Coronavirus

Harv : great news about that SBA loan , hope it happens for you !! You have done all the right things and deserve the support .

Ha thanks Warp!  Hope you are right.

warp daddy wrote

 :   "after WW 2 wartime deficits and national debt that were created by money printing( which is what this amounts to ) have proved inflationery throughout history .

Hey warp, I see your article from March and raise you this article from yesterday:
https://nypost.com/2020/04/10/consumer-prices-clothes-gas-travel-fall-most-in-five-years/

“The big concern right now is deflation,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial in Pittsburgh. “Deflation is likely to take hold over the next few months as businesses slash prices in response to much lower demand from the coronavirus outbreak and associated restrictions on movement.”

Awesome Harv and Warp on the sba loans!

I saw that , interesting take no doubt

Economics operates on C+ I + G. Notion . Consumer Confidence( spending)  I nvestment. And G government spending

The huge question is HOW will consumers perform given the likelyhood of a systemic change in business structure , meaning  the means of production  ( new investment capital to revolutionize the means of production and infusion of more AI  , especially if the US ramps up a Buy American mandate.

Most of Which will result undoubetedly in significant reduction in labor , ( which during a churn or turn as they call a 4 th revolutionary change)  displaces some labor and that in turn affect s. Consumer confidence

 Since we have been in a deficit spending mode prior to this crisis with a Trillion dollar deficit and now  government is further discounting money by increasing the debt without a commensurate backing of FIAT  money with bullion could be a major blow to consumer confidence

  e.g. if / when jobs fail to come back either uniformly in time or segemented over several quarters or god forbid the transformation eliminates entire sectors of jobs that require  highly discretionary consumer spending which in difficult financial times, people are less likely to spend .

Nothing is clear at this point other than some serious disruption is likely to occur in any scenario why :
1  not all sectors will recover equally ,
2 some may simply not recover at all
3 . Not all will recover in the same quarter r eally just number 1 again
4. IF  Consumer confidence spurred by this cratering  , it means discretionery spending will suffer
 5 The notion of buy  American is a nice intent but that will require more capital investment ro get operational.which affects an already difficult situation

I am certain that we will adjust and deal with whatever scenario plays out but i am certain we are in for a rough  time of it .  Hope i am wrong .. Plan for the worst , hope for the best

Kontratieff Winter is coming.

Quite possible Matt.

FWIW, a little feedback from my brother, a nurse treating CV-19 patients in Westchester.  

His concern right now, and I’ve seen this more over the past few days, is that the current CV-19 protocols could be wrong.  As others are starting to say, he sees CV-19 acting more like a high altitude pulmonary edema than pneumonia induced Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.  Patients being put on ventilators, other than low O2 saturation, don’t have other symptoms typical of respiratory distress requiring intubation.  Given the mortality rate of those who do go on ventilators, perhaps intubation should be a last resort treatment option.....whereas right now it seems to be the first thing they do for serious patients.  He’s personally seen patient’s O2 levels raised with less invasive intervention.  Again, just sharing a viewpoint, which may or may not be right.

An update on his view of the situation in general.....the wave he wasn’t sure would come has hit where he is.  ICU, plus makeshift ICU on another floor, full with CV-19 patients on ventilators.  Other less severe CV-19 positive patients fill the other floors.  He’s now more sensitive to how contagious CV-19 is, and how CV-19 acts unlike any virus he’s ever seen....but he’s still not convinced the economic turmoil and loss of jobs we are experiencing is justified, given the mortality rates and likely 70k US CV-19 deaths.  We have that many in a bad flu season.  However, he does believe distancing is making a difference, and who knows how many more might die if it wasn’t in place.

JTG4eva! wrote

An update on his view of the situation in general.....the wave he wasn’t sure would come has hit where he is.  ICU, plus makeshift ICU on another floor, full with CV-19 patients on ventilators.  Other less severe CV-19 positive patients fill the other floors.

I remember you mentioning that earlier in this topic. I never understood why a front line health care worker doubted so strongly that "the wave" would hit his hospital.

A first-person account about being on a ventilator:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/09/my-near-death-experience-ventilator/

bumps wrote

I remember you mentioning that earlier in this topic. I never understood why a front line health care worker doubted so strongly that "the wave" would hit his hospital.

People (even smart people) have a hard time imagining things that they can't see directly & have no prior experience with (even if they watch the news & see other people struggling)

Kinda why it is so hard to get people to take the threat of climate change seriously.

My wife's friend's husband is the director of large Queens ER..Every day a flight leaves from JFK to ALB with his over flow of patients.

Also Dr friend in Cali is putting patients on ECMO..google for explanation

The wave has yet to hit us here. The hospital is empty and they're calling nurses off from work. Only 2 cases in our local hospital. I hope it stays that way. Hope, but I'm very doubtful as we're only 5 hrs north of NYC.

bumps wrote

JTG4eva! wrote

An update on his view of the situation in general.....the wave he wasn’t sure would come has hit where he is.  ICU, plus makeshift ICU on another floor, full with CV-19 patients on ventilators.  Other less severe CV-19 positive patients fill the other floors.

I remember you mentioning that earlier in this topic. I never understood why a front line health care worker doubted so strongly that "the wave" would hit his hospital.

These are unprecedented times. Like MC mentioned I'm sure there are a lot of people who have changed their minds on many different things.

campgottagopee wrote

These are unprecedented times. Like MC mentioned I'm sure there are a lot of people who have changed their minds on many different things.

