nsplayr

"This American Hero Flew an Airplane Over Maryland in a Flight Path That Spelled 'F— Covid 19'" https://www.washingtonian.com/2020/04/29/this-american-hero-flew-an-airplane-over-maryland-in-a-flight-path-that-spelled-f-covid-19/ Someone send this kid a recruiting package! “We’d just got a new compass in the airplane, and I just had to check it out somehow,” he says. 😄

Not that I necessarily disagree, but has there ever been a time in history when an older generation has not thought less of a younger one? That they were lacking in some intangible, immeasurably quality that the older generation exudes and that the younger generation has utterly failed to demonstrate? I think not. Put me in the camp of believing that the kids are alright and will grow up to shit on the next generation after them as reliably as we shit on them now.

His heart was so full with love for The People that it could no longer sustain his worldly body 😁 Screw that guy, glad if he's dead. Will be interesting to see how stable NK is without a clear heir...I'm sure China is on red alert, a global pandemic is a terrible time for a massive refugee crisis.

I can think of a couple of exceptions...

This is good. Video explanation of this plan: https://ethics.harvard.edu/covid-roadmap

I mean I get what you're saying, but if someone is a stage 4 cancer patient with weeks to live and you put a bullet in their head, what is their cause of death? Are you charged with a crime? No different here. Your 82 year old hospice patient died unnecessarily early due to a virus rather than cancer; the cause of death is the virus. Not the same number of QALYs lost as the virus killing a young healthy person, but it's still a loss.

Here is an actual plan for coming out of this crisis from Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s first FDA head, and others at AEI. https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/national-coronavirus-response-a-road-map-to-reopening/ Key takeaways are the triggers/conditions to move from one phase to another. We are in Phase 1 now. They write: A state can safely proceed to Phase II when it has achieved all the following: A sustained reduction in cases for at least 14 days, Hospitals in the state are safely able to treat all patients requiring hospitalization without resorting to crisis standards of care,22 The state is able to test all people with COVID-19 symptoms, and The state is able to conduct active monitoring of confirmed cases and their contacts.23 Some states, including mine, seem ready to move to Phase II in the next week or two, without meeting any of the above triggers. I’m hopeful we can make some progress toward these kind of benchmarks before the state-wise stay at home order expires, but we truly are in a “Ready, Fire, Aim” situation because it’s not a conditions-based plan, it’s a “I’m sick of this lockdown so press” plan, IMHO.

Another success story with Trident. Thanks to Marty and Tyana in particular for working my refi. VA IRRL from 3.75% to 2.75%, gave me options to roll in the modest costs or bring cash, and we closed quickly despite an epic lender fuck-up (~$9K error on the final docs). The error was in my favor though so I wished we could have closed that one haha! I second the opinion to (almost) always get a 30 year and then just accelerate payment as you see fit unless the 15 year rates are MUCH better. If SHTF and you get furloughed, having the lower required monthly payment will be key and there's no usually penalty to paying early if you stay firmly seated on the gravy train. So long as Uncle Sugar keeps letting me fly, my personal amortization table is significantly accelerated based on paying extra every month, although that's becoming harder and harder to justify when rates are this low. Would you lend a buddy half a mil over 30 years at only 2.75%?? I would not. BL: I've now done 4x transactions with Trident in the last 5.5 years and everything has gone as smoothly as could be expected each time. Thanks!

When it comes to nurses & some of the protests to open things back up, I think we need to show some compassion. 5% toward those protesting because freedom of association and movement and work are important, and 95% to frontline healthcare workers who are going through hell right now. The endgame solution is a balance...feel free to pick from the above options and call your Congressman. Back to nurses and the (joke) cards running around for people to sign away their right to healthcare if they get the Rona: how many random soldiers recommended glassing the entire Middle East after seeing their buddies get killed or maimed in Iraq/Afghanistan/et al? I know more than a few personally and I also know there are several examples I could pull from this august body of spear-throwers. Nurses and doctors likely feel about the same right now toward people they see as making the their jobs harder. If I were them I'd be pretty damn angry too; hell, I can get angry at people not doing the right thing and I'm just sitting on my couch. In other news, get off my lawn. I have great certainty that 99.9% of healthcare workers would treat any patient rolling through the door with COVID-19 regardless of the circumstances, just like 99.9% of soldiers wouldn't murder innocent civilians on the battlefield.

