What will we look like after?

[Vrede too]

We will mark the Spring and Summer of 2020 with an annual Social Distancing Day - people stay home or gather 6 feet apart wearing masks and gloves. Healthcare workers are the honored heroes.

[billy.pilgrim]

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020 ... an-history


I don't expect that Coronavirus will topple governments, but pandemics have in the past.

"often referred to as the first pandemic began in the city of Pelusium, near modern-day Port Said, in northeastern Egypt, in the year 541. According to the historian Procopius, who was alive at the time, the “pestilence” spread both west, toward Alexandria, and east, toward Palestine. Then it kept on going. In his view, it seemed to move almost consciously, “as if fearing lest some corner of the earth might escape it.”

By "early 542, the plague struck Constantinople."

"The Justinianic plague, as it became known, didn’t burn itself out until 750. By that point, there was a new world order."

From the pandemic trivia category we have the word “quarantine” from the Italian quaranta, meaning “forty" straight out of the old bible, forever proving the saying that even a broken clock can be a right occasionally  


"As Adam Kucharski, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the author of “The Rules of Contagion” 
“There’s a saying in my field: ‘if you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen . . . one pandemic,’ ” 

[.Oomba.]

What will we look like? For the rest I can't say,
but there is no way that I will get any handsomer.

[Vrede too]

Nancy Pelosi - 80
Bernie Sanders - 78
Mitch McConnell - 78
Joe Biden - 77
PINO - 73, lousy lifestyle
Elizabeth Warren (3rd most delegates) - 70
VP Q-tip - 60, still at risk

What if they all die before the conventions or election? What are the odds that one or more does?

One option, an independent run:

Mark Cuban won't say if he'll run for president, but notes the 'door is wide open'

No prediction from me on odds of success, but perhaps better this year than most.

[neoplacebo]

Nancy Pelosi - 80
Bernie Sanders - 78
Mitch McConnell - 78
Joe Biden - 77
PINO - 73, lousy lifestyle
Elizabeth Warren (3rd most delegates) - 70
VP Q-tip - 60, still at risk

What if they all die before the conventions or election? What are the odds that one or more does?

One option, an independent run:

Mark Cuban won't say if he'll run for president, but notes the 'door is wide open'

No prediction from me on odds of success, but perhaps better this year than most.

Ok, I will predict VP Q tip will die within ninety days. He will announce just prior to his death that he will rise from the dead and return to life. After a week in which he does not rise from the dead he will be buried in a toxic waste EPA Superfund site somewhere in Arkansas. Within a month, none of his followers will even remember him, his death, or his failed resurrection.

[Vrede too]

Ok, I will predict VP Q tip will die within ninety days. He will announce just prior to his death that he will rise from the dead and return to life. After a week in which he does not rise from the dead he will be buried in a toxic waste EPA Superfund site somewhere in Arkansas. Within a month, none of his followers will even remember him, his death, or his failed resurrection.

Even better, he rises from the dead and people didn't notice that he was gone, don't care that he's back, or tell him to just die again.

[neoplacebo]

Ok, I will predict VP Q tip will die within ninety days. He will announce just prior to his death that he will rise from the dead and return to life. After a week in which he does not rise from the dead he will be buried in a toxic waste EPA Superfund site somewhere in Arkansas. Within a month, none of his followers will even remember him, his death, or his failed resurrection.

Even better, he rises from the dead and people didn't notice that he was gone, don't care that he's back, or tell him to just die again.

Yes, double secret resurrection death is what's called for in this case. Poor VP Q tip; can you imagine having to have one of your main functions in life trying to defend and or justify the actions of a raccoon eyed juvenile fool and pathological liar? It has to be difficult; even exasperating. It's like poor little q tip goes to bed at night with mommy there as well and all he can think about is what the fuck will he have to justify or explain or deny or lie about before he wakes up? That's a heavy cross to bear. On the other hand, that press secretary who's a famous repeat DWI offender has the best job in the cult...press secretary. Poor q tip

[neoplacebo]

Can we get serious?

