Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Ghengis Jon]

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[Dr. Strangelove]

Here's a piece on the Smithfield plant in South Dakota that has shut down. Almost 240 employees have tested positive, which is over half of all known cases in the state (kinda crazy). The company is warning that the US is coming 'perilously close' to a meat shortage. This one plant produces 4-5% of the entire nation's pork products.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-meatpacking/smithfield-shutting-us-pork-plant-indefinitely-warns-of-meat-shortages-during-pandemic-idUSKCN21U0O7

[Dr. Strangelove]

The Navy's announced its first covid death from the Theodore Roosevelt. The sailor tested positive March 30, was admitted to an ICU in Guam April 9, and died today.

Almost 600 crewmembers have now tested positive.

[Whitley]

The Navy's announced its first covid death from the Theodore Roosevelt. The sailor tested positive March 30, was admitted to an ICU in Guam April 9, and died today.

Almost 600 crewmembers have now tested positive.

Good thing they fired the captain there</sarcasm>

President Deals retweets a tweet calling for Dr. Fauci to be fired.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Paying less attention to Monday's typical abundance of gloom and doom news ...... Pit Bull just released a video titled "We can Win." He was promoting it on GMA this morning. How can you not believe Pit Bull?

I also read the article where predictions of 18 months of shut downs in the US and global economy appeared. My take is that statement is about as useless as the Fauci/Brix statement some 10dd ago of 100-250 thousand US deaths (now down and believed to be around 60K).

First, I don't think anyone with a clue thinks the US economy will just restart as in hitting a reset button. There are going to be industries that can re-open sooner rather than later (with appropriate mitigation, testing strategies in place) and those that won't or if they do will reopen under some kind of very strict operating rules, e.g., the restaurant, hotel and and, in general the entire hospitality sector. I'm not watching the global stuff so, no comment there but, in general, Asia is ahead of where the US and EU are by about a month. Noted that China, Singapore and Japan are both experiencing an up-tick of new cases after "opening up." We'll have to see how that goes.

Last Friday, the CDC prohibited cruise ships from sailing in US waters for the next 100d (that's until July 15th). Most lines had already cancelled operations through mid May; a couple through early June. The no sail order remains in effect conditionally until the cruise lines come up with uniform procedures to deal with guests that test + for COVID while aboard - the reason for that is to put the cruise lines on notice that they have to cover the costs and logistics of getting those passengers to the appropriate level of care or quarantined in appropriate quarters.

Port Everglades in FTL and the Port of Miami, both of which handled a total of 3 cruise ships between them (about 100 sick guests - not all COVID+ but presumptively + - with sick guests on board that needed hospitalization. It was a mess and a big story on local news. It did get done and done well and I think there were a lot of time consuming and tough negotiations between state officials, port authority officials and cruise line HQs. The goal is to have a plan in place next time. The cruise lines will but whether passengers will want to cruise at all the rest of this year given the high profile bad pres they got is another question entirely.

Anyway, the cruise industry is one example that is going to have a very tough time returning to some semblance of operations within the next year. People watching this sector of the hospitality industry think the cruise lines will not return to profitability until 2022 but most should survive becasue they had good cash positions to start with and have access to billions in loans. Small theme parks (e.g., Six Flags, Sea World, etc) are also going to struggle but should bounce back within the year. Their cash positions and borrowing ability are more constrained though. They will also suffer from decreased attendance when they do open as most people fly to get to them and that could be problematic.

The wider service sector - upwards of 65% of the US economy across multiple sub-units can - generally re-open with a bit more agility. I think manufacturing and energy sectors fall into that category as well. IOW, it is very industry specific and to make a wide generalization like the article on it did, is stupid. There are so many innovations popping up to keep companies viable while weathering the pandemic, so many hopeful signs, so many innovative medical management, testing and tracking strategies emerging, I'm much more optimistic than the nay sayers.

[iam416]

The lockdown folks are going to have an honest discussion soon. Especially if we start to drift toward food shortages, as DSL's post suggests. So far the only place that has been really hit hard is NYC. Michigan is definitely not good, but it's manageable in probably all but a few places.

