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curve flattened. back to work. stop trampling on the fucking constitution.

The next generation(s) will pay it back. Whether they want to or not. The panic in the media feels orchestrated, over reaching and unnecessary. The social media reaction to all of this is what scares me the most. The acceptance of curfews, ridiculous restrictions and just general “the government knows best” attitude. That’s what is truly scary, and I have immediate family in the high risk category for this.

we were sold on these drastic measures to "flatten the curve" and not "overwhelm" our healthcare system. that's been accomplished now let's get to it. or do you keep moving goal posts around? people die every year of the flu. people will die of this virus. it sucks. but its not an excuse to wreck our economy, take away constitutional rights (ie Raleigh police), and FORCE people to stay in their house

There is a zero percent chance the mortality rate of this thing is 3%. We have crappy data on the actual number of deaths, and effectively no data of the number of asymptomatic/resolved cases. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316 13% of a semi-random sample were infected without symptoms. Extrapolate that out and NYC alone has one million asymptomatic cases, or five times what the entire state is reporting. That means at the epicenter in the US the death rate is 1% or lower. Everywhere else will be even better. This thing is going to be about as fatal as the flu (my guess), but it's much more contagious than the flu, and everyone is getting it all at once. We definitely needed to do something to mitigate the risk. But we did nothing, then we did too much. Face masks for everyone who goes out in public, six feet social distancing, including tables at restaurants, no public gathering like concerts and sporting events, and keep the high-risk people at home. That probably would have been enough, but we panicked and didn't allow the social distancing measures to take effect before locking everything down. TJ Maxx, where no one gets within 6 feet of each other usually, is closed while grocery stores, where people are all over each other, are open. We did not have to erase 3 months of wealth creation, but we did. At least it will be a great time to invest or get a mortgage, if I don't get furloughed. But worse, because the "experts" were too afraid to admit they just didn't know (death rate of 3.4%), because they felt the need to bend the truth to influence behavior ("masks don't really help, so let the health professionals have them"), we will leave this crisis with yet another reason for many people to not trust trained professionals, and to not trust science. Pity. Another one added to the list. Global warming, global cooling, acid rain, peak oil, overpopulation, nuclear holocaust, zika, Y2K, the food pyramid, satanic cults, COVID-19.

Great post. Most people don't understand the magnitude of the fallout occurring behind the scenes (and I don't pretend to fully understand it myself). This pandemic occurred when global markets and asset prices where the most over-valued and over-bought, probably ever. In a real economy, a unit of currency represents a unit of production. In our economy, our currency is manipulated through debt and complex financial derivatives, giving us more purchasing power than the real value of goods and services we are producing. The economy is not the market and the market is not the economy. Banking and Finance is a global competitive environment. As in any business industry, there is a jockeying for position, a desire to harm competitors (which may sometimes require cooperation with other competitors), and a need to gain competitive advantages to become the largest and most profitable. Government involvement is a massive competitive advantage. Everyone wants to be too big to fail. Enter COVID-19. This pandemic has created the greatest economic upheaval in history. As the cliche goes: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." It has created some opportunities to make changes to fiscal, monetary, and economic policies that would have taken a decade otherwise. It has also created opportunities that would have otherwise never occurred. Imagine being able to shutdown the country, and then pick and choose which business entities survive. Which ones are willing to become more indebted, pay a higher price, remain more loyal? Imagine being able to buy the stock market. Imagine the majority of a population encouraging you to assume more power to keep them safe. But how much to keep them quiet? $1200. Who doesn't like free money? And while you're printing that $560 billion dollars in stimulus checks, why not print another $1.640 Trillion to dole out at your discretion? Why not more? So we're making the best of a bad situation. We're gaining a competitive advantage, we're seizing control, picking winners and losers, setting new monetary policy, acquiring debts, acquiring shares in the market, and we have a population obediently sitting at home up to their eyeballs in debt forever, over the moon with their $1200. We've also doubled our balance sheet and reduced the value of our debts by half. However, soon we'll have $Trillions of new dollars out there circulating doing God knows what. Is it being hoarded, spent under the table, funding terrorists? Wouldn't it be nice if we had accountability for every one of "our" dollars circulating out there in the wild? Is it in a bank account, under a couch cushion, in someone's wallet? Where is the wallet? I sure hope no one is out there is handling dirty COVID infected cash, spending their stimulus checks on non-pharmaceutical drugs, making private party purchases of assets without paying the appropriate amount of tax, or buying more than their allocated amount of masks and toilet paper before making a debt payment. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/digital-dollars-amid-covid-19-crisis-support-us-digital-currency-emerges https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/SIL20449.pdf

