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The data isn't off by a factor of two. In the only parameter that we can control, it's been off by roughly 5%. Pretty damn good when estimating how 325 million people and a novel virus are going to behave. Given the logarithmic dynamics, that manifests itself in large death deltas, but the meaningful parameter is actually quite accurate. A page back you've got a dude presenting numbers of other cause mortality to suggest that this thing hasn't been a big deal. Never mind that he's comparing annual flu deaths to 1 month worth of this. Yes at this instant, after the 'draconian' measures, after the economy was shut down, after the schools were closed, it's been manageable. Without those things the same models that have proven themselves to be accurate to within 5% of reality would predict that we'd be about 14 days away from a week in which 10% of the U.S. population would be infected. New infections, not total. 30 million infections over the course of a week at a time when the healthcare system would have already been crippled. You'd have people dying of appendicitis in the parking lots of hospitals. Do you think Lowe's garden center and your local Applebee's would be turning record profits in that environment? Or would they have voluntarily closed up shop given that half of their workforce was out sick and 0% of their customer base was willing to venture outside? If you could trust people to handle things intelligently on an individual basis then you wouldn't need to shut down toy stores or close off non-essential sections of essential businesses. But given that you get a reasonable portion of the population complaining to the people who saved their lives that they don't see people dying in the street an therefore it was never a big deal, it's hard to have faith that they'd handle it intelligently. As a result, you get the default position to just shut it down, because a large portion of the population can't operate on nuance.

They’re so underwhelmed that some are shutting down and laying off employees for lack of business. No ‘nonessential’ medical services combined with no coronavirus patients means the doctors are out of business too.

I think Carole’s first husband is still alive and living off-the-grid in Central America with the $15M in gold and silver he “stashed” in various locations down there.

Since this is getting heated let's all crack a beer and talk about something we can all agree on; like how that fucking bitch Carol Baskins killed her husband!

It is in my state, that’s a fact. And that’s what the governor has been using to drive decisions. 1) Nobody knows how many, but there are people who had it and aren’t counted because they never went to the hospital and got a test. That number is probably a ton higher than people give credit. To this point, it’s fairly accurate on capturing who has died from it, but very inaccurate on who has recovered (i.e. a critical piece of the denominator in this equation). 2) Any swinging dick who dies from anything that even hints of respiratory, etc. is deemed corona as the cause, even without a test/confirmation. 3) People in hospice are dying and being counted in the deaths. Those facts above are enough to highlight how unknown the true rate is. I’m willing to bet our death rate tracking is a hell of a lot more than a 5% error. Or you could put out things like violating 6 ft or walking around public while actively sick gets you fined. Only close business that are unable to operate while also adhering to social distancing. Do that and you have means to throw the book at the idiots while not fucking over the economic and mental welfare of the tens of millions who won’t fuck those things away. Guess I’ll never be a senior leader in big blue, because I certainly don’t fit the mold of lazy leadership that hits the easy button and hides behind a bullshit excuse like “but the masses...”

15,000 families in a city of 1.5 million want food assistance, not necessarily need. It's like when Florida has the National Guard passing out MREs and bags of ice during a hurricane; people will line up for hours for free stuff even though the Publix right behind the distribution site is open and stocked.

Yep they are finite, but our system is staffed and equipped for the likely amount of use that occurs each year. If we increase from that just in case, we’ll have a lot of expensive waste that will increase costs. Healthcare is already expensive. It’s not just “muh economy”. It’s easy for us with a steady paycheck to say that. Go checkout how many people are at the Food-banks this week; I read that something like 15K families in San Antonio alone. 15,000 families in one city need food assistance. People die from mal-nourishment too, or become weak and vulnerable to a disease they otherwise could have fought. Isolate the vulnerable and get the less vulnerable doing something productive. Also, let’s take a look at incentives to get people out of the vulnerable camp. Can’t do much about age and some pre-existing conditions.. but a population of people with poor health due to lack of preventative care and poor choices is pretty dumb. It’s also America though, so freedom.

If it makes you feel any better, all pilot union forums are more or less the same across airlines and time periods. Management sucks. Scheduling sucks. Hotels suck. Dispatchers suck. etc. They all said similar things prior to the current crisis, and always will in the future. Everyone talks a big game on the forum, but everyone still shows up to drive the bus for a company they think they could run better. Pay your dues. Vote. Know the contract. When it comes time to picket, go show your face. Want me to wear a special union lanyard? Fine. Whatever happens in the industry is going to happen independent of what is said on the forums. I occasionally go months without checking the forum. When I do, I might glean a tiny fraction of usable information, but the rest is noise.

Agreed

I'll be calling HindSight when I get a little closer to pulling the trigger. Today, I went out to fly the Cub... my first flight since 7 March... and after I flew, I was walking around the ramp with a good bud (who owns the Cub, a Stearman, and a PT-22 and has a ton of GA experience), and we saw a nice Swift taxi out. I say "You've flown the Swift. What did you think?" He says "Good... but you can get in an RV-?, go faster, have better support, do it for cheaper, and have more fun." One data point. For you U-2 guys that know Mountain, we saw him land just a few minutes after that in his RV-6, and went and looked it over. His was finished in '92 (IIRC), and it was a beautiful airplane. He's had it two years, it is is first airplane, and he is a very happy owner. FWIW, we have quite a few U-2 Drivers with airplanes in the Beale area at this time.

