Inverted_Trough

Children are basically vectors for disease propagation, i.e. they don't suffer much from the disease itself but they are efficient spreaders of disease. Opening up schools will increase the velocity of infections, there will be outbreaks, and there will be some teachers that die during these outbreaks. The question is whether society is okay with an increase in the velocity of infections in order to have the benefits of in-person learning. Frankly, I think if we see outbreaks, society might tolerate that for a couple of months, but eventually they'll decide its untenable and many schools will fallback to virtual learning. I think we keep trying to force "normalcy" when normalcy simply isn't possible right now.

I think some people just forget that they have it on, after returning to their car from the grocery store or wherever. That's happened to me a couple of times where I didn't realize I still had it on after returning to the car. It just goes to show you that, if you wear something as part of a routine, your body adjusts to it to the point that sometimes you don't even notice that you're wearing it.

Testing has slowed down over the past couple weeks.

Not sure. But lung damage is very uncommon in symptomatic cold and flu patients, unless it turns into a pneumonia. My main point was that it seems people conflate asymptomatic = benign. I don't think that's necessarily the case. What made HIV so scary back in the 1980s was that so many people were asymptomatic until they basically got full blown AIDS. There are some cancers that are asymptomatic until you get to Stage 3 or Stage 4 -- that's what makes pancreatic cancer so deadly...by the time symptoms arise, you're often already at Stage 4. To me, something that's damaging my body without causing symptoms, that's far more insidious. I just think we have to be careful with how we interpret asymptomatic cases. It's not clear whether all those cases are benign at this point.

They're finding a significant number of asymptomatic people who nonetheless have lung damage on CT scans. So it appears the virus might be damaging the body without causing overt symptoms https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/23/864536258/we-still-dont-fully-understand-the-label-asymptomatic https://www.azfamily.com/news/continuing_coverage/coronavirus_coverage/new-arizona-concern-study-shows-asymptomatic-covid-patients-could-have-long-term-lung-damage/article_64903642-bb36-11ea-b48c-efd576ab9ba1.html

A colleague of mine lives and works remotely from Florida. He hired a contractor to do some work in his house. When the contractor showed up he asked him to wear a mask since he was going to be working inside his house...the guy refused to wear a mask, so he had to cancel the work and go with somebody else. Some People are even willing to lose out on business if it means wearing a mask. The anti-mask sentiment is strong down south.

They're saying that Asia and perhaps even Europe are poised to have stronger economic growth in 2021 compared to the US, simply because they're managing the virus much better. At this point the ability - or lack thereof - to manage this virus will determine your economic growth over the next year. It wouldn't surprise me if the US actually experienced a double dip recession because we simply can't get this under control.

Hopefully this summer we'll be able to say that DCA 1) never reached 100; 2) never had a low >= 80. (The latter is getting rare in modern times..)

Everyone that makes under 75k also received $1200 even if they are working. Even retirees got the $1200 check. People are flush with cash right now. That's also why the savings rate has gone through the roof. Americans typically don't save money but now they are.

Over the past ten years, the big six airlines have spent 96% of their profits on stock buybacks. Sorry, but I'm not that sympathetic to the airlines. They are especially vulnerable to natural disasters, geopolitical conflicts, pandemics, etc. So of all industries you would think they would have a long-term, strategic view towards things. But nope. I say let them fend for themselves. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/airlines-and-boeing-want-a-bailout-but-look-how-much-theyve-spent-on-stock-buybacks-2020-03-18

Well, consolidation and monopolization that has occurred since the 1970s has created businesses that are "too big to fail". You can thank the University of Chicago "intellectual" economists for instilling the belief that business consolidation is good because it's "efficient". Make no mistake: The system we have today is by design. Bailouts are sometimes necessary but the problem is that there should be conditions placed upon the acceptance of that money. For example, if you accept a bailout, then for the next five years you are not allowed to spend a single penny buying back your own stock. If you don't like those conditions, then don't accept the bailout.

Covid has simply accelerated business closures that were going to happen anyway. Businesses also need to learn how to manage their money better. Frankly I think any company that used their profits to buy back their stock should get no help. Let them wallow in the wake of their poor short term decisions.

Pandemics and capitalism don't mix. John Galt had nothing in his playbook for stuff like this. Businesses need to learn to keep more cash reserves on hand. They need to get insurance policies that cover pandemics too. (Wimbledon had the foresight to do this)

32 consecutive 90+ days at CHO Incidentally, why has CHO been so much warmer (relative to their own averages) over the past few years? I've noticed if surrounding stations are, say, at +2 for a monthly average, CHO will almost always be a +4 or +5. It's been a very consistent phenomena for a few years now.

Yeah, the virus disappearing in the heat might go down as one of the worst takes in history. I think that belief subconsciously influenced the Southern states to open early too. It also influenced the decision for the NBA to choose Florida as their bubble location.

Today wasn't a good day globally either. 280k cases globally (all-time high, by far) 7100 deaths globally (highest since April) Pandemic is raging pretty much everywhere south of 35 degrees latitude

Looks like public health measures to manage Covid have basically eradicated the flu from the Southern Hemisphere. This bodes well for us for the fall. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-measures-have-all-but-wiped-out-the-flu-in-the-southern-hemisphere-11595440682 Also goes to show you how insanely transmissible Covid is due to lack of any immunity in our general population

Looks like public health measures to manage Covid have basically eradicated the flu from the Southern Hemisphere. This bodes well for us for the fall. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-measures-have-all-but-wiped-out-the-flu-in-the-southern-hemisphere-11595440682

If 60,000,000 people got hospitalized, the IFR would be much higher than 1%. IFR is dependent upon the medical systems capacity to take care of people. That’s why I think covid would probably have a higher IFR than the Spanish Flu has this occurred in 1918.

The states are within their rights to shut down businesses within their state jurisdiction. The constitutionality of the federal government doing so is an open question.

Higher nighttime lows is consistent with what we'd expected with higher CO2 levels and UHI. Our atmosphere is more moist than what was typically seen in the late 19th / early 20th centuries. High dews = higher overnight lows.

I think they use a Gaussian smoother to calculate the 30 year averages. Otherwise the daily averages would be jaggedy.

There was some concern at the very beginning that it could be similar to the Spanish Flu (since that was also a H1N1 variant), but after a couple months it was readily apparent that it was a relatively mild -- albeit extremely infectious - flu. The flu is an upper respiratory virus, so it doesn't affect your oxygen levels (unless it devolves into a bacterial pneumonia). Covid appears to attack the lower respiratory system, causing shortness of breath and low oxygen levels in a significant portion of people, and because of that it has a much higher hospitalization rate. (I think the hospitalization rate is ~15% for anyone older than 65, and it's even ~5% for people in their 30s/40s...which is crazy.) It's the high hospitalization rate (compared to the flu) that causes the medical community to freak out. The strain on the medical system from Covid is orders of magnitude greater than the swine flu.

Swine flu in 2009 was far less deadlier than the traditional flu. The IFR for swine flu is 0.01 (compared to ~0.1 for the traditional flu). So it made sense to just let it burn through the population. If the swine flu had an IFR of 0.5 or 1.0 (i.e. similar to Covid) we would have seen a similar response. Swine flu also didn't have the longer term complications that Covid appears to be causing in many of those who have recovered (of course we need more time to assess the impact of these effects but its disconcerting and not talked about much)

Anti-maskers were prevalent in 1918, too: https://crosscut.com/2020/07/mask-wars-1918-flu-pandemic It appears back in 1918 they actually enforced the rule more than they are doing today.