Prices not going down??

[rabbi]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

It's called a metaphor. I would like everyone to see him as he really is, and not share his delusion.

Actually naked? Ewwww. That is a disturbing image. I'm sure Stormy will never be able to forget.

Greg

In Germany every kid knows H C Andersen's "Des Kaisers neue Kleider"

I just couldn't resist

[picklesandjesse]

Originally Posted by wolfgal

finally i find some company.


cards up: i'm worried to the moon and back, nervous too. i've been in lockdown way past my cabin-fever quota. seriously i'm ready to jump out of a window. i need sunshine, exercise, to talk to someone, to laugh. grief, this feels like a jail sentence (how i wish i had my boat: i'd be so outta here).

yes, i am in the capital. there are cops everywhere, and they are stopping people right and left 'controlling' them. fear permeates. we can only leave for an hour at a time now too, must put the hour and date on our permission slips that we print out from the govt website. most have a mask, so no one is smiling. people do not want to smile... and the silent eeriness of it all. spoke to an elderly widow on the phone. she was trembling, in tears, feared going out, so alone... she is isolated and terrified, but i am stuck here and cannot get there..., and couldn't anyway: i could kill her with my very presence (having been sick).

and so, my ability for logic is out the window. i need to talk:


there are a few other things that have trotted across my forehead today... it has been a really, really rough day here. i never did read Orwell's 1984. always meant to, but honestly couldn't find the courage. now i find that, given the choice, i do not want to read it. i'd like to wake up tomorrow morning and feel the relief that comes when one realises it was only just a dream.


thanks guys, am glad for the listen

Sorry to her you are feeling like that. It's not a dream unfortunately. Here in NSW Aust we are about to have another level of restrictions carried out. Maybe by next week the same as you. I remember telling my son on 9/11 that his world has changed and this is another such event.
Where I live on the east coast there is a bird virus that's killing vast numbers of rainbow lorikeets so we're not the only species having problems.
I find them all over hopping around unable to fly through lack of energy and food. I manage to save about 50%, they can fly again after about 10 days, it's very disturbing. I'm able to help some have a peaceful death with a full stomach ( they lick organic rice syrup off my fingers )as they slowly die wrapped in a soft cloth listening to the ABC Classic radio station. They get a proper burial in our garden with tears and all. Sad times indeed. This too should pass, but they'll have their freedom not like us.
Bit off topic...... sorry.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by wolfgal

finally i find some company.

cards up: i'm worried to the moon and back, nervous too. i've been in lockdown way past my cabin-fever quota.

You are not alone. And the new thing is, just about the rest of the world is feeling some flavour of the same thing too.

So far, I agree with the point of the lockdown, and even if we later decide that COVID-19 didn't hit as hard as feared, I won't regret acting quickly according to the best info at the time.

What's missing for all of us right now is a set of goalposts, a destination we're driving towards. Authorities should at this time be able to make some estimate for what the lockdowns will achieve, and when we can consider it to have been a success, and we can start moving back towards normal again.

Even if it's a bullsh!t date, we need that carrot now, I think, to hang in there. (but no, it won't be seeing the Donald and Mel at Easter worship)

My own wild-ass guess is that people and the economy won't much tolerate a lockdown that goes into May. I believe we have to start thing up again by then, even if it's gradual, or we pivot to just protecting the most vulnerable.

As to what awaits us economically on the other side of this, it could just be a classic recession with some business casualties, and the normal slog back to market health. It could be the dawn of a greater concern for the average person, with UBI and universal single-payer healthcare, to improve things for everyone. Or it could be Soylent Green / Escape from L.A., if our betters just reward themselves for surviving the lockdown, and leave the rest of us with the cleanup. Do you look cool in an eye-patch?

btw, 1984 is a good book, but not really relevant to the current situation. Also it's a tad depressing. My recommend is anything by Douglas Adams. If you have never read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy set, now would be the time to do it. P.G. Wodehouse is light and funny too, if dated.

Hang in there, folks, and plan/research your next cruise.

[rabbi]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

btw, 1984 is a good book, but not really relevant to the current situation. Also

Sadly it is.

