gbear

I love(hate) how MD has a huge increase 4 days after opening up the economy, and everybody says it can't be related because it wasn't 14 days. Ummm... 14 is the outside of the bell curve for when people become symptomatic. I thought 2-4 was still the most common. Am I wrong in that? Even if not true, there was this little event called 'Mother's Day" where many people went out and got food, gifts, and/or flowers. That fits closer to the longer time for incubation if people insist the increase has nothing to do with more people going out. We need to be careful and maintain social distancing. Sadly, I think we are a long way from out of the woods.

Yesterday, my family and I got to visit our neighbor (maintaining social distances) so we could see the baby flying squirrel they found in their yard. I didn't know we had those in MD. However, google lens agreed that it was a baby fly squirrel.

I hate seeing this: https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2020/05/13/tiaa.html TIAA handles so many teacher and non-profit organizations retirement funds. If they offer the buyouts, the hard part is always who takes such things voluntarily. Usually it is the ones who get the most from them and have opportunities waiting for them. If I knew the company with whom you invested tried to buyout 75% of its workforce, I would have two questions: 1) Did the person running my account take the money and leave and 2) If (s)he did not was that because (s)he had no options? It would seem likely the cream of the crop would leave, and those remaining would have a ton of extra work. Alternatively, they might not have work which says nothing good about the company and its direction. Maybe it is just me reading tea leaves, but this does not seem to bode well for the retirement plans upon which many people in this country are depending. Those people are the public servant class too, the teachers and non-profit organizations. Am I just imagining this is a really bad sign?

Anyone else being gouged using instacart or other personal shoppers? We had been using Insta cart, but a couple weeks ago they stopped including receipts. Then they stopped giving us any sales prices. Now they go a step further. We dont even get what we order. Instead of getting a package of yogurts for 3.99, we get one yogurt for 5.99. Then when we jump through the hoops and get to first in line for customer service, we get hung up on. After sitting through again, we finally get a customer service rep who points to the clause that says Insta cart prices may not be thw stores prices. Now wonder they will no longer include the store receipts. After 90 min online, we are refunded the yogurt cost. However, all the other uncharted remain, like the watermelon that jumps from 3.99 to 6.99. I understand taking a percentage plus the tip, but at a certain point, it is crazy. The hiding the actual costs is also in f under-handed. Is there a better alternative?

For those who say the only people endangered by other not socially distancing on a beach, have you gone to the grocery store or Costco lately? The number of people who think the signs for social distancing don't apply to them and push down whatever aisle in whatever direction they want is staggering. My wife complains every time she has to go out about the impatient people who think the rules don't matter.

LD0506, that makes me think about my interactions with youngest every day. Who am I kidding? Every other minute is closer to true.

For those who say buying liquor from Target would be odd, all I can say is if you are ever in St. Thomas and you buy liquor along the tourist strip where the cruise ships dock, you likely way over paid. Had you gone straight instead of turning to the left to go where all the tourist shops are, you could have bought your liquor at far lower prices. The locals buy most of their liquor from here https://www.kmart.com/stores/virgin-islands/st-thomas/3829.html For an idea of prices, kracken rum price. When I was there, I saw this for $32 on the strip.

I don't find it a particularly bad life. It has its rewards. Though I have to admit sometimes it is a bit stressful.😉

Selective quarantine ideas remind me of a common topic I and others with MS have written about, the gap between "wellville" and "sickville." The reason I find it a bit funny is society talking about putting in place physically what I have always felt figuratively. I have often said one of the hardest parts of living with chronic conditions is how to explain to those without that condition or any known ailment what it is like to live with it. That said, I have long known I belong to one of the largest unrecognized minorities, one of the "disabled." Most people I work with and have worked with for years are shocked when they hear I have MS even though I have always been open about having it and what it does to me. For years, I and my wife have worked with our kids to be as open as they want to be about their conditions whether it is my oldest talking about her heart during jump rope for your heart or my younger daughter being open about what the world looks like through her eyes (functionally very blind). Now we talk about quarantine for our family. I will admit I flinch at a regulated quarantine widening the chasm for our family between wellville and sickville. I flinch but it is not like our family hasn't already been self imposed quarantine for the past 7 weeks after being warned about what was coming our way by my sister-in-law, a family practice doctor in WA. I will also admit I would feel a lot more comfortable with a policy that seeks to help those who have to quarantine themselves rather than just mandating they do so. We are lucky. I suspect my wife and I have more resources than most sick people or parents of fragile children. Still, I cringe for some of the families we know going through the hell of suddenly trying to teach their special needs children, many of whom have 1 on 1 helpers in the classroom. We feel like we are going nuts as their is no break from our kids, but at least there are two of us. I haven't seen anything about what families who quarantine will actually need. It's not just money. Look at online schooling to be flexible to build in adaptive learning opportunities. The hardest part I am finding in all of this is the acting out of our kids forced into quarantine. I write a lot of it off to kids grieving for the loss of the existence they had before the virus without an emotional understanding for the necessity of the changes, Social support needs to be more than dollars, though those help. As it is, we struggle to tread water, and count each day without loss of critical skills as a success. Again, my wife and I are lucky to have the support we do. We figure we will deal with where each of us is compared to where we want to be scholastically when all of this is over. I fear that is a high bar for many families who need help.