Paul Krugman is predicting a "huge fiscal time bomb" as the pandemic rolls to a close. I've been thinking along the same lines; all the funds coming as disaster relief will have to be paid somehow; Krugman is predicting mass government layoffs. Not to mention the earnings hit that corporations are going to take, as well as the bleeding out of small businesses already on the edge. Paradoxically, Krugman is not predicting a recession, but I'm wondering if we will see major inflationary pressures that will gob smack the one part of society that so far might be immune to the devastation - those on social security now.

We shall see...

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says we are ignoring a 'huge fiscal time bomb' set to detonate when the pandemic subsides

Krugman says we have a "huge fiscal time bomb" that is not getting enough media coverage. He predicts that just as the economy is ready to recover there will be mass layoffs of government employees and a cutoff of unemployment benefits unless there's another major round of legislation. ...

Krugman: Sure. State governments, local governments, unlike the federal government have to balance their budgets each year. All of the ... They're losing tax revenue. They're having extra expenses. They're going to have to make that up in the near future, which means that they're going to be laying off ... It's going to be a lot like what happened after the 2008 crisis when layoffs of school teachers, layoffs of government employees were a big factor in holding back recovery and we're going to be ... Yeah, just as the pandemic starts to fade, we hope, we're going to be seeing state and local governments cutting back severely.

Also, by the way, the extra unemployment benefits are only for the next four months. A lot of the financial support that we're going to be providing now is going to be going away just when we're hoping the economy will bounce back. I'm really worried that the economic fallout may last much, much longer than people are thinking....

Other countries are doing ... the economic response is better than ours. Ours was better than I feared it was going to be. There was a point where it looked like Republicans were going to say tax cuts are the answer to everything. But look at Denmark, which is corporations that keep their workers on payroll. The government is picking up 75% of the tab. That's the kind of thing that really would be great. Unfortunately, I don't think America is politically in that universe, but we're in some ways having the weakest economic response of certainly of the G7 countries....

Every time I see stimulus in a headline about the tax bill, I get mad because that's missing the point. I actually have seen almost nobody talking about what happens four or five months from now when hopefully the pandemic has subsided, but then you have financial crises at the state level and the unemployment benefits have expired. We have a huge fiscal time bomb, which we can see is being ... the timer has been set on it as we speak, and I've seen almost no coverage of that.

,,,

Krugman: Well, what happens is that just as the economy is ready to recover, mass layoffs of school teachers, mass cutoff of unemployment benefits undermine the nation's recovery. This could end up being in a way, a little bit like what happened in 2008-2009 when we had a pretty effective response to the crisis, but then went to fiscal austerity, which meant that the recovery was very, very slow.

I read Paul's interview earlier this morning. He fails to mention that the American economy has been a fiscal time bomb for about six decades. The value of our money, the dollar, is based on nothing but faith that it is in fact worth a dollar. The mere fact of massive deficit spending proves this concept. The manufacturing segment of the US economy has steadily left the country at the direction of corporate titans and politicians of both stripes in their never ending pursuit of maximum short term (quarterly) profit over all else. After nearly fifty years of this, the American economy has become one of consumers and service industry workers. When I first entered the labor force, about fifty years ago, the CEO of a company was paid around 35 times the rate of the average worker at the company. Now that ratio is into the high three figures or even four. The richest individuals in the country "produce" nothing; they obtain their wealth by playing with other people's money moving it from place to place or company to company or putting money into ventures that are set up and manipulated to generate high profit for a short time and then self destruct just after those same money men take their money out and put it somewhere else. If you want to preserve value or save something worth saving or have something that's actually worth something, you should buy gold or silver or platinum or palladium. In 1913 a man could take ten twenty dollar gold coins buy a car; today a man can still take ten twenty dollar gold coins and buy a car. The gold coins I refer to are US double eagles, the last one being minted in 1929. Those same coins today are worth on average between $2,000 and $3,000 depending on the date and condition of them. Nothing about gold is dependent on faith. Everything about the US economy is about faith.

[billy.pilgrim]

What will we look like? For the rest I can't say,
but there is no way that I will get any handsomer.

I'm beginning to think that my balding Mullet is exceptionally handsome.

