Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Still in lockdown with "She Who Must Be Obeyed"!!!
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I will if you will Ian. Funny enough this afternoon the old thread just got a load faster.
Take that last bit back. I went back to the first thread which had just jumped quickly to my last read spot a minute before. This time it took about 3 minutes. That's on a fibre internet connection with a 100 Mbps LAN to this PC. Still think there must be a bottleneck somewhere. Maybe my provider is caching data. Is that possible?
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My local news is starting to say things like, "light at the end of the tunnel", "possible easing of restrictions" etc. I predict people will start demanding that we go into "the next phase" (whatever that is) soon.
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The USA is not alone in suffering from this virus.
Almost all liberal western democracies have/are/will suffer because there is no discipline in these societies. They all suffer from the "Its MY right" to do this that or the other.
The "RIGHT" of the individual taking precedence over "Society" has/is/will be the downfall of these societies.
It is just history repeating itself. If you look back through time the civilizations that have fallen were mostly liberal societies.
There is nothing new in the universe!
Do you expect any politician to know what to do in these situations?
I wouldn't let them run a bath so my expectations are low.
When they shut down Whuhan I started gradually building up supplies, I could see what was coming. When they said the vulnerable should isolate at home for 12 wweks it doesn't take the Brain of Britain to work out that any lockdown is going to last longer than three bloomin' weeks.
Here in the UK the whole news media are rabbiting on about the lockdown coming off, what about testing, what is the exit strategy. What a load of nonsense.
Why does the media go on about these things, one simple reason:- TIME! They have to fill 24 hours of broadcasting and dozens of pages of print.
All one can do is "Hope For The Best, Prepare For The Worst", look after you and yours and pray to your God you and yours survive.
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I'd say that no matter what people say, this isn't going to end until we have a vaccine.
And with idiotic anti-vaxxers out there, this will never end!
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My TeePee Decoy
Time was, people would sit a mannequin up in their car so that they could abuse the HOV lanes.
And, as we've all heard, some women drove at night with a mannequin as (what we now know to call) PPE.
As I slow-cruised my way up 8th Avenue yesterday on a mission of mercy, I realized that the Costco-sized package of 30x rolls of TP on my back seat were my ticket out of any ticket; after all, what spells Essential Errand better than a Valhalla-scaled package of toilet paper?
(Fortunately, I also had that morning's purchase receipt as backup.)
Time was, I would never leave twenty-plus bucks worth of TP in my car, lest it tempt a breakin. Nowadays, although that risk is elevated, I'm looking at those now-thousand-dollar isolation violations, and the attendant disgrace, and thinking of keeping My TeePee Decoy right where it is, in my back seat, covering my back side.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who calls this sort of thing "The Coronavirus Calculus")
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One of my heroes, John Prine, died today of complications due to the Coronavirus, everybody should sit back and give a listen to Dear Abbey, 'nuff said!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF8S5XB-eYs
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https://www.komando.com/video/komando-picks/all-day-long-the-coronavirus-song/734784/?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=tvkim&utm_content=2020-04-10
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Folks we are drifting again into a discussion of politics and accusations. Lots of editing was done. Unfortunately due the intertwining of responses, there was a collateral damage to maintain some sense of discussion.
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A Tale of Two Systems: above, a quarantined Israeli gets followup care at home.
Meanwhile, out on Long Island, a friend my age reports that his sister our age had a fever, and made an appointment to see her doctor, who knows that she has several coronavirus-relevant co-morbidities.
She got to the doctor's office for her appointment, and was told "our systems are down, please come back tomorrow".
They could not take her temperature, listen to her lungs, and then decide home/hospital ?
No billing system, no responsibility ?
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Finally some GOOD NEWS - after 20 DAYS of fever and misery, our family member is improving. I was so dang worried and upset - what a relief.
My word, this is one nasty, tenacious virus. 
Stay safe and healthy everyone.
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We'll take all the good news we can get -
thanks, Theresa!
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Theresa,
Thanks for the update! That's great news!!
Here all have been fine. I have several clients where onsite visits are still occurring due to their business needs but basically down to typically 2 days a week of onsite visits with the remainder of support occurring remotely. At the client sites everyone is keeping their distance from each other as much as possible (much more so than they had actually expected to be possible in general) and staff report they have been keeping down their external contacts dramatically.
Church services have been via an online service and have worked very well for both the church we attend and the church at which my wife works. She is working on a migration from an on premises based management system to an online software as a service solution from the same vendor. In many respects working from home for her has been very helpful as it has cut down on interruptions significantly.
Visited a local stamp store yesterday which is open for pickups and deliveries only in the afternoons. The owner reports that eBay activity is basically keeping him operational but he is not accepting any visits for sales of collections from anyone with whom he doesn't have a long term relationship for the time being as a safety check. At my wife's behest I wore a mask during my visit to him and to an older client to pick up a computer to do data recovery from home. We were unable to do his work remotely due to hearing issues which were making remote work untenable.
I found myself in tears driving to a client on Thursday morning as my wife and I had been planning on a weekend trip to see the tulip fields north of Seattle this Spring as I realized that we were not going to be able to do it. It really bothers me that I will have to disappoint my wife again as something has come up every year that we have lived in Seattle, fifteen years to date. I think the isolation from friends and acquaintances may be a factor as well. I haven't actually seen a co-worker with my company for six or seven weeks and no one from church for four weeks. Fortunately there are either two or three staff members at each client typically present otherwise the only contacts I would have with other humans would be at the McDonald's drive through. 
Jerrel
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Thanks fellas, I appreciate the kind words so very much. I’m so sorry that your Tulip plans fell through. Better times MUST be ahead - I mean Karma owes us, eh?
I must apologize for the heated posts this week, but I was tearing my hair out - angry, worried, frustrated and unable to do a damn thing about any of it except rant - a perfect recipe for an Irish temper flare. We were lucky - she beat it but so many others are not. My heart breaks for them.
Thanks, Ernie, for recognizing how badly I was hurting. I WILL take you up on that drink when this is all over. And a big thanks for the kind and supporting messages from six other wonderful folks.
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Theresa,
I totally get it.. wishing you and all of your family the best. Let's have fun with our hobbies and our hobby friends.
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We visited a more distant grocery store that was a in a more rural area. Same chain as our regular one. It was a world of difference...few had masks, no concept of social distancing. On the good side, it was much better stocked but still without many paper products. The grocery store had implemented one way aisles but compliance was limited as the signs were easy to miss. The store people did not seem to even mention it when people went by them the wrong way.
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Jerrel, I was out your way last summer and fall doing work for Facebook Labs. I was staying right in Kirkland where the Coronavirus hot spot was. I was on site a week a month and then remote from my home in Pennsylvania.
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Loyal K9s to the rescue:
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This thread started because the original thread was too long, and then this thread devolved into political rhetoric, so I went back to the old thread. Now that thread has been closed by the moderators.
I'm out.
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I feel like I owe you an apology, Lars, since I’m the one who asked for the new thread in the first place. I see that you were quoted in the last post there, but now you can’t post a response. That must feel very frustrating.
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The original thread was closed (not deleted) because there were two duplicate threads and the original was large. There were deletions in the first thread for political content too. The challenge is the subject matter is political in nature.
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Censorship is it good or bad?
Do you think we are being told the truth?
Here the death count is only based on hospital deaths of those that have tested positive, not what is happening out in the Care homes or the community at large.
Can we believe that China had so few deaths considering the size of the population?
Are we being misinformed?
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Politics....
I prefer to stick to other discussion themes than this.
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The sad thing is that reasonable people ought in theory be able to compartmentalize. I can enjoy talking stamps with anyone regardless of their politics. That mindset is being stretched thin these days with all the 24/7 talk radio and cable TV exposure. If someone doesn't like the same politicians as you, they are your mortal enemy.
I've had this happen in my personal life. I have a good friend of over fifty years whom I haven't heard from since early last year. We can't talk anymore. We disagree on politics. I honestly have tried to get past this and talk about old friends, etc. He won't let me. It's incredibly sad.
I'm probably naive, but Philately ought to be a safe haven these days. End of editorial.
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The problem is, and please let me know if you see it differently, each side of the political spectrum is further apart than ever before. Each side wants to take America to radically different places. The stakes are just too high.
Do you think both sides are further apart now than in the 50s, 60s, 70s etc.?
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Agreed. I am sad that this whole epidemic is being politicalized and that there is no network where you can get an unbiased view. It would be nice if we all banded together against the problem.
I see the same things in both the stamp and my model car community. People in the hobby that I greatly respect are raving political lunatics on uncensored Facebook. I’m amazed at some of the attitudes and opinions and it will be hard to treat these people the same in the future. I’ve had to unfriend and hide a bunch of folks just to make my days less angry.
I did lose a lifelong friend over his Y2K fantasies that it was the end of society, when I refused to hoard ammo and hide in his crawl space with him. It’s been twenty years and none of our friends have ever heard from him since! My wife mentioned him last week that he must be in his glory now!
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"I'm probably naive, but Philately ought to be a safe haven these days."
Philately, Model Railways, Coin Collecting etc are safe havens, unfortunately its the humans within and without that are the problem.
It is those people who take intransigent views, believe they are correct in everything, and cannot see the other persons viewpoint.
Take this topic for example. This topic is titled "Non-Philatelic Discussion" YET throughout the years I have been a member, members keep saying that they do not like what they are reading and they say "I don't want to read this" or "this shouldn't be discussed on a Philatelic site"
Sorry but this is a Non-Philatelic Discussion Topic and the threads within. If you only want to discuss philately than do not click on this topic at all.
It is only through, discourse, discussion and even argument that we can educate one another and understand each others cultures and traditions.
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It's culture we need and Sir Les Patterson was the subject personified, well depending on your taste in humour.
For those unfamiliar with this character here is a link.
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/dame_ednas_alter_ego_sir_les_patterson
In accordance with the standards of insanity this disclaimer is published.
Parts of any videos may be offensive to most people and should not be viewed by people of a fragile disposition (or stomach).
Edit It would appear that the videos have been blocked under copyright rules.
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"... Do you think both sides are further apart now than in the 50s, 60s, 70s etc.? ..."
The electoral battle in the USA (in much of the 20th Century) was over the middle, which led us to such cliches as politicians eager to be seen kissing babies (there would be a staff member tasked to finding a pretty young mom with babe in arms at every event) (guess that's gone now), and endless anodyne speeches about Mom'n'Apple'Pie (see the MAD Magazine satires of the period for confirmation, if your memory fails you), and safe denunciations of common enemies (cancer, etc).
As voter participation fell over the years (which is a very good thing), those voters in the middle got harder to persuade & motivate, and each side realized (though I personally blame one more than the other) that you would gain more votes by turning-out your base'n'fringe than you would lose from the middle ... and this logic only reinforced itself as time went on.
I do not think the two sides are so much further apart as they are a) more open to their extremes, and b) more eager to explain their differences, and c) less interested in talking to the middle.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Goldwater probably was right when he talked about what would happen when the pastors and other church officials began to dabble in politics. If you tie your faith into your political ideas, you are much less able to bend or compromise with the other side. I truly believe that we need to get the churches out of politics before we can return to political parties that can give and take and compromise on issues.
Any churches that preach support for any political party should lose their tax exempt status.
Something else to consider - the need to separate emotions from political thought. To illustrate why this is a problem; Someone falls in love with a sweet little rescue Cat. They bond and that Cat becomes their baby. It doesn’t matter to them what kind of history the cat has or that the cat sprayed on their Manolo Blahnik pumps, shredded the designer drapes or hisses at every other pet and all annoys the neighbors. When that Cat is purring on their lap, he is making them very happy and they adore him and his delightfully quirky behaviors. That cat does exactly what they wanted and does it well.
So people either love the cat or they look at the situation and can’t fathom why anyone would keep the cat. You can’t change that type of love and if you don’t have that emotional bond, you will never convince a person that the cat is worth it. My point is that no amount of talk will change how some people feel. There are too many emotions involved so you might as well give it up.
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Hi Ian,
"Censorship is it good or bad?
Do you think we are being told the truth?
Here the death count is only based on hospital deaths of those that have tested positive, not what is happening out in the Care homes or the community at large."
This distinction is made repeatedly in the daily UK Government press conferences.
The process for collating the total number of deaths is the responsibility of the Office for National Statistics, based on returns from the local registrars.
This was repeated at today's press conference and the latest figures from the ONS are expected later this week.
However, by their nature, these figures lag behind the hospital figures.
Here's a link to an example ONS bulletin on the subject:
ons.gov.uk : COVID-19 deaths : week ending 27 March 2020
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Political activism by the churches has been a fixture of the American experience since its inception. The churches, as long as they have any relevant place in society, will continue to influence politics. Remember, the people came so they could worship as to the dictates of their own consciences.
The church played a role and had a voice during the slavery debate, women's suffrage, workers rights, prohibition, civil rights movement etc...
The day we codify what churches can and cannot say we might as well be communist China.
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Nigel C:-
Would you please change your link to 2 lines as it is affecting the width of this thread on our screens making reading posts a pain in the neck.
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Thanks Nigelc that's a lot better.
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"The process for collating the total number of deaths is the responsibility of the Office for National Statistics, based on returns from the local registrars."
The numbers quoted by the Scottish Government on a daily basis are misleading as there is a time lag between death and Registration of Death. In Scotland you have eight days to register a death.
The total number added to the figures especially from within the community may be false as very little testing for covid-19 if any is carried out on these people. It wholly relies on doctors to mention the word covid-19 on the Death Certificate as the cause of death or the secondary cause of death. In theory a death certificate may say that the cause of death is given as kidney failure, but not known/mentioned the cause was covid-19.
As I have said before there are lies, damned lies and statistics.
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In the R&D business (my area), it is not uncommon to have incomplete or conflicting data. However, one does not dismiss data as not 100% perfect before taking action. In many cases like this one, it is likely under reporting the actual situation and recognizing that may be happening.
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I am not sure what topic you are on but it was about dealing with data and solving problems through scientific methods.
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It all boils down to the interpretation of the data.
That is why one scientific expert will say yes it is absolutely black and another scientific expert will say it is not black.
Interpretation, Interpretation and Interpretation.
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Left or Right or in-between
Politicians in power & their respective media abide to one key fact
"No Crisis Should Go to Waste"
So expect some distortions, omissions, errors and lies and the farther left or right you go - expect the lies and distortions to get bigger and less plausible.
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Are things better or worse today that in the past? I would argue that things are immeasurably better.
I was born in 1956. One of earliest memories is of a visit to my aunt and uncle and not being able to see my favorite TV show, Beanie and Cecil. I started complaining and was quickly told to be quiet, there was something much more important on the TV at that moment. It was the broadcast coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A year later I still vividly remember sitting in my second grade classroom when the school intercom came on with a radio broadcast of President Kennedy's assassination.
My parents were always tuned into the evening news that came on at 5:30 PM in Wisconsin. Throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s was the nightly coverage of the Vietnam War. Then came 1967 and the assassination of King and Senator Kennedy and the burning of American cities.
Can't leave out the Civil Rights Movement and the horrible reaction from the political powers in the South.
The rebellion against the Vietnam War was a daily occurance. While I was never subjected to the possibility of the draft, my older brother was. He lucked out on a high number which meant he most likely wouldn't be called, but I do remember some conversations between my parents about him heading to Canada if the draft was a possibility.
I do remember at a very young age going to local high school and standing in a very long line with my entire family waiting to take the polio vaccine (pink drop on a sugar cube). No such option for measles, mumps and chicken-pox, all of which I suffered through as a child.
I will end with an evening in 1989. I was working at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, on a two-week on then two-week off schedule. I had just returned to my apartment in Anchorage on the evening of November 9 (my birthday). I turned on the TV and sat in shock as I saw people dancing on top of the Berlin Wall. The Cold War, with the ever present chance of nuclear was, was arguably over. I remember sitting there crying because that had always been something in the back of one's mind even if not dwelled upon.
Today's medical crisis will go down as one of histories big events. Most of the other political stuff won't be remembered a few years from now because it just doesn't matter. Remember that 24/7 news coverage is a relatively new feature. When all the national news broadcasters had to worry about a filling 30 minutes time (minus the commercials) once a day they tended to worry more about the important stuff. Most of the 'news' today is not news but rather click-bait and can be ignored, as I do.
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"... Remember that 24/7 news coverage is a relatively new feature. When all the national news broadcasters had to worry about a filling 30 minutes time (minus the commercials) once a day they tended to worry more about the important stuff ..."
Years ago, while looking for something else, I came across a short item on the middle of the front page of The Times of London, which went something like this: "15,000 people died in spring flooding in (some place in Africa) one year ago, a recently returned correspondent reports." And, that was that.
However it was worded, I took the 'correspondent' (if that was the exact word) to be someone who had been travelling (for whatever reason) and, being a loyal reader, dropped them a line as soon as they had returned to London.
One of Isaac Asimov's best conceits was the argument, in The Foundation series, over which planet had been the origin planet of the species that had peopled the Galactic Empire ... just another factoid, lost in the sands of time.
There is no question that Covid-19 will be pretty much forgotten; the only question is "when".
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Today it hit us hard here. With temperatures starting to rise into the 30's we suffered the bad news that there will be no swimming Pool this summer.
When the temps rise into the 40's there will be a longing for the cool water after work.
It was the news expected but it is still heartbreaking when it comes.
Hopefully, beaches will be open sometime in the late summer...........
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"Hopefully, beaches will be open sometime in the late summer..........."
We are already open for business. First in the nation!
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Ernie, friend....I hope three weeks from now you don't wish you hadn't posted this.
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I'm really trying to stay out of this. I'm a Canadian hoping that our friends south of the border do everything possible to get back to normal, at least in a medical sense. Because if you do something really stupid it might have a huge effect on us as well. Please be smart and please be safe!!
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Unless you have an advanced degree in Epidemiology and have direct experience with statistical modeling of the spread of disease, aren't you just parroting what you heard the talking heads say on your favorite television station?
The point is there are very smart people in Canada, in Florida, in New York and many other places and the local scientific community and state leadership has said it's safe to start easing restrictions.
I dont have a degree in Epidemiology so I am not qualified to say whether it's a good idea or a bad idea.
"Paging Dr. Snick...paging Dr. Harvey..." 
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No, I am not qualified to give any more than my own opinion, which I assume that is what you are doing - and I really hope your opinion is right. You can always find scientists who are willing to agree, or disagree on any topic, look at climate change! As far as politicians go, well... I am entitled to my opinion without being insulted, as are you. If I said anything that upset you I really do apologize. By the way I was almost a doctor, two courses short of my P.H.D. before I realized I was grossly over educated and became a high school math teacher instead. I will say two more words in this post and that will be my last comment on our common problem -- Stay safe!!!
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"...my own opinion, which I assume that is what you are doing"
Look at my post again. I didn't give an opinion either way. I just said the beaches are open.
"I am entitled to my opinion without being insulted"
I'm not quite sure why you feel insulted but if you do, I regret that. Okay, I won't refer to you as "Dr. Harvey" any more.
" I will say two more words in this post and that will be my last comment on our common problem -- Stay safe!!!"
Here's my two words: Surfs up!
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No I am not 'Dr. Snick'. But I think any objective evaluation of the available facts would lead to continued caution.
I wasn't being facetious. I really do hope you're right and this whole thing is overblown. Have you stopped to think, what if you're wrong?
Like I said we'll know in about three weeks after the surf's up'.
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Snick,
I hear you. I'm sure we are all hoping for a positive outcome.
I just dont understand it when you say that "any objective evaluation of the available facts would lead to continued caution".
Do you mean to say that the State of Florida Department of Health has not evaluated the situation fully or objectively? Are you in a better position than they to make the call?
Decision makers are REQUIRED to allow individual movement and peaceable assembly at the earliest, safe opportunity.
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The debate is about what is "safe". We do not have a zero death policy to determine the decision so anything above that is subjective. For example, if the annual projected death rate is less than the flu then is that acceptable?
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O.K.- time for a pet peeve of mine. I hope when we get to the other side of this- with a vaccine- this country takes a good hard look at the way we do business with the rest of the world. We have outsourced so much in the last 30 years we are vulnerable in so many ways. The first thing we need to do is bring back the manufacturing and distribution of our prescription medicines to within the borders of the U.S. and Canada. Right now India and China make the vast majority of our medicines. Are we that stupid? Don't the big Pharma's make enough money that they have to outsource this? We (our government) allows our safety to be potentially compromised by allowing this. This is not a political comment- just a statement of opinion.
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@stokesville,
Amen! It's a national security issue.
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It's all very well bringing the work back to our countries but then the cost of such home made/produced items will rise by a large amount.
Why do we need large numbers of temporary workers to gather our food products when there are so many unemployed locals? The answer is they work cheaper than the resident population. I do not see hordes of our citizens signing up to gather the fruit and veg or weed the fields even when so many are now out of work. Is it all down to wages, probably not, some will be due to the idea of such a menial task for little reward.
Now if those producers were to pay decent wages with proper breaks and good working conditions maybe locals would take up the work, but the cost to the consumer would have to rise and are we willing to pay for such an increase. In some households could they even afford such a price rise?
Just my thoughts.
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Vic,
Yep; true.... therein lies the rub.
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" the cost to the consumer would have to rise "
Of course it would and here is the $64,000 dollar question.
Would the Farmers benefit or would it be the Supermarkets???
Several weeks before "The Crisis" started our local supermarket was selling a 1.5 Kg bag of Potatoes for £0.69. One week before "The Crisis" hit the same bag of potatoes was £0.99. The day the lockdown was announced that same bag of potatoes they were selling at £1.49.
Do you think the farmer was getting double the money??
Of course bloomin' not!!!
During the 20th Century, after the two world Wars, Isolationism was rampant and it turned out badly. We then went headlong into globalisation and multiculturalism and it has now turned out badly.
Extremes never turn out well. Moderation in all things is the way forward.
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They call journalism "the first draft of history".
The map (above) shows the locations of cellphones 14 days after being on one Fort Lauderdale beach in early March.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/florida-spring-break-coronavirus.html
I would be more comfortable with opening the beaches if the concession stands stayed closed.
I'm glad that I don't have to figure-out how to re-open the economy safely.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Does anyone remember the opening part of "Jaws" where the mayor wanted to keep the beaches open for tourist dollars. I really hope I'm wrong, but that's what's in my head right now. Please don't give me a slap down for this, it's just a comment that I hope has nothing to do with the situation the people of Florida find themselves in right now. I know I said I would keep quiet about the situation, but...
"Not Doctor" Harvey
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I just read this on twitter about Canada Post.
"CCN & CSN
@trajanpublisher
·
7m
Postal services to 150-plus destinations have been suspended by @canadapostcorp
“at the request of the receiving postal operator or due to the lack of available transportation,” the Crown corporation said in a recent update."
Doug
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Well, please don't shoot the messenger Ernie, but I just saw this:
‘Complete disbelief’: Governors blindside front-line staff with abrupt reopening plans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/complete-disbelief-governors-blindside-front-line-staff-with-abrupt-reopening-plans/2020/04/23/bb965f52-8567-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
Never underestimate the stupidity, culpability, corruptability, greed, or self-interest of a politician.....any politician.
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"Well, please don't shoot the messenger Ernie, but I just saw this:"
Benque,
Haha... I'm not that emotionally invested... I read the article and my home state of Florida was not mentioned. Now, that's not to say that we're doing everything perfectly because we most certainly are not. That's kind of the point; this is an unprecedented situation that effects the entire world, every nation, every city and every street in every neighborhood. To think that we're all going to hit it out of the park and get every single detail perfect on the first try is laughable.
But here's my main concern: it seems that people that have been able to very seamlessly work from home, people of means that are going to be ok either way and also many in our "ruling class" all seem to favor an open ended, unlimited shut down of the economy until there is not one person out there that tests positive. That's not an option folks. There are 10s of millions of regular Joes and Janes out there that are hurting and another $1,200 public dole payment won't solve the problem. They're not on Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok sending cute messages about recipes or drinking wine while sheltering in place and playing with their cats. We have to get society working again as soon as possible or the entire thing could come unraveled.
Again, I really don't care if they open the beaches and I don't know the true scientific impact of it but we have to get millions of folks working again.
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Well said Ernie!
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Benque said:
"Well, please don't shoot the messenger Ernie, but I just saw this:"
Well, Benque, I'm going to shoot the messenger. Journalism as a profession in this country is dead. My best friend in college (and best man at my wedding) was a journalism major who got his masters and taught college journalism. Both of his children got journalism degrees. None of them have anything to do with the journalism profession today.
Much of what passes for journalism today is littered with opinion and misrepresentation. If you actually vetted the article you shared with us, then I'll apologize, but I'm betting your introductory sentence is an indication that you don't know if the story is accurate or not. If not, why burden us with it? If you did vet it, then why not share your thoughts about the article's premise and details. What were the most important points from your perspective? Did you identify any problems in the story's presentation? Don't simply drop this in our laps and then leave us hanging. Otherwise, it appears this was simply a means for you to take a potshot at all politicians? I'd hate to think that was your intent.
Tom
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"I'd hate to think that was your intent."
Like it or lump it, that was my intent.
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OK. Iv'e read all of the novels on my book shelf and I've worked with stamps until I'm bleary eyed. Now what?? Send me a Jack Higgins, David Baldacci, James Patterson, or similar author novel and I'll send you one of mine - via media mail. I've tried to elevate my taste to Charles Frazier's COLD MOUNTAIN, but get bogged down in a 3 page description of the sun rising above Cold Mountain. My wife has tried to interest me in on-line books, but I just enjoy holding a book and turning the pages. Any comments? Thank you.
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I still thrive on the classic Alfred Hitchcock short story paperbacks....
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If there are any second hand book stores left check out Clive Cussler. I got on the Cussler kick a couple years ago and ended up reading all his fiction at one go. There were about 72 books at the time and you don't even have to read his several series in order - it's better, but not that important. It took about a year and now I just wait for his new stuff to show up on Abe's Books. I prefer to have a book to read in the "old fashioned" way!
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Hi Joe!
I had a minor complaint about Clive Cussler - his repeated use of the word "murmmering". Everything was "murmmering". I forget his side kicks name (Gordo?), but the tales sure were far out.