OK, so my follow up from yesterday involves a dog... We found something funnier than a dog chasing its own tail...a dog with a cone of shame chasing its own tail. What can I say, in a house of stress and foul tempers, sometimes dogs provide the outlet we need.

"A glimpse of my life insolation. One child cusses next out. One child licks floor when told to clean it up. One child sighs at everything and still doesn’t follow directions. One child throws toys into the only place that is unreachable. One child is mad because they are forced to go on a 15 minute walk. One child fed one dog play doh. Why the dog ate it I am not sure. And that is only a tiny glimpse of one day. This is exhausting. And I pray we all survive. We shall overcome!!!!!" This facebook post isn't mine...sadly, it's my wife's. What's more, today has been every bit as bad starting with the 4 year old master of mayhem waking up and deciding to loudly get up at 6:30. He did so in a way that made sure everyone else was up shortly there after. School work and telework have not been helped by today's antics.

Our family fun came from trying to recreate this rap. "Watch Wes Tank Rap" link It is a fun book to read, but this is the best reading of it I have heard. He did a few other Dr. Seus raps too, but this is my favorite. We wonder how many takes it took to record this correctly.

It is like $100 worth of candy. Lol

On the miracle od covid side, I picked up an order at Target on Fri. I had them load it to my trunk knowing we didnt need anything I ordered over the weekend. My wife went to unload it today and found somebody else's order in there too. It is now Mon. What do we do? Call target or just enjoy knowing they probably cant take stuff back and resell it without worry that we tampered with it?

Bacon, this is what Bill Gates was saying when he advocated the federal government underwrite loans for pharmaceutical companies to start building factories to produce any vaccine. He pointed out most companies wouldn't want to build plants that might not have what is needed for the production of the vaccine. He said if the government really wants to get things back to good as quickly as possible, they would start looking to speed up the production of any newly found vaccine. He was spot on. It's not enough to discover a vaccine, We have to produce it in the necessary quantities when the WHOLE WORLD wants it yesterday.

What the heck happened in MD yesterday? We had 1100+ new cases yesterday. That is roughly a 25% increase in our total cases to 5100. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Why is this spreading so slowly in Africa?

Not sure if it makes us bad parents, but we played the you-tube of Samuel L Jackson reading Shut the F up and go to sleep baby book for our 4 year old who wasn't going to sleep on Sat. He already curses up a storm, so it wasn't like he was hearing anything new...Ironically, it worked. On Sunday, my wife made us all a sit down dinner for which we all dressed up in our nicest. Then we watched Onward. It was a nice family date night. We needed anything to break up the routine and thinking about all the contacts we no longer enjoy day to day... before we spend another week with distant learning to go with our social distancing.

Yes, so much our debt is social security. However, we have been paying for social security on as we go basis since Vietnam. Now as we start to draw more out of it than we are putting into it, how do you think it will be paid? It will be paid with current federal tax dollars not social security tax dollars unless we suddenly cut social security payments. The interesting question I get from that is whether it is even worth separating the social security tax from the federal tax. Currently the separation only helps those making a lot of money (relative term) because social security is only collected up to $128,400. Every dollar after that is not subject to the social security tax. As for whether this administration could pull off something requiring the amount of coordination needed, I share your doubts. I just don't see any easy way forward regardless of who is in charge, and this would go against so many economic theories I studied in college and since, Despite the difficulties in implementing a plan like mine, I still see it as the easiest/least bad path forward if one is trying to maintain productivity and our current economic model. I sincerely hope a smart mind than mine comes up with the better path.

