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Reacher

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20 minutes ago, Lostin76 said:

Oh, 100% I understand those who need to put food on the family table. It's crushing to think about it.

My "too hard" is not about reopening necessarily. It's about failing to put together a proper and effective response as a nation. Other countries have handled this much better than we have. That's a frustration for me. And the trailing economic devastation is going to be horrible for so many people.

Once again, I'll say that Mother Nature is a formidible foe, and we aren't going to win against her...

I'll also say that there's no judging what an "proper and effective response" looks like without revealing political biases at this point. If you look at various news stories about Sweden's response you'll see they comparatively did very little and are seeing about the same results as most countries. I've seen what I've gauged as missteps at all levels of government in this...but finger pointing isn't productive and won't solve the problem... 

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10 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

Once again, I'll say that Mother Nature is a formidible foe, and we aren't going to win against her...

I'll also say that there's no judging what an "proper and effective response" looks like without revealing political biases at this point. If you look at various news stories about Sweden's response you'll see they comparatively did very little and are seeing about the same results as most countries. I've seen what I've gauged as missteps at all levels of government in this...but finger pointing isn't productive and won't solve the problem... 

There have only been 2 diseases effectively eradicated in human history, just one affecting the human population, smallpox.  No coronavirus vaccine has ever been developed. Link.

This thing will likely burn through the human population no matter what we do.  Its a choice I'm glad I'm not responsible for making but we have to do what is best for the most people possible.

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1 hour ago, Reacher said:

Much more than the immediate mental health issues. Just quoted a study saying 52% of small businesses expect to close within 6 months. How many owners / employees will turn to drugs? Begin drawing down savings only to end up in poverty many years down the road? Not be able to afford medical care and die from other issues? I have seen people retire with not enough. It is a slow motion train wreck. They can get by ok for a number of years. Then they downsize a house to buy time. Eventually home equity is gone. This is already happening from the 2008 recession. Now you stack 2020 on top of it and there will be lots of people hurting. I expect reverse mortgages to take off in the next decade. 

All of the above is happening every single day...and it's very sad.

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1 hour ago, IUFLA said:

I guess it's that or accept mass poverty, mass mental health issues, unemployment rates even higher than they are now, people who've built businesses and invested their lives in them losing those businesses, and elevated addiction numbers...

We're not doing this because fighting the pandemic is "too hard." We're fighting against nature, and mankind rarely if ever wins that battle. 

I said in the beginning we had to balance out response. And that's what we're starting to do.

I pray for you and other New Yorkers every night...I understand how difficult and scary this must be...but my prayers also go out to the people who need to support families and put bread on the table...

Agree with this all day long. 

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1 hour ago, Proud2BAHoosier said:

Kinda makes me wonder where the ACLU has been in all of this. Guess it doesn't fit their agenda.

ACLU has been trying to help first non violent offenders who have been sentenced to 24 months or less get out of a death sentence. We have tens of thousands of people inside our federal criminal system who are basically been given their death sentence. I know, I know....well criminals,etc....they are still human though. ACLU has been plenty busy I can assure you. 

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1 hour ago, IUFLA said:

Once again, I'll say that Mother Nature is a formidible foe, and we aren't going to win against her...

I'll also say that there's no judging what an "proper and effective response" looks like without revealing political biases at this point. If you look at various news stories about Sweden's response you'll see they comparatively did very little and are seeing about the same results as most countries. I've seen what I've gauged as missteps at all levels of government in this...but finger pointing isn't productive and won't solve the problem... 

She is indeed. And I don't expect to win. I just expect a certain level of competence and sustained effort.

You mention political biases. This is not political. Or at least it is not for me. It does not matter who is in charge or what party they belong to. The numbers and destruction are devastating already, and I'm just frustrated that we haven't made the necessary steps to in some way mitigate what comes next. 