Before we get to Tom Clancy, we "sponsored" a Midshipman at the US Naval Academy who went into subs. He was assigned to a sub on loan to the CIA (since decommissioned), and berthed at Treasure Island, between San Francisco and Alemeda, CA. I once asked him about the jet sled on board. He was startled and asked me how I knew about that. I replied, truthfully, that I read about it in a Tom Clancy novel.
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"
Well, Benque, I'm going to shoot the messenger. Journalism as a profession in this country is dead. My best friend in college (and best man at my wedding) was a journalism major who got his masters and taught college journalism. Both of his children got journalism degrees. None of them have anything to do with the journalism profession today.
Much of what passes for journalism today is littered with opinion and misrepresentation. If you actually vetted the article you shared with us, then I'll apologize, but I'm betting your introductory sentence is an indication that you don't know if the story is accurate or not. If not, why burden us with it? If you did vet it, then why not share your thoughts about the article's premise and details. What were the most important points from your perspective? Did you identify any problems in the story's presentation? Don't simply drop this in our laps and then leave us hanging. Otherwise, it appears this was simply a means for you to take a potshot at all politicians? I'd hate to think that was your intent."
Bingo!
When I took journalism I was taught that it would be our awesome responsibility to objectively report the facts, so that the viewers / readers could make up their own minds based on truth. Not so today. Every news outlet has their own biased agenda and there is really nowhere to go for the actual truth. Today on Meet The Press, that sneering Chuck Todd asked Elizabeth Birx two loaded questions, which she expertly deflected. Not being able to trip her up, he ended the conversation with the statement, “The president only cares about himself.” Totally off base.
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Bob:- Have you tried the Patrick Robinson Novels? "Ghost Force", "Hunter Killer", and "Scimitar SL-2".
I gave up on Clive Cussler many years ago as soon as Dirk Pitts' kids showed up!!
Earlier Lee Child books are also an easy read.
When I was in my 20's Desmond Bagley was my favourite author. We sometimes forget that the authors we read when younger can still be enjoyable years later.
At the moment my passion is Historical Fiction with The Last Kingdom series by Bernard Cornwell or the Ghengis Kahn series by Conn Iggulden, or his Emperor series about Julius Ceasar.
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I would recommend to anyone who likes British spy novels the books by Anthony Price who died last year age 90. For cold war period settings I would rate him as good as Le Carre so at the top of that genre. The couple that were made into movies didn't really work very well, but the books are superb. I see they are now out on Kindle, but to find the paperbacks you will have to search used books shops.
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Anyone into spy series, a couple of suggestions for books:
The Bernard Samson Series: Game, Set and Match, Hook, line and Sinker, Faith, Hope and Charity. I know I've read the first 6, don't think I've read the last 3, but incredible!
The James Bond series and I think you should read them in order for maximum effect.
The George Smiley series. I've read a couple and intend to read the rest.
Also there are a few British TV series that are incredible if you can find them either on YouTube or DVD:
The Bernard Samson series again - you really have to pay attention!
The Sandbaggers - In my opinion the best spy series ever made and one of the best TV series ever!
Mr. Palfrey of Westminster - A bit slow, but I think it's fantastic if given a chance.
James Bond, of course, 24 movies so far
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I have a preference for Historical fiction - and specifically British historical fiction
All by Robert Harris (probably my favourite author)
The Cicero trilogy (Roman hitory.... I know!)
An Officer and a Spy (based on the Dreyfus case - probably my favourite book - French history I know)
Munich (the Chamberlain & Hitler meeting)
Second Sleep (given how the big cities are coping with Covid its quite unnervingly topical!)
Bernard Cornwall (already mentioned) the Last Kingdom series (or the Saxon Stories)(covers the Anglo Saxon period King Alfred and beyond)
Patrick O'Brian - Jack Aubrey Series (of Master & Commander Fame!)(before during the Napoleonic Wars)
CJ Sansom - the Matthew Shardlake Series (a detective series set in Tudor England, generally Henry VIII and beyond)
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Random jottings from demented soul.
So how is this Covid tracing Bluetooth app going to work with the whitening toothpaste? Will we have to keep applying food colour? Will it still work for all of us that do not have a mobile 'phone? The song says there are more questions than answers, how did the writer know? Will my brain cell ever get a companion? I don't mind the lockdown but this tight jacket and padded walls get to me.
Ps It's been raining for most of the day and the ground that is waterlogged from snow melt and deep frost is now a large puddle.
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Go for a walk in the park and look and listen at all the wonderful things that nature has provided.
The rat-a-tat-tat of the woodpecker. The sweet songs of the Blackbirds aloft in the trees singing their hearts out. The coo cooing of the doves. The bounce of the squirrel as he crosses the path in front of you.
The two pigeons in the tree making loovvee. The laughter of the children playing on the swings.
The growling and barking of the dogs having a fight. The screeching of their owners trying to bring them under control. Jumping onto the grass to avoid the twat on the bicycle who is tearing along at speed, then realising you've jumped into dog poo.
Avoiding the two joggers who come up behind you and barge you out of the way. As you near home the thump thump music from the bampots' car two streets away.
Aye nature is wonderful??
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Ian, you're a nut!
You just wrote a Ray Stevens song!!!
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Never mind Ray Stevens, How's about this then:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yFTOvO0utY
Reminds me of Scout Camp.
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Coronavirus is proving to be a real pain.
Items sent to the USA are not arriving and it is very frustrating....and expensive. To elsewhere all is OK but to the USA there is a problem. Of course I fully understand the difficulties for Postal services and I for one will not be sending anything for the foreseeable future.
On top of that, Paypal are not working as they should either and giving refunds for non-arrival of goods is proving impossible. Included is one buyer from Stamporama and I have written to him to tell him I am trying......but it's not working.
I will certainly be sending ALL items to the USA by registered mail in future and when it is safe to do so. I just cannot afford the losses.
Still in lockdown here but a little easing of movement.
Londonbus1
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It is not just Israel to the USA that has problems.
Sending from the UK to Israel is just as bad.
The Israeli postal system may actually be the problem.
As for sending everything registered that is just as bad as sending by airmail as NO signatures are being asked for. It is up to the individual post office employee delivering the package to sign that the delivery is complete.
Tracking also depends on the individual deliverer as I have had "Out for delivery" but no confirmation that it "Has been delivered".
Of course it also depends on what you write on the customs forms and how long it is held in customs as they are also short staffed due to covid-19
All you can do is hope that your luck is in and the package arrives at its destination.
I have had no problem refunding for delivery failure through Paypal.
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Some of my mail to the USA has been returned to me without the contents and they all arrived in the US. Sending registered means I can track the packets and the tracking system from here is excellent even to the USA. On a number of occasions I have told the buyer his/her packet is waiting for collection before they get the notice.
Israel Post is not the best, and like many Postal services nowadays the stamps are not cancelled but I have only been having problems with mail to the USA. To other countries everything is fine.
It may just be bad luck but my pocket cannot withstand bad luck forever. At least sending registered means I am covered and I can track the item.
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Just to add to this thread. I had an item mailed from Germany, Registered, on 24 March. Using the tracking number provided to me I get the following:
Your package is on its way to a USPS facility. Sign up to get updates, and we'll send you a delivery date and time when available.
Status
Pre-Shipment
Origin Post is Preparing Shipment
Not sure what any of this means. Just keeping my fingers crossed that it will show up some day.
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Mail from the USA to several other countries has been suspended due to unavailability of transportation. This list includes Israel. Several other countries also have limitations or suspensions on International mail. I noticed that Norway is not shipping mail to the USA. I have been waiting on an envelope from Australia for a month.
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Royal Mail here has a web page titled "International Incidents Update" that gives an outline on what countries are having problems.
e.g. this is the current update for Italy:-
Update: 2 April 2020
Poste Italiane advise if the addressee cannot be contacted, or in the case of parcels addressed to businesses, cultural institutions, commercial activities and other entities which are temporarily closed in accordance with the Prime Ministerial Decree of 25 March 2020, items can be returned to sender after the first delivery attempt. The list of most affected municipalities is constantly updated and can be found on the Poste Italiane website.
For the USA:-
Update: 14 April
The USA has has introduced special quarantine measures against Coronavirus. As a result, USPS may not be able to deliver mail to specifications, signatures on delivery may be suspended in order to prevent spread of the infection. Delays to mail services can be expected.
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"It may just be bad luck but my pocket cannot withstand bad luck forever. At least sending registered means I am covered and I can track the item."
It has always been a problem and will continually be so.
It is always "nice" to have "high value" sales but when several of these packages go astray over a short period of time in can be a serious blow to the seller.
That is why I prefer "little and often" sales. I know some buyers want to reduce the Shipping costs as a percentage of purchases by building up their purchases but PLEASE spare a thought for the seller who will lose out when one of these packages go missing.
It is not easy, if not impossible, to claim for losses from the Postal Authorities. When making a claim the seller has to prove how much they paid for the goods lost NOT what they sold it for!!! EVEN if it is sent "Registered" mail.
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I am in Ecuador and am waiting for several registered letters which left UK on 10 March.According to Royal Mail,s tracking site,they all left the counntry and are in transit.However,Ecuador closed all airports on 21 March.I have no idea how Royal Mail sends letters,either by regular flights or by using courier services.I have no idea where these letters are at the moment.I would hope that if delivery is impossibe,they would be returned to sender.
Very frustrated....
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Here is the latest info from Royal Mail for Ecuador:
Start date: 17 March 2020
Latest update: 24 April 2020
End date: Ongoing
Incident: Coronavirus
Update: 24 April 2020
New transport links to Ecuador have proven unstable, so we're currently not shipping letters and parcels. Items posted will be held and you will experience significant delays.
Update: 17 April 2020
Mail despatches to Ecuador have resumed, and we’re prioritising the processing and shipment of mail held during the recent period of suspension. Delays will still be evident as in-country restrictions remain in place to prevent the spread of Coronavirus.
Original Incident: 17 March 2020
We're currently not sending items to Ecuador as there are no available transport links. Items sent will be held and you'll experience significant delays.
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Hello from a stranger!
I've been away for a while, but since my local club is not currently meeting and Tim had sent me a link to my stamp club to update, I decided it was time to end my time away.
My wife and I are doing well physically. I am working from home for Verizon, and that has brought many challenges with connectivity. Just switched from AT&T to Xfinity Comcast. Some of you may remember I work in Bad Debt, and Vz has definitely increased its reserves significantly for what is coming. Guess who had to book THAT entry ?! 
I added a new collecting interest (Trinidad & Tobago) and bought a decent sized Trinidad/T&T collection from a fellow stamp club member.
I definitely have been catching up on my collection. Added quite a bit to my Norfolk Island collection this past week. Sunday was Berlin's turn.
My major concern I have re the gradual reopening is that many will not honor the social distancing needed. Good grief, many aren't doing it now in the grocery stores. And sorry, the young (teenage to young adult) people who live in Central FL act like there is no problem, walk right next to me in a store, and look at me like I am crazy when I wear my mask when I am out in public (which is not often).
No more on that.
The father of one of my teammates passed from COVID-19. Patrick is up with his mother in Westchester, NY. His mother also contracted the virus, but she is now home recovering.
My dad and other family members live in New Jersey, which ramps up my concern overall. They are well, for now.
I look forward to seeing what material is out there on the auctions and I may be noting some items I am looking for in the upcoming days.
BOB STEWART Orlando, FL
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Hey Bob, you could not stay away eh ? Yesterday was a beautiful day..i think the temp hit 80 degrees..we have a favorite place to walk in Kingston N.Y. along old trolley tracks on the Esopus creek(Hudson River). It was kind of sad to most people fishing or walking the tracks not wearing masks,i guess they figure they do not need them outdoors. So far so good here..we hunker down...out for groceries every 11 or 12 days,the kids are afraid to come around and possibly infect us.
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Brechinite...
Many thanks for the info,very helpful.
Today,the Post Office started back to work on a part time schedule and their web site updated details on a lot of my missing mail.Items which left UK towards the end of February and early March are now showing as received in Ecuador,May 4.
I think they arrived before the suspension of mail service but info was never put in the system.
I will probably have to wait another 3-4 weeks before they arrive here in Guayaquil,maybe longer.Even in normal circumstances,the mail system is pretty disfunctional.Still,it makes quarantine a little more bearable,waiting for my stamps to arrive.
Stay healthy.
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Here is the link to Royal Mails update page. Scroll down to find the country of interest.
https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5317/%7E/international-incident-bulletin
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In our area mask usage in grocery stores is less than 50% (my opinion for when I have been out) when it is not enforced. Even store employees do not all wear masks. I have worn one outside the house when near anyone in stores except for once when I went to the county waste facility for a quick unload - all outdoors. The local golf course has been very busy.
Our next door neighbor got the virus from her mother who supposedly got it at church. Her comment (via text message) - It is not the flu.
I have no experienced any US mail issues. An order from Wizard supply house came in 2 days and a SOR approval letter arrived in 3 days.
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I was just listening to the radio and the person was discussing many underdeveloped areas in the world. For example one African country with a large population where there are some areas with dense populations of people. There is very little testing and the country has one ventilator. If we in Canada and the US think we have problems...
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"... If we in Canada and the US think we have problems ..."
... we can wait for climate change to hit its stride, and really start cryin'.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Hey Ho!
Its been announced, another three weeks of lockdown.
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Yup! You were right. Closing down the thread where we were discussing statistics and replacing it with a thread where you argue politics is MUCH better!
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There’s nothing wrong with civil discussion of political issues.
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I was going through some old Nova Scotia newspapers ( researching to write a book on the history of Base Ball (sic) in my home town ) lately and came up with the following from 1892. "The President of the United States has issued a circular requiring all immigrants from Europe to the States to remain in quarantine 20 days". Hows that for a coincidence? I did a little research and there was a book written by Howard Markle in 1999 called "Quarantine!: East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892". Might be an interesting read, has anyone read the book?
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I haven't heard of it but that is very interesting in terms of precedence.
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Quarantine has been used many times. New York City and Baltimore were quarantined on and off for two years after a yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793. Letters about it are the subject of an article in the current Collectors Club Philatelist. Harbor police were posted to prevent visitors from landing at New York harbor. It had limited effect because mosquitoes spread yellow fever, which was unknown at the time.
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For those of us here in Michigan;
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I guess those who find these restrictions unreasonable may not like the military very well such as being a sailor on ship that sleeps in racks 3 high in confined spaces where your life is controlled 24/7. You do get free meals, health care, lodging, education, special justice system, etc.
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Except that we haven't had a draft for decades, so everyone in the military has chosen that life, whereas today's restrictions are government ordered. If you're actually suggesting that those protesting continued lockdowns are soft, that's insulting, and completely inappropriate for a moderator. Unless you want to drive some members out of the forum.
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I came across this article this morning. It is by Erin Bromage, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts. The article explains her perspective on the infectious nature of a virus and how we might want to react to it.
I am not endorsing the article, just presenting it here because it seems to be a particularly well written and easily understood presentation of the infectious nature of our favorite virus. Her opinion is one of many.
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
This is a link to some information about the author.
https://www.erinbromage.com/home
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The postal situation here no doubt varies across the country. We are in the hot spot of NY/NJ/PA. I believe I've reported on this board that we had a death in our local post office. My favorite counter clerk died of Covid and the rest of the staff went into 14 day quarantine. The post office was closed. We got mail deliver every few days with staff from one of the other local offices. Still, the Exton, PA post office is operating the desk on limited hours.
My wife's brother works in the big sorting center in Trenton, New Jersey. Early on he was exposed and was sent home for 14 days. Since then at least one of his co-workers has died. He was again sent home with symptoms last week, was tested and fortunately came up negative.
He did mention that they are operating on a greatly reduced staff with lots of available overtime. He said they aren't getting to the fourth class mail. On my model car board people are whining that some of them haven't received a magazine. The least of our worries!
My wife's youngest brother works for New Jersey Transit. He believes he and his wife had Covid in January, as they both had bad colds, and thought they had the flu. His wife got tested recently and tested positive for the antibody.
My son in law is a fire captain and had someone on his team test positive. He was tested and came back negative, and is still working. My daughter is a teacher and has been working from home, with three kids under three. They are scared to death that he'll bring it home.
Here west of Philly in Chester County, we've been able to keep our numbers down by being in lockdown. Last we were really out was the weekend of April 14. I've been going out weekly for food and beer. We do go for a daily walk through our neighborhood. Otherwise we are on our property. We've gotten into a routine, so it's not all that bad. Better safe than sorry!
My concern is that people are getting antsy and I notice a marked upswing in traffic every week. The first week I took photos of the roads being entirely empty. Yesterday it looked like a normal day on the highway near our house. It is mandated to wear masks in stores, but I'm troubled by the families that are out shopping. Little kids in the carts or running around the store without masks.
And for states that are reopening, I'm seeing photos on Facebook from people who ran right out to restaurants and are acting like nothing is wrong. I think we will see an upswing in cases as people get bold and stupid.
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As of next week we'll have been sheltering for 60 days. If not for my stamps I'd be bonkers now.
I get out for a walk every morning and the wife and I walk evenings after dinner. We get groceries delivered and other than a trip to the PO or our Vet office to pick up special food for our cat, we stay here. We have a 24 year old son still at home,he works on line from our dining room table.
We have underlying health issues, and we're terrified. Seeing some of the scenes of crowded beaches and bars reopening this soon are like a punch in the gut. Some of the posts on here belittling my concerns do that, too. Just saying..
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Posts aren’t intended as gut punches, but do reflect differing frames of reference, and suffering on a basis that may be different. For every person who is afraid to reenter society, there is someone who is facing the loss of everything they worked for, for decades. But let me suggest a slightly different perspective. I completely respect older people with health problems who want to separate from society for an extended period. Yet those same people who (in the US) are on Social Security or Medicare should be rooting for and even demanding that society reopen for younger, healthier working people. Because the tax dollars that pay for those government benefits on which you depend have to come from somewhere, with the root value being human work. States are already seeing stunning drops in basic tax revenue, and federal losses have to be similar in magnitude. We can only borrow or print money for so long. So let’s get healthy, working people back on duty, and respect everyone else who wants to protect themselves. Infectious disease is a perpetual fact of humanity, but we can’t supply the benefits that one generation needs if the younger generations aren’t free to deliver them.
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I would prefer to discuss the metrics, and we should see some soon that will inform us whether SARS-CoV-2 wilts in the warmer weather (I hope so, but I doubt it due to transmission vectors), and whether soft re-openings are a good idea. (I'm more hopeful there, as long as we wear masks in public and maintain social distance). Sadly, I think Americans are capable of neither, so we are likely to see a surge, but I hope for the best.
It's comments like this that are offensive:
"I completely respect older people with health problems who want to separate from society for an extended period. Yet those same people who (in the US) are on Social Security or Medicare should be rooting for and even demanding that society reopen for younger, healthier working people. Because the tax dollars that pay for those government benefits on which you depend have to come from somewhere, with the root value being human work."
That human work you speak of, I HAVE ALREADY DONE. Social Security is not some gift from the next generation to me, it is something I have been paying into MY ENTIRE WORKING LIFE!!! And I'm still working. Full time. From home for now, but back at the office when it is safe. But I have reached retirement age and could retire tomorrow if I wanted to. To intimate that there is a dichotomy between people below a certain age that can ignore SARS-CoV-2 and old people that just need to stay home is the height of ignorance. And it is EXACTLY that kind of ignorance that guides the current Federal response in the U.S. that is creating a disaster of our own making.
"So let’s get healthy, working people back on duty, and respect everyone else who wants to protect themselves."
How can you even PRETEND to know who is, and who is not, at risk! I'm more concerned about my sons than I am myself. They both had to have breathing treatments as toddlers. Are you SURE they are not at a heightened risk? Nothing I have seen confirms that.
"Infectious disease is a perpetual fact of humanity, but we can’t supply the benefits that one generation needs if the younger generations aren’t free to deliver them."
Again, I don't need the younger generation to do ANYTHING other than NOT SQUANDER THE MONEY I HAVE ALREADY PAID IN TO SOCIAL SECURITY for the past 50+ years!
These false equivalencies are uninformed and misguided.
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Thanks for correcting my misguidedness. I think I'm done here.
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I must point out that as far as I know there is not one country that has kept a wad of cash that I paid into during my working life for the sole benefit of me when I get older.
During my working life I was paying taxes to pay for ALL citizens to benefit and I expect the same to occur today and into the future.
My kids are no longer using the education system but I still pay my local taxes to educate the current generations.
When this pandemic is over (Hopefully), ALL of us will find our taxes will increase as what is being pumped into the economies MUST be paid for at some point, and there is nothing we can do about it.
It is the way of the world, so when the time comes, thank your god you survived and pay up with a smile on your face.
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"... That human work you speak of, I HAVE ALREADY DONE. Social Security is not some gift from the next generation to me, it is something I have been paying into MY ENTIRE WORKING LIFE!!! ..."
Balderdash.
Social Security checks went out in Month #1. Obviously, not one of those recipients had paid into the system for one quarter, let alone forty quarters.
It was always a system of transfer payments. In one of those bipartisan compromises of the sort that we miss today, everyone agreed to call it an 'insurance' program, thus giving cover to those elements from those political parties that objected to transfer payments.
Ditto, and in spades, for Medicare, where 2% of your 1972 salary has not, by The Magic of Compound Interest, grown to cover your generation's Fifty Thousand Dollar hip replacements or Five Hundred Dollar (per month) prescriptions for Eliquis.
Insurance? That you paid for? Fuggedaboudit.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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The employer also contributes as well.
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So my state governor, after rejecting local county requests for control over their own communities, has finally allowed ‘elective medical procedures’ to occur in the last week.
Since this the state lock down was implemented, my state considered medical procedures like cancer CAT scans and fistulagrams as ‘elective’. But because I have not been able to get a routine fistulagram needed to keep my dialysis graft in good working order, it completely failed this week. So instead of getting a simple fistulagram I found myself laying on the operating table for an hour and a half as they worked overtime trying to get it working again. Here is the result (imagine then having to stick two #15 needles into this each day for the last two days)
I also have been prohibited from getting my cancer screening CAT scans but was finally able to get that done this week; hopefully the delay will not be as disastrous as my delayed graft maintenance. Apparently it is ok to die from cancer but the state will protect me from the Chinese virus.
Normally every month in the USA there are 180,000 people diagnosed with heart disease (leading cause of death) and 130,000 people diagnosed with cancer (second leading cause of death). While I assume that some of these folks got help (if their symptoms were so bad that they went to the emergency room), there is little doubt that a significant percentage of people have gone undiagnosed and have died or will die as the result. Where are the body counts for this? And this is without even talking about suicides, opioid overdose, child and spouse abuse, due to the shutdown.
Shutdowns should never have been a binary thing, yet some (i.e. the news media) worked very hard to make it that way by using fear and intimidation. I am weary of hearing the justification of ‘people will die’. Arguing truisms is inane, it is no different than arguing that if we never got in a car then we will not die in car accident.
Risk analysis is made up of two parts; impact and likelihood. What is the risk of going to the store without a umbrella? The likelihood is whatever the chance of rain might be and the impact is pretty low (you get wet and have bad hair day). But when the impact is death then fear mongering is easy to do and some people seem to then ignore the other part of the equation, likelihood. In my state of 10.8 million people, around 600 have died. Putting aside the fact that many of these deaths have been coded as the Wuhan virus when it was not verified, this puts the likelihood at well less than 0.05%.
Of course other states and localities have different situations and my thoughts and prayers are with them. And I appreciate that governors have to live with making some difficult life and death decisions, obviously erroring on the side of caution was prudent. But I think that history will show that the state level implementation was horribly handled and has made the cure far worse than the disease.
Don
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Ouch.
The term 'elective surgery' covers a lot of ground, from pre-wedding nose jobs, to things that will save a patient from seriously deteriorating (further).
A friend in NYC was told (by her surgeon) (in March!) not to worry, her hip surgery would go forward because "we're an orthopedic hospital, so this doesn't affect us".
Nobody's lookin' real good, here.
Just heard the doctor who treated the first US Covid-19 patient explain that the hospital had recently run an infectious disease dress rehearsal so that, when a guy showed-up explaining that he'd just come from China and felt sick, they were caught with their pants up.
Talk about dumb luck.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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I am also in NC and had a spot removed from my skin 4 weeks ago during the lock down. I had delayed it 4 weeks already.
But it is a big dilemma. While there are rational people, there are likely as many that believe that rules only apply to someone else as we constantly see everywhere.
They feel they will not get it, do not care if they spread it, or just do not like people telling them how to behave.
Many laws in place are intended control the actions of a few while others suffer.
For example - no shoes, no shirt, no mask, no service.
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" And I appreciate that governors have to live with making some difficult life and death decisions, obviously erroring on the side of caution was prudent. But I think that history will show that the state level implementation was horribly handled and has made the cure far worse than the disease."
My sentiments exactly....
...especially here in Michigan.
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"Many laws in place are intended control the actions of a few while others suffer."
Hi Al,
Agreed, every society has considerate and inconsiderate people. But human communities have always had ‘bad apples’. Is the approach really to make it illegal to be inconsiderate? You cannot legislate ethics. Those in power can pass laws that can somewhat control our behavior but not our thoughts. Ethics and consideration for others is about how you were raised, not what some politician says or how a law tells us to behave.
Last year no one seemed to care much about going to the store when they were ill even though it put at risk other people (especially those who were immunocompromised). Is it that now that folks do not have to be immunocompromised to get an illness it has become more important to not go to the store when you are not feeling well?
The truth is that SARS, MERS, HIV and many other viruses curve flattened by themselves. They have worked for decades on a HIV virus and no vaccines yet exists. Every year we watch how science has a ‘hit or miss’ approach to flu vaccines, sometimes they get it right and sometimes that year’s virus strain morphs to something they did not anticipate. And people die, lots of people die. Do we shut down everything due to the flu year? Do folks run around in masks? Do people yell ‘you have blood on your hands’ if they spread flu around or is it just this virus that matters?