In other words, we're buying lots of time. My grocery store is now handing out wipes to all the enter and has had gone with "one-way" aisles to promote social distancing. Hospitals in Ohio are cleared out just waiting for the surge. We are using the lockdown time to prepare wisely. But, at some point you're done preparing and you have to play the game.

[CGVT]

TL;DR of Buchanan's tome

It is going to take a while for shit to get back to normal. It will happen in increments


You're welcome.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Speaking of good news on Monday:

• On the US's 39th day since 100 cases of COVID and as of 4/12/20, the GF is estimated to be 1.04. That is down from the rolling GF average of 1.24 over that 39d period.
• Every state follows a similar downward trend in GF with some, not NY NE states with GFs around 1.12, RI is weirdly increasing and is probably an anomaly.
• There is an unmistakable upward trend in new case doubling rates world wide by country, i.e., world is now at 12d, US at 9d.
• Globally death rates, if we're going to use that as a proxy measure of disease progression, are dropping, in some places dramtically - those kinds of dramtic drops are occuring after 40-50d since first case and that is explained by the normal lag rate of deaths compared to new cases.
• The West coast and western states in general of the US are remarkable for their low death rates compared to the East. Of course Governor Newsome of CA claims it's becasue he and the other Governors of Washington and Oregon took measures much more quickly than their peers in the east. Don't know about that without more specifics and we won't really know until a year or two out when all this stuff is studied.

This is the site, among others that I'm watching the stats:

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

[Dr. Strangelove]

Biden and Bernie doing some sort of joint broadcast...Bernie endorses Sleepy Joe for President and calls on all his supporters to back Biden.

[CGVT]

I wonder what kind of conspiracy theories the Bernie Bos will come up with for this turn of events

[AlabamAlum]

Virginia pastor who defiantly held church service dies of coronavirus

https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/virginia-pastor-who-held-packed-church-service-dies-of-coronavirus/

[Dr. Strangelove]

Michigan has a really bad mortality rate. Exceeds that of Louisiana or NY. I don't know if there's a lot of underreported cases up there but I saw some reporting this morning (and can't relocate it) that an awful lot of nursing homes around Michigan have had outbreaks. If true that would also drive the death rate up (it's over 6% right now)

[Jeff Buchanan]

I don't mean to be picky but you have to be careful when "wondering" why a particular COVID stat is what it is.

Are we talking mortality rate, crude mortality rate or case fatality rate? I'm going to assume you're talking about mortality rate. MR is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time.

So, in order to make sense of a "6%" MR being > than NY's or Louisiana's MR (and, you have to compare apples to apples, e.g. CFR is not = to MR) we'd need to know things like what period of time is being used and what population scale is being used.

From the stats I'm looking at the death rate (same as mortality rate) per 1,000,000 measured in a 24h period is as follows:

NY = 482.4 (4%)
LA = 180.7 (2%)
MI = 148.1 (1.5%)

I think we could look at MI tri-county area MR and compare it to the five-county NYC area's MR and I think they would look quite different than the state wide MRs. The point remains though: one has to be very careful drawing conclusions or wondering why a stat is the way it is from any set of stats. Trends seem to be a bit more useful at this point, e.g., GR, CFR. We won't be able to conclusively say why things went the way they did anywhere in the US or globally until this thing is over and there's been 6-12 months of number crunching from trained epidemiologists.

91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

[Hannibal]

Rasmussen has Trump's approval rating at a staggering -13 their last two daily polls. They usually have him six or so points more favorable than the average.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Dead man walking ....... he's finished and we'll be better off for it. Of course the worry has to be Biden trolling for BernieBro voters and, in the process, make campaign promises that appeal to the redistribution programs of the socialists and environmental whackos on the left. The trolling has already started.

But, while he may seek out those voters, he may trend toward an NHS, support green initiatives and more banking and finance regulation, he won't go full Bernie and if he tries once elected, he'll be restrained by Congress.

The best thing that he won't do is surround himself with simpering yes men.