Random Comments/Stream of Consciousness Thread

[ur2ndbiggestfan]

My brother went to Liberty Mutual to get lower insurance, showed them his present (never advertised on TV or radio or internet, very high priced) policy, was told he had a pretty good deal and they couldn't beat it.

[Iwritecode]

My brother went to Liberty Mutual to get lower insurance, showed them his present (never advertised on TV or radio or internet, very high priced) policy, was told he had a pretty good deal and they couldn't beat it.

Insurance is one of those things you have to check into every couple of years. They like to raise it for no discernible reason and you don't get much say in it. Being a loyal customer for 10 or 20 years usually doesn't make a difference either.

[webstar1000]

NHL is done.... Fuck this virus. The real hurt will be the financial repercussions of what is happening

[Brian861]

NHL is done.... Fuck this virus. The real hurt will be the financial repercussions of what is happening

No doubt!

[webstar1000]

QUIET PLACE 2, NO TIME TO DIE... FAST FURIOUS... all canceled openings so far

[MikeDuke]

Well, it was only a matter of time before hit the movie theaters. I was expecting that.

[bdwyer19]

Kris - Are you saying that stopping play (NHL, NBA, college basketball) is the wrong move? I initially thought that with college basketball, but once Rudy Gobert tested positive, the NBA made the only choice they could.

As for the movies, those franchises have huge success overseas, so delaying the release dates makes perfect sense.

[webstar1000]

Kris - Are you saying that stopping play (NHL, NBA, college basketball) is the wrong move? I initially thought that with college basketball, but once Rudy Gobert tested positive, the NBA made the only choice they could.

As for the movies, those franchises have huge success overseas, so delaying the release dates makes perfect sense.

I think it is harsh and over the top BUT I will respect it if it gets us past this faster. How come the response now is SO insane compared to the SARS I wonder...

[amd013]

Kris - Are you saying that stopping play (NHL, NBA, college basketball) is the wrong move? I initially thought that with college basketball, but once Rudy Gobert tested positive, the NBA made the only choice they could.

As for the movies, those franchises have huge success overseas, so delaying the release dates makes perfect sense.

I think it is harsh and over the top BUT I will respect it if it gets us past this faster. How come the response now is SO insane compared to the SARS I wonder...

If I remember correctly, this is much more communicable then SARS and MERS was.

Also, I don't think SARS could be passed before symptoms showed, but I don't think that is the case with COVID-19 and I think the incubation period is longer for COVID-19.

[Iwritecode]

Kris - Are you saying that stopping play (NHL, NBA, college basketball) is the wrong move? I initially thought that with college basketball, but once Rudy Gobert tested positive, the NBA made the only choice they could.

As for the movies, those franchises have huge success overseas, so delaying the release dates makes perfect sense.

I think it is harsh and over the top BUT I will respect it if it gets us past this faster. How come the response now is SO insane compared to the SARS I wonder...

Here's a few charts. I think the coronavirus is much more easily transmitted compared to SARS.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...mbers-n1150321

I've also read that the symptoms for SARS appeared fairly quickly leading people to seek medical treatment faster. The symptoms for corona may not appear for a week or two so people can be contagious and spreading it around without even realizing it.

[amd013]

Ok, had to go ahead and change my "mood" setting.

[lotuz]

NHL is done.... Fuck this virus. The real hurt will be the financial repercussions of what is happening

Yes x1,000,000. But not for the big franchises like NBA/NHL/MLB/Marvel Studios/Disney/etc.

In America, the people who are well and truly fucked are the people at the bottom of the ladder who are impacted by these closures, the people who can't afford to miss a week or more of work without putting their mortgage/car payment/insulin/etc. on the line. The janitors and cleaning staff of the stadiums. The hotel maids. My sister in law is a ref for high school and college basketball games. When they get cancelled, she doesn't get paid. And there are only so many cancellations she can endure before the bills start piling up.

In Italy they are suspending mortgage payments while the country is quarantined. Can you imagine something like that in the States? I'd eat my first edition of The Stand: Complete and Uncut!

[Tommy]

My niece is a nursing assistant and works in a nursing home part time. They check everyone's temperature that enters the building. If anyone has a fever, they will immediately quarantine the building for 14 days with no exceptions.

[Hunchback Jack]

NHL is done.... Fuck this virus. The real hurt will be the financial repercussions of what is happening

I hope you're right. Because for some, the real hurt has come from the death of a loved one. Let's hope that won't be more universal.