I think there will be always inconsiderate boobs among us. But I learned a long time ago that we cannot control others we can only control what goes on between our own ears, how we think and feel. And what we need to stop doing is being fearful. Fear, and those who are peddling it, is the enemy. Perhaps it is the fact that I have lived so long under a ‘95% chance of dying in the next 6 months’ death sentence that has made me come to grips with fear and its impact on us. I can tell you that living with fear as a constant companion is no way to live.
Our hobby has a strong ties to history. I am surprised how many stamp collectors seem to not have learned the lessons that it teaches us. Consider WWII, the body counts were horrific and the USA was fearful of entering the war. Yet ultimately in the end victory was gleaned by using the American economy. It was our economy that kicked into overdrive and able to outproduce all the major economies of all the other war participants combined. Today the Chinese Communist Party knows this history lesson and believes that ‘there is only one sun in the sky’. The battleground today is financial (unless folks want to move to the nuclear option) just like it was in WWII. Does the free world really want to let fear be used to reduce our economies to rubble? In WWII everyone had to overcome fear, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and come together. As stamp collectors we should know this history lesson.
Don
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"... It was our economy that kicked into overdrive and able to outproduce all the major economies of all the other war participants combined ..."
Our factories were not getting bombed.
Neither were our railways & ports.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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"As stamp collectors we should know this history lesson."
Unfortunately people do not know their history, especially politicians.
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"Shutdowns should never have been a binary thing, yet some (i.e. the news media) worked very hard to make it that way by using fear and intimidation. "
"In WWII everyone had to overcome fear, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and come together.
"
"Unfortunately people do not know their history, especially politicians.
"
In the free areas of the world of WW2 the government, people and media would have been aligned to fight a common enemy.
There was a recent survey in Australia showing that the Australian population has been more inclined to listen and trust the government than the media during the Covid crisis. That is an interesting statistic. Even our left leaning public broadcasting channel ABC, has, to my mind, been very fair and reasonable with our 'conservative' government.
In the UK and the US all I can see is political campaigning on public media outlets which should be acting impartially, I think this is a serious problem and when the government should be given latitude to deal with the issue they are bombarded by a negative media, its no wonder they are flapping.
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"In the UK and the US all I can see is political campaigning on public media outlets which should be acting impartially, I think this is a serious problem and when the government should be given latitude to deal with the issue they are bombarded by a negative media, its no wonder they are flapping."
This bothers me a great deal, the way the media is playing this crisis... The president comes on and announces a grand vaccine task force, where the greatest minds in the country with unlimited resources and funds, without any government red tape will try to get a vaccine in place in record time. Man, imagine if they are successful? Will this become the model for solving the rest of our medical issues?
CNN comes back on and immediately starts bashing, saying it's impossible and IF they are successful that the American public shouldn't trust a vaccine developed on such a short timeline! They should be put off the air for undermining the government in time of crisis!
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Here in the UK it was announced today that H.M. Government is giving £80+ million to Oxford University and Imperial College London for vaccine research and the implementation of trials.
Oxford have signed a deal with Astra Zenica to produce 100 million doses of their vaccine if their trials are successful. Their vaccine is already in the process of human trials. 30million doses to be ready for September and the UK has first shout on the production. It was also agreed that further production would be available to the Third World Countries at the cheapest price possible.
Imperial Colleges vaccine will go for human trials hopefully next month.
H.M. Government has also said the new production facility planned for 2022 will be completed by mid 2021 (This facility is already under construction and was started before this pandemic). £40 million is being spent to increase current production facilities as well.
Further trials of existing drugs on covid-19 are currently under trial. It has been revealed that many of the deaths were due to the patients blood being too thick and the medical profession have been instructed to introduce blood thinning drugs at an early stage of treatment to thin the blood and hopefully avoid scarring in the lungs.
Hopefully all will go as planned if not it will be back to the drawing board.
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Ian,
"many of the deaths were due to the patients blood being too thick"
During "regular" treatment of COVID-19, or during initial vaccine trials?
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Benque:-
During regular treatment of covid-19.
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So a good reason to take 1 or 2 low dosage aspirins each day....at least while risk of infection is significant.
Edit to add: At least for myself, with no adverse effects, or fear of aspirin.
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Benque:-
Just don't take too much "Warfarin"......(The main constituent of rat poison which also thins the blood)
Also take soluble aspirin NOT tablets as tablets can damage the stomach lining.
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Thanks Ian.
I am familiar with warfarin, or cumidin, after monitoring my Mom's use of it after dementia set in. Always a worry.
I didn't know about the different aspirins you mention, but will look into it further. I use it so sparingly that I have had no problems in the past, but daily use might be a different story.
Here in Mexico, I feel I can not expect the same level of treatment as I MIGHT receive back home in Canada if I should contract the infection. A bit of proactivity couldn't hurt.
Who knows these days? Or to quote from an excellent Russian movie I watched (The Dawns Here are Quiet..2015 4-part TV series) "How can anyone know, in these times?"
Best wishes for continued good health and safety to you and to all philatelists....and everyone else too.
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ikeyPikey,
I thought you were smarter than that.
"Balderdash.
Social Security checks went out in Month #1. Obviously, not one of those recipients had paid into the system for one quarter, let alone forty quarters."
Of course. It's not unlike car insurance. You never know when you will need it, but you continue paying just in case you DO need it. If you have a wreck after only three months the insurance company can't say you haven't paid enough to cover the claim. That's not how it works.
"It was always a system of transfer payments. In one of those bipartisan compromises of the sort that we miss today, everyone agreed to call it an 'insurance' program, thus giving cover to those elements from those political parties that objected to transfer payments."
That's total BS. Insurance is nothing but a system of transfer payments, and if what I paid in didn't matter, my benefits would not be based on how much I paid in over my lifetime. And my first wife, who died when she was 37, and got nothing, would have gotten an annuity. You clearly misunderstand how this works.
"Ditto, and in spades, for Medicare, where 2% of your 1972 salary has not, by The Magic of Compound Interest, grown to cover your generation's Fifty Thousand Dollar hip replacements or Five Hundred Dollar (per month) prescriptions for Eliquis."
You got me there. I don't recall mentioning Medicare, but yes, you are right. Old people get a HUGE break being able to use Medicare for otherwise unaffordable healthcare. How dare they?
"Insurance? That you paid for? Fuggedaboudit."
Insurance, yes. And yes, I DID pay for it. But yes, I may have to forget about it if people aligned with your view are in power.
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"... I thought you were smarter than that ..."
Classy.
You are failing to distinguish between pooled risk payments between contemporaries (insurance) and inter-generational transfer payments (like social security).
With auto insurance, we all throw our cash into a pile, and claims are paid from that pile to the people who paid into the pile. The pool can wind-down at any time. Any surplus or shortcoming falls on the sponsor.
With social security, people immediately got full benefits when they hit the magic birthday, regardless of whether/not they had paid into the pile for any length of time.
If there was never any possibility that the payments from the early beneficiaries would cover their lifetime benefits, then this was not pooled risk, it was just taking from the new subscribers to pay off the old subscribers.
The proof is in the pudding. For all of your life, time & again, you have heard a) that the social security trust fund was going to run out of money by Year X, and b) that some combination of trimmed benefits and boosted taxes had "saved" the system.
Howzabout you hear it from the horse's mouth (or read it on the horse's website, as it were):
"As a result of changes to Social Security enacted in 1983, benefits are now expected to be payable in full on a timely basis until 2037, when the trust fund reserves are projected to become exhausted."
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html
(By comparison, search in vain for a company with the word "insurance" in its name that explains that they will stop paying claims at some date even though people will still be paying premiums in the expectation of decades of payouts.)
If there is no money to pay in 2038 - when people born in 1968 will turn 70 - even though people who were born in 1968 have already been paying into social security for thirty years as I write this - then this is not pooled risk, and this is not insurance.
One of the Big Dirty Bipartisan Open Secrets in Washington is that no one wants to raise the payroll tax rate (notice that it is not called a "premium") and that no one wants to reduce the benefits, so everyone has agreed on a strategy of importing tens of millions of new payers to support the system.
Another of the Big Dirty Bipartisan Open Secrets in Washington is that the best payers are workers (call them "illegal", call them "undocumented", call them whatever name you like) who can only pay into the system, and can never collect. How cool is that?
Social Security is a system of inter-generational transfer payments. The money taken from young(er) workers is paid out to old(er) workers. This is not an insult; it is exactly the way the system has worked from Month #1.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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"You are failing to distinguish between pooled risk payments between contemporaries (insurance) and inter-generational transfer payments (like social security)."
No. I'm not. I have already granted that there would be initial inequities with the startup of such a system, but those are moot at this point. My benefits are based on my contributions. The more I make (and therefore pay into SSI with matching contributions by my employer), the more I receive in retirement. I can even delay retirement for a few years to get an even larger payment (based on actuarial tables). My risk is that I could die before I get a dime.
The ONLY way that becomes an inter-generational transfer payment is if the government raids the funds we have paid into over our lifetimes to pay for other things.
But then that isn't a transfer payment but a misappropriation of funds.
I was paying taxes and SSI when the top tax rate was 70%. When there was a promise that we were all in this together. When we put a man on the moon. And won the cold war!
You seem to think we are begging at the doorstep for crumbs.
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For 2020, the FICA percentage is 7.65% (SS, Medicare) and max contribution is $8537.40 for employee and employer each so $17K max goes in. When it started, the max contribution was lower. It is different for self-employed.
One question is if you had maxed out every year where is the point you draw out more than you put it. This would have to be in adjusted dollars and some assumption of interests if you want to compare to other ways.
If you retire at 70, the maximum benefit you can get is $3790 per month so if you lived 10 years you can do the math. Of course it can be reduced if you draw early, have other income, etc.
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IkeyPikey said...
"Social Security is a system of inter-generational transfer payments. The money taken from young(er) workers is paid out to old(er) workers. This is not an insult; it is exactly the way the system has worked from Month #1."
I agree with ikey, this is how Social Security works.
Larsdog said...
"The ONLY way that becomes an inter-generational transfer payment is if the government raids the funds we have paid into over our lifetimes to pay for other things.
But then that isn't a transfer payment but a misappropriation of funds. "
Larsdog, the Social Security Trust Fund is not an all cash account. The money has been "invested" in US Treasury notes and securities. The cash money has been loaned to and spent by the US Government on other things, and replaced by promises to pay the money back. There is no big vault of cash money, all the money has been spent. We all just hope that the United States does not go bankrupt, and default on all of their notes.
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It's a shame in a way that insurance is split away from taxes in general. Wasn't it a famous American jurist who said something about taxes being the price of civilization?
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I heard a rumor several years ago that one Canadian Prime Minister announced to one and all that the Federal deficit was eliminated by his party, during their term. Everyone was ecstatic. The rumor was that he used the Canadian Pension Fund to do it, and we've been trying to catch up ever since. Don't know if it is true, but most likely is.
Was it Turner? Yes, I think it was, back around 1998???
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'
Dunno 'bout you, but I'm getting tired of hearing:
"... no one could see this coming ..."
"... once in a lifetime event ..."
"... no, once in a century event ..."
Consider "The Silent Invader" (1957), about an "asian flu" epidemic that was on its way to America.
Watch the whole thing.
Notice the emphasis on predictability.
Notice the anticipated casualties.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Beneque, I'm not Canadian but if memory serves, Turner was PM only about three months in 1984 or so. It's possible it was him but doubtful.
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Hi Snick,
I am pretty sure it was Turner, coming into office on the heels of Chretien's downfall, pulling the defecit rabbit out of his hat, and still losing the election after 3(?) months.
But, the precedent was set, and the pension fund is owed to us by the gov't. That is how I remember it anyway. I recall that I voted for Turner, not knowing about the pension fund removal, at that time.
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Jings!...Crivvens!...Help Ma Boab!......ITS RANT TIME!!
The First Minister of the Scottish Government (She is head of the scottish national party)announced the plans for the easing of the Lockdown here.
It is no longer a lockdown it is the Scots being Locked-Up!!
The "release" will be in 4 phases. England is only going to do it over 2 phases.
The time between each phase is 3 weeks so the English will be "Free" in six weeks. We Scots will be "locked up" for 12 weeks.
The next person who says the word "Independence" will get a glorious diatribe of the verbals!!
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ikeyPikey,
That was an interesting video. It was interesting to see mechanisms in place for early detection and they were able to create a vaccine quickly. Many more people travel by air today compared to then so virus is likely to spread much quicker.
North Carolina enters Phase 2 at 5pm today. There still no toilet paper readily available at local grocery stores The paper products aisle is nearly empty.
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I fear for the English. But I am more sad.
The town where I was born, Southend on the Essex coast, was full of thousands of beach-goers yesterday during the hot weather. They were almost piled on top of each other.
I am not sure if it is anger or despair that warrants this post.
My Mother has just passed away (in Essex) and I cannot give her the send-off she deserves because of travel restrictions, lockdowns, rules and regulations.
But thousands of happy people can enjoy a nice sunny day on a beach a few miles away, one on top of the other, risking God knows what while others like myself look on in wonderment !!
Sod the dead, let's get those folk back on the beaches !!
Londonbus1
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Londonbus,
Sorry for your loss. I understand your feelings and only wish more people had a sense of how all this is connected. Best wishes..
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"... they were able to create a vaccine quickly ..."
To be fair to us, the seasonal flu vaccines are all pretty much alike; they only need to be re-tuned to next year's strain.
But the Covid-19 vaccines under development are a wildly varied lot, some working in vastly different ways than others. Anthropomorphizing (which I am loathe to do), it is the question of whether I smack you upside the head, kneecap you, kick you in the nuts, swing a machete at your elbows, lasso your ankles ... or, add foam padding or a steel helmet where you might try to strike me, etc.
This, in turn, creates a great deal of uncertainty about which vaccine might work (let alone best) for which population, might have which side effects for which population, might confer what degree of immunity for how long ...
So, in that respect, they had it a bit easier in 1957.
Still, they saw it coming, and were willing to caution people.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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We might need a "Coronavirus 3" post!
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Londonbus,
I'm sorry for you loss, and the constraints on your ability to properly pay tribute.
It makes no sense to me that sunbathing is more important than mourning.
Or that going to a bar is more important than going to church.
I told my wife today that with the infection numbers still reasonably flat in the U.S. that I was ready to consider dining in an open air cafe if there was good separation. She asked if I wasn't concerned about being around that many people and I told her I was much more concerned about encountering just one moron screaming at me (spewing spittle) that I was trying to make a political statement by wearing a mask to and from my table.
I'm waiting to see the first use of lethal force in the U.S. in similar circumstances. You know it's coming! Sad.
Lars
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Where I live there have been reported incidents of shoppers wearing masks getting harassed by others. One middle aged man was shopping for his family and some middle aged woman literally got in his face telling him he needed to take it off and stop listening to the'Media'. He now has the virus. Hopefully so does she.
Things are getting nuts. What ought to be a matter of Health has become another fault line in the political wars. I agree- someone is going to lose their life before this is over.
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Masks?
Even the Teddy Bears wear masks.
This is part of a shop window display.
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"I'm waiting to see the first use of lethal force in the U.S. in similar circumstances."
"I agree- someone is going to lose their life before this is over."
Yeah, sure, any day now.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/michigan-security-guard-mask-killing-trnd/
Freedom!
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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It really doesn't matter which country it is, there are insanely stupid people everywhere! Stay safe!!
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Yes,
It's far too tempting to let them have their parties and festivals and constitutionally guaranteed expressions of stupidity, and let Darwinism work. If only they wouldn't show up later at the local ER wanting help, I would tell them to go for it!
Lars
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My INP (Inner Nasty Person) has been hoping all along that, out of respect for The First Amendment, places of worship would be the first to be allowed to resume normal operations, as this would be a good chance to settle that whole Deacons Versus Doctors argument, once and for all.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who asks that no one quibble about the "inner")
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"Deacons Versus Doctors "
Having been born a Deacon but not in a religious sense I would trust a doctor over prayer every time.
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Here, Barcelona, Catalonia (W.Europe) we've been hitten very badly by the covid. Already 10 weeks of lock down. Luckily, tomorrw, restrictions will be loosened a little. It seems, that we've overcome the worst.
At street, is compulsory to wear face mask and to keep "social distance" (1.5 - 2 m), specially in buses and underground. We're look forward to go back to something like "normality".
It hasn't been too bad. But I'm fed up of being at home alone.
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Part of the dilemma with reopening churches is that there are many different types of worship practiced. If we're talking about allowing folks to gather with distancing, sitting quietly to listen to a sermon, etc, that's probably safe.
If however there is a lot of singing, physical interaction, dancing in the aisles and arm waving, that's not safe- now. I mean no offense to anyone by saying this but it's just how it is.
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Robin: Holy Covid, Batman, they've closed the bat caves !
https://www.ynetnews.com/environment/article/SyxwIt9sL
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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UK Royal Mail made this announcement yesterday;
There are significant delays to a number of countries right now due to a lack of available transport links and suspension of certain country’s postal operations. We strongly advise not to send items to destinations listed as ‘On suspension’ .
Here is the link to the full article: https://business.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5317/%7E/international-incidents-update
PLEASE NOTE: CANADA & THE USA ARE ON THIS LIST!
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Just had mail from UK posted 15th May arrived here in Manitoba yesterday. So some is getting through fairly quickly.
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Have just been to the Royal Mail website "international incidents" page and whilst they do have the USA on their list the latest update ( the 18th of March! ) states the following....
" Update: 18 March 2020
At the weekend, the US travel ban for passengers from EU countries was extended to include the UK and Ireland. This relates to people, rather than goods. Royal Mail’s International services to the USA remain operational. We continue to accept and process traffic for the USA. Some delays are to be expected due to restrictions on movement to minimise the spread of the virus."
Mail is definitely still getting through as I had a package arrive in Texas yesterday that I had sent from here in Scotland on the 1st of May....slow but it got there.
Best wishes,
Brian.
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Ya know.... just when you think things cannot get worse! The news has shifted from Coronavirus to riots!
We managed to slip house arrest yesterday for our 39th anniversary. We saw my daughters and granddaughters for the first time in 3 months. We sat out in the yard and didn’t hold the babies.
On our way home on the Pennsylvania Turnpike the overhead signs said I95 into Philadelphia was closed. I thought it must’ve been an accident. We get home and turn on the news to see there are riots in Center City.
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The city is imploding - the place of my birth is a true embarrassment of lawlessness.
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Hey Stamp Friends,
Hope all is well! We're so glad that the restrictions are easing up a bit. Just me and my furry son Charlie chillin' at the riots. Cheerio!
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Ya better get outta there, Ernie -
yer shoes are gonna melt....!
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I just got to the part about your mother passing. I am sorry for your loss Michael.
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Thanks Antonio.
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02:05:21pm
"An envelope I mailed to Brazil on May 27th was returned yesterday with a Canada Post sticker over the address that stated 'Return to Sender' Temporary Suspension of Postal Service."
We had two returned yesterday, same sticker, both mailed to New Zealand, one on April 23, the other on May 5. I think they sit around, waiting for a plane and then somebody finally gives up on a bunch and stickers 'em and sends them back.
Roy
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From one of our sellers in USA I got the following message.
"I received a letter with approvals that I sent to you. It has two postmarks, 31 March and 20 April. There is a sticker attached. It states, "Return to sender. Not deliverable as addressed. Unable to forward."
The address is my PayPal address which has not been a problem with any other mail or goods. Perhaps they are so overwhelmed they are just returning mail to get it out of the way rather than load a plane.
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Better than in The Bad Old Days, when the Chicago post office was dumping container loads of probably-just-Xmas-cards into Lake Michigan.
Imagine that: so much First Class Mail that they could not manage to sort & deliver it.
"You're gonna miss me when I'm gone."
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Just think about all those wonderful covers floating around in Lake Michigan.
It's odd, if someone had told me about our present virus problem a year ago and asked me "Where will the worst area be?" I would have said India. I was listening to the news this morning and I think that is starting to happen. This is nowhere close to over yet, there's a lot of suffering left to happen and a lot of people left to die - maybe not here, but in other areas.
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Parts of the UK seem to think it's over according to my Sister near London. Things are opening up, Football is about to re-start and other sports too. Yet Autumn Stampex has been cancelled for the end of September/October which I feel is a bit early.
Maybe by then the British Pub will be open too ?
It will be the first year since, I believe, the 1960's when there has been no Stampex.
Sad. 
Londonbus1....also sad.
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Yes certain things are being eased in the UK. Yes football is starting BUT under serious restrictions, No fans, everybody else (Substitutes, physios etc) to be 2 metres apart, other than the players of course.
The players are being tested twice a week and most teams are basically in lockdown together.
Of course we would all like to be in lockdown, isolating and staying apart from every other human to avoid the virus but if we did that we would all be dead of starvation.
Each individual must take responsibility for their own actions and assess what the risks are when they leave the house and how their actions will effect others they will meet once outside their own environs.
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I'm not interested in opening up a fire storm over this, but I wonder how others have made out being tested for Coronavirus. I was tested yesterday morning, AND IT WAS NOT A PROCESS WITHOUT DIFFICULTIES. The short of it is that the VA does not want to do it and you need a doctors recommendation to have it done elsewhere. It's a catch 22 (is that the proper phrase?). Thank you.
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I am worried that I may have the virus. Have felt weak and generally awful the past two days. It's been uneasonably hot here for this early in the Summer and I spent a lot of time outside in the heat earlier in the weekend. I put it down to dehydration but from what I can see, this may be an early symptom, lots of digestive upset, etc. Could also be food poisoning.
I cannot imagine where I caught it if I do have it.
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Your problem sounds like it could be heat stroke related as a possibility as well. Definitely work on hydration and check with your doctor!
Heat stroke was the primary causal factor reported in my father's death back in 1997 where he worked outside clearing brush after moving to my mother's home place after retirement so it is definitely not something to ignore. He had a heart attack four days later while we were on the way to a family reunion one month after retiring.
So please take care of yourself!
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Hope you get well soon Bob.
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My best wishes to everyone who has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, which pretty much includes everyone. Special wishes to those who are themselves or have relatives or friends who have been diagnosed with Covid-19. It is truly a terrible time, not one I ever expected to see in my lifetime, which of course is one of the problems. In 1995, I read The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. That book sets out the exact problems that have led to novel coronavirus; if only our political leaders had paid attention…. However…
Susan and I feel incredibly fortunate to have landed in British Columbia. We came to Canada in 1969 for my first job after university, and stayed. We have lived in Canada for nearly all of our adult lives, and are now Canadian citizens. We feel especially good about our move to British Columbia from Ontario in 1972, for we are now benefitting from one of the most progressive programs to deal with the novel coronavirus on the planet, thanks especially to one incredible woman, Dr. Bonnie Henry, BC's medical officer.
Largely because of her experience, her knowledge, and her incredible personality, BC is now one of the safest large provinces/states on the planet. Please let this New York Times article tell her story: The Top Doctor Who Aced the Coronavirus Test. It is truly a "good news" story. It's hard to believe that if other jurisdictions paid attention to her, including all of those in Canada, the entire planet would be in a better position to survive Covid-19.
Bob
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I got tested today at a drive through center and should know in 48 hours. I doubt I have it but my doctor felt given my age I ought to. Will update.
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The following was written in the context of the US situation.
I applied for and was accepted into a university study which sends me anti-body test kits so I can test myself every week. I have to answer a short survey (6 questions) and submit an image of the test result each week. Their was no cost to me for this but I am committed to do this for an entire year. The blood test does require a finger prick but considering that I stick two #15 needles in my arm every other day this is not an issue.
I only did this after unsuccessfully pressuring my dialysis provider to perform testing. Dialysis centers (including mine) are known hot spots with many, many cases of the Wuhan virus; everyone has other preexisting conditions and most are over 65. You would think that they would want to get out in front of the issue they they are still in reactionary mode. So far 6 people at my dialysis center have died from the virus.
So I took things into my own hands; I have learned that this is something that I really needed to do for myself. I suggest that folks not allow yourself to sleepwalk through the healthcare system. You have to become fully engaged in your own healthcare. Sitting back and assuming that a 'white coat' person has your overall healthcare situation in hand is risky. many of these folks are overworked and tend to be myopically focus upon whatever specialty they do (ie. cancer, respiratory, heart, kidneys etc.). Becoming your own medical advocate is not easy, it requires you to invest significant time into discovery and education. Stay away from the moronic news media and instead directly access the medical resources. Above all, use common sense and always remember to think about what is driving the information you are accessing (i.e. money, politics, etc.). Even organizations like the NIH, for example, have an 'agenda'. This is not to say they publish misleading information but be aware why they do what they do and how they do what they do. Lastly, has been clearly demonstrated with the virus, the 'experts' have been wrong at virtual every turn. Part of this was due to the virus being a virus, a bigger part of this was due to it being turned into a political football.
Apparently we now live in a society where every single thing is politically weaponized. It makes me sad to see this happen. This virus was serious, as serious as other viruses in the past like SARS and HIV. Inappropriate workplace sexual behavior is also an important issue. And global climate change is something we need to be doing research on. Racism, while at lowest all-time level, is something that we all should be against.
But this bit of weaponizing these issues really needs to stop, it is only hurting the issues and not helping advance real improvements. I think folks need to recognize when are intentionally being scared to death for political purposes.
Don
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"But this bit of weaponizing these issues really needs to stop, it is only hurting the issues and not helping advance real improvements. I think folks need to recognize when are intentionally being scared to death for political purposes."
Its not just the USA that suffers we in the UK suffer from these politics as well. Last week one political party was shouting "Don't open the schools", now they are shouting" Why are you not opening the schools".
Unfortunately society now expects everything to be done at once if not sooner and do not realise that things can take time to set up, and if you do not have it, politicians cannot change the laws of physics eg if you have class sizes of 30 kids and reduce the size to 15 kids for social distancing where are you going to find the extra 100% space?
As Don says do your own research, use your common sense and pray to your god that you and yours come through this.
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Don wrote:
"Even organizations like the NIH, for example, have an 'agenda'.... Apparently we now live in a society where every single thing is politically weaponized. It makes me sad to see this happen. This virus was serious, as serious as other viruses in the past like SARS and HIV."
