Coronavirus

One good thing about this pandemic is Face4Me is back posting again.

One Doc my wife works with and has utmost respect for told her he broke down crying on the drive into work. The stress is unimaginable. Being rural we aren't seeing the masses, yet. Hopefully we never do.

My wife was talking to a good friend of hers the other night who is also a RN out on LI. Just on her floor alone they have 279 patients infected with the virus.

There's no drama as it's completely real.

Face4Me wrote

I think you got that backwards ...

Thanks for that correction...I can't even read any more LOL!

tjf1967 wrote

Campi your man can get free money for wages.

My dept is non-essential. I can't work from home and no way in hell do I want to be in the public appraising the complete garbage cans that some people drive around. You have no idea how some people keep their cars. I wouldn't let my dog get in some of these dumpsters.

campgottagopee wrote

There's no drama as it's completely real.

Amazingly, just like there were Sandy Hook "truthers" saying all the people were crisis actors, there are Coronavirus "truthers" saying that hospitals aren't actually full and nobody is actually dying.

Thankfully, Google/Twitter/Facebook are burying the misinformation this time (which is definitely the right move here, but might have dangerous consequences in some future crisis).

All true but the rest of us can't crawl up into a ball. We have a responsibility to keep being productive.. To plan how we are going to come out of this like a rocket so we have something for them to come back to.

tjf1967 wrote

All true but the rest of us can't crawl up into a ball. We have a responsibility to keep being productive.. To plan how we are going to come out of this like a rocket so we have something for them to come back to.

Right. That's exactly what I asked of my boss. When this whole thing was going down he asked me what everyone's expectations were. I told him to not go broke so we have a place to go back to work. I don't need to be out there looking for a job. Screw that!

campgottagopee wrote

Right. That's exactly what I asked of my boss. When this whole thing was going down he asked me what everyone's expectations were. I told him to not go broke so we have a place to go back to work. I don't need to be out there looking for a job. Screw that!

Would you take a 20% pay cut when you go back? How about 50%?

My fear is that companies are going to use this as a way to shaft their workers - cutting pay because people will be desperate for jobs, cutting benefits because healthcare costs are going to skyrocket, cutting jobs because they automate even more work, working the employees that they retain even harder than they do now.

I'm not sure I even have a solution for that (except for Universal Basic Income & Medicare For All, of course).

tjf1967 wrote

All true but the rest of us can't crawl up into a ball.

I agree with this completely, and I'm not suggesting that we should crawl into a corner and give up. For those of us who live in a place where the virus isn't having much of an impact, it's easy to understand the frustration of having to be "locked down" for something that doesn't really seem to be a problem ... at least for us, but that said, I think it's important for the country to come together to deal with this together. The "us" vs "them" mentality just needs to stop ... a little empathy can go a long way.

This country came together after 9/11 like no other time since World War II. You would think that something like this would be bringing the country together, but it's quite clear that it's not. I just don't get it.

tjf1967 wrote

We have a responsibility to keep being productive.. To plan how we are going to come out of this like a rocket so we have something for them to come back to.

My wife and I were talking about this yesterday, thinking about what things will be like once this is behind us. For myself, I'm fortunate ... I was already a "work from home" person before all of this started, and I'm still working, so in reality, nothing has really changed too much for me.

I think it's going to be great time to buy a car, for example. I'm guessing the manufacturers will be offering all kinds of incentives to get the ball rolling again. I have two cars that I really need to think about replacing ... one's a 2007 with about 95,000 miles and the other is a 2012 with about 250,000 ... I'm hoping to replace them both.

For those restaurants that can weather the storm right now, I think they'll see a really big "boom" once this is over ... people are going to be itching to get out, and not have to cook at home!

Travel, particularly domestic travel, I think will see a big surge ... same as above ... people are going to be anxious to just get away from home.

The one thing that does concern me, is whether people who are still able to work right now, will get used to "not spending" money, and will not go back to their previous spending habits. That could definitely impact economic recovery, at least in the short term.