Never before have so many of our rights been taken away so quickly - globally and without any riot or even discussion.
And we won't get all of them back


Here in germany they are thinking about tracing people's contacts through their cellphones to isolate infections.
Just a month ago anyone with such an idea would have been burned alive

[CarinaPDX]

FWIW anyone wishing to (re)read George Orwell's 1984 can do so for free. It is available for download from archive.org, and probably gutenberg.org as well. (These are amazing resources for freely accessing our literary heritage.)

I use an application called Calibre, which can search various web stores as well as archive and gutenberg for desired titles (free and paid). Calibre also is a server of ebooks as well as an ebook reader. I have an ebook client on my tablet, and download from my laptop server as needed. It works great.

Greg

[picklesandjesse]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

btw, 1984 is a good book, but not really relevant to the current situation. Also it's a tad depressing. My recommend is anything by Douglas Adams. If you have never read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy set, now would be the time to do it. P.G. Wodehouse is light and funny too, if dated.

Hang in there, folks, and plan/research your next cruise.

You might like my licence plate !! Hybrid is a joke. Douglas Adams !!! Sorry about sideways pics !!

[Simi 60]

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

And what's most disconcerning - no one yet, with all the other systems tried or proposed, has found a workable long term solution. May be there is none afterall.

The long term solution is to reopen the markets.

The problem is does that happen because the virus is controlled, we reach herd immunity. Either way it will happen and then we will move on.

As with past crisis, those who make smart moves will exit the crisis in a stronger position. Those who make panic moves will exit the crisis in worse position.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

I have somewhat more pessimistic view of the future....
...And what's most disconcerning - no one yet, with all the other systems tried or proposed, has found a workable long term solution. May be there is none afterall.

My take: if you don't submit too much to the game of the social Darwinists...then there's no need to be pessimistic. Let them worry about "positioning themselves" relative to one another for their next battle to get more crap that they don't need.

I've always liked the ending to the old War Games movie...teaches a good lesson that can be comforting...if you look at it the right way.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by rabbi

...You will realize that we are already living Orwell's nightmare to some extend, but a bit smarter.

No need for the government to install "big brother" devices in every house like in 1984. We buy Alexa and Siri instead!

No need for the government to change newspapers, files & records in order to create alternative historical facts. Today we have the internet, a search engine monopoly and FB bots.

We are making these decision - either directly for ourselfs or indirectly by electing the wrong people.

Yes ... we're not in 1984. We're in a Brave New World. People aren't being coerced or forced into surrendering their freedoms. We're doing in voluntarily -- all for the promise of "safety" or "security" or "convenience" or so we can get more shinny new bobbles. This is Huxley's far darker lesson. In the Orwellian world we can struggle against the oppressor: Big Brother. But how do you fight yourself?

Originally Posted by Wotname

I am nowhere near as optimistic as you Mike and I am normally an optimistic kind of guy.

I wouldn't say I'm optimistic about these possibilities. But they are possible lessons we could learn. I mention them as a bit of an antidote to my more extensive view that this event will be utilized in the way all such events are; to further consolidate power in the hands of the few (Shock Doctrine is a fairly simplistic enunciation of this).

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

I believe that Hans Christian Andersen story had the emperor deluded into believing he was wearing clothes - his subjects saw him naked. I wish that were the case here...

Isn't the real lesson of this story is that everyone, individually, "sees" that the emperor is naked. But no one is willing to say so. They all doubt their own eyes because the Emperor keeps telling everyone how beautiful his clothes are. And critically, everyone parrots this line.

We all see it's a lie, but no one has the courage to stand up and say anything. The parallels to our current time are too painful to dwell on.

wolfgal, hang in there. You are experiencing far tighter restrictions than I. I haven't had to get permission to walk the halls since leaving high school (and I refused to do it back then ). I'm not sure how I'd respond to that level of confinement and control -- but then I didn't ever imagine my current restricted state.

The thing I keep stressing to myself is, This Too Shall Pass. But what we're pass into has me even more concerned than the current lockdown state.