Whether we call it "the deep state" or politicization or whatever, bureaucratic organizations tend to become over time more focused on their own internal interests than the interests of the public they were originally established to serve. It's a little like rigor mortis. Once that process has begun, you're not likely to reverse it!
Whether we're talking about the EPA, State Department, Justice Department, FBI, police departments and the police unions, Congress, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook or whatever, self-preservation tends to becomes a primary concern for the organization. Unfortunately, this often comes without benefit to society generally and may even be detrimental.
Tom
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It's a shame that some members are now politicizing the present corona virus, so I figured I would get my two cents in
It can be a dangerous to try and generalize on the big-small government argument. Personally I respect a lot of what that stamp collecting president FDR did and think the winding back of some of the rules and regulations made during his period in office under more recent presidents of both major parties was a mistake.
So to the corona virus. I live in Thailand. It was one of the very first countries to have a case of the virus outside of China. We have a large tourist industry based on visitors from China. So let's look at the numbers relating to Covid-19 in Thailand. Today the Bangkok Post newspaper reported no new cases and no new deaths from the virus. Hopefully below the chart will show our total cases.
Now we have a population of 69 million here and a land mass about the size of France. We do not have the health spending levels of the West yet the numbers really put my own country, Britain, and the US to shame. Ah, you may be saying, the numbers can be fiddled. Well yes they can and the caveat that should be attached is that in Thailand there is no mass testing going on and testing is very selective. At a streamed Foreign Correspondents of Thailand meeting on Tuesday, the general, really unanimous, feeling was the numbers are correct. This is from a rather cynical bunch of foreign journalists. Two government doctors spoke, plus a retired Australian ambassador to Thailand, a foreign statistician and the head of a SE Asia news agency.
What did Thailand do that was so much different to Britain and the US. Well probably the most important thing was the politicians and generals, often the same thing here, handed the crisis over to the health officials who were on the epidemic committee formed after recent scares with MERS and SARS. From then on in they have pretty well kept in the background. The virus was beaten back in February and March. There were not large stocks of virus testing kits, but the policy was track and trace. Every case was followed up by testing and isolating contacts. If you think the Thai numbers look good, then look at Vietnam where the numbers are even better and they share a land border with China.
So what lessons are there for Western countries. For me it would be the thought that if we elect clowns we should expect a circus.
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"So what lessons are there for Western countries. For me it would be the thought that if we elect clowns we should expect a circus."
Well put! I actually DID laugh out loud!
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"FYI: I have just been notified that I tested positive for the Coronavirus virus. The VA has been unbelievably enempt in dealing with this situation.
Bob Armstrong"
I'm so sorry to hear that, Bob. Sending you best wishes for a VERY mild case.
We just went through the passing of a parent here (same town as Bob in Florida) and the hospitals were very strict about visitation and now they are ramping up becoming stricter because cases are again on the rise. Ditto for the Hospice. We are unable to have a regular funeral, so we will be having a virtual service with only the immediate family members actually present (9 of us - 10 is the limit). But after a vaccine is developed and travel is again safe we plan to have a memorial service up north for all the Canadian and Michigan friends and extended family.
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This isn't directly covid related, but I couldn't go to my Aunt's funeral last week because of these stupid limitations. She was a favorite aunt of mine and will be sorely missed. She didn't die of covid, but other issues.
On other note, my Daughter is nurse at a large Detroit hospital that dealt with a large number of covid patients. She took care of a lot. She has had several tests and negative every time. But she is only 30 and healthy so at lower risk. She is now telling me that that there are increased suicide attempts and now homicidal people being admitted to hospital. Some days she texts me that there is no or 1 new covid patient and 14 attempted suicides. Here in Michigan we are expected to have maybe 6000 covid deaths, but see an increase of 20,000 suicides. Most so far apparently from lockdown, lack of seeing friends, work, etc. So many overdose deaths today. It breaks my heart. We humans aren't designed to be alone.
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Hurrah! I am getting parole starting on the 29th of June.
Finally Scotland is starting to ease Lock Up (Sorry Lockdown).
England started to ease things last Monday.
All the countries of the United Kingdom went into lockdown on the same day in March.
Why are we in Scotland running behind?
This is entirely down to the power-crazed control freaks of the Scottish National Party!
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"This is entirely down to the power-crazed control freaks of the Scottish National Party!"
Control freaks or a sensible precaution against a second spike? Now there's a debate that only time will give us an answer to. Here in Thailand we had six new cases yesterday. Recent cases have been mostly Thais returning from abroad. What are the numbers like in Scotland Ian?
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WE were totally unprepared for the pandemic. Little testing capacity, insufficient Person Protection Equipment, hospitals dumping infected patients into care homes, everything had to be controlled nationally, allowing people into the country from all over the globe and too many exceptions to the rules and a complete lack of enforcement of the rules.
However we got the initial spike down and yesterday there were 2 deaths in Scotland from the virus.
There have been 4000+ deaths in total, half of which occurred in care homes and the vast majority of the others in the main urban centres.
Certain businesses were allowed to stay open throughout, others closed. When lockdown started to be eased certain types of shops were allowed to open with the smaller shops remaining closed. This made little sense as the smaller shops have lesser footfall and could better control the numbers and social distancing than the large DIY, Homeware, Garden Centres and supermarkets. It appeared to be the case that they could shout louder so they got their way and to hell with the smaller shops. If they were going to allow these big national chains to open they could have and should have allowed the smaller shops to open at the same time.
I did support the smaller shops prior and during this pandemic. The reason being is that their footfall is smaller, the probability of catching the virus is less.
Currently in the supermarkets the customers have to wear masks. Yet when you walk round NONE of the staff on the shop floor moving stock or stacking shelves are wearing masks. Totally illogical.
One must assess the risks of going out the house, why you are going out, where you are going, how you are getting there and back and pray to your god that you and yours survive this.
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Here in Manitoba we have got off very lightly, only 7 deaths and just over 300 infections and nobody currently in hospital. Stores are sanitizing carts and pin terminals and spacing is in effect.
From Sunday restaurants will be allowed to open for seated diners but spacing restrictions will have to be applied. Most other stores are already opened with restrictions on customer numbers and all have sanitizer stations at the entrances.
Travel isolation is being eased but we are unable to drive to the states but can fly.
Strangely more suicide deaths have occurred than from Covid. Mostly from overdoses.
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Here in Pennsylvania USA we’ve gone one step down to yellow which allows for restaurants to open with separated outdoor seating and most stores to open but you still cannot get a haircut. I finally had enough and sheared off my long Covid beard and gave myself a haircut. I put the half inch attachment on my trimmer and did my whole head. Shorter than my norm but it looks okay. We are supposed to go to green end of the month.
I see people I know on Facebook running out to do things the minute it opens up. Some states opened restaurants and people just needed to be there the very first day! We are still erring on the side of caution, we’ve done it this long so what’s a bit longer? Rather that than it being all for naught!
I fear all the recent “togetherness” of the protests will result in a massive spike, we will see!
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@Stockflyer
"Here in Michigan we are expected to have maybe 6000 covid deaths, but see an increase of 20,000 suicides."
This report, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tXIREDKFUZSIbURk6_TxzSvekp4xEJ1V/view
projects 2,039 deaths by suicide in Michigan for 2020, which includes 491 additional suicides relating to COVID-19
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Point of order:
Is it a lock down, or a loch down, in Scotland?
Asking for a friend.
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"Is it a lock down, or a loch down, in Scotland?"
Very good.
Would it then be a lake down in England?
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"Here in Michigan we are expected to have maybe 6000 covid deaths, but see an increase of 20,000 suicides"
"This report, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tXIREDKFUZSIbURk6_TxzSvekp4xEJ1V/view
projects 2,039 deaths by suicide in Michigan for 2020, which includes 491 additional suicides relating to COVID-19"
It seems everyone wants to drown themselves in so-called 'facts' and figures....
We will not know the true numbers related to all this until - just like every other pandemic in history - it has subsided and is for the most part,over.
My wife watches and listens to 'reports' on this throughout the entire day;
I prefer not to.....
God, family and friends (including those here) are much better things to dwell on in my opinion....and yes - that's all this is; one person's opinion.
**This is in NO way an attempt to tell anyone else what they should or shouldn't do or watch or listen to. (That's my 'disclaimer', which we seem to have need of in today's world now
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"It seems everyone wants to drown themselves in so-called 'facts' and figures....
We will not know the true numbers related to all this until - just like every other pandemic in history - it has subsided and is for the most part,over."
Quoted for truth.
The Wuhan virus study that I am participating in has recently seen a large jump in the positive antibody tests (percentage) in our state population; two weeks ago it was 3% but now it is 8-10%. But if you look into the increase, it has little to do with a ‘second wave’ or jump in the number of North Carolina people who have/had the virus. Instead it largely reflects an exponential increase in the number of test kits they have distributed in the last 10 days.
https://www.wakehealth.edu/Coronavirus/COVID-19-Community-Research-Partnership/Updates-and-Data
You can spin the same data in both directions. If my agenda was to scare people then I could report that the study was showing a huge uptick in the number of verified COVID cases in NC. If my agenda was to downplay the seriousness of the virus then I could report that the study is showing an increase due to the way the study has had an increase in test kit distribution.
I think people need to better understand why the information is being spun and the underlying agendas of the people who are reporting it. In my opinion the news industry has been struggling ever since the internet changed the way we live. We no longer rely upon a few newspapers or mainstream media television channels for our information; the number of ways we get our information has exploded.
Desperate times calls for desperate measures and this is what I think we are seeing now in the news media. They know that fear, division, and hatred will help cement their ‘base’ viewers and keep them clicking and supporting their advertisers. It does not matter what the current event is; racism, viruses, climate change, sexual abuse, the media does their best to generate fear and hatred. They need us to be mad at each other, it is more than just a question of making money it is how many of them are even surviving.
Don
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Agreed - well said.
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I just realized I hadn't posted an update on my situation. I did get tested and was negative. What I apparently had was an E coli infection, bad enough but not the big one. Thanks to all who expressed concern.
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FYI: I was admitted to the hospital with positive corronavirus + pneumonia. Figured out where I stand with SOR, Ebay, and HipStamp today. Will start responding to your requests for Invoices, etc., tomorrow. Thank you.
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What Mel said.
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Well the wonderful 'reopening' has turned in many places into a hot mess. There perhaps isn't much to say and maybe it's best not to. I posted my misgivings about rushing back on here and in a few cases was ridiculed for it. Haven't seen comments from those folks lately.
I hope it all works out.
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Oh Bob, get well soon! Have you told Mike and the club members? If not, I can email him for you.
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"
Well the wonderful 'reopening' has turned in many places into a hot mess. There perhaps isn't much to say and maybe it's best not to. I posted my misgivings about rushing back on here and in a few cases was ridiculed for it.?"
Here are the facts 42% of all deaths have occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Those populations make up .06% of the total US population. Instead of putting the entire country on lockdown when the vast majority wont even know they've acquired the virus, it would be much more effective and humane to lock down the nursing homes instead of destroying the means of production that care for the nursing homes. Any good Dr. will tell you, the cure cant be worse than the illness.
Moderator: Edited for unnecessary comments.
(Modified by Moderator on 2020-06-30 16:56:52)
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'Unnecessary comments'?
Never seen that on here before. Could it have been another reference to me as 'Doctor Snick'?
This could go in a lot of directions, none of them good. Let's all just move on.
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"... Here are the facts 42% of all deaths have occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities ..."
Here are a few more:
- Coupla million people work in those facilities.
- Those workers live with many more millions of people.
- Unchecked community spread infects those workers.
- Given varying incubation periods & asymptomatic transmission, even frequent (eg, weekly) testing of those workers will not stop the virus from reaching the people who live in the nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
- Zero testing & zero social distancing is a poor choice of policy.
People who think that the issue is whether/not they are willing to risk contracting a virulently contagious disease are, uh, proceeding on the wrong basis.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Yo Ikes!
"- Zero testing & zero social distancing is a poor choice of policy."
I agree with you on this but throwing 50 million people out of work is also a poor choice of policy.
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Unfortunately the leaders of countries were/are on a hiding to nothing.
No matter When How or What they did do or didn't do they were/are in a lose lose situation.
Remember there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Your own interpretation of the statistics may or may not help you come through this.
It is each individuals own personal responsibility to act in a way that protects themselves and protects society as a whole.
Unfortunately this has been ignored during this pandemic. Its all been about "it is my right to do as I please" and sod the rest of you.
Man's grip on the planet has always been by his fingernails and every pandemic in the past has proven that.
All you can do is educate yourself, isolate yourself and pray to your god that you and yours survive.
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Then why do I pay taxes Ian? (he said with a smirk)
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One pays taxes for the government and local government to provide services to YOUR community.
They decide what services they will provide to the whole community and you will decide what services you will use.
If you do not use all the services that they provide then you can take satisfaction that your money is paying for a service that someone else may desperately require.(eg Blind, Deaf, Elderly, Unemployed etc etc etc)
Of course as you get older you may need the services that you do not use at the moment. You could say it is like insurance, its there if you need it.
As far as a one off situation like a pandemic you cannot expect any government to be properly prepared as you do not pay enough taxes to cover every contingency, you will have to pay for it after the event.
Governments cannot protect you 100% during a pandemic. It is up to YOU to take responsibility for YOUR actions and do YOUR duty to protect YOUR loved ones and YOUR community.
Governments can help get the men and materials in the right place at the right time and issue guidance on how to keep safe.
The responsibility to enact and follow that guidance is YOU and YOUR community.
The only alternative to control a pandemic is Martial Law.
You know, as well as I do, that can never happen in parliamentary democracies. Unfortunately that is why more people will die because of their and others actions before this pandemic is over....if ever!
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I might regret this, but a comment anyway... The US is going through a bad time right now. Because of the rush to get the economy up and running ASAP many people are dying. Of course it's possible that people would have died anyway if they didn't restart. As Ian said - You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't! I'm a Canadian so it really isn't up to me to complain about what the US does. I just hope the border stays closed!
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" I'm a Canadian..."
Where is that?
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"The US is going through a bad time right now. Because of the rush to get the economy up and running ASAP many people are dying."
My sympathy is with all countries going through a bad time right now.
This pandemic started way before now. People didn't take it seriously and amended their lives in sufficient quantities to make a different outcome to what we have today.
The W.H.O. told the world what to do but the politicians and the general public thought they could carry on as normal.
We have all seen the pictures of various mass gatherings prior to "lockdowns" and during "lockdowns", whether it be night clubs, street parties and even more stupid, mass demonstrations.
You reap what you sow.
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Sorry Ernie, I didn't mean to confuse you with geography. Take a map of the US and go North, you'll eventually find Canada, go South and you find Mexico. Remember, North for Canada and South for Mexico. I know it's really confusing but I'm sure you can figure it out ... eventually!
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Harvey said:
"Because of the rush to get the economy up and running ASAP many people are dying."
Actually, Harvey, the problem in the US is the reluctance (refusal in some cases) by many to follow the social distancing and face mask guidelines as mayors and governors proceed with unlocking the economy in their individual jurisdictions. Overall, the the death rate has been dropping for weeks and continues to drop. The number of virus ICU patients continues to drop. Hospital stays for virus patients are still declining and, anecdotally, the severity of the hospitalized virus cases is declining. What is rising is the number of tests (500,000 per week now, I believe) and the associated number of positive tests. The CDC said this week that as many as 20 million Americans have already had the virus. (Robert Redfield: "...between 5%, 6%, 7%, 8% of the American public has experienced infection, whether they recognized it or not.")
The US media have focused on advertising revenue for years and tend to sensationalize stories whenever possible to maximize revenue. The virus story is no exception. Much of the story is never broadcast and what is broadcast isn't always accurate. It's a complicated story that is easily misunderstood by those in the media trying to present it.
I'm in Indiana and our state is doing great, as are many other "fly over" states in the middle of the country. The media's focus is elsewhere—as usual.
My wife and I began our virus isolation plan March 10 because of the extreme risk she faces should the virus find us. We're still avoiding all unnecessary contacts and excursions outside the home. My wife has learned how to teleconference with her doctors. We wholeheartedly endorse the re-opening of the economy as quickly as possible. We don't expect to see a vaccine until next year at the earliest. (As I have mentioned before, my wife was involved with setting up phase 3 trials for new cancer compounds for several years. So we understand what is involved.) We expect the number of treatment options (if not prophylactics) for patients to rise fairly quickly in coming weeks. The number of treatment options under development is astounding! We're looking forward to easing back into a more normal lifestyle this summer as more of these options become available to treat virus patients.
Tom
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"No matter When How or What they did do or didn't do they were/are in a lose lose situation.
Remember there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Your own interpretation of the statistics may or may not help you come through this. "
I’m beyond sad and disillusioned! The US is deeply embroiled in shameless politics and they are digging in deeper instead of saying, “hey we need to work together to solve this”. The same politicals who screamed the president shut down travel from China to protect us that he did this to be racist, now stand in front of the camera and say he didn’t respond fast enough! The same ones who encouraged the protests now are blaming the president for the resulting surge in cases. Every relief bill gets bogged down as politicals add garbage the president won’t agree to just to slow it down.
You get an overwhelming feeling of helplessness knowing that elected officials will put their own agendas ahead of the good and well-being of the citizens!
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It would be horrendous to think that the fear mongering and shut downs were politically motivated but frankly I am having a hard believing it is anything else.
Here is a simple question. The number of reported cases is growing but the number of deaths is not, what does this mean?
As a person who has an average of 200 medical procedures per year, I am pretty close to the action. Here is what I see…I have seen a surge in the number of people at the hospitals and clinics over the last 6 weeks. Just yesterday I was at the Vascular Surgeons and the place was packed. I was in the hospital last week and had to wait over 5 hours in Pre-Op due to how busy they were. I am now trying to get a new surgery date and they are telling me that they do not have a free space in the schedule for 4 weeks.
This is a stark comparison to February, March, April, and May when the same places were ghost towns. I was literally walking in the same day and getting surgeries. My cancer infusion center saw the number of folks getting their treatments drop to 50% of normal; half the folks who were getting chemo and radiation decided to stay home instead of getting their life saving treatments. For the first time in 6 years I was finding parking spaces right next to front the door and got incredible attention/care because the nurses and doctors had plenty of time and bandwidth for me.
But now the flood gates have opened and all of the procedures and treatments that has been put off for months are now getting done. So what does this mean for the COVID hospitalization numbers? It means that any and everyone who is going into the hospital or other treatment centers and is found to have had the virus gets counted for a COVID hospitalization even though they are actually in the hospital for something else. They may have had the virus back in March, but they are counted as a COVID hospitalization this week because they tested positive for the antibodies.
For example, here is my latest COVID test, it is a bit hard to see but it tests for both Immunoglobulin G and Immunoglobulin M. They have dialed this in to test for SARS-CoV-2, I put a few drops of blood into the test fixture, add the reagent, wait 10 minutes, and it tells me if I previously had the virus or if I currently have the virus. This test is similar to those being used in hospitals to test the flood of people who are now coming back in.
Follow the money, not the fear mongering.
Don
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You sure that's not a pregnancy test Don. Stay safe.
This following longish message came to me via a family member on FB, I have no idea who J Wade is or their qualifications but the words seem apt and sensible.
From a person called J.Wade
"Chicken pox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don't think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you're older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don't just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it's been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.
Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in your body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed-out they're going to have an outbreak. Maybe every time you have a big event coming up (school pictures, job interview, big date) you're going to get a cold sore. For the rest of your life. You don't just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it's been around for years, and been studied medically for years.
HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system, and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It was decades before viable treatments were developed that allowed people to live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, bone disease, liver disease, cognitive disorders, and some types of cancer. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.
Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.
So far the symptoms may include:
Fever
Fatigue
Coughing
Pneumonia
Chills/Trembling
Acute respiratory distress
Lung damage (potentially permanent)
Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)
Sore throat
Headaches
Difficulty breathing
Mental confusion
Diarrhea
Nausea or vomiting
Loss of appetite
Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)
Swollen eyes
Blood clots
Seizures
Liver damage
Kidney damage
Rash
COVID toes (weird, right?)
People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.
Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused deaths.
This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.
For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, for people who refuse to take even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:
How dare you?
How dare you risk the lives of others so cavalierly. How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as "getting it over with", when literally no one knows who will be the lucky "mild symptoms" case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30 year olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.
How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don't yet know, but with what we DO know, are smart enough to be scared of how easily this is spread, and recommend baseline precautions such as:
Frequent hand-washing
Physical distancing
Reduced social/public contact or interaction
Mask wearing
Covering your cough or sneeze
Avoiding touching your face
Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces
The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are, in my opinion. Not only does it flatten the curve and allow health care providers to maintain levels of service that aren't immediately and catastrophically overwhelmed; it also reduces unnecessary suffering and deaths, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus in order to come to a more full understanding of the breadth of its impacts in both the short and long term.
I reject the notion that it's "just a virus" and we'll all get it eventually. What a careless, lazy, heartless stance."
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"... I agree with you on this but throwing 50 million people out of work is also a poor choice of policy ..."
Contrary to popular wisdom, it is possible to set a value on human life and, in fact, we do it all the time.
Ages ago, Congress began requiring that agencies promulgating safety rules must estimate the total cost of implementation (eg, to private industry) and divide that by the number of lives saved, and compare that cost-per-save with the value of a human life.
Unsurprisingly, Congress was unwilling to pick a number, so they mandated that every agency pick a number, with the result that the value of a human life varies quite a bit; a typical number is U$D 5m per.
If you put 50 million people out of work and supporting them cost U$D 100,000 each, the cost of implementation is U$D 5 trillion dollars. (We'll leave aside the fact that the money is spent inside the US economy, so the nature of 'cost' gets kinda soft.)
If you spend U$D 5T and save 1 million lives, the cost per save is U$D 5m per life saved, which is right around the common statutory pass/fail point. Obviously, one can argue:
- that the number of lives to be saved is less than one million, or
- that a few months of income support does not look like one hundred thousand dollars per person, or
- that there are 'only' 30 million unemployed to date.
I find these calculations a little silly, because I reject the dichotomy: letting an epidemic run rampant to kill hundreds of thousands of people (and sickening millions more) will, uh, dampen aggregate demand.
That, in turn, will reduce corporate earnings and, in turn, step on the stock market ... and reduce the amount of money that would eventually be spent out of all those 401-k accounts.
So 'saving' the U$D 5T you would have spent supporting the 50 million unemployed does not get you to zero, because the economic damage of an epidemic run rampant is not zero.
I submit that you are going to be out a few trillion no matter what you do.
My own guess is that people are worth saving, even if the only thing we have in common with them is citizenship & species.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Sheepshanks:-
Well said.
We all should now take up the call "HOW DARE YOU!"
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Ian, not my words but they resonated with me.
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How dare you? Sounds a lot to me like a sudden onset of medical morality.
For years hundreds of thousands of other people have been walking around immunocompromised and the majority of society did not care. No one cared about going to the grocery store while they were sick with the flu or a cold. No one was concerned about throwing their diapered baby into the grocery store cart and leaving feces on it. No one cared about wiping down the gas pump handle. No one cared that their kids had snot running down their noses and sent them to school anyway. No one cared about going to work sick, even healthcare workers showed up ill. All these things put our lives in danger but no one cared.
But now apparently it is the time to ask ‘How Dare You? The hypocrisy society is now showing is a bit overwhelming from the chair of this 7 year immunocompromised person. I guess I could take a similar stand and say ‘welcome to my world’.
Don
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Aye Don people can be dirty, filthy, self centred and arrogant. They do as they please.
BUT
Not everybody!
There are some wonderful, caring, unselfish, brilliant people out there.
It takes all sorts and I never tar everyone with the same brush!
"How Dare YOU!" Could be used in all these circumstances you describe. It could be used for littering, queue jumping, cycling on the pavement and almost anything else.
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Ikey,
That sounds really, really good. But...society is ordered in such a way where everyone has his or her part to play and role to contribute. How many millions of people do you have to put out of work before society itself unravels?
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Well said Sheepshanks Vic. I was reading the same post in another platform and was thinking of posting it here.
Now here are some sobering facts, from a friend in France who developed a nasty bout of Covid-19 in OCTOBER 2019. Just tested it now, as they were not testing prior suspicious cases until now, and more interesting, a routine blood test taken during a routine check up 3 days earlier than her symptoms in October 2019 showed nothing.
Source of infection, unknown.
She ended up critical on ventilator at home, and was bed ridden for a month. Turns out, every person she was in touch with at the time also had the virus (they all thought it was the flu) and these people traveled to Germany and the UK among other places, which is where they showed their "flu symptoms". They, and those they were in contact with, are now being tested for Covid-19 antibodies, for scientific research purposes.
So we are finding a lot more about the virus spread now, and anyone who does not take the minimum precautions today...when we know how wide spread it is... for themselves and for others, is either a fool or a potential willful killer.
The virus is out of control and a minimum amount of precautionary steps is all that we ask...those of us at risk, and anyone else!
Want to be scared...just watch the multi-part series on the "black death" on Amazon, Netflix, or other TV channels.
The sooner we put a stop to the spread, the sooner a real recovery can occur..otherwise we will all be like Florida, Texas and other places...having to stop, restart, stop and restart again any potential economic recovery. We have somehow wasted 3 months by half measures, which will not be effective.
rrr...
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None of you are medical doctors. Go back to your stamp albums.
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Ernie, curious..how many active new cases a day in your home state of Florida will it take to bend your mindset? 10,000 (today's numbers), 20,000 ?
I often heard the expression, just saving one person was worth the effort.
Today's rounded death numbers per John Hopkins Center's stats ): >10 million cases worldwide. >500,000 deaths. US numbers: >2.5 million. >125,000 deaths.
I don't have to be a doctor to understand these numbers.
rrr...
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Ralph,
I am working from home and only go out to buy groceries. I go at 7:00 am when there is no one else in the store. I'm doing my part. I've read the accounts of the horrible delirium and terrifying hallucinations. To be honest, it scares the $#% out of me. BUT....my wife goes to work every single day and interacts with people and then comes home to me...is all my hand washing a waste of time? My daughter comes and goes about her business. Were not retired people Ralph. Life goes on. Ok... thought experiment... YOU, Ralph, have just been made emporer of the U.S. what would you have everyone do? Should my wife quit her job? Can we move in with you?