And when you start arresting people for peaceable assembly for the redress of grievances to the government, we’ve gone from safety to power. According to the Raleigh NC police department, “Protesting is a non-essential activity.” The protesters were requesting that the their state decriminalize their ability to work and provide for their families https://mobile.twitter.com/raleighpolice/status/1250111779574894594

Here's an excellent article (with super informational links and rabbit holes to run down) by Harvard Business Review (penned Jan 7th this year) that explains a huge part of exactly what your takeaway is. BLUF: companies have been taking on massive amounts of "cheap" debt in the low interest rate environment we've lived in to buy their own stocks back and pay out dividends over reinvesting in R&D, paying higher wages, expanding workforces/manufacturing, etc. Little true "value" has been created, but prices have been driven up as capital flocks to the stock markets to chase returns. Which feeds back to the cycle of PE ratios, debt, and stock prices all increasing without there being much true growth. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. The emperor has no pants, IMHO, and COVID was a catalyst to help show that. Which it did...until the Fed stepped in (and WAYYYY overstepped their mandate) by buying...everything...to prop prices up.

Really? Because they weren’t saving up for the rainy day that was an unprecedented shutdown of the entire global economy? Sure, this thing has shined a light on some questionable practices (stock buybacks anyone?), but now is not the time to go all Ayn Rand. No business or household could be reasonably expected to be fiscally prepared for what is currently transpiring.

The legislation also requires that the SBA grant me a $10,000 refundable advance on my EIDL loan within three days. I’m still waiting. I guess I just don’t trust the government to do what they said they’d do.

It's funny how we get discouraged when people arm chair general military matters but so many of us are willing to do the same with a health issue. In other news, I realised service secretaries have the power to extend bonus pay (I think up to $1000/mo) to individuals who are deployed more than 180 days a year as a result of unforseen circumstances. It would sure be nice if someone forwarded that up the staff to compensate all those Bros and broettes taking one for the team right now.

Yes! Yes! Yes! I know pic takes up space, but it’s glorious Bacon. Arg has it right. Self sustaining, if not close to it. Preparing Prime Rib right now, store bought but still a nice cut. Everyone else bought the Chicken out and ignored the Prime Rib at $6 a lb. Guess I’ll eat the Prime(s) x 4 for two weeks, too lazy to thaw my chicken. Thx Arg, that’s living - some will say it’s bad for us but we all pass and there’s nothing like being a carnivore. Sorry, derailed there - But it’s Bacon!

It depends on how your local franchise unit interprets the regs. I've had it work out both ways after deployments or schools. Scenario 1: Orders end date doesn't change whether I take leave or not. The dollars in your pocket are greater if you sell back. If 6 month orders end on August 15, they end on August 15. Take leave, you get paid through Aug 15 with BAH/BAS/Fly Pay, and nothing more. Sell back leave and you're paid through Aug 15 with BAH/BAS/Fly Pay, plus X days of base pay. Scenario 2: Orders end date changes based on leave sell back. Cash in hand is less if you sell back. If 6 month orders end on August 15 you've earned 15 days of leave. You can take leave Aug 1-15 and get BAH/BAS/Fly Pay. Or, you can sell back 15 days of leave. Your orders are modified to end on July 31 and you get a check for 15 days of basic pay. All depends on who is cutting your orders.

When you sell back, you are missing out on BAH/BAS/Fly pay. So that’s less money than if you just took the day of leave. What am I missing?

SOCOM is not immune to waste/asinine misuse of air assets. Not to say there isn’t a lot of good use going on also.

No just strictly talking about mil stuff. You'll make more money selling it back over taking it. But time off on leave has a value as well. We just have generally have such a good schedule while full time, that a bunch of leave isn't really required.

