Coronavirus: COVID-19

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

Blonde Lives Matter!

[mr.WHO]

I have a mixed feeling about it, but I kinda enjoy the overall slowdown of life with COVID.

Less crowds everywhere, less noise, less trafic, less crowded public transport, less queues, clean air (I looked in the sky and noticed the stars...in the middle of my city).

I almost want to stay it that way...if not that behind this quiet time, there is a tragedy of unemployment, people missing the rent/mortgage and big possibility that in several months people will go into eachother throats or even to war (China and India already bash eachother, who know maybe Taiwan is next, Russia is looking at Ukraine due to drought in Crimea).

[Vertigo 7]

Unemployment has the natural consequence of homelessness as well, and that's about to become a massive problem here. Congress passed a short term measure for eviction bans that's about to expire, if it hasn't already. I can't remember if that was set to expire at the beginning or end of July. But there's been little from congress about future relief for the citizens, at least from the senate.

[mr.WHO]

The sad part is that during lockdown both production and services are in all time low, so no matter how much money goverment throw at the problem it's just piece of paper that will be worth less and less with every day.
You're end up with hyperinflation and huge debt.
Lockdown was never a mid/long-term solution, but was ment to be time to prepare supplies and safety measures.

Seem like in continental Europe, things start to look good with economies lifting the restrictions and going into local measures like lockdown in Barcelona.
It sux to see UK and USA failing to get things under control.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

There is only one thing to boost economy, because it's currently based on consumism and it's not going to change: give people money to spend and tell them to spend it.
The huge € 750b recovery fund: if you give € 2k to each EU citizen and tell them they have two months to spend them all (and not just in food or essentials), you instantly put all that money into economy (shops, restaurants, leisure... Everything). You want to buy a € 2k watch? Do it! I need that shop to survive too. And if you choose to split those billions in just people under a certain income, it's going to be even more effective.
Mine is just a provocation, but I think economy is going to recover only if people are going to have money to spend: if you give money to a company, a share of that money is going to be unproductive for sure.

[Vertigo 7]

Yeah but it's all made up BS anyway. This isn't about someone who has made some bad life decisions and ended up on the street. This is literally a crisis situation that impacts everyone. If there was ever a time to show compassion, this is it. Debts can be forgiven, deals can be made between banks and the feds to keep people in their homes. Apartments aren't going to gain anything by tossing people out on the street - that certainly isn't going to reduce the loan amounts owed by the complex owners.

Whatever financial difficulties that may arise by helping out the people now will be much easier to overcome if they're able to bounce back and return to work as things begin to stabilize. Making them homeless on top of everything else is just going to compound the issues and make the economic recovery that much harder for everyone.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

What happens with all those loans from banks, when people lose their jobs and cannot pay anymore? Do you feel the scent of 2008, or it is just me?

[Alan Phipps]

I completely agree with Vertigo 7's post just above but would add just one condition.

There would have to be some brief and basic level of investigation of the background to the rent/mortgage arrears as there will be some (a small minority admittedly) who will otherwise milk the welfare system while making no effort to return their family to any form of normality. We have seen a very small element in the UK who are quite happy to remain at home on state-paid furlough and benefits despite now having the opportunity and support (eg return to school, child care, etc) that allows them to return safely to some form of working income.

[Vertigo 7]

What happens with all those loans from banks, when people lose their jobs and cannot pay anymore? Do you feel the scent of 2008, or it is just me?

Different situation, same outcome.

Housing collapse from 2008 resulted from banks making super risky investments and engage in sub-prime lending for houses, among other ****** practices like banks would do their own property value estimations instead of now using independent 3rd parties to do that. So basically properties were being over valued, people were getting hit with super high interest rates, debts went unpaid, and then boom.