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"How many millions of people do you have to put out of work before society itself unravels?"
The question possibly should be "How many millions of people have to die before society itself unravels?"
Thank God the borders are still closed. Something has to be done before this mess is totally out of control.
I know I'm going to be really crapped on for my comment, but I really think human lives are more important than jobs, at least for a while until this mess can be fixed!
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Harvey,
The point you and others keep missing is that jobs = human lives.
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I understand your point, I really do - suicide rates are up because of people being out of work, possibly violence is up for the same reason. But speaking for myself I'd much rather be alive not working, than die with a job!
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""How many millions of people do you have to put out of work before society itself unravels?""
"The point you and others keep missing is that jobs = human lives."
Does it not all come down to the dreadful logic of necessity, the classic case being the shipwrecked sailors far from land, no food. To survive they eat each others limbs, but sooner or later the limbs run out. Then who dies so that some may live.
The same can be applied to the current situation because if people stay at home and isolate then many will survive but if everyone carries on regardless that number will be far less.
Yes jobs will be lost, businesses will close, poverty will run rampant but ultimately those jobs will come back. Someone will step in to fill the gap and start those firms again. (this is where the rich get richer).
Better that we try and stay away from crowds, wear a mask when out around people and stay home if exposed, lessen the number of contacts as much as possible. Short term pain for a long term gain.
If I can draw a sort of comparison, the USA and many other countries went through the bad days of the depression but arose leaner and stronger. The USA in particular created jobs and came out as a far better nation to become a world superpower.
I accept that it is easier for some folks than others but we all have a part to play in overcoming this pandemic. We can only do our best as individuals.
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It has to be a balance between economic well-being and public health. The extremes of either will not be very palatable. In February and early March the UK government was basing its policy on a 'herd immunity strategy' which was on the extreme end of economic well-being coming first. If they had stuck to it the UK would eventually have come out of the crisis with a smaller, leaner, fitter and younger population. The downside would have been the early loss of the old and infirm. Fortunately the government made a u-turn in mid March once some of the modelling showed 500,000 deaths due to the virus. That has probably saved 400,000 lives. To put this in perspective Covid-19 has now killed more Brits than the WW2 blitz because of an extremist policy in February and early March.
Just to expand slightly on the 'herd immunity strategy', it's a Darwinian derived idea of the old and sick animals falling off the end of the herd to be eaten by lions and hyenas. Not a very pleasant thought. We can achieve herd immunity, but it's by vaccination. That is why we had a herd immunity to smallpox. Once it was removed from the wild immunity was no longer needed. Much the same happened with polio.
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Unfortunately this is a pandemic.
It means people will die. Not just by the disease but by other methods, be it suicide, not treated for other ailments or starvation.
Man is so arrogant that they think they have the knowledge to beat anything that comes along.
Mother Nature knows otherwise.
At the moment the human race is being culled whether we like it or not.
Yes there are certain things one can do to reduce the risk BUT it is up to each individual to decide what level of risk they are prepared to take and accept the consequences of their actions.
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"... is all my hand washing a waste of time? ..."
This sort of black'n'white digital thinking is not helpful.
If you touch your wife - or anything that she touches - washing your hands will reduce (not eliminate) the viral load to which you are exposed.
Less is better.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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"Digital thinking"
That's cute. I gotta remember that one.
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"…Man is so arrogant that they think they have the knowledge to beat anything that comes along.
Mother Nature knows otherwise…"
Agreed. Risk is not always the enemy, sometimes the enemy is the solution. There is a good chance that the shutdowns have only delayed the inevitable while at the same time have added more pain, misery, and deaths. In this case my opinion is that we failed at balancing our willingness to assume risk with the business of living. Risk is comprised of two things; likelihood and impact. Due to the fear mongering and perhaps for political reasons, I think risk decisions were made incorrectly. Instead of targeting and of concentrating on those who were truly being impact (seniors and those with pre-existing conditions) those in control decided to impact the entire society. The impact to younger, healthy people is nothing near the same as the most vulnerable population.
I guess they could use the excuse that in the beginning they did not know for sure that impact would not be ‘one size fits all’. But that excuse is no longer applicable, we now know that for younger healthy people the risk is a small fraction of older and those in frail health. Yet the thinking remains ‘close down everything’. For example, a local university (Clemson) reported that 1/3 of the football team had tested positive for COVID. Of the 37 players who tested positive half had were asymptomatic and there have been no hospitalizations. The total number of COVID related deaths in the US for those under 30 is only a few hundred.
The younger people are the ones who we needed to be leading the charge in developing herd immunity. But yet we are still seeing sweeping close downs without talking about who is actually being impacted. It make no sense to me unless the real reason for the shut downs is political.
Don
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Perfectly articulated 51Studebaker. At this point anyone who doesn't think the shut downs are, in large part, politically motivated is in fantasy land.
One week people are saying the sky is falling and we're all gonna die because people are at the beach and then the next week the very same people are applauding the "courage and patriotism" of all the idiots congregated together to throw rocks and burn police cars.
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Well Ernie.. nearly all the pictures I've seen of people frolicking at the beaches in your neck of the woods show almost none of them wearing masks or keeping distance. They're all partying like it's pre Pandemic.
My college aged son took part in demonstrations when they first started. (He got tear gassed twice.) He said nearly all of them wore masks. That tells me the source of resurgence is not the Left, it's the selfish fools on your side of the divide.
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Snick,
I dont know what your son has been doing but I'm not talking about anyone out of doors keeping safe distances and wearing masks. I'm referring to the lawless, riotous mobs that caused so much destruction to private property. Was your son involved in those "demonstrations"?
Oh, and so now you can see a crowd of people on television and you can ascertain their political leanings and on what side of the political divide they fall? Wow! You really are good.
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" That tells me the source of resurgence is not the Left, it's the selfish fools on your side of the divide."
We have an old saying in Old Caledonia:-
"It takes one to know one"
Throughout the world we have governments of ALL political persuasions. NONE of them have been successful fighting this.
Covid will kill YOU.
Whatever your political ideals, whoever you want to blame, makes no difference, covid is here to stay,
catch it and you may.........DIE.
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"It takes one to know one."
Ian,
Once again your sage wisdom shines through. I always know I'm making way too much sense when someone has to resort to name calling.
Ian, you and your wife stay safe!
Ernie
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Ernie:-
I am like you I stay at home, I shop carefully by using the small local shops (their footfall is a lot less than the supermarkets), and always wear a mask. There is sanitizer in the car for when I come out the shop.
My wife went back to work on Monday. She travels by bus, she waits longer for a specific bus as it does not come from the city and has less passengers, the first thing she does when she arrives home is take off the mask, throw it into the bin and then scrubs her hands.
We keep in touch with family by 'phone and there is no contact with others. It is not easy to live this way but I do not want to end up looking at the growing potatoes from below.
Keep you and your family safe,
Ian.
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"... anyone who doesn't think the shut downs are, in large part, politically motivated is in fantasy land ..."
My fantasy land is 3 miles from Elmhurst Hospital, where refrigerated 40' trailers were parked, side-by-side, and filling-up with dead bodies when people began doing the silly things (avoiding unnecessary errands, donning masks, et al) that brought the infection, hospitalization, and death rates down, and down, and down.
The idea that you can let the virus run rampant thru children & young adults without consequence (dead adults, long-term lung damage) is the politically-motivated fantasy.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Ikey,
That's because your Democratic leadership failed you. They spent more time focusing on the healthy rather than protecting the frail. See 51Studebaker's previous post. We have had it much better down here in Florida.
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Ikey,
www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20200513/coronavirus-florida-desantis-florida-nursing-homes-safer-than-other-states%3ftemplate=ampart
Cuomo needs to do more to protect the most vulnerable. He needs to stop worrying about healthy young people hanging out at Jones Beach and Fire Island.
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"Cuomo needs to do more to protect the most vulnerable. He needs to stop worrying about healthy young people hanging out at Jones Beach and Fire Island."
Nation-wide
"As shown, deaths in young people (from babies to college students) are almost non-existent. The first age group to provide a substantial contribution to the death toll is 45-54 years, who contribute nearly 5% of all coronavirus deaths. More than 80% of deaths occur in people aged 65 and over. That increases to over 92% if the 55-64 age group is included."
Why is everyone still talking about sweeping remediation's for all age groups?
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I live in a county that has like 36 active cases top to bottom...what are the odds? And yet people are doing the right thing. Meanwhile the sardines 90 miles South in N.Y.C. seem more cavalier about things !
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I am not sure that geographic location is the best perspective and I know that the virus does not care if the person is a conservative or a liberal. I think that the best delineation is age and pre-existing conditions.
And in regard to the COVID numbers I posted above that note those with pre-existing conditions are not shown. It seems obvious that the older populations have more pre-existing conditions. I spent time looking for information on the younger people that have succumbed to COVID and have not yet been able to find a case of a healthy (no pre-existing conditions) person under 30 who has died. I assume there may be some out there but they would most certainly be rare.
So the key metric for decision makers about shutting things down and setting other restrictions to know is, how many HEALTHY (no pre-existing conditions) people are dying from this virus? Has anyone seen data on the number of healthy (no pre-existing conditions) people dying from COVID? I have not seen this metric yet people have no problem fear mongering, scaring everyone, and making judgments on young people in protests or at the beach. Even worse, state and local politicians in the US shut down an entire country without knowing how it was actually impacting the majority of the population. This was not and is not intellectually honest in my opinion.
They should be focused on those who are actually at risk. Cancer kills over 500,000 US people each year including many who do not know they even have it. No one would tolerate it if we ordered everyone in a state to undergo chemo and radiation as a preventative measure. Instead we target our efforts to the populations who are likely to have it.
Don
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Yes, the majority of the people dying are older, but where are they getting it from? Maybe if they kept the older people in total lockup they would be safer, no contact with younger relatives! Lock 'um up in a cell with no contact with the outside world and slide a bit of food under the door occasionally. If they happen to be bed ridden, well ... I guess we just let them die! Until the vaccine arrives, if it does, we must try to keep the numbers of infected down in all age groups. Yes, you have a right to work, but let's be sensible about it, please!
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Reductio ad absurdum argument. No one said to 'Lock 'um up in a cell with no contact with the outside world'.
I have been immunocompromised for years. I have carried a mask with me for the last 7 years. I avoid crowds and practiced social distancing as much as possible for the last 7 years. I carry a baggie with 80% alcohol soaked paper towels with me for the last 7 years. I have dedicated clothes and shoes which I only wear in germy locations, I strip down in the garage and never bring them into my house. Yes, I avoided groups of children, those who were ill or sick, and avoid some public places at times.
The solution is to focus on the pre-existing condition folks, have them limit their exposure and take the right precautions. There was a small window where the world could have prevented this virus from spreading but the Chinese Communist party made sure that did not happen. Trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted is just stupid. The best we could have done was focus the efforts on the people who are actually at risk, not force the entire world into hiding in their homes.
Many folks are arguing that there is a now second wave or now it is spreading. If this is so then they are making my argument; we only delayed the spread. I asked months ago ‘how long will we be sheltering?’ There is still no vaccination for SARS years later. There is no vaccination for HIV decades later. There is an annual flu vaccination which is hit and miss each year. So how long do the shut downs last? Why not target those who are really at risk and allow other to go about their business?
Don
Edit: Remember the original justification for shutting everything down? We were told that it was because the hospitals systems would be overwhelmed. Then we were told that masks would not help. Funny how this is all forgotten now.
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'I'm referring to the lawless, riotous mobs that caused so much destruction to private property. Was your son involved in those "demonstrations"?
Ernie you really need to watch something other than Fox News. Antifa is not burning down the country.
I felt the need to clarify this although it doesn't of course matter to you but it does to me. My son was NOT rioting, looting or damaging property. He is a fine young man with a responsible job who felt very deeply about the death of George Floyd and others. Again, he and most others there took the trouble to wear a mask. I make no judgement on all the folks crowding beaches and bars without masks other than to assume they are thoughtless. I don't think that's much of a stretch.
I intend this to be my last comment on this thread. I respect the opinions of those with whom I disagree but I don't apparently share some of the values expressed on here. I believe in prioritizing human life, not jobs or the 'economy'. I wish you all well.
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Uh, Snick...
I've not met your son so I wont cast aspersions but to suggest that the riots and lawlessness over the past couple of months and that continue today are somehow a figment of Fox News is just plain wrong. From a leading insurance industry trade journal:
"Rioting that erupted in cities across the United States after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd in Minneapolis may rival the 1992 Los Angeles riots to become the most costly civil disorder in United States history."
Yes sir...its a major problem and a really big deal. Lots of families lost life savings and businesses.
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Shutting down the economy briefly in order to allow time for the health system to gear up for fighting this virus made sense, but federal agencies along with many cities and some states were totally unprepared. It took a few weeks to get our act together, but we achieved the goal of "flattening the curve." At that point, we were still learning how to deal with the virus, but we did have more flexibility and more options on how to proceed.
The virus wasn't going to go away. We all knew that (or should have). We simply slowed the inevitable spread of the virus and began focusing on avoiding health care system stress while the development of treatment options, prophylactics and vaccines got underway in earnest.
Anything beyond that level of control made little sense because the cost of doing so in terms of destroying businesses, jobs, families, the social/community fabric and individual lives of those who couldn't or wouldn't seek treatment for other health issues or were otherwise suffering and didn't survive, was too great. Those are just the obvious personal issues.
Here in the US, there is also the trillions in new debt that will unfairly burden future generations. I suppose the same is true across much of the globe. And then there are the opportunity costs.
Just imagine how much better off we would be in the US had the federal government, state governors and city mayors not mismanaged this to such a degree. They all had expensive plans (courtesy of the taxpayers!) sitting on their shelves to guide them through various types of crises and still many failed. Too many federal agencies as well as state and local leaders have demonstrated they were not up to the challenge and didn't have the qualified staff they needed in order to deal with this crisis. The economy was in great shape, but not now. Hopefully, we'll be better served next time!
Tom
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My very last comment on this topic: It really sounds like a lot of you care more about $$$$ than lives. What exactly is a human life worth, or does it depend on the age of the person? This thread is getting really nasty! Maybe it's time we all got back to stamps instead of politics!
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"Too many federal agencies as well as state and local leaders have demonstrated they were not up to the challenge and didn't have the qualified staff they needed in order to deal with this crisis."
Yup! We had folks in charge of public health that had no public health experience! Our senior medical officer was an obstetrician who had to quit for breaking lockdown rules. Her replacement is a General Practitioner! Sheer stupidity!
How they got the job god knows!
We also had a committee of 50+ scientists "advising" the government. There were opposing views within that committee so it was a no-brainer that the politicians didn't know who to listen to and they made some poor decisions. (The best committee is a committee of one.)
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"This thread is getting really nasty! Maybe it's time we all got back to stamps."
If you dont like it just stop reading it.
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The idea that the virus should be allowed to run rampant thru younger people because they do not die like flies ignores:
- some young(er) people suffer catastrophic damage, and the more the virus runs rampant thru young(er) people the more catastrophic damage we will see, and live with, and pay for; and,
- some young(er) people come into contact with the more-vulnerable people (live with them, work with them, take care of them), so the more the virus runs rampant thru young(er) people the more that "just protect the vulnerable" is betrayed as an illusion; and,
- there is no free virus. You can pay to fight the virus, or you can pay to live with the primary & secondary & tertiary costs of the virus run wild.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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"Throughout the world we have governments of ALL political persuasions. NONE of them have been successful fighting this."
Well let's name a few that have been quite successful and have governments of various political persuasions. New Zealand, Vietnam and Thailand which was the first country to report a case outside of China. "Ah", you may well say, "New Zealand is an island so it's easier for them." Then again Britain is an island and we have had a far worse outcome than Germany which isn't.
If it was all down to the individual's response then we could quite rightly blame the individuals for their own bad health. But 30,000 more people in British care homes have died compared to last year, and that's before the new winter flu strain makes it to Europe. Can we blame the old people for the government allowing Covid-19 to run wild in the care homes?
At times like this we need a good government response. This is why we live in societies and pay taxes. Of course we can't live in a bubble and risk is always there, but to ignore the problem like the president of Brazil is doing is a recipe for disaster. Which government would you prefer live under, New Zealand or Brazil?
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Harvey said:
"It really sounds like a lot of you care more about $$$$ than lives."
The solutions to complex problems are rarely black and white and they always come with unintended and unexpected consequences. Many decision makers have difficulty identifying, much less analyzing, the secondary and tertiary consequences a pandemic presents. These individuals were never equipped to tackle complex problems. Unfortunately, such skills are not a prerequisite for our political office holders or the managers of bureaucracies they are elected to oversee.
The virus and its impacts involve both the economy and lives. In the US alone, over 40 million people have filed for unemployment. Many of those people have already begun returning to work. Others will be returning to their jobs in the coming months. Others, due to the permanent closure of thousands of small businesses as well as bankruptcies/restructuring of larger companies, no longer have jobs to return to.
The people most affected by this virus lockdown are members of lower income families. The longer the various state and local lockdowns drag on, the more these families are going to suffer. The more they suffer, the more lives will be lost for a variety of reasons. Those of us who are retired or work in relatively secure jobs have much less to worry about. It's easier for us to overlook the pain and suffering of those less fortunate victims of the lockdowns. It's all too easy for us to focus on the risks we personally face from the virus and at the same time fail to comprehend how the damage to the economy this summer could affect all of us in one way or another a few months or a few years down the road. It's those damned unexpected consequences that will haunt us for years to come.
Tom
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This thread as a whole is a perfect example of every government's reaction to the pandemic around the globe;
NO-ONE is an expert on this - EVERYONE'S opinion on how to handle it on a national/global scale is different from the next.
You have all PROVEN this in this very discussion thread.
EACH of us would react/respond in different ways if any of us were in charge on a large-scale situation.
Human lives matter.
Human suffering - for whatever reason - matters.
The one thing that matters MOST in all this is the one thing that is frowned upon talking about here;
GOD and trust in HIM alone.
Why? Because after 2000 years, He's still intimidating people.
I've voiced whats been on my heart and mind....back to stamping now and you can continue your "discussion."
As Jacob Marley so aptly stated - "...look to see me no more..."
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To paraphrase Bacon...'People prefer to believe what they prefer to be true.'
Don
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Just plotted out the daily new infection trend for the U.S. from June 16 to July 3.
Looks a lot like Mar 17 to April 3.
It's about to get real. Again.
Hospitalization uptick is next.
Then deaths.
You can't bullshit a virus.
Full stop.
The only mystery is whether Florida or Arizona will be the next epicenter.
This is not an opinion. I am using the 3-day rolling averages for the US and the EU from Feb 24, 2020 to Jul 3, 2020 for comparison. The U.S is, once again, in an explosive exponential growth phase. You may not like it, but it is.
Hopefully the mortality rate will be lower due to better understanding of best practices, but hospitalization rates are likely to strain hospital capacity in the very near future, especially those states with the most permissive re-opening protocols.
This isn't the second wave. We are still in the first wave. It didn't go away because some politicians said it did.
Please try to continue your social distancing, etc. We WILL get a vaccine eventually, but remember the weakest among your "herd" and do what you can to keep them safe until the vaccine is available.
I'm not advocating all or nothing policies. Just keep using common sense. I don't wear a mask in the parking lot of the grocery, but I put one on before I go inside. I make a large order weekly that is delivered directly to my car's trunk without going in, but I will go in (with a mask) and pick up a few random items.
I'm able to work from home most of the time, but occasionally I have to go in to the central office and I take precautions.
To paraphrase Ikey Pikey: My father dodged U-boats in the North Atlantic and Panzers on D-Day. I can be a little flexible.
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Here is the US COVID deaths March 1 to July 1.
The trend is for evident; the fact that the number of reported cases is way up and that the number of deaths is dropping is good news.
Deaths are not up for two primary reasons.
First and most obvious is that more testing is occurring. Currently the US is doing 600,000 tests a day while in April/May it was 100,000 per day; a 6 fold increase. Additionally the use of antibody testing is now widespread and anyone who previously had COVID is now being counted for the first time.
Secondly there is a significant shift in whom the virus is infecting. Back in the springtime the medium age of reported COVID cases was 65 years old; today it is 35 years old. In most states the age group of 20 to 44 now account for nearly half of all cases being reported.
The history of this virus is that is only kills older adults with preexisting conditions. The only reason that COVID deaths might go up from here is if the virus suddenly changed and became lethal to the younger population. (I know of no one who is predicting that to happen.)
Those with pre-existing conditions do indeed need to continue to take precautions and be extremely careful. For older people without pre-existing conditions the most preventative thing you can do is to remember to never touch your face until you have washed or sanitized your hands. Quality masks are helpful if you are living with others (they should be the ones wearing the masks). Limit your chance of exposure by staying close to home and away from the public. This does not mean that you cannot see the family at all, it means that they can come over to see you but everyone stays on the front porch/six feet away and the grandkids do not climb into your lap. No hugging or kissing. Family members should be wearing good quality masks, no bandanas or homemade masks. (Some homemade masks are done right but many are not, why risk it?)
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/immunocompromised.html
Medical facilities and nursing homes should be changing the air handler filters daily, installing UV devices, and isolating their population from contact with anyone who has COVID. If the US had done these three simple things back in March, the vulnerable older adults with preexisting condition would have seen far fewer deaths. I think the moronic politicians and state officials have finally figured out to not be sending active COVID patients back into nursing homes but are still are not mandating air handler maintenance or the addition of UV devices.
The last thing that we can count on increasing in the US is the media and politician negative rhetoric and fear mongering; this is the election season after all.
Don
Edit: There is virtually no press or discussion on UV sterilization. This is a very effective method for killing pathogens in the air and is widely known by anyone who has an immunocompromised person in the house or facility. It is not an expensive remediation and makes a great present for any susceptible person with pre-existing conditions.
https://www.amazon.com/Pure-UV-Germicidal-photocatalytic-conditioning/dp/B07BPHD2LM/ref=sr_1_12?dchild=1&keywords=uv+disinfection+light&qid=1593943439&sr=8-12
I recommend that a device like this be installed by a professional although a handy person can do it.
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Don:-
What wavelength of U.V.?
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"... The history of this virus is that is only kills older adults with preexisting conditions ..."
If one ignores the not-so-older people who, for example, do not go to the ER when they are having a heart attack because the ER is overrun with virus cases, and the ER staff are falling ill. (That hospital admissions for heart attacks fell dramatically during March-April in the NY-NJ-CT area is well-documented.)
And if one ignores the fact that, once the virus is running rampant amongst young people who will survive their hospitalization, postponing "elective" surgeries means that people who need surgery are not getting surgery. ("Elective" means "scheduled", it does not mean unimportant.)
There is no free virus. There is no protecting only the nursing home patients while the virus runs rampant thru the broader community.
You can fight the virus in the bars (by closing them), or you can fight the virus in people's homes (by removing & isolating the infected to dedicated facilities) ... which of these is faster & cheaper?
Or you can let the tsunami wave build, and think that you are going to catch that wave at the doors of the nursing homes, the assisted living facilities, the retail stores, the apartment & office building elevators, the pubic transit trains & buses, and all of the other places where someone can get infected and then infect someone else.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Brechinite,
The UV-C wavelength in the 200 to 280 nm is the most effective spectrum. NOTE: UV-C wavelengths can cause damage/injury if used incorrectly. Do not look directly at a UV-C light and do not expose your skin directly under UV-C wavelengths for any period of time. UV-C germicidal lights are mounted or installed in a way to avoid direct human contact. You can see them in most hospitals mounted high on the walls near the ceiling and pointing upwards; they are often found near an air flow.
Don
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Thanks for the info Don.
I can't remember what the wavelength that was used on me when I had psoriasis. The treatment involved being placed in a full sized cabinet and blasted with UV. The first treatment was for 10 seconds and every second day thereafter the time was increased.
I was given protective eye wear but I must admit I used the protection but I kept my eyes closed just in case.
UV can be dangerous, during the treatment I had a night of agony as it felt like my hips had been micro-waved. I had expected that might happen as I was made aware by others that it had happened to them.
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"Here is the US COVID deaths March 1 to July 1.
Image Not Found
The trend is for evident; the fact that the number of reported cases is way up and that the number of deaths is dropping is good news.
Deaths are not up for two primary reasons. "
Edited by request:
Deaths are not up because they are a trailing factor. Increasing hospital admissions come first, a few weeks from now. Then you can look at deaths a few weeks after that to make a judgement. Most Americans are (sadly) statistically illiterate, so it's not unsurprising that someone would say something that this.
But just wait a few weeks. Just like last time (in early April). The numbers look bad again. Very bad. Make a note to check the death rate in 4 weeks. I personally believe that there are reasons for hope (better early treatments, for example), but in areas where the hospitals are overwhelmed, it will not be pleasant for some folks, sad to predict.
And yes, I sure hope I'm wrong this time. I wasn't last time.
A lot of our fellow citizens depend on us to see this threat clearly.
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"Deaths are not up because they are a trailing factor. Increasing hospital admissions come first, a few weeks from now. Then you can look at deaths a few weeks after that to make a judgement. You clearly have NO IDEA what the data means. That's OK. Most Americans are (sadly) statistically illiterate, so it's not unsurprising that someone would say something that this.
But just wait a few weeks. Just like last time (in early April) when you told me I was an alarmist, my response is the same. The numbers look bad again. Very bad. Make a note to check the death rate in 4 weeks. I personally believe that there are reasons for hope (better early treatments, for example), but in areas where the hospitals are overwhelmed, it will not be pleasant for some folks, sad to predict."
Well said Lars. This is a pandemic caused by a new and deadly virus, not a seasonal low grade cold or flu, and we have to stop treating it like a mild seasonal annoyance!
Just to highlight what is happening in states that relaxed their Covid-19 quarantine rules early, just look at these selected charts (of new cases by day). And then let us unfortunately look at their death rates in a month or so.... I am afraid the numbers will exceed even the most worrisome estimates of experts (like Dr Fauci)quote: I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around.