[Vrede too]

... If you want to preserve value or save something worth saving or have something that's actually worth something, you should buy gold or silver or platinum or palladium. In 1913 a man could take ten twenty dollar gold coins buy a car; today a man can still take ten twenty dollar gold coins and buy a car. The gold coins I refer to are US double eagles, the last one being minted in 1929. Those same coins today are worth on average between $2,000 and $3,000 depending on the date and condition of them. Nothing about gold is dependent on faith. Everything about the US economy is about faith.

Actually, most of the value of gold is dependent on faith. It has some industrial uses that give it real value, but otherwise it's all derived from faddish jewelry or speculative investing, by definition faith.

Then, precious metals investment usually comes at the cost of great environmental harm through mining, even mining done in somewhat heavily regulated America.

Environmental impact of mining

Elsewhere the mining impacts are worse, including funding dictators and wars, causing major human rights and worker abuses, and wrecking the local social fabric.

Now, I’m not naive. I know that we all use the products of mining. However, when it’s done for unnecessary, unproductive things like jewelry and speculative investing, which are a big part of the demand, it seems particularly egregious.

[billy.pilgrim]

Can we get serious?

Paul Krugman is predicting a "huge fiscal time bomb" as the pandemic rolls to a close. I've been thinking along the same lines; all the funds coming as disaster relief will have to be paid somehow; Krugman is predicting mass government layoffs. Not to mention the earnings hit that corporations are going to take, as well as the bleeding out of small businesses already on the edge. Paradoxically, Krugman is not predicting a recession, but I'm wondering if we will see major inflationary pressures that will gob smack the one part of society that so far might be immune to the devastation - those on social security now.

We shall see...

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says we are ignoring a 'huge fiscal time bomb' set to detonate when the pandemic subsides

Krugman says we have a "huge fiscal time bomb" that is not getting enough media coverage. He predicts that just as the economy is ready to recover there will be mass layoffs of government employees and a cutoff of unemployment benefits unless there's another major round of legislation. ...

Krugman: Sure. State governments, local governments, unlike the federal government have to balance their budgets each year. All of the ... They're losing tax revenue. They're having extra expenses. They're going to have to make that up in the near future, which means that they're going to be laying off ... It's going to be a lot like what happened after the 2008 crisis when layoffs of school teachers, layoffs of government employees were a big factor in holding back recovery and we're going to be ... Yeah, just as the pandemic starts to fade, we hope, we're going to be seeing state and local governments cutting back severely.

Also, by the way, the extra unemployment benefits are only for the next four months. A lot of the financial support that we're going to be providing now is going to be going away just when we're hoping the economy will bounce back. I'm really worried that the economic fallout may last much, much longer than people are thinking....

Other countries are doing ... the economic response is better than ours. Ours was better than I feared it was going to be. There was a point where it looked like Republicans were going to say tax cuts are the answer to everything. But look at Denmark, which is corporations that keep their workers on payroll. The government is picking up 75% of the tab. That's the kind of thing that really would be great. Unfortunately, I don't think America is politically in that universe, but we're in some ways having the weakest economic response of certainly of the G7 countries....

Every time I see stimulus in a headline about the tax bill, I get mad because that's missing the point. I actually have seen almost nobody talking about what happens four or five months from now when hopefully the pandemic has subsided, but then you have financial crises at the state level and the unemployment benefits have expired. We have a huge fiscal time bomb, which we can see is being ... the timer has been set on it as we speak, and I've seen almost no coverage of that.

,,,

Krugman: Well, what happens is that just as the economy is ready to recover, mass layoffs of school teachers, mass cutoff of unemployment benefits undermine the nation's recovery. This could end up being in a way, a little bit like what happened in 2008-2009 when we had a pretty effective response to the crisis, but then went to fiscal austerity, which meant that the recovery was very, very slow.