But now we're facing financial crisis because so many people have been displaced from their jobs. Naturally, if someone doesn't have income, they can't pay their debts. The feds have taken SOME action to avoid a major catastrophe. US Department of Education loans have been frozen until like November or something, for example. No interest is accruing and no payments are due. But the housing loans aren't owned by the government, so it's up to the banks to really make a decision there. Of course, they want to make money. So they have to deal with the feds for protections, or, they let people default on their loans. Renters, on the other hand, have no loan, but they're under payment contract with the apartment managers. The apartment mangers have loans with the banks for the properties they own, so there's another layer of people who want to make money between the renter and the feds.

[mr.WHO]

There is only one thing to boost economy, because it's currently based on consumism and it's not going to change: give people money to spend and tell them to spend it.
The huge € 750b recovery fund: if you give € 2k to each EU citizen and tell them they have two months to spend them all (and not just in food or essentials), you instantly put all that money into economy (shops, restaurants, leisure... Everything). You want to buy a € 2k watch? Do it! I need that shop to survive too. And if you choose to split those billions in just people under a certain income, it's going to be even more effective.
Mine is just a provocation, but I think economy is going to recover only if people are going to have money to spend: if you give money to a company, a share of that money is going to be unproductive for sure.

Your assumption has one major flaw - money is just a piece of paper or digital 0-1 if there is no service or good to buy them for.
Normaly you have X amount of money and Y amount of economy (goods + services). In optimal conditions X = Y
You can give 1 mil $ to everyone, but if barber/general services are closed and farms/factories/mines are closed, then what you gonna spend these money on?
X is inflating due to stimulous programs, while Y is collapsing due to lockdown.

Pumping money to restart economy and consumer spending could work, but you have to lift up the lockdown first, so that production and services could resume.

We actually had this in '90s in Poland where we had 500'000'000 PLN bills (present day 500 PLN which is about 125 $) - everyone was a millionare or even billionare, yet we were dirt poor.

[Mightysword]

What happens with all those loans from banks, when people lose their jobs and cannot pay anymore? Do you feel the scent of 2008, or it is just me?

If you have been following the report from banking sectors recently, you can see they're prepping for it. So far, the revenue hasn't been impacted much (meaning only relative few people businesses missing their payment). But the banks are deferring their profit and slash dividend/stock buy back. Instead of reporting it as profit, they're reporting it as loss - future loss to be exact. Because they're reserving that revenue in the event that default wave will indeed come.

- In one way, you can say this is good news because the banks are doing their diligent, unlike 2008. This is them going beyond even the normal "stress test" threshold required by the fed you often hear about in the news to prep for the crisis.
- In another way, this is bad news because it tells you how the banks think about the economy outlook, and basically don't see any hope for a recovery anytime soon. Wellfargo and Citigroup shifted about 80% and 75% of their profit this quarter into reserve respectively, and it's a signal to tell the market how bad they think it gonna be.


Denver, and Colorado overall has been doing very good so far in term of control the COVID-19. And even us still see an upstick since the soft opening, enough for the mayor to hit the 'pause' button 2 days ago. And it seems him and other mayors are writing to the governor to even reverse it. Being a reasonable state that we are, you don't see many protest ... yet. Even groups represent business said they understand the decision, but regardless they still issued a stark warning that if this situation keeps up, as much as 50-60% of some sectors will fail by the end of the year.

[matthewfarmery]

Another great add from the Lincoln project

Mourning in America

https://lincolnproject.us/video/mourning-in-america/

They are certainly putting the pressure on. and telling it as it is.

I have to agree with this add. If there is no reversal from the Trump admin, things will get far worse. and yes, I also think another great depression is more then likely, but more so, a world depression. If the USA sinks, so will many of the western world will sink with them.

[felter]

So I was playing around with softmaker planmaker and I was using the graphs, I needed some information so I ended up making a graph for the confirmed US covid-19 cases, by adding up all the daily cases and making them weekly and I thought I would post it, see below:



Can you believe it has been 19 weeks since the first reported infection in America, time sure does fly along. You will notice that week 18 and 19 are the exact same, but I used Saturday to Friday for the numbers so there is still today's number to be added onto week 19, so you are probably looking at another 60k+ to be added to that number. And yes those numbers are in the thousands, so those last two are 390,400 confirmed cases, yipes, nearly a million in two weeks. The next week or two will be an important time, as it is expected that the death rate is about to start going up to match rise in infections, lets hope that doesn't happen or we could be looking at some serious numbers.