If I'm being honest, I suppose I'm just angry b/c I see what our font line staff are facing. It's also hard knowing how many patients are dying alone every day. Their families are hurting and confused. We have radiologists (who are a lot less busy now days) volunteering to act as liaisons with patient families. People are giving and losing so much. It's just heartbreaking.

I'll end with some positives though. We have started some very promising trials that we are excited about. And we just had an update from our community service plan folks. The food banks and child care facilities are adapting well and continue to serve the community. We have a CSA partnership going that allows us to send discharged patients home with a huge bag of healthy food and sanitation supplies. Families who need help are still getting it. And many more are needing help right now.

 

 

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46 minutes ago, Seeking6 said:

ACLU has been trying to help first non violent offenders who have been sentenced to 24 months or less get out of a death sentence. We have tens of thousands of people inside our federal criminal system who are basically been given their death sentence. I know, I know....well criminals,etc....they are still human though. ACLU has been plenty busy I can assure you. 

That's all good and all, but what about our basic liberties? You know, like the protesters in states that don't agree with what their governors are doing?

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I've come to the conclusion that once the virus gets a foothold in a community, there really isn't much to prevent it from spreading, even when there are strict social distancing guidelines.

For instance, compare Marion County, Indiana to entire states.

Total Deaths

  • Marion County - 403
  • Tennessee - 239
  • Wisconsin - 374
  • Alabama - 369
  • Kentucky - 294

Indiana is now projected to have more total deaths than Georgia, a state with 4 million more people in it.

 

 

 

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41 minutes ago, Lostin76 said:

You mention political biases. This is not political. Or at least it is not for me. It does not matter who is in charge or what party they belong to. The numbers and destruction are devastating already, and I'm just frustrated that we haven't made the necessary steps to in some way mitigate what comes next. 

No, it shouldn't be political, but it is, whether we like it or not.

The thing is, we don't know what the numbers would be if we, as a nation, had handled this differently. We don't have a baseline. There's nothing to measure against.

We can look at our numbers and compare them with other countries all day long, but the amount of variables involved really don't tell us much. I do know we're slightly below the global numbers in mortality percentage.

And my hat is off to you for focusing on the positives...

So, as I stated long ago in this thread, all we can do is be a good spouses, parents, neighbors, and friends, even to those I don't know. Help each other through this...

That's what we can do...

I see stories about good deeds by everyday people (fire up Sly and the Family Stone) in the news and my faith in America is renewed... 

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I'm honestly so torn on everything.

I think we botched home isolation horribly. Political bias and finger pointing truly aside; we botched it as a society. Or you could argue our society was never set-up to adhere to the type of regulations needed to effectively suppress this virus. If we effectively home quarantined, the new cases per day would be in the hundreds. If the cases were that low you can do contact tracing, but the restrictions to reach that goal would've been far reaching and would've required federal enforcement. Hypothetically, we could have ripped that band-aid off already and as a result we would have far more options to re-open society, which would've given us many more options economically. It didn't happen. We still have 2k active new cases per day, which is way too many for contact tracing.  

Our current reality is our reality though. The big thing that scares me now is because there are still so many active cases still, re-opening everything with the numbers this high can cause another spike. If that happens and we need to go back into home quarantine it will hurt the economy even more. Because we can't get on the same page as a country, I fear a long slinky-like effect (a cycle of tightening and loosing restrictions) which will make it extremely hard for our economy to get any type of solid footing, any time soon. 

Of course, this is my opinion and you may disagree with it. And that's fine. I don't have any good answers other than we need to get on the same page as a country....somehow. The messaging (from everybody) is far too mixed right now. Sometimes I wish we could just call a timeout, put the petty shit aside, and do our part as citizens because everybody ultimately wants the same thing: to get back to normalcy. Social responsibility right now is the truest form of patriotism. 

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7 minutes ago, tdhoosier said:

I'm honestly so torn on everything.

