Nah, one for himself, his wife and the four kiddos. The math checks out.
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Nothing good out of boxes again this week. 
Canât complain about quarantine. Have it better than a lot of people.
Getting tired of seeing people named Corona Viruslord Yayquarantine etc though. These kids have no imagination.
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Ah hell, there go my next two throw away twink names.
You be âthat guyâ lol
Iâd be more surprised if you could snag one. With how many I keep seeing they all get taken quick.
The nurses, doctors and orderlies in the hot zones are literal heroes.
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In other news, 32% unemployment rate predicted for the 2nd quarter:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/03/30/coronavirus-unemployment-could-top-32-47-million-lose-jobs-fed-says/5091156002/Seems like a lose-lose situation either way:
Choice 1 - rescue the economy and avert a depression, but lose a couple thousand (mostly elderly) people
or
Choice 2 - completely lockdown society and âshut offâ the economy, but save a couple thousand (mostly elderly) people
Supposedly it takes an average of 18 months to develop a safe/working vaccine, but honestly I donât see the economy surviving that long while being in a âshut offâ state. Things will get scary once the unemployment/relief money starts running out.
The youngest fatality in my region, 20; in New York City, 16, in London, 13 with no known underlying health issues but yes mostly elderly.
The bigger problem is that with the hospitals overwhelmed with covid-19 cases, many others with unrelated conditions would also die.
An antibody test is a lot closer than a vaccine, and that could allow a return to work for much of the population.
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Theyâre currently estimating 100,000+ deaths. Or, as you call it â âa coupleâ thousand.
If people went back to work right now, that wouldnât rescue the economy. Youâd have even more people getting sick and hospitals overflowing with exponentially more patients. That would also adversely affect people with other medical issues/emergencies.
Youâd end up with the worst case scenario â bad economy and exponentially more deaths.
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Theyâre just old people, theyâll happily to die for the economy.
/s
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Rant time, this virus thing has pointed out some issues that Iâm not okay with as an American. Firstly, the fact this is officially, what, week 2 and 1/2 for the United States? Approximately 14 days and the talk is like this country has been brought to itâs knees. I get it, itâs a scary issue, but itâs showing glaring issues like the lack of manufacturing jobs in this country.
Understanding history, the US has gone from the manufacturing power that cranked out hundreds of thousands to even millions of military vehicles/equipment in World War 2, supplying our allies. Then after the war is over, rebuilding straight up places like Berlin.
To today where I see articles about struggling to build enough face masks, something you can hold in the palm of your hand. I think that shows just how much has âleftâ here.
Rant over, back to your normally scheduled sarcastic forum personality.
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Just an update: now all vets and staff are being tested there. Half the building today, other half tomm. They sent in the national guard to cover staff while tests are pending. They got expedited so luckily wonât take the normal 4 days it has been. Iâd say by Thursday night weâd have an actual count of how many are affected there. All because this wasnât taken seriously enough by administration/supervisors. Thereâs a reason I left there a year and a half ago, and now it takes a catastrophe like this for people to see what myself and dozens others were saying for years.
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I tend to get into trouble for rants, the mods donât like them, but what the hell.
Issues that youâre ânot okay with as an Americanâ?
OK fair enough, I grew up in a military family (my father had active service in WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam) and I take these things quite seriously.
Iâm old, I served in the infantry in Berlin while that stupid wall was still there, Richard Milhous Nixon was my commander in chief.
I can remember when the CEOs in corporate America and the wonderful supply-side economics (thank you Mr. Ronald Wilson Reagan) decided that we were better off with a âservice economyâ because it helped the bottom line and stock prices (screw the workers) to send all of our manufacturing to countries where there were no trade unions or environmental regulations.
I was working on the Gambit and Hexagon projects (old spy satellite programs) when it was first determined that there was no longer a single major weapons system in the US military that didnât depend on at least one critical part that had to be imported. (I believe thatâs still true).
And now Iâm living during a time when we are dependent on our competitors for our basic medical supplies during a pandemic.
So sure, watching your personal finances go to hell and our future suddenly looking shaky isnât much fun. Nobody can blame you, or anybody else, for wanting to rant during this debacle; itâs frustrating and it comes at us during one of the most politically divisive eras in our history on top of everything else.
However:
Iâve never belonged to any political party because I donât much like either one of them but if youâre referencing the historic reason weâre in this beschissen situation by implication with your use of the term âleftâ in quotes, youâre blaming the wrong group of dummer esels.
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Amen to that.
And on that point, a little rant of my own. These politicians seeking to score points off this pandemic by taking potshots at each other is GROSS AF. Using a pandemic to grandstand on is beyond bad taste. Way beyond.
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Well, there was clearly a failure of testing in the U.S. Thereâs also a ridiculous situation right now where all the states and the federal government are bidding against each other for critical medical supplies/equipment.
Other countries did a better job responding to this pandemic.
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Hah, I wasnât even considering sides when I wrote that. Iâm talking about the âup and goneâ style left. My issue is my understanding of how things were through reading history versus this experience today.
Depends on where you are. Here in Seattle (the US epicenter of this mess) our testing is and has been overwhelming our data reporting system.
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Yes!! They wasted so much on non critical people (NBA) that they just failed hard. Iâm still do butt hurt that tests were done on people that didnât need it, even if their own people founded it.
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Our health-care system is made up by state and county labs, which do not have the same equipment as ARIs, and further have different equipment than hospitals that DX (diagnose). The same tests wonât work in every place. There is no nationalized health-care system where everyone is on the same sheet of music. What you have is a vast network of independent hospital systems with their independent equipment in their independent labs.
Thatâs how it works. Or in the case of national testing - how it doesnât work.
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Kind of burns the blood to see the most useless people in our society getting tested over everyone else who provides some value.
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