[pjknibbs]

The interesting thing about that is that you can see lockdown was starting to work...they lifted it far too quickly.

[mr.WHO]

Mass protest and riots didn't helped eigher.

It's amusing to see continental Europe as the calm and rational one when dealing with crisis...first time in 200 years.

[felter]

So I've updated my chart to include Fridays numbers:



Looking at it you will see the rise is pretty well consistent, with no sign of easing but also it doesn't seem to be getting any worse, which is kind of good.

The UK government is still playing around with the numbers, they are spending an exceptional amount of effort to get the numbers down, with them announcing they are going to open a review into deaths with the intention of removing when the person died after leaving hospital to lower the amount of deaths. So in the governments mind they couldn't have died from covid-19 as they weren't in hospital, therefore they shouldn't be included. Notice they have no intention of opening an enquiry into the thousands who died from the virus and have never been included, they are only interested in lowering the number to make them look like they did a better job than they did. It's the same with the current deaths, they are reporting that only 13 deaths occurred yesterday in England from the virus, but that is not the whole story there were actually 114 deaths yesterday but the government is still only reporting on deaths in a hospital, if you died in a nursing home or outside of a hospital, even if there is 100% guarantee it was from Covid-19, they will not be included in the governments briefing on the death count. Nothing that is coming from the UK government can be trusted to be the actual factual truth, as they keep on manipulating the figures for their own personal benefit.

[felter]

It's pretty amazing in the differences in how different countries take on things. Yesterday Scotland had its worst day for new infections with a total of 21 infections reported, which is more than any other day in the past month. The Scottish government makes a big deal out of it, using it as a warning that the virus is still out there, that the fight is not over yet. Meanwhile the UK government is lets improve the amount of reported cases so it doesn't look so bad and lets get ready for Christmas, while masking the truth about how many people are actually being infected and the total death count. The America government with 72k infection in a single day are, it's okay nothing to see here, it's only because we are doing more testing that we have more infections, so you don't need to wear a mask and we need to get those kids back into school as they can't be infected or infect anyone else.

I know I'm glad I come from Scotland, I do believe the Scottish government has done a better job than some others. So the question is, are you happy with the way your government is handling things.

[Observe]

we need to get those kids back into school as they can't be infected or infect anyone else...

The idea of children somehow being immune, is apparently not the case: 85 infants under age 1 tested positive for coronavirus in one Texas county.

[felter]

we need to get those kids back into school as they can't be infected or infect anyone else...

The idea of children somehow being immune, is apparently not the case: 85 infants under age 1 tested positive for coronavirus in one Texas county.

That is so, so sad. How could they let 85 under 1's get infected with a nasty virus. I just have visions of a baby in an enforced coma with tubes to help it breath, not the kind of vision I want to have. If I had a 1 year old kid, I would not be letting anyone get anywhere near it right now, especially if I was in America.

Also want to point out one thing you don't want to know your country state town or whatever is having to do:

Texas counties such as Cameron and Hidalgo are so dire, health officials are stocking up on refrigerated trucks to store bodies as morgues fill up.

Meanwhile Georgia governor sues Atlanta over face mask rules. What's up with America, are they all suffering from the stupidity of their president. I have been told that stupidity is not contagious, that you can't catch it, but are we sure on that, as it sure looks like it is spreading just like the virus is in America.

[Vertigo 7]

Meanwhile Georgia governor sues Atlanta over face mask rules. What's up with America, are they all suffering from the stupidity of their president. I have been told that stupidity is not contagious, that you can't catch it, but are we sure on that, as it sure looks like it is spreading just like the virus is in America.

Well... as with the Targaryens, republicans have wed brother and sister for generations, and they say every time a republican is born, the gods flip a coin.