PrinceFrederickWx

I think we’re safe to call it. @Prestige Worldwide is the winner- congratulations! Attached is your snow trophy- you led all season and toppled the Olaf/Stormpc dynasty! I’ve decided (for multiple reasons) to take a long hiatus from this forum, so I won’t be doing the summer temperature contest. If anyone else is interested, feel free (maybe @RodneyS or @Roger Smith would like to run it). I will be back in early November with the next snowfall contest. I encourage you all to tell new people to sign up or get your AmWx friends from outside this subforum to join in- we had a record turnout this year, and the more players we have, the more fun and competitive it is! May next winter bring an end to COVID-19, a booming economy and triple-digit snow totals at all four airports.

I’ll leave these two articles here as I found them both interesting: Model War: GFS vs Euro lol https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-outcomes.html Food for thought, from an epidemiologist at Stanford: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

Their Flu death rate from 13/14 to 16/17 was 1.3%, which is in line with the death rates from Coronavirus worldwide. Consider that the U.S. Flu death rate is only about 0.1%, so just the Flu itself is about 13 times as deadly in the Italian population.

Italy has always had much higher death rates every year though- their Flu death rates in the last decade are not much different than Coronavirus. https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(19)30328-5/fulltext

Azithromycin has been shown in studies over the years to act as an anti-inflammatory in addition to an antibiotic, particularly for respiratory issues. Some examples: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15590715 https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/33/1/171

Let’s all hope that the experts dire predictions end up being as accurate as the predictions most of you made for this winter.

Could a benchmark be when the deaths from starvation exceed virus deaths? Because right now, even if the virus were magically wiped out, you're looking at exceeding Great Recession levels of unemployment and GDP contraction. If this goes for months, you're looking at Great Depression levels easily. I don't think many Americans realize what that's going to look like. So I agree on the honesty part.

Two weeks? Even the CDC has recommended social distancing for the next eight weeks: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/487702-cdc-recommends-no-events-of-50-or-more-people-for-next-eight-weeks One example of many experts saying this will take years: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/17/21181694/coronavirus-covid-19-lockdowns-end-how-long-months-years

They keep moving the goalposts on social distancing- first it was weeks, then months... now I see experts saying it could take a year or more? The economy can’t handle that. Neither can humans. I don’t think officials realize the devastating impact this will have on the millions of people with mental health disorders. Isolation has been shown to increase health issues and mortality in and of itself... I don’t claim to have a solution to any of this, but the current plan is NOT going to work, that is all. Come up with something better.

I’m calling it now- cat 5 up the bay during the height of the pandemic this summer.

Great Depression incoming. Also 2020 elections will be cancelled.

We can handle the virus. We cannot handle selfish, ignorant pigs hoarding things though. We need to start rationing supplies like we did in World War II, or else we're going to keep seeing losers walk out with ten carts full of toilet paper and bread, leaving none for anyone else. Babies are missing formula, people can't find pet food... I can't even find diapers for my son. Stores around here are still out of many basic items like meat, water and toiletries.

You should be concerned about the xenophobic fallout from this. I know this isn’t a political board so I’ll leave it at that.

You know what scares me more than the virus... large groups of crazy, ignorant Americans stuck at home with nothing to do, looking for someone to blame.

The vast majority of my money is still in the G fund. I was talking about setting my contribution allocations going forward (which I've got set to nearly all C fund now)- I will be dollar cost averaging all the way down. I don't think anyone knows where the bottom will be (I certainly don't) and attempting to time the market and "look for the bottom" are not going to work. I do know that the last few years have been ridiculously overvalued, which is why I sat it out. I've been waiting for this bear market. And to think, just a few months ago I was told the exact opposite- "You're still sitting in the G Fund? You're missing out on this historic bull market!" I'm totally fine with a 50% drop, the lower the better. I have a lot of time... unless you're going to argue we're Japan in the 1980's, in which case we're all screwed anyway so it doesn't matter.