With the entire world's economies set up for a coronavirus crash, I think there are two ways out. The first is massive inflation and unrest as banks fail due to cascading inability to make scheduled payments by people and businesses. As banks fail, money available for consumers and businesses becomes much more expensive. For an idea what that could be like, I direct you to Jamaica. When I was there in Jan, I asked why all the houses are half built. I was told interest rates are btw 17-20% so all houses are built as they get money to do it. When interest rates sore, the costs for everything goes up and sales drop. Just think how many fewer houses or cars would be sold and what that does for related industries. Now lets look at our tax structure. Currently with our model, we tax every time money changes hands. There are some wealth taxes like real estate taxes we pay at the local level, but most of the time we pay when money changes hands. If money no longer changes hands as much, then less is collected. That means we either change the tax rate, run deficit's (states and localities can not), or provide less service. How happy will citizens be without good roads, emergency services, and fewer hospitals? I think down this road lies severe public unrest. I am not sure our current political/economic model survives this road. A second way forward is a massive stimulus like nothing we have seen because our current proposals do nothing beyond putting a band-aid on massive 3rd degree burn. The stimulus I propose would be a world wide forgiveness of debts paid for by the governments of the world. I am talking a stimulus where if you owe, the federal government writes a check (or hits a few keys). I am not talking about just student loans. I mean mortgages, student loans, medical debt, back rent, etc. I would like to see a global reset. From a given date, the balance of your bank account is from what you earn going forward minus what you spend. For what it's worth, I would have the U.S. do it for all our national debt too. That may cause inflation on a grand scale if only one country does it, but if all do? It's only inflationary if your currency is seen as less valuable/stable than some other currency. I say let all the countries take on debt to deal with the coronavirus, and then pay it all out by increasing monetary supply by enough to cover debts. I am trying to figure out who gets hurt more on this path than the first. Am I crazy?

I agree diehard (great to see you on again). I dont think our economy looks the same on the other side of this. I question how an economy where the growth has been largely financed through debt continues when we have stretch where there are massive defaults. I think many people will begin doing the thinking of weighing walking away from existing obligations versus starting over. How does our banking industry deal with massive defaults. It makes me think of the old axiom, "when you owe $100k, the bank owns you. When you you owe $100 billion( or heaven forbid trillions), you own the bank." At this point, individuals dont own the bank, but as a class, small business owners and households own the banks. The question is how do we restructure our debt to allow financing of future projects. I see people talking about college loan forgiveness. Why stop there? What about home loan help? Other things will need to be done if we are to preserve a capitalist economy post corona virus.

As usual, I think Gates gets it: Gate's edditorial One thing I haven't seen mentioned by others is planning for the production of a vaccine. The demand will be huge, but most of the building up for the production is likely to not fill the needs as they arrive. If we want to produce such a vaccine in the quantities needed quickly, we need to plan for success in developing ahttps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bill-gates-heres-how-to-make-up-for-lost-time-on-covid-19/2020/03/31/ab5c3cf2-738c-11ea-85cb-8670579b863d_story.html?itid=pm_pop vaccine. It is the first time I have seen somebody advocating for the implementation of plans for what to do if we get a vaccine. In management terms, I would file this under "those who don't plan for success are planning to fail." The other two points about a federal response plan versus a states and the need for more testing with centralized results are good points too. It's just the planning for what success could look like that I think has been missing from our national discussions.

For those In need of a laugh

My kids have been in daily contact with their cousins in WA and Germany along w friends in Israel. Never been more happy they have relationships with extended family. My son is even playing DnD w cousin in Germany. These are the days of miracle and wonder.

Sorry, I tried to paste chart from worldometer on daily deaths, but I can't from phone. It is the predictable exponential growth. My next question is when do we take the steps countries like Israel are taking to get on top of this? I predict we go above 5k before we try to bend the curve as a country and closer to 10k before we agree on what to do and start implementation of measures. For reference, in Israel, our friend can't go more than 300ft from their house unless they are the one person in the house gping out for food. I bet their numbers of new cases drop precipitously in next 2 weeks. Why can't we? Political will is my answer, and frankly I dont know whether to be more emarassed, disgusted, or angry with those who wont take this seriously. Their ignorant actions mean the rest of us have to isolate ourselves longer.