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THE PANDEMIC CHAT ROOM


Erwin

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3 hours ago, Erwin said:

One has to see the "big picture" to see what is the nature of the Chinese junta and what China is really up to.  Only then does the Pearl Harbor reference makes more sense.

Or not. Part of the alt right narrative that falls flat so often is linking things that aren't linked, assuming intent where none exists and inflating beliefs to facts.

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

And Marx took a dump and it became ... alfred  newman. 

oooh the rapier wit, I am mortally afflicted!!   Aaarrrgh

-Does it say anything else?
-No!
Just "Aaargh."
Aaargh.
Do you suppose he meant the Camargue?
-Where's that?
-ln France, I think.
-lsn't there a St. Aaargh's in Cornwall?
-No, that's St. Ives.
St. Ives.
No, "Aaargh." At the back of the throat.
No, in surprise and alarm!
-You mean a sort of a "Ah!"
-Yes, that's right.
My God!
It's the Legendary Black Beast of Aaargh!
That's it! Run away!

Edited by sburke
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8 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Checkmate ... now you have been exposed again as the village idiot. 

Do you talk like this in real life to real people not on a forum?  Interesting interaction behavior... and kind of repetitive.

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Here is the Russian view of this CV pandemic, as told by the Chief Researcher of the Centre for Defense and Strategic Studies of the General Staff, former colonel of the Military Intelligence Service (GRU), Vladimir Kvachkov. This is NOT PC, is brutally honest and offers perspectives on this matter no one elsewhere has provided. Lots of food for thought here. A colleague sent me this, and I am grateful. This blockbuster of a video is in Russian with English subtitles. 
 


Regards,

John Kettler

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4 hours ago, kevinkin said:

Of course. We just don't make a habit of making jack asses out of ourselves. Tends to be dangerous in NJ. Which might explain why you hightailed it to CA. 

Do you ever go back and reread your posts?  I suggest you do.  Hopefully you'll see that you don't come off very well sometimes.

As for the stupid internal US rivalry, it is all relative.  Where I am nobody really cares about Californians because they don't vacation here or own second homes.  On the other hand, locals have some pretty strong feelings about folks from NJ in particular.  It isn't good.  And I'm sure the people from NJ have a similar opinion about our slice of the world.  However, on one point there does seem to be broad improvement.  Both would rather be here than in NJ for the summer :D

I do not include myself in that.  I judge people by who they are, not where they were born or where they currently reside.  But I'm funny that way, I s'pose.

Steve

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11 hours ago, kevinkin said:

Can't cite any sources since this is new situation and can't be studied in a controlled fashion. However, immediately (say March 1) going to 50% occupancy for indoor places of business and wearing face coverings indoors would have been a way to balance the infection rate and the unemployment rate. In NJ, they first closed all restaurants and bars on March 17, then 6 days later everything closed but places to get food, booze and keep your house and car maintained. Then ~2 weeks later they required face coverings indoors. Then they closed parks and golf. Then they opened parks and golf at 50% due to public pressure. Very haphazard.

Agree with the haphazard approach being very bad.  Unfortunately, the standard playbook prior to this crisis was the Feds took the lead on using its superior resources to come up with recommendations and then to coordinate them with states.  States were, reasonably, expecting to follow the Fed's lead.  But nothing happened at the Federal level except denials and refusals.  The states, therefore, had to take action on their own.  They were obviously not prepared to do so even within their own states, not to mention coordinating with their neighbors.  So yeah, it's a flipp'n mess.

11 hours ago, kevinkin said:

Now we are going to work backwards by opening back up to 50% maybe sometime in June. Restaurants are praying for outdoor dining by Memorial Day weekend. If so, it will be the biggest tailgate party ever. There is no way to know if closing at 50% on March 1 would have been as effective as 100% on March 22.

For sure there is no way to know.  But there's also no way to know if having a 100% lockdown for February would have done the trick and then we could have moved to 50% by mid march.  With viruses the later one waits to do any action, the more limited choices become.

However, the basic gist of your argument that the economy would be in better condition now if we had gone with only 50% lockdown is not really supported by what's going on in Sweden.  The GDP contraction there is about as bad as everywhere else in Europe, yet their restaurants and bars are largely open.  Which gets back to my argument that there are inherent flaws in Western economic systems that simply don't do well with pandemics.  100% or 50% lockdowns is like arguing about chopping off a leg below the hip or below the knee.  I'd rather we talk about ways to save the whole thing, or at worst lose "only" a foot.

11 hours ago, kevinkin said:

But if the goal was 6 feet apart to avoid 6 feet under, I think it was likely achievable at 50%. Since we are going to be at 50% anyway, why not go there initially especially in less populated areas of the country?

That's part of the problem.  Epidemiologists argue we shouldn't be going to 50% until certain benchmarks are met, which for the most part few states have achieved.  It is too soon to say how right or wrong they are, but the empirical evidence doesn't lean in favor of things turning out well.  At least for some places. 

11 hours ago, kevinkin said:

A targeted response was more appropriate and likely how it will play out the next time. Like I said before, we have to learn to live with this and other new viruses and we can't do that sitting on the couch. 

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/496586-the-burden-of-proof-lies-with-economic-lockdown-proponents

Read that one when it came out.  There are some good points in there, though there's also a lot of omissions and convenient interpretation of whether the glass is half full or half empty.

11 hours ago, kevinkin said:

BTW NJ has a higher per capita income than CA (3rd in the nation; 1st apart from the DC area)

Per capita income isn't very important IMHO.  Income is largely a function of underlying expenses.  When we got smart and escaped the urban life my wife and I took a combined 40% pay cut, yet all of a sudden we went from scraping by with an apartment, one vehicle, and mounds of credit card debt to having a nice house, two vehicles, and had almost no debt.  This economic liberation is what allowed Battlefront to take shape, which gets into a separate offshoot of economic theory (i.e. opportunity costs associated with high expense lifestyles).

Steve

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