I read Paul's interview earlier this morning. He fails to mention that the American economy has been a fiscal time bomb for about six decades. The value of our money, the dollar, is based on nothing but faith that it is in fact worth a dollar. The mere fact of massive deficit spending proves this concept. The manufacturing segment of the US economy has steadily left the country at the direction of corporate titans and politicians of both stripes in their never ending pursuit of maximum short term (quarterly) profit over all else. After nearly fifty years of this, the American economy has become one of consumers and service industry workers. When I first entered the labor force, about fifty years ago, the CEO of a company was paid around 35 times the rate of the average worker at the company. Now that ratio is into the high three figures or even four. The richest individuals in the country "produce" nothing; they obtain their wealth by playing with other people's money moving it from place to place or company to company or putting money into ventures that are set up and manipulated to generate high profit for a short time and then self destruct just after those same money men take their money out and put it somewhere else. If you want to preserve value or save something worth saving or have something that's actually worth something, you should buy gold or silver or platinum or palladium. In 1913 a man could take ten twenty dollar gold coins buy a car; today a man can still take ten twenty dollar gold coins and buy a car. The gold coins I refer to are US double eagles, the last one being minted in 1929. Those same coins today are worth on average between $2,000 and $3,000 depending on the date and condition of them. Nothing about gold is dependent on faith. Everything about the US economy is about faith.

neo, I'm pretty much with you, but aren't you using the "collector's" value for the coins and not the value of the gold?

[neoplacebo]

... If you want to preserve value or save something worth saving or have something that's actually worth something, you should buy gold or silver or platinum or palladium. In 1913 a man could take ten twenty dollar gold coins buy a car; today a man can still take ten twenty dollar gold coins and buy a car. The gold coins I refer to are US double eagles, the last one being minted in 1929. Those same coins today are worth on average between $2,000 and $3,000 depending on the date and condition of them. Nothing about gold is dependent on faith. Everything about the US economy is about faith.

Actually, most of the value of gold is dependent on faith. It has some industrial uses that give it real value, but otherwise it's all derived from faddish jewelry or speculative investing, by definition faith.

Then, precious metals investment usually comes at the cost of great environmental harm through mining, even mining done in somewhat heavily regulated America.

Environmental impact of mining

Elsewhere the mining impacts are worse, including funding dictators and wars, causing major human rights and worker abuses, and wrecking the local social fabric.

Now, I’m not naive. I know that we all use the products of mining. However, when it’s done for unnecessary, unproductive things like jewelry and speculative investing, which are a big part of the demand, it seems particularly egregious.

Yeah, when you get right down to it, gold's value is also based on faith; even the intrinsic value of it is nothing more than the "belief" that it's valuable. Humans have historically placed great value in gold from ancient times until now. I'm no fan of mining operations and the gold in the coins I referred to as being used a hundred years ago or used today to buy a car has already been mined. I noted that the last of those coins bear a 1929 date. The mint does currently strike gold coins as bullion but I have no clue where they get that gold, whether it's from some existing stockpile or if they buy it on the open market. Regardless, the mining of precious metals will not end unless the belief in their value goes away. Gold is now at about $1650 an ounce or so. When the coins I referred to were made, gold was $20 an ounce and each coin contains nearly an ounce of gold. So the coins even though they say "twenty dollars" on them are worth a lot more than that. A 1929 paper twenty dollar bill is still only worth twenty dollars in a commercial transaction. So there is a tangible difference between faith in faith and faith in gold.

[neoplacebo]

neo, I'm pretty much with you, but aren't you using the "collector's" value for the coins and not the value of the gold?

Not to any great extent; gold is now around $1650 or so. The coins I mentioned will have at least that value and of course depending on how many of a particular year and mint were made and the physical condition of the coin itself, additional value as a historic or collector object will attend.

[Vrede too]

Yeah, when you get right down to it, gold's value is also based on faith; even the intrinsic value of it is nothing more than the "belief" that it's valuable. Humans have historically placed great value in gold from ancient times until now. I'm no fan of mining operations and the gold in the coins I referred to as being used a hundred years ago or used today to buy a car has already been mined. I noted that the last of those coins bear a 1929 date. The mint does currently strike gold coins as bullion but I have no clue where they get that gold, whether it's from some existing stockpile or if they buy it on the open market. Regardless, the mining of precious metals will not end unless the belief in their value goes away. Gold is now at about $1650 an ounce or so. When the coins I referred to were made, gold was $20 an ounce and each coin contains nearly an ounce of gold. So the coins even though they say "twenty dollars" on them are worth a lot more than that. A 1929 paper twenty dollar bill is still only worth twenty dollars in a commercial transaction. So there is a tangible difference between faith in faith and faith in gold.