And that’s just the thing.. resources are finite. We can’t shut down the economy for every virus or disease that emerges in the world. We need to find ways to continue to live and operate as safely as possible... and that probably involves isolating the most vulnerable and getting the least vulnerable back to work ASAP.

It’s like hurricanes in the SE USA (or a million other things). When one is threatening, people went nuts and prepped for it by buying supplies. It would come through, be a dud, and people would feel like it was a waste of time. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. A few hurricanes later, they just stop prepping...until one comes that’s legit. Then it’s a holy , end of the world rush level of scramble to prep for the beast bearing down. It would hit and people would get wiped out and say, “how did this happen?!?” People didn’t think this was serious. Ebola and SARS weren’t, so everyone let it go. But, this one turned out legit and people weren’t prepped.

Agreed. If the mitigation measures seem like ridiculous overkill, that's because they're working. And we need to keep doing them. It's pretty annoying and very scientifically illiterate that people are talking about lifting restrictions the moment new york has a slight leveling off in infection rate.

Your question reminds me of this old aviation story... I don’t think anyone knows right now, because I don’t think we’ve hit the bottom yet.

T birds are doing a valley air show today in Vegas. Something about their plan seems...familiar.

I'm driving with the daughter not too long ago, she states that she's in charge of music for the ride, and tries to plug in her device, but hits the CD/XM button. I have 5x "mix tape" CDs in there from eons ago and we start hearing some ZZ Top. What starts out as "What's this?" finally ends with me trying to explain what a 10-12 song mix tape is/was. When we got got home, I had to show her the clip from High Fidelity on rules for making a mix tape. PS, for the next song, The Cranberries "Zombie" she goes, ooooh, I know this one, its by (some unknown name), but why is a girl singing it? Tried to explain why too many artists these days take a song, slow it down, and sing it all raspy and moody. Then gave her the Cranberries CD to listen, but she wondered how she was going to listen to them on her device. MP3s I answered. I tried to explain those. In the end, I concluded I'm a dinosaur, but when the XM satellite blows up, and Spotify and Pandora go offline, I have thousands of MP3s, CDs, and old cassettes to keep me company. "Like that'll ever happen" she says. I asked when was the last time she had coffee in a Starbucks!

But, much like Pearl Harbor or 9\11, this is an event that is disproportionately affecting those particular locations more than others, which can make it hard for those on the outside to grasp the gravity of the situation. For my Manhattan firehouse, nearly 20 of the 65 people assigned have or are recovering from COVID, with nearly 20% of the entire FDNY out on medical leave with it. Bros are having to quarantine in hotels away for days/weeks from their families to avoid bringing exposures home. Our work chart is changed to one that hasn’t been used since the days after 9/11. They’re told by the FDNY to report to work EVEN IF THEY TESTED POSITIVE as long as they’re not showing symptoms because manpower is so dire. CPR calls and home deaths, usually around 20/day throughout the whole city, are well north of 200/day. It appears those deaths are not being counted as COVID, at least initially, because they haven’t tested the deceased to tie it to that. I guess I’m saying that, just because it seems like this is a ridiculous inconvenience that’s overblown in a lot of other areas of the country, it certainly is capable of being way worse and having much further-reaching ramifications if left unchecked.

Danger’s list of comparisons + the pics in the above link are one of several things demonstrating how we are fucking this away. Measured response, not freak-the-fuck-out-and-shut-down-the-world response.

Yahoo finance news article today estimating this is going to push FIVE HUNDRED MILLION people worldwide into poverty. Hope it’s worth it tragedy that people are dying. It is. Horrible that some young people die. but young people die of the flu each year too. You just don’t hear about it. Is this worse? Probably. But at what cost? people can shit on trump for being a dope but he’s right the cure can’t be worse than the disease

Got stopped at the commissary door today because I didn’t have a face covering. By three people wearing face coverings and literally standing shoulder to shoulder. I’m excited for tomorrow’s preventive measure of the day. Hopefully we can all self- radicalize to support whatever they say it is next. Remember to shame your neighbors over this previously unmentioned mitigation strategy.

You’re both talking about the same area.

I still buy CDs. I’m more a fan of the perpetual licenses, just pay once for it and be done rather than subscription type stuff. Plus, nearly everything I listen to is 20+ years old anyway.

On Mar 4th many people on this forum, (including myself) and talking heads on TV were convinced this virus was a hoax, over hyped, or a political ploy. We have been in isolation long enough that we have quickly forgotten how casual our attitudes were only a month ago. I hardly blame crozier for porting.

Bought a bunch of Disney a couple weeks ago, when it was at ~$90 a share...down from over $150.

How does the Air Force chain of command handle it when lower ranks elevate issues, ask for changes that involves a small amount of risk in judgement? Dodge, Delay, Deny, Defend, and Punt. Does anyone think Crozier's first attempt at getting resolution was a blast unsecure email?

So sending it on official Navy channels, to Navy officials, is "too public"? Or they think it should have been on SIPR... Like they were going to disguise an aircraft carrier parking at Guam for two weeks? I think every one of us just got yet another glimpse into how expendable military members are to the political class.

Some interesting patches for sale. https://pizzastrike.bigcartel.com/ Especially the ANG and AFR ones.

Your privilege is showing