Do you really think we can restart the economy if we don't get the surge in cases under control? It will shut again, and not by government regulation, when it is too dangerous for young and old to resume life as normal. Meanwhile, it is also sickening and killing our front line care givers!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/texas-coronavirus-cases.html
https://azbigmedia.com/business/covid-19-cases-in-arizona-surpass-98000-total-deaths-top-1800/
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne-florida-coronavirus-saturday-july-4-20200704-e5lqdwvuhrcb5f2ynyplzprtrq-story.html
etc...
Rather than accept mandatory mask wearing and distancing..the easy steps... we could end up eventually with a mandatory nationwide quarantine in place, because doing it at random county by county, city by city or state by state will not work unless we stop all travels? Look outside the US...it has been done!
rrr...
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I think this thread reflects the clash between negativity and positivity; and negativity has won.
Vince asked me a few days ago ‘why do you bother here’? Over the last 6-7 years I found that maintaining a positive perspective was critical for my survival. Being told that you have a 95% of dying in the 6 months helped me understand the value of a positive perspective. For me, positivity is a choice I made as part of a survival strategy. It is a choice that I have been told by countless medical professionals saved my life.
The media and politicians have all been working overtime in pushing negativity down our throats; it does not matter what the topic may be negativity is the order of the day. I have been trying to inject a bit of what I learned about optimism into the community but this appears to be problematic. To me it feels like there is little room or tolerance for balance or positivity in this community. You are literally screamed at that your positivity is WRONG and/or told that you are advocating everyone should get an illness and suffer.
I think some positive folks here refrain from posting because they know they will get push back. I truly appreciate others like Brechinite, who while we sometimes do not agree, often uses humor in threads to lighten the negative tone and tenor. Of course the Mods cannot address the negativity, there is no rule about being upbeat or having balance.
For some of us, the sky is grey much more than it is blue but we try to persist in the fight against the darkness of negativity. This fight is hard enough on a daily level but adding push back for being positive in a hobby community makes it intolerable. So like Vince and others I will sit back down and not bother; those who want to spread their negativity can have at it and enjoy their ‘I told you so’ victory.
Don
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Jings!....Crivvens!.....Help Ma Boab!
We are all human so we all have human foibles.
Some are optimists some are pessimists. Is it a half full or half empty bottle of whiskey?
If we always agree wouldn't life be boring!
If we all stopped discussing or arguing we would not learn anything new.
Yes I have not always agreed with some members views but that does not stop me respecting them for the views they hold.
Tolerance and fun is my motto.
As I used to say to new employees:-
" We are a team here, we play ball together but remember its MY bloomin' ball!!
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Yes, the number of new infections each day is rising faster than the number of new fatalities each day.
Yes, one reason is the time-shifting effect, eg, infections rise, then hospitalizations rise, then fatalities rise.
But another reason is that more (NOT ALL) of the newly infected are younger, and they enjoy a lower (NOT ZERO) risk of death from the virus, whether this week or next.
This does not mean that letting the virus run rampant amongst young people is a clever idea.
https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=24986#180694
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who notes that a 41-y/o Broadway song'n'dance man died yesterday after three months in the hospital, and that there were plenty of optimists on The Titanic)
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It is up to each individual how they interpret the statistics and what conclusions they come to.
Of course statistics are not facts!
They are numbers arrived at via a system. The system is seldom defined to the public. How they are collected, collated, what parameters are used influences the result. Thus it can be difficult to compare results between different systems.
Governments issue guidelines or laws that individuals should or have to obey. It is an individuals choice whether they observe or obey them.
What the "herd" decide to do determines the outcome.
My choice is to keep myself and my loved ones as isolated as possible as I recognise that the "herd" mentality is not for me and mine and I keep an eye on the "herd" so I can avoid any possible problems.
You can argue over statistics and their meaning until the cows come home, I couldn't care less, I shall strive to keep my family safe.
Life is too short!
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"Yes, one reason is the time-shifting effect, eg, infections rise, then hospitalizations rise, then fatalities rise.
But another reason is that more (NOT ALL) of the newly infected are younger, and they enjoy a lower (NOT ZERO) risk of death from the virus, whether this week or next."
IkeyPikey, this appears to be very relevant for Florida. Apparently a large number in Florida hospitalized with COVID-19 are young people hospitalized because of other things (like automobile accidents), and they were only discovered to have COVID-19 because the hospital tested them on admission. So they weren't hospitalized BECAUSE of COVID, but WITH COVID.
That's the good news. The bad news is that Florida has a VERY large elderly population and COVID-19 is more rampant than thought.
I don't wish bad results on anyone. I hope things work out fine. I'm just not naive enough to think positive thinking is all we need. I have one brother over 65 in Florida and another brother over 70 in Tennessee. They both still work full-time. One in a hospital. One as a military contractor. I'm over 60 and work in banking. We are all considered "essential" employees. I would LIKE to say that I'd be happy to sit on my ass for two years while the 20 somethings frolic, but even if they DID pay enough in taxes to pay me NOT to work, I have two problems with that notion:
1. I'm not a slacker. Never have been.
2. I don't want to add one dollar more than necessary to the national debt my children are going to inherit.
This is real.
We need to get real.
Unicorns and rainbows ain't gonna cut it.
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Another senseless murder last night at a gas station. Jacksonville's murder rate continues to easily outpace its deaths from COVID-19.
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"Another senseless murder last night at a gas station. Jacksonville's murder rate continues to easily outpace its deaths from COVID-19."
Manitoba 2020 Covid deaths 7, Winnipeg, the largest town pop. 700,000, homicides 20 so far this year. Last year was a record 44.
The latest was a young 27 year old mother randomly shot on the street, currently police are holding 14 and 15 year old youths as suspects.
Sad world.
Edit, today the homicide number in Winnipeg went to 21. Manitoba total now 34.
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I wrote:
"... there is no free virus. You can pay to fight the virus, or you can pay to live with the primary & secondary & tertiary costs of the virus run wild ..."
And, along comes:
Sweden Has Become the World’s Cautionary Tale
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html (paywall down)
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Hi All
Miss my stamps and auctions but enjoying my retirement in Central Mexico.
Been exiled to my patio since middle of March as too many people in town not wearing masks (locals and gringos)and now Mexico is getting it hard, No shortage of anything here,
Most of the restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies all have free delivery and also hairdressers will come to your place wearing masks, Also easy to get deliveries from Coco and Amazon etc, Most of the cleaning ladies are staying home with full pay, Weather is awesome and my mango tree is full of fruit, All the best to you all
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Lee,
miss you, too, sweetheart. Glad you're getting your fill of mangoes. After that, what else is there... oh yes, stamps. Miss those from you, too.
David
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Couldn't get much worse here.
Like many other places in our world, Israel is experiencing the 'second wave'. It has been spreading like crazy and arrived in our village (200 families) at the end of last week. 8 have tested positive including 5 children. Because they were on school buses or in after-school clubs, then over 50% of the population has been in quarantine which has since risen to 70%. Now it's like a ghost town !!!
My Grandsons have been tested and are awaiting the results. If they are positive then my wife and I must stay home too !
There is a positive. The country are very organized healthwise and very much 'on the ball' when it comes to the Coronavirus. So only 3 have died during this 'second wave'.
That is, of course, 3 too many but a success when compared to some other places.
There is a 500 shekel fine ($140) for anyone walking around without a mask. There have been many arrests, some quite violent.
Londonbus1.....not at all violent.
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Auctions - Approvals
Lets make the decision to use this thread in place of coronavirus so those that have slow or expensive data usage internet connections don't have to trawl through 360 posts.
Still in lockdown with "She Who Must Be Obeyed"!!!
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re: Coronavirus 2
I will if you will Ian. Funny enough this afternoon the old thread just got a load faster.
Take that last bit back. I went back to the first thread which had just jumped quickly to my last read spot a minute before. This time it took about 3 minutes. That's on a fibre internet connection with a 100 Mbps LAN to this PC. Still think there must be a bottleneck somewhere. Maybe my provider is caching data. Is that possible?
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re: Coronavirus 2
My local news is starting to say things like, "light at the end of the tunnel", "possible easing of restrictions" etc. I predict people will start demanding that we go into "the next phase" (whatever that is) soon.
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re: Coronavirus 2
The USA is not alone in suffering from this virus.
Almost all liberal western democracies have/are/will suffer because there is no discipline in these societies. They all suffer from the "Its MY right" to do this that or the other.
The "RIGHT" of the individual taking precedence over "Society" has/is/will be the downfall of these societies.
It is just history repeating itself. If you look back through time the civilizations that have fallen were mostly liberal societies.
There is nothing new in the universe!
Do you expect any politician to know what to do in these situations?
I wouldn't let them run a bath so my expectations are low.
When they shut down Whuhan I started gradually building up supplies, I could see what was coming. When they said the vulnerable should isolate at home for 12 wweks it doesn't take the Brain of Britain to work out that any lockdown is going to last longer than three bloomin' weeks.
Here in the UK the whole news media are rabbiting on about the lockdown coming off, what about testing, what is the exit strategy. What a load of nonsense.
Why does the media go on about these things, one simple reason:- TIME! They have to fill 24 hours of broadcasting and dozens of pages of print.
All one can do is "Hope For The Best, Prepare For The Worst", look after you and yours and pray to your God you and yours survive.
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11:21:06am
re: Coronavirus 2
I'd say that no matter what people say, this isn't going to end until we have a vaccine.
And with idiotic anti-vaxxers out there, this will never end!
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re: Coronavirus 2
My TeePee Decoy
Time was, people would sit a mannequin up in their car so that they could abuse the HOV lanes.
And, as we've all heard, some women drove at night with a mannequin as (what we now know to call) PPE.
As I slow-cruised my way up 8th Avenue yesterday on a mission of mercy, I realized that the Costco-sized package of 30x rolls of TP on my back seat were my ticket out of any ticket; after all, what spells Essential Errand better than a Valhalla-scaled package of toilet paper?
(Fortunately, I also had that morning's purchase receipt as backup.)
Time was, I would never leave twenty-plus bucks worth of TP in my car, lest it tempt a breakin. Nowadays, although that risk is elevated, I'm looking at those now-thousand-dollar isolation violations, and the attendant disgrace, and thinking of keeping My TeePee Decoy right where it is, in my back seat, covering my back side.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who calls this sort of thing "The Coronavirus Calculus")
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12:07:11pm
re: Coronavirus 2
One of my heroes, John Prine, died today of complications due to the Coronavirus, everybody should sit back and give a listen to Dear Abbey, 'nuff said!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF8S5XB-eYs
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re: Coronavirus 2
https://www.komando.com/video/komando-picks/all-day-long-the-coronavirus-song/734784/?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=tvkim&utm_content=2020-04-10
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re: Coronavirus 2
Folks we are drifting again into a discussion of politics and accusations. Lots of editing was done. Unfortunately due the intertwining of responses, there was a collateral damage to maintain some sense of discussion.
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re: Coronavirus 2
A Tale of Two Systems: above, a quarantined Israeli gets followup care at home.
Meanwhile, out on Long Island, a friend my age reports that his sister our age had a fever, and made an appointment to see her doctor, who knows that she has several coronavirus-relevant co-morbidities.
She got to the doctor's office for her appointment, and was told "our systems are down, please come back tomorrow".
They could not take her temperature, listen to her lungs, and then decide home/hospital ?
No billing system, no responsibility ?
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
Finally some GOOD NEWS - after 20 DAYS of fever and misery, our family member is improving. I was so dang worried and upset - what a relief.
My word, this is one nasty, tenacious virus.
Stay safe and healthy everyone.
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re: Coronavirus 2
We'll take all the good news we can get -
thanks, Theresa!
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re: Coronavirus 2
Theresa,
Thanks for the update! That's great news!!
Here all have been fine. I have several clients where onsite visits are still occurring due to their business needs but basically down to typically 2 days a week of onsite visits with the remainder of support occurring remotely. At the client sites everyone is keeping their distance from each other as much as possible (much more so than they had actually expected to be possible in general) and staff report they have been keeping down their external contacts dramatically.
Church services have been via an online service and have worked very well for both the church we attend and the church at which my wife works. She is working on a migration from an on premises based management system to an online software as a service solution from the same vendor. In many respects working from home for her has been very helpful as it has cut down on interruptions significantly.
Visited a local stamp store yesterday which is open for pickups and deliveries only in the afternoons. The owner reports that eBay activity is basically keeping him operational but he is not accepting any visits for sales of collections from anyone with whom he doesn't have a long term relationship for the time being as a safety check. At my wife's behest I wore a mask during my visit to him and to an older client to pick up a computer to do data recovery from home. We were unable to do his work remotely due to hearing issues which were making remote work untenable.
I found myself in tears driving to a client on Thursday morning as my wife and I had been planning on a weekend trip to see the tulip fields north of Seattle this Spring as I realized that we were not going to be able to do it. It really bothers me that I will have to disappoint my wife again as something has come up every year that we have lived in Seattle, fifteen years to date. I think the isolation from friends and acquaintances may be a factor as well. I haven't actually seen a co-worker with my company for six or seven weeks and no one from church for four weeks. Fortunately there are either two or three staff members at each client typically present otherwise the only contacts I would have with other humans would be at the McDonald's drive through.
Jerrel
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re: Coronavirus 2
Thanks fellas, I appreciate the kind words so very much. I’m so sorry that your Tulip plans fell through. Better times MUST be ahead - I mean Karma owes us, eh?
I must apologize for the heated posts this week, but I was tearing my hair out - angry, worried, frustrated and unable to do a damn thing about any of it except rant - a perfect recipe for an Irish temper flare. We were lucky - she beat it but so many others are not. My heart breaks for them.
Thanks, Ernie, for recognizing how badly I was hurting. I WILL take you up on that drink when this is all over. And a big thanks for the kind and supporting messages from six other wonderful folks.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Theresa,
I totally get it.. wishing you and all of your family the best. Let's have fun with our hobbies and our hobby friends.
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re: Coronavirus 2
We visited a more distant grocery store that was a in a more rural area. Same chain as our regular one. It was a world of difference...few had masks, no concept of social distancing. On the good side, it was much better stocked but still without many paper products. The grocery store had implemented one way aisles but compliance was limited as the signs were easy to miss. The store people did not seem to even mention it when people went by them the wrong way.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Jerrel, I was out your way last summer and fall doing work for Facebook Labs. I was staying right in Kirkland where the Coronavirus hot spot was. I was on site a week a month and then remote from my home in Pennsylvania.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Loyal K9s to the rescue:
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re: Coronavirus 2
This thread started because the original thread was too long, and then this thread devolved into political rhetoric, so I went back to the old thread. Now that thread has been closed by the moderators.
I'm out.
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re: Coronavirus 2
I feel like I owe you an apology, Lars, since I’m the one who asked for the new thread in the first place. I see that you were quoted in the last post there, but now you can’t post a response. That must feel very frustrating.
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re: Coronavirus 2
The original thread was closed (not deleted) because there were two duplicate threads and the original was large. There were deletions in the first thread for political content too. The challenge is the subject matter is political in nature.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Censorship is it good or bad?
Do you think we are being told the truth?
Here the death count is only based on hospital deaths of those that have tested positive, not what is happening out in the Care homes or the community at large.
Can we believe that China had so few deaths considering the size of the population?
Are we being misinformed?
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re: Coronavirus 2
Politics....
I prefer to stick to other discussion themes than this.
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The sad thing is that reasonable people ought in theory be able to compartmentalize. I can enjoy talking stamps with anyone regardless of their politics. That mindset is being stretched thin these days with all the 24/7 talk radio and cable TV exposure. If someone doesn't like the same politicians as you, they are your mortal enemy.
I've had this happen in my personal life. I have a good friend of over fifty years whom I haven't heard from since early last year. We can't talk anymore. We disagree on politics. I honestly have tried to get past this and talk about old friends, etc. He won't let me. It's incredibly sad.
I'm probably naive, but Philately ought to be a safe haven these days. End of editorial.
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The problem is, and please let me know if you see it differently, each side of the political spectrum is further apart than ever before. Each side wants to take America to radically different places. The stakes are just too high.
Do you think both sides are further apart now than in the 50s, 60s, 70s etc.?
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Agreed. I am sad that this whole epidemic is being politicalized and that there is no network where you can get an unbiased view. It would be nice if we all banded together against the problem.
I see the same things in both the stamp and my model car community. People in the hobby that I greatly respect are raving political lunatics on uncensored Facebook. I’m amazed at some of the attitudes and opinions and it will be hard to treat these people the same in the future. I’ve had to unfriend and hide a bunch of folks just to make my days less angry.
I did lose a lifelong friend over his Y2K fantasies that it was the end of society, when I refused to hoard ammo and hide in his crawl space with him. It’s been twenty years and none of our friends have ever heard from him since! My wife mentioned him last week that he must be in his glory now!
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"I'm probably naive, but Philately ought to be a safe haven these days."
Philately, Model Railways, Coin Collecting etc are safe havens, unfortunately its the humans within and without that are the problem.
It is those people who take intransigent views, believe they are correct in everything, and cannot see the other persons viewpoint.
Take this topic for example. This topic is titled "Non-Philatelic Discussion" YET throughout the years I have been a member, members keep saying that they do not like what they are reading and they say "I don't want to read this" or "this shouldn't be discussed on a Philatelic site"
Sorry but this is a Non-Philatelic Discussion Topic and the threads within. If you only want to discuss philately than do not click on this topic at all.
It is only through, discourse, discussion and even argument that we can educate one another and understand each others cultures and traditions.
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It's culture we need and Sir Les Patterson was the subject personified, well depending on your taste in humour.
For those unfamiliar with this character here is a link.
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/dame_ednas_alter_ego_sir_les_patterson
In accordance with the standards of insanity this disclaimer is published.
Parts of any videos may be offensive to most people and should not be viewed by people of a fragile disposition (or stomach).
Edit It would appear that the videos have been blocked under copyright rules.
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re: Coronavirus 2
"... Do you think both sides are further apart now than in the 50s, 60s, 70s etc.? ..."
The electoral battle in the USA (in much of the 20th Century) was over the middle, which led us to such cliches as politicians eager to be seen kissing babies (there would be a staff member tasked to finding a pretty young mom with babe in arms at every event) (guess that's gone now), and endless anodyne speeches about Mom'n'Apple'Pie (see the MAD Magazine satires of the period for confirmation, if your memory fails you), and safe denunciations of common enemies (cancer, etc).
As voter participation fell over the years (which is a very good thing), those voters in the middle got harder to persuade & motivate, and each side realized (though I personally blame one more than the other) that you would gain more votes by turning-out your base'n'fringe than you would lose from the middle ... and this logic only reinforced itself as time went on.
I do not think the two sides are so much further apart as they are a) more open to their extremes, and b) more eager to explain their differences, and c) less interested in talking to the middle.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Goldwater probably was right when he talked about what would happen when the pastors and other church officials began to dabble in politics. If you tie your faith into your political ideas, you are much less able to bend or compromise with the other side. I truly believe that we need to get the churches out of politics before we can return to political parties that can give and take and compromise on issues.
Any churches that preach support for any political party should lose their tax exempt status.
Something else to consider - the need to separate emotions from political thought. To illustrate why this is a problem; Someone falls in love with a sweet little rescue Cat. They bond and that Cat becomes their baby. It doesn’t matter to them what kind of history the cat has or that the cat sprayed on their Manolo Blahnik pumps, shredded the designer drapes or hisses at every other pet and all annoys the neighbors. When that Cat is purring on their lap, he is making them very happy and they adore him and his delightfully quirky behaviors. That cat does exactly what they wanted and does it well.
So people either love the cat or they look at the situation and can’t fathom why anyone would keep the cat. You can’t change that type of love and if you don’t have that emotional bond, you will never convince a person that the cat is worth it. My point is that no amount of talk will change how some people feel. There are too many emotions involved so you might as well give it up.
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Hi Ian,
"Censorship is it good or bad?
Do you think we are being told the truth?
Here the death count is only based on hospital deaths of those that have tested positive, not what is happening out in the Care homes or the community at large."
This distinction is made repeatedly in the daily UK Government press conferences.
The process for collating the total number of deaths is the responsibility of the Office for National Statistics, based on returns from the local registrars.
This was repeated at today's press conference and the latest figures from the ONS are expected later this week.
However, by their nature, these figures lag behind the hospital figures.
Here's a link to an example ONS bulletin on the subject:
ons.gov.uk : COVID-19 deaths : week ending 27 March 2020
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Political activism by the churches has been a fixture of the American experience since its inception. The churches, as long as they have any relevant place in society, will continue to influence politics. Remember, the people came so they could worship as to the dictates of their own consciences.
The church played a role and had a voice during the slavery debate, women's suffrage, workers rights, prohibition, civil rights movement etc...
The day we codify what churches can and cannot say we might as well be communist China.
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"The process for collating the total number of deaths is the responsibility of the Office for National Statistics, based on returns from the local registrars."
The numbers quoted by the Scottish Government on a daily basis are misleading as there is a time lag between death and Registration of Death. In Scotland you have eight days to register a death.
The total number added to the figures especially from within the community may be false as very little testing for covid-19 if any is carried out on these people. It wholly relies on doctors to mention the word covid-19 on the Death Certificate as the cause of death or the secondary cause of death. In theory a death certificate may say that the cause of death is given as kidney failure, but not known/mentioned the cause was covid-19.
As I have said before there are lies, damned lies and statistics.
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In the R&D business (my area), it is not uncommon to have incomplete or conflicting data. However, one does not dismiss data as not 100% perfect before taking action. In many cases like this one, it is likely under reporting the actual situation and recognizing that may be happening.
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I am not sure what topic you are on but it was about dealing with data and solving problems through scientific methods.
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It all boils down to the interpretation of the data.
That is why one scientific expert will say yes it is absolutely black and another scientific expert will say it is not black.
Interpretation, Interpretation and Interpretation.
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Left or Right or in-between
Politicians in power & their respective media abide to one key fact
"No Crisis Should Go to Waste"
So expect some distortions, omissions, errors and lies and the farther left or right you go - expect the lies and distortions to get bigger and less plausible.
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Are things better or worse today that in the past? I would argue that things are immeasurably better.
I was born in 1956. One of earliest memories is of a visit to my aunt and uncle and not being able to see my favorite TV show, Beanie and Cecil. I started complaining and was quickly told to be quiet, there was something much more important on the TV at that moment. It was the broadcast coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A year later I still vividly remember sitting in my second grade classroom when the school intercom came on with a radio broadcast of President Kennedy's assassination.
My parents were always tuned into the evening news that came on at 5:30 PM in Wisconsin. Throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s was the nightly coverage of the Vietnam War. Then came 1967 and the assassination of King and Senator Kennedy and the burning of American cities.
Can't leave out the Civil Rights Movement and the horrible reaction from the political powers in the South.
The rebellion against the Vietnam War was a daily occurance. While I was never subjected to the possibility of the draft, my older brother was. He lucked out on a high number which meant he most likely wouldn't be called, but I do remember some conversations between my parents about him heading to Canada if the draft was a possibility.
I do remember at a very young age going to local high school and standing in a very long line with my entire family waiting to take the polio vaccine (pink drop on a sugar cube). No such option for measles, mumps and chicken-pox, all of which I suffered through as a child.
I will end with an evening in 1989. I was working at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, on a two-week on then two-week off schedule. I had just returned to my apartment in Anchorage on the evening of November 9 (my birthday). I turned on the TV and sat in shock as I saw people dancing on top of the Berlin Wall. The Cold War, with the ever present chance of nuclear was, was arguably over. I remember sitting there crying because that had always been something in the back of one's mind even if not dwelled upon.
Today's medical crisis will go down as one of histories big events. Most of the other political stuff won't be remembered a few years from now because it just doesn't matter. Remember that 24/7 news coverage is a relatively new feature. When all the national news broadcasters had to worry about a filling 30 minutes time (minus the commercials) once a day they tended to worry more about the important stuff. Most of the 'news' today is not news but rather click-bait and can be ignored, as I do.
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"... Remember that 24/7 news coverage is a relatively new feature. When all the national news broadcasters had to worry about a filling 30 minutes time (minus the commercials) once a day they tended to worry more about the important stuff ..."
Years ago, while looking for something else, I came across a short item on the middle of the front page of The Times of London, which went something like this: "15,000 people died in spring flooding in (some place in Africa) one year ago, a recently returned correspondent reports." And, that was that.
However it was worded, I took the 'correspondent' (if that was the exact word) to be someone who had been travelling (for whatever reason) and, being a loyal reader, dropped them a line as soon as they had returned to London.
One of Isaac Asimov's best conceits was the argument, in The Foundation series, over which planet had been the origin planet of the species that had peopled the Galactic Empire ... just another factoid, lost in the sands of time.
There is no question that Covid-19 will be pretty much forgotten; the only question is "when".
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Today it hit us hard here. With temperatures starting to rise into the 30's we suffered the bad news that there will be no swimming Pool this summer.
When the temps rise into the 40's there will be a longing for the cool water after work.
It was the news expected but it is still heartbreaking when it comes.
Hopefully, beaches will be open sometime in the late summer...........
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"Hopefully, beaches will be open sometime in the late summer..........."
We are already open for business. First in the nation!
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Ernie, friend....I hope three weeks from now you don't wish you hadn't posted this.
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06:48:17pm
re: Coronavirus 2
I'm really trying to stay out of this. I'm a Canadian hoping that our friends south of the border do everything possible to get back to normal, at least in a medical sense. Because if you do something really stupid it might have a huge effect on us as well. Please be smart and please be safe!!
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Unless you have an advanced degree in Epidemiology and have direct experience with statistical modeling of the spread of disease, aren't you just parroting what you heard the talking heads say on your favorite television station?
The point is there are very smart people in Canada, in Florida, in New York and many other places and the local scientific community and state leadership has said it's safe to start easing restrictions.
I dont have a degree in Epidemiology so I am not qualified to say whether it's a good idea or a bad idea.
"Paging Dr. Snick...paging Dr. Harvey..."
