Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

Think I mentioned it a couple days ago

You did mention it. You're about to join Buchanan and Jon as our resident posters on the alzheimer's fast track.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trump's gone from 43% approval to 55% on handling COVID-19 in a week's time (at least in the ABC poll). What changed? Well mainly that he stopped downplaying it

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/20/poll-majority-of-americans-now-approve-of-trumps-coronavirus-management-138570

[iam416]

He's also been much better in communicating. To the point where I think he's been genuinely good over the last few days (not some artificually low "good by PDJT standards").

I think he appreciates the gravity of the situation or, at a mimimum, the gravity of the situation as it relates to this re-election chances.

[THE_WIZARD_]

America held hostage...day 5...

...as an owner of two small businesses myself...one being a restaurant...this is an overreach and mega-overreaction the likes I never ever thought I would see in this country.

...like killing a fly with a nuclear warhead...

[iam416]

America held hostage...day 5...

Heh. Talk about nostalgic.

as an owner of two small businesses myself...one being a restaurant

Yeah, I really can't even imagine what it's like to be a small business owner. Godspeed, Wiz.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Thanks Talent. Not pretty right now. My IT business is booming though with the sudden surge in home to office setups...but that will end shortly...have to lay off a bunch of people as well.

[iam416]

Please fire Dr. Strangelove first. TIA, yer pal, The Talent.

[lineygoblue]

Not sure if its applicable to your restaurant Wiz, but here in Michigan the restaurants are trying to stay open by offering drive up/pickup service. One restaurant owner here in the area is taking a page from the 50's, and turning his place into a drive-in, where waitstaff comes to the car, takes your order and brings it out.

Best wishes to you, my friend.

In regards to ANY politician who KNEW this situation was coming, and used their information to make profits? I don't care what letter they put after their name, they should be thrown out of office, and be locked up. AND they should forfeit any profits made in any such sales.

Despicable.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Not sure if its applicable to your restaurant Wiz, but here in Michigan the restaurants are trying to stay open by offering drive up/pickup service. One restaurant owner here in the area is taking a page from the 50's, and turning his place into a drive-in, where waitstaff comes to the car, takes your order and brings it out.

Best wishes to you, my friend.

In regards to ANY politician who KNEW this situation was coming, and used their information to make profits? I don't care what letter they put after their name, they should be thrown out of office, and be locked up. AND they should forfeit any profits made in any such sales.

Despicable.

Thanks Liney...actually my restaurant is a pizza/wing sports bar and we do a lot of carryout as is...but it's not just converting to carryout/drive-up/curbside/delivery...the fact is people are scared shitless to do anything right now...or spend money on anything but soap and toilet paper...I'm trying to get a local GrubHub type system going for the local restaurant owners which hopefully will help...but no matter what I project we will be down about 75% regardless what we do. Losing March Madness was a fucking killer.

But I look forward to my $1200 check.

[Ghengis Jon]

In all seriousness Wiz, I hope you and your employees come out of this relatively unscathed. Small biz, the backbone of this country, could really take a beating if this extends beyond a couple of months.

[froot loops]

Tax deadline pushed back to 7/15.

[froot loops]

The latest update from my wife is the COVID unit was nearly filled and they were making plans to open another unit. The patients are stacking up. She has been part of the team coordinating the response but pretty soon she'll have to start taking patients in addition.

[THE_WIZARD_]

In all seriousness Wiz, I hope you and your employees come out of this relatively unscathed. Small biz, the backbone of this country, could really take a beating if this extends beyond a couple of months.

Thanks Jon.

[iam416]

Actually, looking at Burr, he didn't sell for 3 weeks. Right when it really started to look bad. That's definitely a fact in his favor. I mean, if you're going to dump you dump pretty quickly. You don't walk up to the edge of the cliff, which is pretty much what he did.

Whatever. There are much bigger fish to fry.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Re warm weather slowing the spread of the virus: Maybe. I read a report today that shows invitro growth of cultured COVID-19 decreases below 20C (about 68 degrees). In vitro is a long way from in vivo so, caveats apply.

It's been in the 80s for the past 2w here in S FL. I saw curves/trajectories comparing state by state growth and FL was in the top 5 by number of active cases but, TBF trajectories were comparable state to state while case numbers in most other states were low.

There are now 4 drive through testing centers open in Broward and Miami Dade. On the news this am, 3 of them were reported as being open for people wanting a test to just come on in. The test is administered with you in your vehicle via swab. Results allegedly available by text or email in 24h. That time frame is consistent with some of the newer versions of the single swab test kits so, if true, test kits are showing up en-mass. Side note: read that one company produces the single swab kit swabs ...... it's in Italy and allegedly on lock-down.

You may have read that global and national transportation services for needed medical supplies has ground to a halt. While that may be true on cargo carried by commercial airlines, UPS, FEDEX and DSL are operational and touting their availability to move whatever needs to be moved. The US military can move whatever is needed from wherever it is available to any location on the globe. Press needs to get off the panic button on that one.

One of the drive throughs - the one near us - said you had to have a prescription to get the test. That is weird. I actually would expect some form of triage per CDC guidelines be required to see if you need the test. When the first one opened two days ago, that was the protocol to get a test. Made sense in a limited testing availability circumstance. I'd also assume that if 100s of thousands of test kits suddenly became available in S FL, those triage requirements would be logically waived. We'll see ......

......and yes, the spike in new cases in the US is due to rapidly expanding and implementation of testing capability. It should be pointed out that just testing and getting numbers, while that's good for epidemiological stats, if you want to flatten the curve, you have to test AND track. I don't have a good feeling that 's happening given the degree of technology available in your smart phone to do that - just have heard nothing about that here in the US. Implementing that on a wide scale would be touchy business but, damn the privacy advocates right now. It was used extensively and apparently successfully in SK.