The crews do pretty well despite our best efforts...particularly since the planes are designed to be fairly easy to operate and the dudes are motivated. Long pole in the tent is and always will be the MX and supply side of things. Advising is fun and rewarding, but I would highly recommend finding a different place to slam your head into a wall repeatedly. The USAF isn't sending their best leaders to run that effort, and it can be fairly frustrating at the operator level as those organizations have grown to simply season dudes for their next job vs train the host nation. Things may be different in AFSOC, but generally AVFID was always seen as the red headed stepchild and there were multiple attempts on killing it, so I can't imagine life being that much better over there. Still fun though.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/germany/a-post-from-germany/ I'm living in Germany right now. I thought some people would be interested to know the civil Rights discussion is not exclusive to the US right now. I would like to accept that isolating the immuno compromised is a doable strategy but the more I run it through in my head, it really isn't. If my wife is immunocompromised, I would still have to go to work, buy groceries, take the kids to school, etc... Her chance of catching the virus is the exact same as mine now. If my probability goes way up because we open the flood gates than so does hers. Furthermore, because normally healthy people will flood the hospitals with what is still a very severe sickness for many younger people, when she does get sick, she will possibly be denied care on the basis of resource availability, all but ensuring her fate. I like many others on here find the erosion of civil rights concerning but as I eluded to earlier, we live in a country that cares more about how that bitch Carol Baskins hid her husband's body than pathogenic precautions. I'm not saying I have a right or wrong moral answer to this, it's a plague. Anyone who is naieve to think we can get through something like this with minimal suffering is wrong. People are going to suffer. Our only choice as a society is who will bear that suffering and how.

Control yourself before you try to control others. If you have a disease or have an immunodeficiency, it’s on you to avoid situations that puts you at risk. Case in point, saying it’s irresponsible for 200 boaters to be on the water while ignoring the hundreds of people at Wal-Mart sorta defeats the argument. I’m more at risk being near the fat fvck hacking in the cereal aisle than I would be if I was on my Bassmaster 3000. Hell, if you’ve never been fishing on a lake before, boaters typically get pissed if you’re closer than a 100 yards from their fishing hole. My bigger point, I can get behind barring gatherings in a place like a movie theatre, or sporting events. When you start telling people they can’t go hiking, by themselves, or can only exercise within a few hundred yards of their house, we’ve officially reached Ludicrous Speed.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america Looks like we're flattening it. Hoping we're done with this shit by the middle of May.

Speaking for my situation, not yet. My state has also not yet made unemployment insurance available to self employed, like the Act says they will. My guess is that the state is hoping that if they delay enough the crisis will pass before they have to pay out any benefits. But that’s probably overly cynical of me.

You’ll pay it back on your 2021 tax return. There’s no free lunch.

You clearly haven’t had a personal connection to the small business world. People aren’t losing their livelihood because they’ve planned poorly. Additionally on the big side of the house, corps don’t run with billions of cash reserve because it doesn’t make sense. They would not be profitable if scrooging away money was their aim. Not to say there aren’t companies out there who have fucked it away, but in general the economic impact is in large not due to how businesses have ran.

My (uneducated) takeaway of the economic impact this pandemic has had is that maybe our economy hasn't really been healthy for a while. Lots of businesses over leveraged and carrying too much debt at the expense of short term gains.

That's a negative. That was posted to their official FB page. https://www.facebook.com/121FSpilotrecruiting/ So you should be good with your app, they have not sent out any emails or anything just general info on the fb page.

Dan Crenshaw has a good podcast episode on this Mobilize and Transition: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mobilize-transition-policy-to-defeat-covid-19-restore/id1498149200?i=1000470697169 His guest, Dr. Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, argues that there could be partial remobilization of the economy, especially in regions where the virus is not spreading much, but it would require testing at high levels (5 million tests/day) and would require regular re-testing. Dr. Allen is a political theorist. It was an interesting discussion.

Old engineering cliche: All models are inaccurate, some are useful. The data is seriously crappy. Given the apparent wide range of symptoms (asymptomatic all the way to knocking on death's door) and the limited amount of testing that is triaged to more serious cases, the case fatality rate is inflated if you just divide deaths by total verified cases. The lower CFR being reported is (I assume) an estimate based on epidemiological modeling. As an example, if you just take total verified cases in Italy, the CFR is something like 12%. But that same number also results in only a quarter of a percent penetration into the population, New York state is around 2% penetration. Which seems like an insanely low percentage given the Ro estimate of 2.5ish. Even more so when you consider the seasonal flu is around 1.3 and the 1918 pandemic is something like 1.8. For reference, I scrounged around google and found a paper (published years ago) on selective social distancing to control a flu epidemic. Based on a "small town model" of 10k residents and an epidemic meant to be representative of the 1918 flu (natural progression 50% of the population would get it before herd immunity did its thing), they applied a handful of different techniques and managed a maximum reduction down to 15% getting it. They assumed kids and teens were the primary vector so restricted their movements (closed schools and kept kids/teens at home). Would a total societal application get that percentage down to the 1-2% range? Maybe? The information from people who know things is being filtered through communications majors who don't have the aptitude to understand any of it. They are incentivized to freak people out, it sells ads. So take it seriously, but freaking out and destroying everything because we're scared isn't a good idea either.

