Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[froot loops]

NBA season suspended, the Jazz and Thunder players are in quarantine.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Getting crazier and crazier. Probably puts additional pressure to cancel March Madness entirely. OSU just canceled the Spring game.

Not that celebrities catching it are any more tragic than anyone else, but it sucks Tom Hanks & his wife got it.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Dow futures down 1100 points as of 10 Pm eastern after Trump's speech, which was extremely vague and noncommittal other than the "we're gonna ban the Euro foreigners" part.

[froot loops]

He stated in that hostage speech that they were shutting off trade to Europe, that is panicking the markets along with his flop sweat appearance. The White House is saying he misspoke about trade but he was reading that speech from a teleprompter.

[Dr. Strangelove]

[CGVT]

Getting crazier and crazier. Probably puts additional pressure to cancel March Madness entirely. OSU just canceled the Spring game.

Not that celebrities catching it are any more tragic than anyone else, but it sucks Tom Hanks & his wife got it.

Tom Hanks will be alright. He's already survived AIDS, being stuck on a desert island, and kidnapped by Somali Pirates. Fucker's tough as nails.

[froot loops]

The White House is also walking back that travel ban, apparently foreign nationals are the only ones banned which defeats any purpose you may get from it. They have so many walkbacks and clarifications on an hour old speech that Lucasfilm is cackling.

That might have been the worst speech of any president ever. I can't tell what was worse, the presentation or the writing. Hire a fucking speech writer and practice it a few times. It clobbered some of the good things he was trying to convey.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Futures trading halted again. 2nd time in 4 days

[iam416]

Yep. Again, this is devastating for pension systems. If only the we would have acted properly then everything would be kosher.

I also suspect the widespread canceling of everything would do much to help the markets. Right now, I guess, it's a matter of containment and then, hopefully, in 2 years I'll still have some money left in my 529 to pay for my daughter's college.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trump's speech last night had at least 3 major things wrong in it that the White House is trying to walk back. Probably more the fault of the speechwriters (Kushner & Miller, reportedly) than Trump himself, but it's symptomatic of his impulsive, uncoordinated style of leadership.

1. Banning all travel from Europe after Friday. Initially this wasn't made clear that this didn't apply to US citizens. I've seen reports that this set off panic in some European airports as US citizens scrambled to get home and were paying exorbitant prices. Additionally, the ban isn't ALL Europe, just the Schengen zone.

2. The travel ban will also apply to the "tremendous amount of trade and cargo". The White House is now explicitly saying the opposite. Trade with Europe is NOT being halted. This is one of the things that most freaked out the market but even after it was clarified futures kept falling.

3. Insurance companies have agreed to waive copayments for coronavirus treatments. This isn't true and insurance companies are rushing out statements that they never agreed to this. They've agreed to waive copayments for just the test -- not subsequent treatment if you're sick.

[froot loops]

This article is grim

[iam416]

I'm just gonna hope for a Remdesivir hail mary. It worked on one dude in Washington!

[Dr. Strangelove]

Want another country that could be lying about its caseload? How about Egypt? That's a country run by a military dictator which depends very heavily on tourist money for its economy. So they have a heavy incentive to lie about the extent of the problem.

A NY Times reporter based in Cairo says they've kept track and know of at least 100 tourists that have tested positive since returning from trips to Egypt (2 of the ones in Ohio fall into this category). Yet the govt claims to only have 67 cases overall.

[froot loops]

The country needs more of these stat, eventually without the doctor's note but baby steps. Unfortunately the federal government seems to be uninterested in this approach. Three cheers for federalism.

[froot loops]

This is welcome news especially if it scales.