Ah. If one already has gold, keep it or spend it as desired. However, any new purchase, even of "old" gold, necessarily contributes to demand and thus mining.

[neoplacebo]

Yeah, when you get right down to it, gold's value is also based on faith; even the intrinsic value of it is nothing more than the "belief" that it's valuable. Humans have historically placed great value in gold from ancient times until now. I'm no fan of mining operations and the gold in the coins I referred to as being used a hundred years ago or used today to buy a car has already been mined. I noted that the last of those coins bear a 1929 date. The mint does currently strike gold coins as bullion but I have no clue where they get that gold, whether it's from some existing stockpile or if they buy it on the open market. Regardless, the mining of precious metals will not end unless the belief in their value goes away. Gold is now at about $1650 an ounce or so. When the coins I referred to were made, gold was $20 an ounce and each coin contains nearly an ounce of gold. So the coins even though they say "twenty dollars" on them are worth a lot more than that. A 1929 paper twenty dollar bill is still only worth twenty dollars in a commercial transaction. So there is a tangible difference between faith in faith and faith in gold.

Ah. If one already has gold, keep it or spend it as desired. However, any new purchase, even of "old" gold, necessarily contributes to demand and thus mining.

All I'm saying, hominy, is that Ulysses or anyone else who wants to invest money with the expectation that the money they invest will be worth more at some point in the future should think about gold, silver, platinum, palladium. And we'll just have to agree that mining will go on until all humans are dead. I just a few minutes ago bought a 1856 quarter in very nice shape; paid fifty bucks for it. The coin has only .1806oz silver but I would rather have this quarter than a steak dinner and drinks at Outback.

[Vrede too]

Dr. Anthony Fauci is named People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive".

[Vrede too]

viewtopic.php?f=17&p=116566#p116566

Smithfield is shutting down its pork processing plant in South Dakota for at least two weeks. The plant accounts for five percent of US pork production. Other companies have shut down meat processing plants in Iowa and Pennsylvania.

The reason for the shutdowns has been the number of employees out sick, presumably with CV19.

The CEO of Smithfield said:

"The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply," the meat processor's chief executive, Kenneth Sullivan, said in a statement Sunday.
"It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running," he said. "These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/12/business ... Stories%29

Damn you CV-19, how dare you cut Chinese profits and make us healthier?!

[O Really]

I think it will be a long time before there is an "after." I saw a poll today that said 75% of people would be uncomfortable going to, say, an arena sporting event, until/unless there's a vaccine. So if and when sports start back up, they might be playing to sparse crowds for a while. Does that matter to TV audiences? Dunno - certainly there is some interest or excitement generated by the sound of the crowd, and certainly the Seahawks would miss not having a 12th Man. Turns out, virtual sports are getting popular - maybe they won't have to play live at all.

Restaurants will have to cut down on crowds, space out tables, etc. Will that cut into their ability to earn enough to stay in business? Will it keep being legal to serve "Margaritas to Go"? Now that more people are getting comfortable with Zooming and other televideo contact, will they keep using it more for medical appointments, etc.?

Hand-shaking as a custom will probably be mostly dead, and hopefully fake air-kiss greetings.

[Vrede too]

I think it will be a long time before there is an "after." ...

I don't plan on needlessly risking exposure anytime soon, and I sure won't be a pioneer at it.

Most athletes are necessarily exposed to a lot of other people even without fans. They may resist early return.

[Vrede too]

viewtopic.php?p=116594#p116594

Damn you CV-19, how dare you cut Chinese profits and make us healthier?!

I think you missed the point ...

It's a shame for the workers, if that's the point that you mean. Otherwise, we can do without sending profits to China, artery-clogging bacon, and hog farm pollution. Those are my points.