I think we botched home isolation horribly. Political bias and finger pointing truly aside; we botched it as a society. Or you could argue our society was never set-up to adhere to the type of regulations needed to effectively suppress this virus. If we effectively home quarantined, the new cases per day would be in the hundreds. If the cases were that low you can do contact tracing, but the restrictions to reach that goal would've been far reaching and would've required federal enforcement. Hypothetically, we could have ripped that band-aid off already and as a result we would have far more options to re-open society, which would've given us many more options economically. It didn't happen. We still have 2k active new cases per day, which is way too many for contact tracing.  

Our current reality is our reality though. The big thing that scares me now is because there are still so many active cases still, re-opening everything with the numbers this high can cause another spike. If that happens and we need to go back into home quarantine it will hurt the economy even more. Because we can't get on the same page as a country, I fear a long slinky-like effect (a cycle of tightening and loosing restrictions) which will make it extremely hard for our economy to get any type of solid footing, any time soon. 

Of course, this is my opinion and you may disagree with it. And that's fine. I don't have any good answers other than we need to get on the same page as a country....somehow. The messaging (from everybody) is far too mixed right now. Sometimes I wish we could just call a timeout, put the petty shit aside, and do our part as citizens because everybody ultimately wants the same thing: to get back to normalcy. Social responsibility right now is the truest form of patriotism. 

My wife and I have been talking about your last paragraph the last couple of days. How do we get everyone on the same page, or at least in the same book, to help us get back to normal?

We have people here (mostly young men) who are too cool or too good to wear a mask when they go outside. Being socially responsible and looking out for each other has never been more important, but we can't even get that right as a country. And you can't put all of that blame on leaders - we the people need to get our shit together.

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6 minutes ago, tdhoosier said:

I'm honestly so torn on everything.

I think we botched home isolation horribly. Political bias and finger pointing truly aside; we botched it as a society. Or you could argue our society was never set-up to adhere to the type of regulations needed to effectively suppress this virus. If we effectively home quarantined, the new cases per day would be in the hundreds. If the cases were that low you can do contact tracing, but the restrictions to reach that goal would've been far reaching and would've required federal enforcement. Hypothetically, we could have ripped that band-aid off already and as a result we would have far more options to re-open society, which would've given us many more options economically. It didn't happen. We still have 2k active new cases per day, which is way too many for contact tracing.  

Our current reality is our reality though. The big thing that scares me now is because there are still so many active cases still, re-opening everything with the numbers this high can cause another spike. If that happens and we need to go back into home quarantine it will hurt the economy even more. Because we can't get on the same page as a country, I fear a long slinky-like effect (a cycle of tightening and loosing restrictions) which will make it extremely hard for our economy to get any type of solid footing, any time soon. 

Of course, this is my opinion and you may disagree with it. And that's fine. I don't have any good answers other than we need to get on the same page as a country....somehow. The messaging (from everybody) is far too mixed right now. Sometimes I wish we could just call a timeout, put the petty shit aside, and do our part as citizens because everybody ultimately wants the same thing: to get back to normalcy. Social responsibility right now is the truest form of patriotism. 

Three things...

I posted a link to some NYC numbers a few pages back that showed 66% of new cases were found to be people who had been sheltering in place. Very surprising. 

I also read the opinion of a couple of doctors who were saying wearing a mask may be detrimental to developing the necessary natural antibodies our body would produce on its own to fight this virus. That it will slow the "herd immunity." 

Thirdly, the numbers are going to "spike" simply because we're testing more.

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Today, Indiana started paying out PUA unemployment for self employed, sole proprietor, gig worker ect.  If you get even $1 from state UI you will get the full $600 from the feds.  If you haven't applied you should.  The $600 is in effect until July 31st. 

If the do nothing congress people can sit on their keisters and get their salary you bet I'm going to squeeze every penny out of this I can.

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31 minutes ago, tdhoosier said:

Of course, this is my opinion and you may disagree with it. And that's fine. I don't have any good answers other than we need to get on the same page as a country....somehow. The messaging (from everybody) is far too mixed right now. Sometimes I wish we could just call a timeout, put the petty shit aside, and do our part as citizens because everybody ultimately wants the same thing: to get back to normalcy. Social responsibility right now is the truest form of patriotism. 