HBJ

[lotuz]

If we are to avoid the worst of it, it will be through measures like those taken today, and other upcoming hard decisions. Those decisions will also have severe negative consequences, which will be borne disproportionately by the least-well-off among us.

There are reasonable estimates of 1,000,000 US cases by this summer, which, at the current mortality rate, would mean ~35,000 excess deaths. It is taking precautions now (or, better yet, three weeks ago when public health experts and officials first started warning us) that will avoid the worst. And even having the same number of cases but spread out more over time has significant impacts on our current healthcare infrastructure. For example, we have one of the lowest rates of hospital beds per capita among developed countries, in part because hospitals are largely profit-driven businesses in the US and profit-driven businesses disdain things like excess/unused capacity. The current rate of capacity leaves us with about 300,000 available hospital beds total in the entire country at any given time. Filling up all those beds and still having people that need to be hospitalized is a big deal and something we want to work hard to avoid. Even filling up all the beds in a particular region causes cascading problems.

If we work really, really, hard, and if our government gets their shit together (definitely not assured, given the drastic divergence between official government statements and reality in the past few weeks) and actually makes tests available and affordable (we had tested approximately 11,000 people total by March 10, while South Korea has been testing 10,000 people per day, and remember that our first cases were within 24 hours of each other) we might look back and see that we dodged a bullet. Of course, ironically, the act of dodging that bullet will make some people convinced that there was no big problem in the first place but we're never gonna get those people engaged with the Public Health literature anyway, so

If you are thinking that I sound dire and pessimistic, it is because I'm feeling dire and pessimistic. Everything that public health experts have warned about in the past weeks has come to fruition as expected, and everything we are currently being warned about is still looming right in front of us. And I want to note here that the fact that they were right is not luck or magic but is because we have entire fields based on studying diseases and disease transmission and population-level health and health infrastructure and about a dozen other very specific health-related disciplines, and they were all largely ignored the past couple of weeks out of political convenience and because much of our media ecosystem is broken and doesn't prioritize dissemination of factual information from subject-matter experts over grabbing eyeballs for ads.

Please avoid large gatherings. Please wash your hands. Please stay home whenever it's possible, including working from home.

You can blame Tommy for this a little bit too because I have been keeping this all bottled up inside for a couple weeks and his frank and factually supported comment broke my psychological levee

[WeDealInLead]

My wife and I were driving from London, ON to Grand Rapids, MI to see a concert. The border was a ghost town and it just felt grim. I picked up my packages, we bought a few things from Target and decided that being in a venue with 400 people wasn't the safest thing for us. The mall we usually stop at was another ghost town. As in, other than people working there, there wasn't a single soul.

Hamilton (the play) in Toronto is cancelled, my daughter's school added two weeks to their March break. I'm hoping the naysayers are right but with each day it's getting harder to believe that this will just "blow over."

[wizardsrainbow]

This will not blow over but will be felt like a hurricane....indiscriminate

[Tommy]

Prime Minister Trudeau's wife has tested positive for COVID-19.

[east-tennessee]

On a lighter note: Coming soon to a stock market near you some great buying opportunities.
If I could only predict the bottom.......

[Tommy]

That and Trump/Pence (The COVID-19 Czar) convinced Dana White to keep UFC fights (with fans present) going. Is there a sport where players could possibly get any closer to one another?

[webstar1000]

This WILL blow over... but not without serious financial repercussions. If we could get a vaccine out sooner rather than later..... the hysteria would end.

[Aremag]

This WILL blow over... but not without serious financial repercussions. If we could get a vaccine out sooner rather than later..... the hysteria would end.

The problem with that is new vaccines aren't usually something that can be made that quickly. It might take up to 20 months to get a vaccine ready for testing in people like it did for SARS back in 2002-2003.

[webstar1000]

This WILL blow over... but not without serious financial repercussions. If we could get a vaccine out sooner rather than later..... the hysteria would end.

The problem with that is new vaccines aren't usually something that can be made that quickly. It might take up to 20 months to get a vaccine ready for testing in people like it did for SARS back in 2002-2003.

Yeah I know.. they have one I see but there in lies the issue

[herbertwest]

And dont forget anti-vaxers

[St. Troy]

In America, the people who are well and truly fucked are the people at the bottom of the ladder who are impacted by these closures, the people who can't afford to miss a week or more of work without putting their mortgage/car payment/insulin/etc. on the line. The janitors and cleaning staff of the stadiums...

I think I heard Mark Cuban say he wanted to do something to help those people; I'm not sure how realistic that is, but hopefully it happens.