As a former Compass pilot, I approve this message.

I don't know shit about shit, but here's my valuable interpretation: The reactor crew is highly trained, specialized, and not easy to replace. As they began to get sick and incapacitated with the virus, the Navy had a 5 billion dollar aircraft carrier with a nuclear reactor potentially stuck in the middle of the Pacific that no one else was qualified to operate. The ship medical staff estimated there would be 50 deaths on the ship if they didn't quarantine/evacuate. The senior officers aboard the ship all conferred and wanted to sign the letter to the Navy leadership, but were denied by Crozier and he took all the responsibility .

Owning an airplane (bought my first one 11 years ago) is a heartbreaking yet awesome experience. If you have the means, go do it - you only live once. I had a Glasair 1 that I used to fly to work everyday for 2 years. After my Mc-dozen deployment and AD jettison to the ANG, I bought a Bonanza 36 and have had that for 8.5 years. We flew it a ton for a while, then had good years and slow years. My kid is 2 now and she loves flying which is awesome. It's been a total gamechanger for the extended family visits; even before the kid but now it really is. I honestly didn't think I'd ever sell this one. I'm thinking about selling. But just to buy something else. I'm retiring this year and moving back to Idaho next spring and want something a little more back country friendly. 180/185 is the goal, but I'm kicking around all kinds of options. Financially it'll never make sense in the long run; do it because you want to be an airplane family. Drop the cash, don't ever keep track of what it's costing you and go fly every time you feel like it. (My .02 )

F that. Look how many damned times do we have to learn the same lesson on airplanes/helicopters that carry cargo (or passengers who disembark without landing). Ramps are a requirement. Period full stop. Anybody saying otherwise has never tried to put something not luggage into a “light cargo aircraft.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I am going out of my way to not "whistle past the graveyard" -- we have no idea what will be ultimately impacted by this situation, and I don't at all believe that cargo is immune to the wrecking ball. The 2008 recession hit Purple heavily, and if it weren't for a contract provision that allowed across-the-board reductions in flying hours instead of furloughs, there certainly would have been cargo guys put out on the street, too. My thought is that if this current thing lasts longer than just the spring/early summer, and really does become another great recession, the job losses (or the delays in re-starting jobs) will mean people will be ordering less stuff online, and there will be a lot less cargo that needs to be moved. Just like in '08. So, I think there will be more than enough misery to go around all sectors of the entire industry, unfortunately. I'm strapping in and preparing for the worst.

haha yea very true. I was trying to make the point that you can't rent many airplanes with good performance and are just a blast to fly.

FTFY. Not a distinction without difference to this 3-time sucker of the certified captive audience game. 😄 I liken my relationship with certified rules as Michael and the office fax machine in Office space...

Civil engineering guy here. It’s pretty much a myth for sure but I always encounter folks that thought having an engineer degree would make you stand out. If you can make it thru engineering, you can make it thru UPT it’s the general consensus. I for one like to think it’s all about work ethic and “how much do you want it”. Had plenty of good bros in engineering that were pretty smart, but lazy. Made A+ on exams but would get F’s on group work type stuff. Had other bros that could not perform during exams, but would nevertheless stay up all night trying to figure it out. I was one of those all nighter dudes with shitty grades. I think engineering has help me in having an excuse for shitty grades in college. Graduated with a 2.6 but “it was engineering... so that’s okay” it’s the response I usually get. Don’t let other folks persuade ya into engineering because it might help your chances. Just like aviation, engineering is not for everybody. Also I am sure every major out there will come with its own set of challenges to overcome. Even sailing ;-) Cheers Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Go get a ride in a RV and you will see why owning is better.

I just put a deposit down for a house in DC for mid-June. And it wasn’t a small deposit. DAMNIT.