 

20 minutes ago, Lostin76 said:

My wife and I have been talking about your last paragraph the last couple of days. How do we get everyone on the same page, or at least in the same book, to help us get back to normal?

I think to do this we have to rectify a few things...

Is the American Dream still alive and well?

Do we want to continue The Great Experiment of a self governing society?

Can we eschew "gotcha" politics?

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26 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

Three things...

I posted a link to some NYC numbers a few pages back that showed 66% of new cases were found to be people who had been sheltering in place. Very surprising. 

I also read the opinion of a couple of doctors who were saying wearing a mask may be detrimental to developing the necessary natural antibodies our body would produce on its own to fight this virus. That it will slow the "herd immunity." 

Thirdly, the numbers are going to "spike" simply because we're testing more.

Interesting, I’ll have to read up about the masks, as I haven’t thought about it from that angle. 

More tests or not. If hospitalizations go up that threaten their capacity, I think we’ll see restrictions tighten up in those specific areas. 

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39 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

Three things...

I posted a link to some NYC numbers a few pages back that showed 66% of new cases were found to be people who had been sheltering in place. Very surprising. 

I also read the opinion of a couple of doctors who were saying wearing a mask may be detrimental to developing the necessary natural antibodies our body would produce on its own to fight this virus. That it will slow the "herd immunity." 

Thirdly, the numbers are going to "spike" simply because we're testing more.

I didn't see your post about the 66% in NYC, but that really was a weird (and shocking) number at first. But not really when you think about it - they characterized these people as those who were either retired or not commuting into work - basically teleworkers like my wife and I. That doesn't mean we don't/won't come into contact with the virus though. We still have to go to stores and get supplies. We still come into contact with dozens of people most days. 

I'll give you one example - walking the dog. Our dog run out back is closed during this. So, we have to take our two dogs out front for walks a few times a day. To do that, we have to get into an elevator. There are often people on elevators - sometimes people not wearing a mask. In a small elevator!

Then, we have to pass though the lobby and run the gauntlet of delivery people and people getting their deliveries. We don't do walks during lunch of dinner times, anymore b/c there are just too many delivery people delivering food and people picking up said food. We also have UPS, FedEx, and USPS people in and out all day.

Then, you get out front and there are other people walking their dogs. People out front smoking. People just randomly walking around. People jogging. There are still a lot of people out and they are not all wearing masks. We probably come into contact with a 12-25 people just walking our dog each time. That's three times a day.

There are a ton of asymptomatic people out and about, it would be very easy for people who say they are "sheltering in place" to get this in NYC. And our building only has 75 units. Imagine a huge building. Heck, imagine a housing project!

 

 

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Field hospitals are being taken down after only treating 82 patients. $8,000,000 per patient spent. 

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/07/851712311/u-s-field-hospitals-stand-down-most-without-treating-any-covid-19-patients

I live in a county with 7 positive cases still. And even though its rural we do have the Crane Naval Base.  We should be working. Along with hundreds of other counties and municipalities.

And instead of people like me getting the benefit of unemployment, and businesses here getting loans, that money can be shifted to people in the hotspots to help them while they stay in quarantine.  And as hotspots come and go allocate resources there.  Maybe, just a thought.  

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There are so many other factors in play than social distancing, 

My numbers a few posts above show that Marion County, Indiana, under a fairly strict social distancing policy, was faring worse than the states of Tennessee and Georgia, states with comparatively weaker social distancing restrictions.  Then, you compare Sweden to other areas of Europe.  While Sweden is certainly not fared the best, they are far, far, from the worst.

I don't know what the 'right' answers are.  But, I do think that we all need to be accepting to the fact that the whole world is learning how to deal with this on the fly.  Some decisions are going to be right.  Some will be wrong.  But, we all need to pull together and have each other's back until this is over.  .  