MC2 5678F589 wrote

My fear is that companies are going to use this as a way to shaft their workers - cutting pay because people will be desperate for jobs, cutting benefits because healthcare costs are going to skyrocket, cutting jobs because they automate even more work, working the employees that they retain even harder than they do now.

I was thinking about this too ... It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out ... Is it going to be a "buyers market" or a "sellers market"?

While on the one hand, there are going to be SO MANY people looking for jobs, there are also going to be SO MANY employers looking for workers.

I think this is different than it was after the "Great Recession". At that time, most businesses stayed open, and were continuing to function ... but as you stated above, they kind of used the recession as an "excuse" to ... in your words ... "shaft their workers".

This time, so many businesses are actually shut down. I think that makes it a different situation.

Estimates of what we spent in response to 9/11 are 4-6 trillion, where "only" 3000 Americans died. Granted the death toll worldwide was much more, but I think we are talking about America here.

IMO most of that money was wasted. There was some good that came out of the response, it's much harder for passengers to get into the cockpit of a plane. Still not a great ROI.

9/11 was an "us vs them" thing.  It's just that the them were not Americans.  In this case the virus itself if hard to blame.  There has been some blaming of the Chinese. I read a story about a man in texas who stabbed an asian family, including a two year old, shopping at Sams Club because they were "making everyone sick."

I think some good could come out the pandemic.  People are seeing a real need for tax dollars and coordinated response, a role for our collective resources. I'm hoping that it will be a lot harder in the future to get the public behind needless expenditures of our strength, to save and prepare for things like this pandemic.

MC2 5678F589 wrote

campgottagopee wrote

Right. That's exactly what I asked of my boss. When this whole thing was going down he asked me what everyone's expectations were. I told him to not go broke so we have a place to go back to work. I don't need to be out there looking for a job. Screw that!

Would you take a 20% pay cut when you go back? How about 50%?

My fear is that companies are going to use this as a way to shaft their workers - cutting pay because people will be desperate for jobs, cutting benefits because healthcare costs are going to skyrocket, cutting jobs because they automate even more work, working the employees that they retain even harder than they do now.

I'm not sure I even have a solution for that (except for Universal Basic Income & Medicare For All, of course).

The majority of my pay is commission so I'll be in charge of what I make. Not a concern for me. When this is done, like Face mentioned, we are going to rock bud. 👍💪👍
And you can bet your ass I and my guys will be ready.

Side effect: I assume everyone has heard about Zoom bombing by now.

I live in a small neighborhood with several college professor neighbors. One of them is a very sweet woman, economics professor. She is Chinese but has lived and taught in the US for 15 years or so.

During her lecture on Thursday, she was interrupted by someone on the call saying they had a question, when she called on them the voice said “professor Corona, where can I buy some bats?” Then yelled something unintelligible and hung up.

Turns out people are posting the links and passwords  to their zoom lectures on reddit, 4chan etc, so that asshole racists can unleash abuse from the anonymous safety of their computer.

MC2 5678F589 wrote

JTG4eva! wrote

.  You don’t like the word nuance....replace that with “comprehensive assessment of ALL facts”

They...uhhh... Do that.

Of course you wood think that!  Its classic MC-style “analisys”....find a cupola quotes that support you’re side of a issue and, Voila!....an expert is born!

Try a gain!  

I’m not a regular reader, but I’ve bean on enough too sea Snopes for what it is.  While maybe sum times they do a “bettor” job, to much of there analysis is purely superficial.

Their, that should keep MC busy doing something “use full” for awhile!  Any thing wood bee bettor then hearing more about his frightening reliance on the likes of Snopes!

Wow. That was... something.

Being the grammar Nazi and spelling police is what you are good at, so I figured ‘what the heck’!

You must have been a real cad on those Disney message boards.

Petition to separate upstate from NYC, what do you folks make of this? My cuz posted on Facebook.

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/separate-nyc-from-upstate-and-central-ny

It's silly

tjf1967 wrote

It's silly

Well said