This seems relevant to the discussion. To me, there was never an agreed upon strategy from the top down, so it's natural that some people feeling cheated based on what your expectations were when this all kicked off. All of these (and more!) were messages from various leaders/experts/etc., yet no one can definitely say which one is/was the plan. Example: a lot of people here are dying on the hill of, "We were told #10 or #11!!" and yea, you were told that. But you were also told to prepare for #2, #3, or #5, and worst case #1. IMHO the President's plan (if you can call it that) has been start with deny, deny, deny, deny, make counter-accusations (classic strategy!), now we're in #4 (delay is also one of my fav tactics), with a sprinkling of #7 and eventually probably end up at #6 because we have no other plan. List originally taken from here.

Ya never know, this may the Marshall Law @tac airlifter was talking about 😄I'm sure someone there could competently answer questions about what Governors are legally and Constitutionally allowed to do re:quarantiness and other public health emergencies. University of Illinois at Chicago John Marshall Law School.

Ed Yong has done some fantastic writing over at The Atlantic about the, “What next?” question. I recommend both of these pieces. Start here: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/ Latest here: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-summer-coronavirus-reopening-back-normal/609940/

Some of y’all on here be like

I mean hey, nothing like declaring victory right away at the first sign of hope! I can't see any historical precedent where that didn't work out... In all seriousness, let's follow the science & the recommendations of public health experts and implement a conditions-based plan for how we can lessen some of the temporary restrictions without needlessly getting more people killed. That doesn't exactly fit on a bumper sticker but it's the best way to move forward. Everyone wants to get back to normal, but I for one don't want to do so at the cost of thousands more American lives who would otherwise live if we act more cautiously. Let's ensure the virus is truly beaten back and ultimately defeated via better treatments for those who get sick & effective vaccines for everyone else.

I’m hopeful we’re starting to enter purple territory on this chart, as evidenced primarily by the increasing number of takes complaining about how we overreacted.

Whoa whoa whoa that hits too close to home 🥺

https://www.duffelblog.com/2020/04/pentagon-worries-capt-croziers-concern-for-his-sailors-may-be-contagious/ As usual, DuffleBlog nails it 😆

Now > 400 positive COVID-19 cases from the TR alone, with one sailor in the ICU. That’s damn near 10% of the crew. More than half of the cases Navy-wide are from that one single ship. Given the R0 of this virus, the rest of the TR crew would soon have been infected if dramatic action wasn’t taken. IMHO Crozier is looking better and better for ringing a 4-alarm fire bell. Nitpicking his email tactics (literally “But his emails!!”) pales in importance to the importance of taking action to save the crew.

Just spitballing here, but perhaps the Captain considered it "extreme circumstances" to be on a ship of ~4K sailors all stacked up nuts-to-butts while a deadly virus swept the ship, despite being docked at a friendly port, all under a bureaucracy that was slow-rolling his attempts to evacuate the crew 🤷‍♂️ Dude knew he was falling on his sword to protect his people, the SECNAV played stupid games and won a stupid prize, and Monday morning quarterbacking is kind of like masturbation...we all do it and it's fun up to a certain point, but only to a point. There are always things to address in the debrief, but I'm not having a hard time seeing who was broadly right and who was broadly wrong in this situation even with limited information.

So far just dollar-cost averaging some extra cash into VFIAX (S&P 500). Might buy some specific stocks like DAL that got extra-beat up, but I'm usually inclined just to index, set it and forget it.

The vagaries of ROTC scholarships is a factor. Depending on how competitive commissions are, ROTC tends to goes back and forth between, “Only tech majors get $$” to, “Do you have a pulse?” Obviously the only settings are idle and max AB. A good friend of mine is a kick-ass Nav and majored in Art History and I am a Nav-now-RPA Pilot and majored in International Studies. Needless to say our year was more “have a pulse” and less “calculus required” haha. I know others only a few years later who had to choose between a tech major they didn’t really want to pursue and not getting a scholarship/commission.

This is what it sounds like when you know you done fucked up.

https://warontherocks.com/2020/04/the-navys-crisis-of-special-trust-and-confidence/ I thought this was an excellent write up of the USS TR incident and how the Navy (mis)handled things.

Lots of folks making assumptions based on Ferguson's work. Here's what he says himself re: the original modeling and the updates based on the steps the UK has already taken. BLUF: the model hasn't changed, the behavior of the country (UK) has changed and for the strongly positive. Strict social distancing and rapidly increasing ICU capacity were some of the measures Ferguson et al recommended, and those things so far are ongoing, which is good.

I mean I'm gonna go with the advice of epidemiologists and health security professionals...although I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Just kidding, I stayed the f*ck home. Our economy will recover from a relatively short-duration shutdown to combat a critical health crisis, especially with proper support from the government. What won't recover is people's lives that are lost if we disregard the advice of people who actually know what they're talking about.