PrinceFrederickWx

All are equally targeted, yes, but why does it cause such severe illness and death in elderly patients but not infants and toddlers? The flu, RSV, etc. are life-threatening if an infant catches them, yet this seems almost non-existent with COVID-19. But again, this seems to be very rare for other respiratory viruses? It doesn't seem like COVID-19 slows down at all in hotter weather. We're trying to take all the precautions we can... masks, gloves, etc. The office claims to be taking precautions too but I'm skeptical on that part. If it's going to be around all summer, then why would we have another "wave"? We've been adding nearly 30,000 cases a day with no end in sight, and that's only a fraction of the true number of cases (I have no idea what that fraction is; no one really does). If we're doing that all summer and fall, I don't see how you wouldn't have some level of herd immunity. It just seems like it's gonna keep going at this rate until it burns itself out (whenever that may be). Sometimes I think I should just tune out all the news for several months and see what happens.

Just random questions- feel free to answer or point out where I'm wrong. I've generally been optimistic but I'm starting to lose the faith... I'm not seeing any evidence this is slowing down nationally? Looks to me like a sine wave that goes on forever rather than a curve. I mocked the CHIME model the DC Mayor originally put out (which had them peaking in July) but that seems more likely to me now than the IHME (which is already wrong it seems). Though my question is: if this keeps going into the summer, are we really going to have a second wave in the fall? Take NYC for example- that antibody test showed about 20% may have already had it? There's a lag in antibodies too I think, so that's probably a snapshot of a few weeks ago then? If this keeps going at that rate, aren't many areas of the northeast going to be approaching herd immunity in a few months anyway? Can anyone give me an example of a respiratory virus that only targets older people and those with metabolic syndromes? All the others I know of hit both very young AND old hard. Also, why is COVID-19 able to spread in warm weather? I don't know of any respiratory virus that transmits well in heat. If heat and lockdowns aren't squashing it, what's to stop it from continuing to spread at the rate it currently is until herd immunity? My youngest son has to go in the Dr. for his 1-year immunizations in two weeks, and we're all worried we're gonna catch it then in the Doctor's office. :-(

I was supposed to be on hiatus, but came back to check messages and saw this. I'm still sticking to my buy-and-hold dollar cost averaging strategy and doing well so far. :-)

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.

Good choice. I have been loading up on the C Fund (S&P 500) in my TSP... if you have ten years or more to sit on it, this is the best buying opportunity since early 2009 IMHO. You want to be buying when everyone is panicking and heading for the exits.

I’m probably shutting this down at the end of the month. Prestige has pretty much locked it up, even if we get an accumulating event. This will be my 3rd consecutive top ten finish at least (and I get higher up in the leaderboard every year).

It’s a bigger sample size than the mostly worthless indices you all track and it has a 100% correlation so far. I called for a shutout back in October in Weather53’s other thread anyway.

Every November that has less than 2” of rain at BWI/DCA has a winter that turns out to be a dumpster fire. It’s a better leading indicator than any model at this point.

We always do wind well this time of year.

Yeah, at this point we'd have to kill it all, fully amend the soil, then start all over. After we bought this house, we found out the builder basically rolled out sod over subsoil (to make it look nice for closing) without doing any prep work at all. My half-assed attempts at fixing the problem (spreading seed and layering topsoil in) have never worked long-term. Not sure of exact height- tall enough to be mowed lol I believe my first mow in 2017 was also February- I'd have to check my notes to be sure.

I am not trolling- I had to mow about half my yard last weekend. Though admittedly most of my yard is weeds- I’ve given up on ever getting good grass to grow here.