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07:47:40pm
re: Coronavirus 2
No, I am not qualified to give any more than my own opinion, which I assume that is what you are doing - and I really hope your opinion is right. You can always find scientists who are willing to agree, or disagree on any topic, look at climate change! As far as politicians go, well... I am entitled to my opinion without being insulted, as are you. If I said anything that upset you I really do apologize. By the way I was almost a doctor, two courses short of my P.H.D. before I realized I was grossly over educated and became a high school math teacher instead. I will say two more words in this post and that will be my last comment on our common problem -- Stay safe!!!
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"...my own opinion, which I assume that is what you are doing"
Look at my post again. I didn't give an opinion either way. I just said the beaches are open.
"I am entitled to my opinion without being insulted"
I'm not quite sure why you feel insulted but if you do, I regret that. Okay, I won't refer to you as "Dr. Harvey" any more.
" I will say two more words in this post and that will be my last comment on our common problem -- Stay safe!!!"
Here's my two words: Surfs up!
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No I am not 'Dr. Snick'. But I think any objective evaluation of the available facts would lead to continued caution.
I wasn't being facetious. I really do hope you're right and this whole thing is overblown. Have you stopped to think, what if you're wrong?
Like I said we'll know in about three weeks after the surf's up'.
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Snick,
I hear you. I'm sure we are all hoping for a positive outcome.
I just dont understand it when you say that "any objective evaluation of the available facts would lead to continued caution".
Do you mean to say that the State of Florida Department of Health has not evaluated the situation fully or objectively? Are you in a better position than they to make the call?
Decision makers are REQUIRED to allow individual movement and peaceable assembly at the earliest, safe opportunity.
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The debate is about what is "safe". We do not have a zero death policy to determine the decision so anything above that is subjective. For example, if the annual projected death rate is less than the flu then is that acceptable?
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O.K.- time for a pet peeve of mine. I hope when we get to the other side of this- with a vaccine- this country takes a good hard look at the way we do business with the rest of the world. We have outsourced so much in the last 30 years we are vulnerable in so many ways. The first thing we need to do is bring back the manufacturing and distribution of our prescription medicines to within the borders of the U.S. and Canada. Right now India and China make the vast majority of our medicines. Are we that stupid? Don't the big Pharma's make enough money that they have to outsource this? We (our government) allows our safety to be potentially compromised by allowing this. This is not a political comment- just a statement of opinion.
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@stokesville,
Amen! It's a national security issue.
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It's all very well bringing the work back to our countries but then the cost of such home made/produced items will rise by a large amount.
Why do we need large numbers of temporary workers to gather our food products when there are so many unemployed locals? The answer is they work cheaper than the resident population. I do not see hordes of our citizens signing up to gather the fruit and veg or weed the fields even when so many are now out of work. Is it all down to wages, probably not, some will be due to the idea of such a menial task for little reward.
Now if those producers were to pay decent wages with proper breaks and good working conditions maybe locals would take up the work, but the cost to the consumer would have to rise and are we willing to pay for such an increase. In some households could they even afford such a price rise?
Just my thoughts.
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Vic,
Yep; true.... therein lies the rub.
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" the cost to the consumer would have to rise "
Of course it would and here is the $64,000 dollar question.
Would the Farmers benefit or would it be the Supermarkets???
Several weeks before "The Crisis" started our local supermarket was selling a 1.5 Kg bag of Potatoes for £0.69. One week before "The Crisis" hit the same bag of potatoes was £0.99. The day the lockdown was announced that same bag of potatoes they were selling at £1.49.
Do you think the farmer was getting double the money??
Of course bloomin' not!!!
During the 20th Century, after the two world Wars, Isolationism was rampant and it turned out badly. We then went headlong into globalisation and multiculturalism and it has now turned out badly.
Extremes never turn out well. Moderation in all things is the way forward.
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They call journalism "the first draft of history".
The map (above) shows the locations of cellphones 14 days after being on one Fort Lauderdale beach in early March.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/florida-spring-break-coronavirus.html
I would be more comfortable with opening the beaches if the concession stands stayed closed.
I'm glad that I don't have to figure-out how to re-open the economy safely.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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11:56:49am
re: Coronavirus 2
Does anyone remember the opening part of "Jaws" where the mayor wanted to keep the beaches open for tourist dollars. I really hope I'm wrong, but that's what's in my head right now. Please don't give me a slap down for this, it's just a comment that I hope has nothing to do with the situation the people of Florida find themselves in right now. I know I said I would keep quiet about the situation, but...
"Not Doctor" Harvey
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I just read this on twitter about Canada Post.
"CCN & CSN
@trajanpublisher
·
7m
Postal services to 150-plus destinations have been suspended by @canadapostcorp
“at the request of the receiving postal operator or due to the lack of available transportation,” the Crown corporation said in a recent update."
Doug
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12:19:22pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Well, please don't shoot the messenger Ernie, but I just saw this:
‘Complete disbelief’: Governors blindside front-line staff with abrupt reopening plans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/complete-disbelief-governors-blindside-front-line-staff-with-abrupt-reopening-plans/2020/04/23/bb965f52-8567-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
Never underestimate the stupidity, culpability, corruptability, greed, or self-interest of a politician.....any politician.
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"Well, please don't shoot the messenger Ernie, but I just saw this:"
Benque,
Haha... I'm not that emotionally invested... I read the article and my home state of Florida was not mentioned. Now, that's not to say that we're doing everything perfectly because we most certainly are not. That's kind of the point; this is an unprecedented situation that effects the entire world, every nation, every city and every street in every neighborhood. To think that we're all going to hit it out of the park and get every single detail perfect on the first try is laughable.
But here's my main concern: it seems that people that have been able to very seamlessly work from home, people of means that are going to be ok either way and also many in our "ruling class" all seem to favor an open ended, unlimited shut down of the economy until there is not one person out there that tests positive. That's not an option folks. There are 10s of millions of regular Joes and Janes out there that are hurting and another $1,200 public dole payment won't solve the problem. They're not on Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok sending cute messages about recipes or drinking wine while sheltering in place and playing with their cats. We have to get society working again as soon as possible or the entire thing could come unraveled.
Again, I really don't care if they open the beaches and I don't know the true scientific impact of it but we have to get millions of folks working again.
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Benque said:
"Well, please don't shoot the messenger Ernie, but I just saw this:"
Well, Benque, I'm going to shoot the messenger. Journalism as a profession in this country is dead. My best friend in college (and best man at my wedding) was a journalism major who got his masters and taught college journalism. Both of his children got journalism degrees. None of them have anything to do with the journalism profession today.
Much of what passes for journalism today is littered with opinion and misrepresentation. If you actually vetted the article you shared with us, then I'll apologize, but I'm betting your introductory sentence is an indication that you don't know if the story is accurate or not. If not, why burden us with it? If you did vet it, then why not share your thoughts about the article's premise and details. What were the most important points from your perspective? Did you identify any problems in the story's presentation? Don't simply drop this in our laps and then leave us hanging. Otherwise, it appears this was simply a means for you to take a potshot at all politicians? I'd hate to think that was your intent.
Tom
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04:20:46pm
re: Coronavirus 2
"I'd hate to think that was your intent."
Like it or lump it, that was my intent.
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OK. Iv'e read all of the novels on my book shelf and I've worked with stamps until I'm bleary eyed. Now what?? Send me a Jack Higgins, David Baldacci, James Patterson, or similar author novel and I'll send you one of mine - via media mail. I've tried to elevate my taste to Charles Frazier's COLD MOUNTAIN, but get bogged down in a 3 page description of the sun rising above Cold Mountain. My wife has tried to interest me in on-line books, but I just enjoy holding a book and turning the pages. Any comments? Thank you.
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re: Coronavirus 2
I still thrive on the classic Alfred Hitchcock short story paperbacks....
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10:38:10am
re: Coronavirus 2
If there are any second hand book stores left check out Clive Cussler. I got on the Cussler kick a couple years ago and ended up reading all his fiction at one go. There were about 72 books at the time and you don't even have to read his several series in order - it's better, but not that important. It took about a year and now I just wait for his new stuff to show up on Abe's Books. I prefer to have a book to read in the "old fashioned" way!
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Hi Joe!
I had a minor complaint about Clive Cussler - his repeated use of the word "murmmering". Everything was "murmmering". I forget his side kicks name (Gordo?), but the tales sure were far out.
Before we get to Tom Clancy, we "sponsored" a Midshipman at the US Naval Academy who went into subs. He was assigned to a sub on loan to the CIA (since decommissioned), and berthed at Treasure Island, between San Francisco and Alemeda, CA. I once asked him about the jet sled on board. He was startled and asked me how I knew about that. I replied, truthfully, that I read about it in a Tom Clancy novel.
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"
Well, Benque, I'm going to shoot the messenger. Journalism as a profession in this country is dead. My best friend in college (and best man at my wedding) was a journalism major who got his masters and taught college journalism. Both of his children got journalism degrees. None of them have anything to do with the journalism profession today.
Much of what passes for journalism today is littered with opinion and misrepresentation. If you actually vetted the article you shared with us, then I'll apologize, but I'm betting your introductory sentence is an indication that you don't know if the story is accurate or not. If not, why burden us with it? If you did vet it, then why not share your thoughts about the article's premise and details. What were the most important points from your perspective? Did you identify any problems in the story's presentation? Don't simply drop this in our laps and then leave us hanging. Otherwise, it appears this was simply a means for you to take a potshot at all politicians? I'd hate to think that was your intent."
Bingo!
When I took journalism I was taught that it would be our awesome responsibility to objectively report the facts, so that the viewers / readers could make up their own minds based on truth. Not so today. Every news outlet has their own biased agenda and there is really nowhere to go for the actual truth. Today on Meet The Press, that sneering Chuck Todd asked Elizabeth Birx two loaded questions, which she expertly deflected. Not being able to trip her up, he ended the conversation with the statement, “The president only cares about himself.” Totally off base.
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Bob:- Have you tried the Patrick Robinson Novels? "Ghost Force", "Hunter Killer", and "Scimitar SL-2".
I gave up on Clive Cussler many years ago as soon as Dirk Pitts' kids showed up!!
Earlier Lee Child books are also an easy read.
When I was in my 20's Desmond Bagley was my favourite author. We sometimes forget that the authors we read when younger can still be enjoyable years later.
At the moment my passion is Historical Fiction with The Last Kingdom series by Bernard Cornwell or the Ghengis Kahn series by Conn Iggulden, or his Emperor series about Julius Ceasar.
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I would recommend to anyone who likes British spy novels the books by Anthony Price who died last year age 90. For cold war period settings I would rate him as good as Le Carre so at the top of that genre. The couple that were made into movies didn't really work very well, but the books are superb. I see they are now out on Kindle, but to find the paperbacks you will have to search used books shops.
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12:43:24pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Anyone into spy series, a couple of suggestions for books:
The Bernard Samson Series: Game, Set and Match, Hook, line and Sinker, Faith, Hope and Charity. I know I've read the first 6, don't think I've read the last 3, but incredible!
The James Bond series and I think you should read them in order for maximum effect.
The George Smiley series. I've read a couple and intend to read the rest.
Also there are a few British TV series that are incredible if you can find them either on YouTube or DVD:
The Bernard Samson series again - you really have to pay attention!
The Sandbaggers - In my opinion the best spy series ever made and one of the best TV series ever!
Mr. Palfrey of Westminster - A bit slow, but I think it's fantastic if given a chance.
James Bond, of course, 24 movies so far
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I have a preference for Historical fiction - and specifically British historical fiction
All by Robert Harris (probably my favourite author)
The Cicero trilogy (Roman hitory.... I know!)
An Officer and a Spy (based on the Dreyfus case - probably my favourite book - French history I know)
Munich (the Chamberlain & Hitler meeting)
Second Sleep (given how the big cities are coping with Covid its quite unnervingly topical!)
Bernard Cornwall (already mentioned) the Last Kingdom series (or the Saxon Stories)(covers the Anglo Saxon period King Alfred and beyond)
Patrick O'Brian - Jack Aubrey Series (of Master & Commander Fame!)(before during the Napoleonic Wars)
CJ Sansom - the Matthew Shardlake Series (a detective series set in Tudor England, generally Henry VIII and beyond)
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re: Coronavirus 2
Random jottings from demented soul.
So how is this Covid tracing Bluetooth app going to work with the whitening toothpaste? Will we have to keep applying food colour? Will it still work for all of us that do not have a mobile 'phone? The song says there are more questions than answers, how did the writer know? Will my brain cell ever get a companion? I don't mind the lockdown but this tight jacket and padded walls get to me.
Ps It's been raining for most of the day and the ground that is waterlogged from snow melt and deep frost is now a large puddle.
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Go for a walk in the park and look and listen at all the wonderful things that nature has provided.
The rat-a-tat-tat of the woodpecker. The sweet songs of the Blackbirds aloft in the trees singing their hearts out. The coo cooing of the doves. The bounce of the squirrel as he crosses the path in front of you.
The two pigeons in the tree making loovvee. The laughter of the children playing on the swings.
The growling and barking of the dogs having a fight. The screeching of their owners trying to bring them under control. Jumping onto the grass to avoid the twat on the bicycle who is tearing along at speed, then realising you've jumped into dog poo.
Avoiding the two joggers who come up behind you and barge you out of the way. As you near home the thump thump music from the bampots' car two streets away.
Aye nature is wonderful??
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Ian, you're a nut!
You just wrote a Ray Stevens song!!!
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Never mind Ray Stevens, How's about this then:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yFTOvO0utY
Reminds me of Scout Camp.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Coronavirus is proving to be a real pain.
Items sent to the USA are not arriving and it is very frustrating....and expensive. To elsewhere all is OK but to the USA there is a problem. Of course I fully understand the difficulties for Postal services and I for one will not be sending anything for the foreseeable future.
On top of that, Paypal are not working as they should either and giving refunds for non-arrival of goods is proving impossible. Included is one buyer from Stamporama and I have written to him to tell him I am trying......but it's not working.
I will certainly be sending ALL items to the USA by registered mail in future and when it is safe to do so. I just cannot afford the losses.
Still in lockdown here but a little easing of movement.
Londonbus1
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It is not just Israel to the USA that has problems.
Sending from the UK to Israel is just as bad.
The Israeli postal system may actually be the problem.
As for sending everything registered that is just as bad as sending by airmail as NO signatures are being asked for. It is up to the individual post office employee delivering the package to sign that the delivery is complete.
Tracking also depends on the individual deliverer as I have had "Out for delivery" but no confirmation that it "Has been delivered".
Of course it also depends on what you write on the customs forms and how long it is held in customs as they are also short staffed due to covid-19
All you can do is hope that your luck is in and the package arrives at its destination.
I have had no problem refunding for delivery failure through Paypal.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Some of my mail to the USA has been returned to me without the contents and they all arrived in the US. Sending registered means I can track the packets and the tracking system from here is excellent even to the USA. On a number of occasions I have told the buyer his/her packet is waiting for collection before they get the notice.
Israel Post is not the best, and like many Postal services nowadays the stamps are not cancelled but I have only been having problems with mail to the USA. To other countries everything is fine.
It may just be bad luck but my pocket cannot withstand bad luck forever. At least sending registered means I am covered and I can track the item.
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Just to add to this thread. I had an item mailed from Germany, Registered, on 24 March. Using the tracking number provided to me I get the following:
Your package is on its way to a USPS facility. Sign up to get updates, and we'll send you a delivery date and time when available.
Status
Pre-Shipment
Origin Post is Preparing Shipment
Not sure what any of this means. Just keeping my fingers crossed that it will show up some day.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Mail from the USA to several other countries has been suspended due to unavailability of transportation. This list includes Israel. Several other countries also have limitations or suspensions on International mail. I noticed that Norway is not shipping mail to the USA. I have been waiting on an envelope from Australia for a month.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Royal Mail here has a web page titled "International Incidents Update" that gives an outline on what countries are having problems.
e.g. this is the current update for Italy:-
Update: 2 April 2020
Poste Italiane advise if the addressee cannot be contacted, or in the case of parcels addressed to businesses, cultural institutions, commercial activities and other entities which are temporarily closed in accordance with the Prime Ministerial Decree of 25 March 2020, items can be returned to sender after the first delivery attempt. The list of most affected municipalities is constantly updated and can be found on the Poste Italiane website.
For the USA:-
Update: 14 April
The USA has has introduced special quarantine measures against Coronavirus. As a result, USPS may not be able to deliver mail to specifications, signatures on delivery may be suspended in order to prevent spread of the infection. Delays to mail services can be expected.
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"It may just be bad luck but my pocket cannot withstand bad luck forever. At least sending registered means I am covered and I can track the item."
It has always been a problem and will continually be so.
It is always "nice" to have "high value" sales but when several of these packages go astray over a short period of time in can be a serious blow to the seller.
That is why I prefer "little and often" sales. I know some buyers want to reduce the Shipping costs as a percentage of purchases by building up their purchases but PLEASE spare a thought for the seller who will lose out when one of these packages go missing.
It is not easy, if not impossible, to claim for losses from the Postal Authorities. When making a claim the seller has to prove how much they paid for the goods lost NOT what they sold it for!!! EVEN if it is sent "Registered" mail.
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11:15:35am
re: Coronavirus 2
I am in Ecuador and am waiting for several registered letters which left UK on 10 March.According to Royal Mail,s tracking site,they all left the counntry and are in transit.However,Ecuador closed all airports on 21 March.I have no idea how Royal Mail sends letters,either by regular flights or by using courier services.I have no idea where these letters are at the moment.I would hope that if delivery is impossibe,they would be returned to sender.
Very frustrated....
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Here is the latest info from Royal Mail for Ecuador:
Start date: 17 March 2020
Latest update: 24 April 2020
End date: Ongoing
Incident: Coronavirus
Update: 24 April 2020
New transport links to Ecuador have proven unstable, so we're currently not shipping letters and parcels. Items posted will be held and you will experience significant delays.
Update: 17 April 2020
Mail despatches to Ecuador have resumed, and we’re prioritising the processing and shipment of mail held during the recent period of suspension. Delays will still be evident as in-country restrictions remain in place to prevent the spread of Coronavirus.
Original Incident: 17 March 2020
We're currently not sending items to Ecuador as there are no available transport links. Items sent will be held and you'll experience significant delays.
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Hello from a stranger!
I've been away for a while, but since my local club is not currently meeting and Tim had sent me a link to my stamp club to update, I decided it was time to end my time away.
My wife and I are doing well physically. I am working from home for Verizon, and that has brought many challenges with connectivity. Just switched from AT&T to Xfinity Comcast. Some of you may remember I work in Bad Debt, and Vz has definitely increased its reserves significantly for what is coming. Guess who had to book THAT entry ?!
I added a new collecting interest (Trinidad & Tobago) and bought a decent sized Trinidad/T&T collection from a fellow stamp club member.
I definitely have been catching up on my collection. Added quite a bit to my Norfolk Island collection this past week. Sunday was Berlin's turn.
My major concern I have re the gradual reopening is that many will not honor the social distancing needed. Good grief, many aren't doing it now in the grocery stores. And sorry, the young (teenage to young adult) people who live in Central FL act like there is no problem, walk right next to me in a store, and look at me like I am crazy when I wear my mask when I am out in public (which is not often).
No more on that.
The father of one of my teammates passed from COVID-19. Patrick is up with his mother in Westchester, NY. His mother also contracted the virus, but she is now home recovering.
My dad and other family members live in New Jersey, which ramps up my concern overall. They are well, for now.
I look forward to seeing what material is out there on the auctions and I may be noting some items I am looking for in the upcoming days.
BOB STEWART Orlando, FL
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Hey Bob, you could not stay away eh ? Yesterday was a beautiful day..i think the temp hit 80 degrees..we have a favorite place to walk in Kingston N.Y. along old trolley tracks on the Esopus creek(Hudson River). It was kind of sad to most people fishing or walking the tracks not wearing masks,i guess they figure they do not need them outdoors. So far so good here..we hunker down...out for groceries every 11 or 12 days,the kids are afraid to come around and possibly infect us.
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09:43:19pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Brechinite...
Many thanks for the info,very helpful.
Today,the Post Office started back to work on a part time schedule and their web site updated details on a lot of my missing mail.Items which left UK towards the end of February and early March are now showing as received in Ecuador,May 4.
I think they arrived before the suspension of mail service but info was never put in the system.
I will probably have to wait another 3-4 weeks before they arrive here in Guayaquil,maybe longer.Even in normal circumstances,the mail system is pretty disfunctional.Still,it makes quarantine a little more bearable,waiting for my stamps to arrive.
Stay healthy.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Here is the link to Royal Mails update page. Scroll down to find the country of interest.
https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5317/%7E/international-incident-bulletin
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In our area mask usage in grocery stores is less than 50% (my opinion for when I have been out) when it is not enforced. Even store employees do not all wear masks. I have worn one outside the house when near anyone in stores except for once when I went to the county waste facility for a quick unload - all outdoors. The local golf course has been very busy.
Our next door neighbor got the virus from her mother who supposedly got it at church. Her comment (via text message) - It is not the flu.
I have no experienced any US mail issues. An order from Wizard supply house came in 2 days and a SOR approval letter arrived in 3 days.
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01:37:02pm
re: Coronavirus 2
I was just listening to the radio and the person was discussing many underdeveloped areas in the world. For example one African country with a large population where there are some areas with dense populations of people. There is very little testing and the country has one ventilator. If we in Canada and the US think we have problems...
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"... If we in Canada and the US think we have problems ..."
... we can wait for climate change to hit its stride, and really start cryin'.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
Yup! You were right. Closing down the thread where we were discussing statistics and replacing it with a thread where you argue politics is MUCH better!
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12:03:33pm
re: Coronavirus 2
There’s nothing wrong with civil discussion of political issues.
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03:52:41pm
re: Coronavirus 2
I was going through some old Nova Scotia newspapers ( researching to write a book on the history of Base Ball (sic) in my home town ) lately and came up with the following from 1892. "The President of the United States has issued a circular requiring all immigrants from Europe to the States to remain in quarantine 20 days". Hows that for a coincidence? I did a little research and there was a book written by Howard Markle in 1999 called "Quarantine!: East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892". Might be an interesting read, has anyone read the book?
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I haven't heard of it but that is very interesting in terms of precedence.
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07:49:16pm
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Quarantine has been used many times. New York City and Baltimore were quarantined on and off for two years after a yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793. Letters about it are the subject of an article in the current Collectors Club Philatelist. Harbor police were posted to prevent visitors from landing at New York harbor. It had limited effect because mosquitoes spread yellow fever, which was unknown at the time.
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re: Coronavirus 2
For those of us here in Michigan;
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I guess those who find these restrictions unreasonable may not like the military very well such as being a sailor on ship that sleeps in racks 3 high in confined spaces where your life is controlled 24/7. You do get free meals, health care, lodging, education, special justice system, etc.
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11:02:01am
re: Coronavirus 2
Except that we haven't had a draft for decades, so everyone in the military has chosen that life, whereas today's restrictions are government ordered. If you're actually suggesting that those protesting continued lockdowns are soft, that's insulting, and completely inappropriate for a moderator. Unless you want to drive some members out of the forum.
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I came across this article this morning. It is by Erin Bromage, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts. The article explains her perspective on the infectious nature of a virus and how we might want to react to it.
I am not endorsing the article, just presenting it here because it seems to be a particularly well written and easily understood presentation of the infectious nature of our favorite virus. Her opinion is one of many.
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
This is a link to some information about the author.
https://www.erinbromage.com/home
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The postal situation here no doubt varies across the country. We are in the hot spot of NY/NJ/PA. I believe I've reported on this board that we had a death in our local post office. My favorite counter clerk died of Covid and the rest of the staff went into 14 day quarantine. The post office was closed. We got mail deliver every few days with staff from one of the other local offices. Still, the Exton, PA post office is operating the desk on limited hours.
My wife's brother works in the big sorting center in Trenton, New Jersey. Early on he was exposed and was sent home for 14 days. Since then at least one of his co-workers has died. He was again sent home with symptoms last week, was tested and fortunately came up negative.
He did mention that they are operating on a greatly reduced staff with lots of available overtime. He said they aren't getting to the fourth class mail. On my model car board people are whining that some of them haven't received a magazine. The least of our worries!
My wife's youngest brother works for New Jersey Transit. He believes he and his wife had Covid in January, as they both had bad colds, and thought they had the flu. His wife got tested recently and tested positive for the antibody.
My son in law is a fire captain and had someone on his team test positive. He was tested and came back negative, and is still working. My daughter is a teacher and has been working from home, with three kids under three. They are scared to death that he'll bring it home.
Here west of Philly in Chester County, we've been able to keep our numbers down by being in lockdown. Last we were really out was the weekend of April 14. I've been going out weekly for food and beer. We do go for a daily walk through our neighborhood. Otherwise we are on our property. We've gotten into a routine, so it's not all that bad. Better safe than sorry!
My concern is that people are getting antsy and I notice a marked upswing in traffic every week. The first week I took photos of the roads being entirely empty. Yesterday it looked like a normal day on the highway near our house. It is mandated to wear masks in stores, but I'm troubled by the families that are out shopping. Little kids in the carts or running around the store without masks.
And for states that are reopening, I'm seeing photos on Facebook from people who ran right out to restaurants and are acting like nothing is wrong. I think we will see an upswing in cases as people get bold and stupid.
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As of next week we'll have been sheltering for 60 days. If not for my stamps I'd be bonkers now.
I get out for a walk every morning and the wife and I walk evenings after dinner. We get groceries delivered and other than a trip to the PO or our Vet office to pick up special food for our cat, we stay here. We have a 24 year old son still at home,he works on line from our dining room table.
We have underlying health issues, and we're terrified. Seeing some of the scenes of crowded beaches and bars reopening this soon are like a punch in the gut. Some of the posts on here belittling my concerns do that, too. Just saying..
