Inverted_Trough

current DP is 68 at BWI. It's 70 at IAD. So it's not that anomalous.

Lots of clouds incoming. Might get cloudy for a couple hours.

The point of wearing a mask is to prevent you from giving the virus to an old person or the high risk groups. You've been reading too much Animal Farm and 1984 during quarantine.

Nobody can tell you when a pandemic will happen, but the risk is always there. People have been warning about this for a long time. Most probably just assume those people are "alarmists" and that it'll never happen. Maybe this will teach companies that, instead of spending trillions of dollars of their profit into buying back their shares, maybe they can hold onto some of it as cash reserves...to tide them over during "rainy days" such as our current situation. But I doubt that will happen. They'll keep expecting government to bail them out during black swan events.

If most businesses barely make a profit, that's not a resilient system. Maybe these business models need to change to properly account for existential risks. Any business that serves the general public is always going to be vulnerable to a public health crisis. Just because pandemics are very rare doesn't mean the risk doesn't exist.

The air mass this weekend looks too soupy to make it to 100 degrees. I'm thinking between 96 to 98 degrees. Euro seems to be overshooting temps lately but we'll see.

Hospitalization counts are supposed to only include patients where the primary diagnosis is Covid. Pregnant women who are hospitalized and have Covid are often not counted because of this. So I think the overcounts and undercounts on hospitalizations go both ways...and may just balance out. There were also a lot of deaths back in March and early April that were likely Covid deaths, but were not counted because testing was so limited back then.

crossing my fingers and hoping we end the streak today!

Wear a mask, Rogue. If not, you certainly have the freedom & liberty to stay at home.

Egotistical is too kind. I call them maskless covidiots

I've noticed that in other countries, when there's an outbreak or a cluster, they pounce on it immediately. They don't hesitate to lock down if necessary. They are hyper vigilant. They watch the data like a hawk and pounce if they see something anomalous. We don't have that mentality. Incidentally, Israel and Hong Kong have shut down again. They said that schools were the primary reason for their renewed outbreaks.

It's pretty much guaranteed DCA will hit 90.

This is the lamest heatwave ever. It doesn't deserve to go into the annals of history. Please hold at 89 and end it now.

They say 20% of small businesses go out of business every year. So 2% of small businesses being "permanently closed" seems like what typically happens anyway. Of course, you could have all businesses fully open but have them be fully liable if there are outbreaks at their location. But I guarantee you no business would want to open if they were held liable for outbreaks. They want government to shield them from risk

Looks like it's making its way into the LTC facilities unfortunately https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-cases-jump-in-sun-belt-nursing-homes-11594468980

Not sure what happened -- sounds like the thread went off the rails once a few people started using it to fight their culture wars. Ah well, maybe it's time to focus on...weather!

lol

I'd love to, but I didn't save the post! That's okay, @PhineasC reportedly has gone back to the Twitter-sphere for a few days

Well, the economic data has come in. It turns out that there was about a 80% drop in restaurant dine-in activity before anyone even knew what a stay-at-home order was. Now that those orders have been lifted, only about 20-25% of their typical demand has returned. Even though many states are allowing up to 50% capacity, they're coming nowhere close to even approaching that. One could surmise that the pseudo-lockdown only affected 20% of consumer demand. The remaining 80% was voluntary. The barbershop economy isn't displaying this "pent-up demand" and a V-shaped recovery, as we were told would happen. Reviewing the GDP report from the 1st quarter reveals we were already in a recession by mid-March due to massive disruptions in manufacturing and supply chains. But now, I'm going to go back to reading Animal Farm and 1984, and conjure up some more fantastical stories of tyrannical oppression. And I plan to call some hair salons....my hair is out of control

very cool, thanks!

Where can we get historical data for weather balloon observations?

There's a COVID thread in the New England forum. The usual suspects are over there advocating for the barbershop and tattoo parlor economy in case you guys are missing that discussion.

The 2009 swine flu actually had a much lower mortality rate than the traditional flu. Some IFR estimates were as low as 0.001, i.e. 10 times less deadly than the typical flu. It was comparably mild. I don't think you'd see that level of fear even with social media.

South Korea had 3 cases. Thailand only had one case. Vietnam, New Zealand and Hong Kong reported no new cases. Several eastern European countries have just a handful of new cases. Instead of treating it as evidence that it's possible to contain the virus, it seems that many people just assume these countries must be lying.

And I'm willing to bet that, even among those who believe certain businesses should be allowed to be open, a majority of them aren't going to patronize those businesses anytime soon either.