 

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11 minutes ago, Lostin76 said:

I didn't see your post about the 66% in NYC, but that really was a weird (and shocking) number at first. But not really when you think about it - they characterized these people as those who were either retired or not commuting into work - basically teleworkers like my wife and I. That doesn't mean we don't/won't come into contact with the virus though. We still have to go to stores and get supplies. We still come into contact with dozens of people most days. 

I'll give you one example - walking the dog. Our dog run out back is closed during this. So, we have to take our two dogs out front for walks a few times a day. To do that, we have to get into an elevator. There are often people on elevators - sometimes people not wearing a mask. In a small elevator!

Then, we have to pass though the lobby and run the gauntlet of delivery people and people getting their deliveries. We don't do walks during lunch of dinner times, anymore b/c there are just too many delivery people delivering food and people picking up said food. We also have UPS, FedEx, and USPS people in and out all day.

Then, you get out front and there are other people walking their dogs. People out front smoking. People just randomly walking around. People jogging. There are still a lot of people out and they are not all wearing masks. We probably come into contact with a 12-25 people just walking our dog each time. That's three times a day.

There are a ton of asymptomatic people out and about, it would be very easy for people who say they are "sheltering in place" to get this in NYC. And our building only has 75 units. Imagine a huge building. Heck, imagine a housing project!

 

 

I've always thought NYC was operating behind the 8 ball in this whole thing for a few reasons. 8+ million people packed into 300 square miles (population density 28 per sq mi) for one. The reliance on public transportation too. It's no wonder you're at the epicenter.

Houston has over 2 million in the city, but that's spread out over 600+ square miles (3 per sq mi)...

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5 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

I've always thought NYC was operating behind the 8 ball in this whole thing for a few reasons. 8+ million people packed into 300 square miles (population density 28 per sq mi) for one. The reliance on public transportation too. It's no wonder you're at the epicenter.

Houston has over 2 million in the city, but that's spread out over 600+ square miles (3 per sq mi)...

Yep, we were doomed before we even got started. I can't even imagine how bad it would have been if people had kept riding the subs as normal. I always forget just how huge the Houston metro area is geographically. Definitely helps you guys with spread. And I'm still curious about warmer states in the south.

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28 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

 

I think to do this we have to rectify a few things...

Is the American Dream still alive and well?

Do we want to continue The Great Experiment of a self governing society?

Can we eschew "gotcha" politics?

Yes. Yes. And I really hope so. 

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9 minutes ago, mrflynn03 said:

@Lostin76

How is air circulated in those apartment buildings?  Do multiple units share the same recycled air?  Could see that being a problem. 

Great, I'll add that to my worry calendar! :) I actually don't know the answer to that and am afraid to ask now.

We are very lucky in that the south side of our place is basically all windows and a door that open onto our terrace. We've had our windows and door open and just move in and outside as the day/night progresses. So, for us lots of fresh air and sunshine if it's nice out. I would say most people don't have that outdoor space/access here. This probably sounds crazy, but we've ever turned our heat on in the three years we've lived here. But it gets HOT in the summer on sunny days. AC is cranking then.

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1 hour ago, mrflynn03 said:

Today, Indiana started paying out PUA unemployment for self employed, sole proprietor, gig worker ect.  If you get even $1 from state UI you will get the full $600 from the feds.  If you haven't applied you should.  The $600 is in effect until July 31st. 

If the do nothing congress people can sit on their keisters and get their salary you bet I'm going to squeeze every penny out of this I can.

You are correct. I am self-employed and thought WTH, I'll fill out the form(s). I really didn't know what to expect and sure enough, like you said mrflynn, I noticed PUA payments in my bank account. I have not been able to generate any income for almost 8 weeks and this is totally appreciated.

I want to add that you must file for Indiana Unemployment benefits first. Most likely, like me, I was turned down. But they do provide a link to file the PUA form.

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