Unprecedented times that make complicated things even more difficult.....and the healthcare system was already incredibly complicated.

As for not initially buying into the wave, not unlike most he formed an initial opinion and supported it with the science and fact that fit (the mortality rate for CV-19 is no higher than for influenza), and was further swayed by personal experience (weeks into the NY crisis there were very few CV-19 patients where he is).  Not unlike most of us, his opinion didn’t consider all the facts (namely Ro/transmission rate, and just how contagious CV-19 is, as compared to influenzas).  In the end (like most of us) he’s probably right and wrong on varying aspects of the subject.

Of course it’s more complicated than that.  Unfortunately, medical protocols and hospital procedures are not always based primarily on patient care/outcomes.  Patient focused clinicians tend to develop a healthy skepticism of hospital administrators.  Hospitals, for better or worse, are big businesses that include a lot of bureaucracy, and are beholden to insurance companies for “cost” reimbursement.

Yeah, we all know that is nothing new.  However, that reality has manifested itself in different ways with CV-19.  It’s been things as simple as hospital administrators where he is having decided early on that every person that sets foot through the doors of the hospital must wear a mask.  Everyone, no exceptions.  That may have been an incredible waste of PPE, and contrary to CDC guidance.  A more frustrating example for him....there is a growing body evidence (back to this thing acting like high altitude pulmonary edema) that Hyperbolic Oxygen Treatment (HBOT) could be a better bridge to getting severe patients past the cytokine storm that really ramps up the respiratory distress that is putting CV-19 patients on ventilators.  Granted, most hospitals may not (currently) be equipped to use HBOT in a critical care setting....but his facility has the largest hyperbaric chamber in the northeast US.  When he suggested they consider its use as an alternative to ventilators, which can do a lot of long term damage to the CV-19 patients that do survive intubation, he was told they couldn’t do that because it involved “too much red tape”.  Of course “red tape” is just double speak for legal risk (even though new laws have been passed since the start of this crisis to protect providers trying different/promising treatments from malpractice claims) and insurance companies who won’t reimburse because HBOT isn’t the “approved protocol”.  So, you have a potentially beneficial therapy not even being considered by his facility for reasons other than patient care.  For reasons like that he wasn’t all that confident the administrators at his facility were taking the best possible courses of action early on, rather than playing the follow protocol and CYA game.

He’s has found that the wave is real, but he’s still not convinced the course of action is right.  Distancing may be saving people from dying of CV-19, but others are currently dying from untreated diabetes, heart disease, depression (suicide) and other causes (because you currently can’t get care for anything but CV-19), deaths that will never get counted in the numbers.  For those reasons (combined with the mortality rate and death projections) he’s still of the overall opinion that the current distancing measures aren’t saving enough lives to justify the current economic and personal turmoil they are causing.

JTG4eva! wrote

.  For those reasons (combined with the mortality rate and death projections) he’s still of the overall opinion that the current distancing measures aren’t saving enough lives to justify the current economic and personal turmoil they are causing.

So you're saying your brother is kinda dumb?

Like, imagine if we weren't distancing? Yeesh.

Harvey wrote

Sweden seems to be nearly all in on the herd immunity strategy that UK was talking about, but then gave up on:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/europe/sweden-lockdown-turmp-intl/index.html

It will be very interesting to see the results, over time.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8212365/Swedish-PM-tighten-coronavirus-restrictions-Austria-Denmark-begin-easing-lockdown.html

MC2 5678F589 wrote

So you're saying your brother is kinda dumb?

Given that there are numerous schools of thought on the relative benefits of social distancing (lives saved) vs. the economic and other impacts that will be felt for generations, over what may prove to be a really really bad flu-like season......only the truly dumb person in the room (you) would dismiss either side out of hand, without any intelligent discussion to back it up.

Fact of the matter is that everyone is going to have his opinion sooner or later.  The world will reopen, and lives will be lost when those decisions are made (because more lives would be/could be saved if we social distanced forever).  Maybe he’s  there sooner than you or me, but you have no proof he’s wrong.

It’s back to opinions and assholes.  His opinion regarding medical stuff is much more informed than yours.  While I’m not entirely sure exactly how much better his opinion is, you definitely are the bigger asshole!

JTG4eva! wrote

Fact of the matter is that everyone is going to have his opinion sooner or later.  The world will reopen, and lives will be lost when those decisions are made (because more lives would be/could be saved if we social distanced forever).  Maybe he’s  there sooner than you or me, but you have no proof he’s wrong.

Wait, what?

To believe this, isn't it necessary to believe that a vaccine will never be discovered?

Like, what's wrong with social distancing until September (the date they're now targeting for a vaccine)?

JTG putting off a lot of this energy right now:

raisingarizona wrote

Wait, what?

They? It’s one scientist in the UK, who thinks there could, if everything goes perfectly, be a vaccine available for use in September.  That’s the one you are betting on, while others still think a widespread vaccine program could take 18 months?

Oh, and there are such things as influenza vaccines, yet 30k to 70k people die of flu each year.  There isn’t going to be any magic bullet that eradicates CV-19, this isn’t Polio!

Especially combining CV-19 with known influenzas, when the world reopens many people are going to die of CV-19, it’s only a matter of when that happens.  I’m not saying it should be sooner rather than later, but it’s not wrong to start considering such questions.

Talk about dumb.....in addition to taking away Trump’s twitter they should revoke your social media privileges!