[CarinaPDX]

I was just reading an interesting article that actually made sense about what we are doing right now. Basically, for the US and Europe (and Iran, etc), we let this get out of hand. We should have been tracing down everyone sick, and all of their contacts (as we did for syphilis), but it spread too fast, we were unprepared, and without tests it spread undetected. This is how South Korea got control without extreme measures - test, identify, isolate, and trace contacts. For us now, minimizing contacts, for a month or more, the transmission is cut back and those infected can heal without spreading. This will effectively put us back to an earlier stage of the epidemic, at a point that traditional containment practices will work, with the help of readily available tests and of course fewer cases. If we fail to contain it then we will see a repeat of the growth, but perhaps at a slower rate. Meanwhile the curve should have been flattened enough, and the ICU capacity increased enough, that the mortality rate can stay under 1%. Do nothing and the mortality rate would be ten times greater, plus the mortality from other causes that also couldn't be treated due to capacity constraints. We are paying the price now for being unprepared; we really need to get it right quickly.

Read this: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coron...e-f4d3d9cd99ca and the other article linked: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coron...e-be9337092b56 . The first article is constantly updated; last week it had a huge amount of facts but the author wasn't pulling it together with the right conclusions. That has changed - it is very well done.

Greg

[robert sailor]

I can tell you our boat is getting pretty small. Everything is in lock down, we are not even supposed to swim but my wife and I do, just around the boat as we need some exercise. We are stocked up with beans rice and lentils plus we have a water maker so everything is ok. Not used to hanging around in the tropics waiting for another day to pass but hey it's not that bad I guess. Just heard Guatemala was going to continue the shut down another 30 days, haven't confirmed that with government source but it makes sense, if this virus gets out of control in Central America it will be hell as they real,y don't have much for healthcare.

[letsgetsailing3]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

I was just reading an interesting article that actually made sense about what we are doing right now. Basically, for the US and Europe (and Iran, etc), we let this get out of hand. We should have been tracing down everyone sick, and all of their contacts (as we did for syphilis), but it spread too fast, we were unprepared, and without tests it spread undetected. This is how South Korea got control without extreme measures - test, identify, isolate, and trace contacts. For us now, minimizing contacts, for a month or more, the transmission is cut back and those infected can heal without spreading.
Greg

According to some sources, the U.S. has done more tests than South Korea, or at least it's pretty close. We've really ramped it up over the past week. Is it really out of control here, compared to other countries? We've got some challenging hot spots, but the U.S. is closer to the size of Europe than a particular country.

Seems to me that some comparisons are a bit loaded. We're still on the front of the curve compared to other countries, and if we checked it per capita I think we'd find that our curve is flatter than originally projected. Maybe that's so we keep up the social distancing. Too many people seem to feel invincible.

I'm not convinced of the "South Korea is a lot freer" statement. Are they really? Because unless you've had a high incidence of infections, even with lots of testing you still need to maintain social distancing. Also, part of South Korea's success is due to some pretty serious surveillance capability over it's own citizens. I don't see the U.S. going that direction.

The U.S. has implemented a social distancing strategy, and we'll do lots more testing. I hope it's getting cheaper and more efficient. We're still just in the second inning of this thing.

Until we have vaccines and therapies, We're going to have to maintain a high level of social distancing. Our strategy may need to be different in different regions of the country.

[Island Time O25]

IMO social culture plays a significant role in spreading or containing the virus. In more socially active/interactive cultures (Italy, Spain. Iran, etc) you have conditions more prone to virus dissemination as people hug each other when greeting, more and larger family gatherings with grandchildren running among their grandparents, people hangout on warmer evenings outside, etc.

Compare to more reserved, "northern type" of cultures - Scandinavia, Northern Europe, "puritan" New England, etc. New York with its beehive style of living and culture is more affected then next door New England with its more puritan and old yankee style of living, i.e. more aloof, more likely to stay at home anyway, even without the advisories to stay home.

[fivecapes]

Originally Posted by letsgetsailing3

According to some sources, the U.S. has done more tests than South Korea, or at least it's pretty close.

Is that on an absolute basis, or per capita?