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09:09:31pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Posts aren’t intended as gut punches, but do reflect differing frames of reference, and suffering on a basis that may be different. For every person who is afraid to reenter society, there is someone who is facing the loss of everything they worked for, for decades. But let me suggest a slightly different perspective. I completely respect older people with health problems who want to separate from society for an extended period. Yet those same people who (in the US) are on Social Security or Medicare should be rooting for and even demanding that society reopen for younger, healthier working people. Because the tax dollars that pay for those government benefits on which you depend have to come from somewhere, with the root value being human work. States are already seeing stunning drops in basic tax revenue, and federal losses have to be similar in magnitude. We can only borrow or print money for so long. So let’s get healthy, working people back on duty, and respect everyone else who wants to protect themselves. Infectious disease is a perpetual fact of humanity, but we can’t supply the benefits that one generation needs if the younger generations aren’t free to deliver them.
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I would prefer to discuss the metrics, and we should see some soon that will inform us whether SARS-CoV-2 wilts in the warmer weather (I hope so, but I doubt it due to transmission vectors), and whether soft re-openings are a good idea. (I'm more hopeful there, as long as we wear masks in public and maintain social distance). Sadly, I think Americans are capable of neither, so we are likely to see a surge, but I hope for the best.
It's comments like this that are offensive:
"I completely respect older people with health problems who want to separate from society for an extended period. Yet those same people who (in the US) are on Social Security or Medicare should be rooting for and even demanding that society reopen for younger, healthier working people. Because the tax dollars that pay for those government benefits on which you depend have to come from somewhere, with the root value being human work."
That human work you speak of, I HAVE ALREADY DONE. Social Security is not some gift from the next generation to me, it is something I have been paying into MY ENTIRE WORKING LIFE!!! And I'm still working. Full time. From home for now, but back at the office when it is safe. But I have reached retirement age and could retire tomorrow if I wanted to. To intimate that there is a dichotomy between people below a certain age that can ignore SARS-CoV-2 and old people that just need to stay home is the height of ignorance. And it is EXACTLY that kind of ignorance that guides the current Federal response in the U.S. that is creating a disaster of our own making.
"So let’s get healthy, working people back on duty, and respect everyone else who wants to protect themselves."
How can you even PRETEND to know who is, and who is not, at risk! I'm more concerned about my sons than I am myself. They both had to have breathing treatments as toddlers. Are you SURE they are not at a heightened risk? Nothing I have seen confirms that.
"Infectious disease is a perpetual fact of humanity, but we can’t supply the benefits that one generation needs if the younger generations aren’t free to deliver them."
Again, I don't need the younger generation to do ANYTHING other than NOT SQUANDER THE MONEY I HAVE ALREADY PAID IN TO SOCIAL SECURITY for the past 50+ years!
These false equivalencies are uninformed and misguided.
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10:42:53am
re: Coronavirus 2
Thanks for correcting my misguidedness. I think I'm done here.
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I must point out that as far as I know there is not one country that has kept a wad of cash that I paid into during my working life for the sole benefit of me when I get older.
During my working life I was paying taxes to pay for ALL citizens to benefit and I expect the same to occur today and into the future.
My kids are no longer using the education system but I still pay my local taxes to educate the current generations.
When this pandemic is over (Hopefully), ALL of us will find our taxes will increase as what is being pumped into the economies MUST be paid for at some point, and there is nothing we can do about it.
It is the way of the world, so when the time comes, thank your god you survived and pay up with a smile on your face.
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"... That human work you speak of, I HAVE ALREADY DONE. Social Security is not some gift from the next generation to me, it is something I have been paying into MY ENTIRE WORKING LIFE!!! ..."
Balderdash.
Social Security checks went out in Month #1. Obviously, not one of those recipients had paid into the system for one quarter, let alone forty quarters.
It was always a system of transfer payments. In one of those bipartisan compromises of the sort that we miss today, everyone agreed to call it an 'insurance' program, thus giving cover to those elements from those political parties that objected to transfer payments.
Ditto, and in spades, for Medicare, where 2% of your 1972 salary has not, by The Magic of Compound Interest, grown to cover your generation's Fifty Thousand Dollar hip replacements or Five Hundred Dollar (per month) prescriptions for Eliquis.
Insurance? That you paid for? Fuggedaboudit.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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The employer also contributes as well.
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So my state governor, after rejecting local county requests for control over their own communities, has finally allowed ‘elective medical procedures’ to occur in the last week.
Since this the state lock down was implemented, my state considered medical procedures like cancer CAT scans and fistulagrams as ‘elective’. But because I have not been able to get a routine fistulagram needed to keep my dialysis graft in good working order, it completely failed this week. So instead of getting a simple fistulagram I found myself laying on the operating table for an hour and a half as they worked overtime trying to get it working again. Here is the result (imagine then having to stick two #15 needles into this each day for the last two days)
I also have been prohibited from getting my cancer screening CAT scans but was finally able to get that done this week; hopefully the delay will not be as disastrous as my delayed graft maintenance. Apparently it is ok to die from cancer but the state will protect me from the Chinese virus.
Normally every month in the USA there are 180,000 people diagnosed with heart disease (leading cause of death) and 130,000 people diagnosed with cancer (second leading cause of death). While I assume that some of these folks got help (if their symptoms were so bad that they went to the emergency room), there is little doubt that a significant percentage of people have gone undiagnosed and have died or will die as the result. Where are the body counts for this? And this is without even talking about suicides, opioid overdose, child and spouse abuse, due to the shutdown.
Shutdowns should never have been a binary thing, yet some (i.e. the news media) worked very hard to make it that way by using fear and intimidation. I am weary of hearing the justification of ‘people will die’. Arguing truisms is inane, it is no different than arguing that if we never got in a car then we will not die in car accident.
Risk analysis is made up of two parts; impact and likelihood. What is the risk of going to the store without a umbrella? The likelihood is whatever the chance of rain might be and the impact is pretty low (you get wet and have bad hair day). But when the impact is death then fear mongering is easy to do and some people seem to then ignore the other part of the equation, likelihood. In my state of 10.8 million people, around 600 have died. Putting aside the fact that many of these deaths have been coded as the Wuhan virus when it was not verified, this puts the likelihood at well less than 0.05%.
Of course other states and localities have different situations and my thoughts and prayers are with them. And I appreciate that governors have to live with making some difficult life and death decisions, obviously erroring on the side of caution was prudent. But I think that history will show that the state level implementation was horribly handled and has made the cure far worse than the disease.
Don
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Ouch.
The term 'elective surgery' covers a lot of ground, from pre-wedding nose jobs, to things that will save a patient from seriously deteriorating (further).
A friend in NYC was told (by her surgeon) (in March!) not to worry, her hip surgery would go forward because "we're an orthopedic hospital, so this doesn't affect us".
Nobody's lookin' real good, here.
Just heard the doctor who treated the first US Covid-19 patient explain that the hospital had recently run an infectious disease dress rehearsal so that, when a guy showed-up explaining that he'd just come from China and felt sick, they were caught with their pants up.
Talk about dumb luck.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
I am also in NC and had a spot removed from my skin 4 weeks ago during the lock down. I had delayed it 4 weeks already.
But it is a big dilemma. While there are rational people, there are likely as many that believe that rules only apply to someone else as we constantly see everywhere.
They feel they will not get it, do not care if they spread it, or just do not like people telling them how to behave.
Many laws in place are intended control the actions of a few while others suffer.
For example - no shoes, no shirt, no mask, no service.
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" And I appreciate that governors have to live with making some difficult life and death decisions, obviously erroring on the side of caution was prudent. But I think that history will show that the state level implementation was horribly handled and has made the cure far worse than the disease."
My sentiments exactly....
...especially here in Michigan.
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"Many laws in place are intended control the actions of a few while others suffer."
Hi Al,
Agreed, every society has considerate and inconsiderate people. But human communities have always had ‘bad apples’. Is the approach really to make it illegal to be inconsiderate? You cannot legislate ethics. Those in power can pass laws that can somewhat control our behavior but not our thoughts. Ethics and consideration for others is about how you were raised, not what some politician says or how a law tells us to behave.
Last year no one seemed to care much about going to the store when they were ill even though it put at risk other people (especially those who were immunocompromised). Is it that now that folks do not have to be immunocompromised to get an illness it has become more important to not go to the store when you are not feeling well?
The truth is that SARS, MERS, HIV and many other viruses curve flattened by themselves. They have worked for decades on a HIV virus and no vaccines yet exists. Every year we watch how science has a ‘hit or miss’ approach to flu vaccines, sometimes they get it right and sometimes that year’s virus strain morphs to something they did not anticipate. And people die, lots of people die. Do we shut down everything due to the flu year? Do folks run around in masks? Do people yell ‘you have blood on your hands’ if they spread flu around or is it just this virus that matters?
I think there will be always inconsiderate boobs among us. But I learned a long time ago that we cannot control others we can only control what goes on between our own ears, how we think and feel. And what we need to stop doing is being fearful. Fear, and those who are peddling it, is the enemy. Perhaps it is the fact that I have lived so long under a ‘95% chance of dying in the next 6 months’ death sentence that has made me come to grips with fear and its impact on us. I can tell you that living with fear as a constant companion is no way to live.
Our hobby has a strong ties to history. I am surprised how many stamp collectors seem to not have learned the lessons that it teaches us. Consider WWII, the body counts were horrific and the USA was fearful of entering the war. Yet ultimately in the end victory was gleaned by using the American economy. It was our economy that kicked into overdrive and able to outproduce all the major economies of all the other war participants combined. Today the Chinese Communist Party knows this history lesson and believes that ‘there is only one sun in the sky’. The battleground today is financial (unless folks want to move to the nuclear option) just like it was in WWII. Does the free world really want to let fear be used to reduce our economies to rubble? In WWII everyone had to overcome fear, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and come together. As stamp collectors we should know this history lesson.
Don
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"... It was our economy that kicked into overdrive and able to outproduce all the major economies of all the other war participants combined ..."
Our factories were not getting bombed.
Neither were our railways & ports.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
"Shutdowns should never have been a binary thing, yet some (i.e. the news media) worked very hard to make it that way by using fear and intimidation. "
"In WWII everyone had to overcome fear, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and come together.
"
"Unfortunately people do not know their history, especially politicians.
"
In the free areas of the world of WW2 the government, people and media would have been aligned to fight a common enemy.
There was a recent survey in Australia showing that the Australian population has been more inclined to listen and trust the government than the media during the Covid crisis. That is an interesting statistic. Even our left leaning public broadcasting channel ABC, has, to my mind, been very fair and reasonable with our 'conservative' government.
In the UK and the US all I can see is political campaigning on public media outlets which should be acting impartially, I think this is a serious problem and when the government should be given latitude to deal with the issue they are bombarded by a negative media, its no wonder they are flapping.
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"In the UK and the US all I can see is political campaigning on public media outlets which should be acting impartially, I think this is a serious problem and when the government should be given latitude to deal with the issue they are bombarded by a negative media, its no wonder they are flapping."
This bothers me a great deal, the way the media is playing this crisis... The president comes on and announces a grand vaccine task force, where the greatest minds in the country with unlimited resources and funds, without any government red tape will try to get a vaccine in place in record time. Man, imagine if they are successful? Will this become the model for solving the rest of our medical issues?
CNN comes back on and immediately starts bashing, saying it's impossible and IF they are successful that the American public shouldn't trust a vaccine developed on such a short timeline! They should be put off the air for undermining the government in time of crisis!
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Here in the UK it was announced today that H.M. Government is giving £80+ million to Oxford University and Imperial College London for vaccine research and the implementation of trials.
Oxford have signed a deal with Astra Zenica to produce 100 million doses of their vaccine if their trials are successful. Their vaccine is already in the process of human trials. 30million doses to be ready for September and the UK has first shout on the production. It was also agreed that further production would be available to the Third World Countries at the cheapest price possible.
Imperial Colleges vaccine will go for human trials hopefully next month.
H.M. Government has also said the new production facility planned for 2022 will be completed by mid 2021 (This facility is already under construction and was started before this pandemic). £40 million is being spent to increase current production facilities as well.
Further trials of existing drugs on covid-19 are currently under trial. It has been revealed that many of the deaths were due to the patients blood being too thick and the medical profession have been instructed to introduce blood thinning drugs at an early stage of treatment to thin the blood and hopefully avoid scarring in the lungs.
Hopefully all will go as planned if not it will be back to the drawing board.
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06:38:03pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Ian,
"many of the deaths were due to the patients blood being too thick"
During "regular" treatment of COVID-19, or during initial vaccine trials?
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06:44:59pm
re: Coronavirus 2
So a good reason to take 1 or 2 low dosage aspirins each day....at least while risk of infection is significant.
Edit to add: At least for myself, with no adverse effects, or fear of aspirin.
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Benque:-
Just don't take too much "Warfarin"......(The main constituent of rat poison which also thins the blood)
Also take soluble aspirin NOT tablets as tablets can damage the stomach lining.
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10:17:07pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Thanks Ian.
I am familiar with warfarin, or cumidin, after monitoring my Mom's use of it after dementia set in. Always a worry.
I didn't know about the different aspirins you mention, but will look into it further. I use it so sparingly that I have had no problems in the past, but daily use might be a different story.
Here in Mexico, I feel I can not expect the same level of treatment as I MIGHT receive back home in Canada if I should contract the infection. A bit of proactivity couldn't hurt.
Who knows these days? Or to quote from an excellent Russian movie I watched (The Dawns Here are Quiet..2015 4-part TV series) "How can anyone know, in these times?"
Best wishes for continued good health and safety to you and to all philatelists....and everyone else too.
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re: Coronavirus 2
ikeyPikey,
I thought you were smarter than that.
"Balderdash.
Social Security checks went out in Month #1. Obviously, not one of those recipients had paid into the system for one quarter, let alone forty quarters."
Of course. It's not unlike car insurance. You never know when you will need it, but you continue paying just in case you DO need it. If you have a wreck after only three months the insurance company can't say you haven't paid enough to cover the claim. That's not how it works.
"It was always a system of transfer payments. In one of those bipartisan compromises of the sort that we miss today, everyone agreed to call it an 'insurance' program, thus giving cover to those elements from those political parties that objected to transfer payments."
That's total BS. Insurance is nothing but a system of transfer payments, and if what I paid in didn't matter, my benefits would not be based on how much I paid in over my lifetime. And my first wife, who died when she was 37, and got nothing, would have gotten an annuity. You clearly misunderstand how this works.
"Ditto, and in spades, for Medicare, where 2% of your 1972 salary has not, by The Magic of Compound Interest, grown to cover your generation's Fifty Thousand Dollar hip replacements or Five Hundred Dollar (per month) prescriptions for Eliquis."
You got me there. I don't recall mentioning Medicare, but yes, you are right. Old people get a HUGE break being able to use Medicare for otherwise unaffordable healthcare. How dare they?
"Insurance? That you paid for? Fuggedaboudit."
Insurance, yes. And yes, I DID pay for it. But yes, I may have to forget about it if people aligned with your view are in power.
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"... I thought you were smarter than that ..."
Classy.
You are failing to distinguish between pooled risk payments between contemporaries (insurance) and inter-generational transfer payments (like social security).
With auto insurance, we all throw our cash into a pile, and claims are paid from that pile to the people who paid into the pile. The pool can wind-down at any time. Any surplus or shortcoming falls on the sponsor.
With social security, people immediately got full benefits when they hit the magic birthday, regardless of whether/not they had paid into the pile for any length of time.
If there was never any possibility that the payments from the early beneficiaries would cover their lifetime benefits, then this was not pooled risk, it was just taking from the new subscribers to pay off the old subscribers.
The proof is in the pudding. For all of your life, time & again, you have heard a) that the social security trust fund was going to run out of money by Year X, and b) that some combination of trimmed benefits and boosted taxes had "saved" the system.
Howzabout you hear it from the horse's mouth (or read it on the horse's website, as it were):
"As a result of changes to Social Security enacted in 1983, benefits are now expected to be payable in full on a timely basis until 2037, when the trust fund reserves are projected to become exhausted."
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html
(By comparison, search in vain for a company with the word "insurance" in its name that explains that they will stop paying claims at some date even though people will still be paying premiums in the expectation of decades of payouts.)
If there is no money to pay in 2038 - when people born in 1968 will turn 70 - even though people who were born in 1968 have already been paying into social security for thirty years as I write this - then this is not pooled risk, and this is not insurance.
One of the Big Dirty Bipartisan Open Secrets in Washington is that no one wants to raise the payroll tax rate (notice that it is not called a "premium") and that no one wants to reduce the benefits, so everyone has agreed on a strategy of importing tens of millions of new payers to support the system.
Another of the Big Dirty Bipartisan Open Secrets in Washington is that the best payers are workers (call them "illegal", call them "undocumented", call them whatever name you like) who can only pay into the system, and can never collect. How cool is that?
Social Security is a system of inter-generational transfer payments. The money taken from young(er) workers is paid out to old(er) workers. This is not an insult; it is exactly the way the system has worked from Month #1.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
"You are failing to distinguish between pooled risk payments between contemporaries (insurance) and inter-generational transfer payments (like social security)."
No. I'm not. I have already granted that there would be initial inequities with the startup of such a system, but those are moot at this point. My benefits are based on my contributions. The more I make (and therefore pay into SSI with matching contributions by my employer), the more I receive in retirement. I can even delay retirement for a few years to get an even larger payment (based on actuarial tables). My risk is that I could die before I get a dime.
The ONLY way that becomes an inter-generational transfer payment is if the government raids the funds we have paid into over our lifetimes to pay for other things.
But then that isn't a transfer payment but a misappropriation of funds.
I was paying taxes and SSI when the top tax rate was 70%. When there was a promise that we were all in this together. When we put a man on the moon. And won the cold war!
You seem to think we are begging at the doorstep for crumbs.
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re: Coronavirus 2
For 2020, the FICA percentage is 7.65% (SS, Medicare) and max contribution is $8537.40 for employee and employer each so $17K max goes in. When it started, the max contribution was lower. It is different for self-employed.
One question is if you had maxed out every year where is the point you draw out more than you put it. This would have to be in adjusted dollars and some assumption of interests if you want to compare to other ways.
If you retire at 70, the maximum benefit you can get is $3790 per month so if you lived 10 years you can do the math. Of course it can be reduced if you draw early, have other income, etc.
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re: Coronavirus 2
IkeyPikey said...
"Social Security is a system of inter-generational transfer payments. The money taken from young(er) workers is paid out to old(er) workers. This is not an insult; it is exactly the way the system has worked from Month #1."
I agree with ikey, this is how Social Security works.
Larsdog said...
"The ONLY way that becomes an inter-generational transfer payment is if the government raids the funds we have paid into over our lifetimes to pay for other things.
But then that isn't a transfer payment but a misappropriation of funds. "
Larsdog, the Social Security Trust Fund is not an all cash account. The money has been "invested" in US Treasury notes and securities. The cash money has been loaned to and spent by the US Government on other things, and replaced by promises to pay the money back. There is no big vault of cash money, all the money has been spent. We all just hope that the United States does not go bankrupt, and default on all of their notes.
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re: Coronavirus 2
It's a shame in a way that insurance is split away from taxes in general. Wasn't it a famous American jurist who said something about taxes being the price of civilization?
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11:04:20am
re: Coronavirus 2
I heard a rumor several years ago that one Canadian Prime Minister announced to one and all that the Federal deficit was eliminated by his party, during their term. Everyone was ecstatic. The rumor was that he used the Canadian Pension Fund to do it, and we've been trying to catch up ever since. Don't know if it is true, but most likely is.
Was it Turner? Yes, I think it was, back around 1998???
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re: Coronavirus 2
'
Dunno 'bout you, but I'm getting tired of hearing:
"... no one could see this coming ..."
"... once in a lifetime event ..."
"... no, once in a century event ..."
Consider "The Silent Invader" (1957), about an "asian flu" epidemic that was on its way to America.
Watch the whole thing.
Notice the emphasis on predictability.
Notice the anticipated casualties.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Beneque, I'm not Canadian but if memory serves, Turner was PM only about three months in 1984 or so. It's possible it was him but doubtful.
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09:28:49pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Hi Snick,
I am pretty sure it was Turner, coming into office on the heels of Chretien's downfall, pulling the defecit rabbit out of his hat, and still losing the election after 3(?) months.
But, the precedent was set, and the pension fund is owed to us by the gov't. That is how I remember it anyway. I recall that I voted for Turner, not knowing about the pension fund removal, at that time.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Jings!...Crivvens!...Help Ma Boab!......ITS RANT TIME!!
The First Minister of the Scottish Government (She is head of the scottish national party)announced the plans for the easing of the Lockdown here.
It is no longer a lockdown it is the Scots being Locked-Up!!
The "release" will be in 4 phases. England is only going to do it over 2 phases.
The time between each phase is 3 weeks so the English will be "Free" in six weeks. We Scots will be "locked up" for 12 weeks.
The next person who says the word "Independence" will get a glorious diatribe of the verbals!!
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re: Coronavirus 2
ikeyPikey,
That was an interesting video. It was interesting to see mechanisms in place for early detection and they were able to create a vaccine quickly. Many more people travel by air today compared to then so virus is likely to spread much quicker.
North Carolina enters Phase 2 at 5pm today. There still no toilet paper readily available at local grocery stores The paper products aisle is nearly empty.
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re: Coronavirus 2
I fear for the English. But I am more sad.
The town where I was born, Southend on the Essex coast, was full of thousands of beach-goers yesterday during the hot weather. They were almost piled on top of each other.
I am not sure if it is anger or despair that warrants this post.
My Mother has just passed away (in Essex) and I cannot give her the send-off she deserves because of travel restrictions, lockdowns, rules and regulations.
But thousands of happy people can enjoy a nice sunny day on a beach a few miles away, one on top of the other, risking God knows what while others like myself look on in wonderment !!
Sod the dead, let's get those folk back on the beaches !!
Londonbus1
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re: Coronavirus 2
Londonbus,
Sorry for your loss. I understand your feelings and only wish more people had a sense of how all this is connected. Best wishes..
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re: Coronavirus 2
"... they were able to create a vaccine quickly ..."
To be fair to us, the seasonal flu vaccines are all pretty much alike; they only need to be re-tuned to next year's strain.
But the Covid-19 vaccines under development are a wildly varied lot, some working in vastly different ways than others. Anthropomorphizing (which I am loathe to do), it is the question of whether I smack you upside the head, kneecap you, kick you in the nuts, swing a machete at your elbows, lasso your ankles ... or, add foam padding or a steel helmet where you might try to strike me, etc.
This, in turn, creates a great deal of uncertainty about which vaccine might work (let alone best) for which population, might have which side effects for which population, might confer what degree of immunity for how long ...
So, in that respect, they had it a bit easier in 1957.
Still, they saw it coming, and were willing to caution people.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
We might need a "Coronavirus 3" post!
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re: Coronavirus 2
Londonbus,
I'm sorry for you loss, and the constraints on your ability to properly pay tribute.
It makes no sense to me that sunbathing is more important than mourning.
Or that going to a bar is more important than going to church.
I told my wife today that with the infection numbers still reasonably flat in the U.S. that I was ready to consider dining in an open air cafe if there was good separation. She asked if I wasn't concerned about being around that many people and I told her I was much more concerned about encountering just one moron screaming at me (spewing spittle) that I was trying to make a political statement by wearing a mask to and from my table.
I'm waiting to see the first use of lethal force in the U.S. in similar circumstances. You know it's coming! Sad.
Lars
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re: Coronavirus 2
Where I live there have been reported incidents of shoppers wearing masks getting harassed by others. One middle aged man was shopping for his family and some middle aged woman literally got in his face telling him he needed to take it off and stop listening to the'Media'. He now has the virus. Hopefully so does she.
Things are getting nuts. What ought to be a matter of Health has become another fault line in the political wars. I agree- someone is going to lose their life before this is over.
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re: Coronavirus 2
"I'm waiting to see the first use of lethal force in the U.S. in similar circumstances."
"I agree- someone is going to lose their life before this is over."
Yeah, sure, any day now.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/michigan-security-guard-mask-killing-trnd/
Freedom!
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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06:28:59pm
re: Coronavirus 2
It really doesn't matter which country it is, there are insanely stupid people everywhere! Stay safe!!
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re: Coronavirus 2
Yes,
It's far too tempting to let them have their parties and festivals and constitutionally guaranteed expressions of stupidity, and let Darwinism work. If only they wouldn't show up later at the local ER wanting help, I would tell them to go for it!
Lars
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My INP (Inner Nasty Person) has been hoping all along that, out of respect for The First Amendment, places of worship would be the first to be allowed to resume normal operations, as this would be a good chance to settle that whole Deacons Versus Doctors argument, once and for all.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who asks that no one quibble about the "inner")
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"Deacons Versus Doctors "
Having been born a Deacon but not in a religious sense I would trust a doctor over prayer every time.
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Here, Barcelona, Catalonia (W.Europe) we've been hitten very badly by the covid. Already 10 weeks of lock down. Luckily, tomorrw, restrictions will be loosened a little. It seems, that we've overcome the worst.
At street, is compulsory to wear face mask and to keep "social distance" (1.5 - 2 m), specially in buses and underground. We're look forward to go back to something like "normality".
It hasn't been too bad. But I'm fed up of being at home alone.
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Part of the dilemma with reopening churches is that there are many different types of worship practiced. If we're talking about allowing folks to gather with distancing, sitting quietly to listen to a sermon, etc, that's probably safe.
If however there is a lot of singing, physical interaction, dancing in the aisles and arm waving, that's not safe- now. I mean no offense to anyone by saying this but it's just how it is.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Robin: Holy Covid, Batman, they've closed the bat caves !
https://www.ynetnews.com/environment/article/SyxwIt9sL
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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09:40:41pm
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re: Coronavirus 2
UK Royal Mail made this announcement yesterday;
There are significant delays to a number of countries right now due to a lack of available transport links and suspension of certain country’s postal operations. We strongly advise not to send items to destinations listed as ‘On suspension’ .
Here is the link to the full article: https://business.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5317/%7E/international-incidents-update
PLEASE NOTE: CANADA & THE USA ARE ON THIS LIST!
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Just had mail from UK posted 15th May arrived here in Manitoba yesterday. So some is getting through fairly quickly.
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Have just been to the Royal Mail website "international incidents" page and whilst they do have the USA on their list the latest update ( the 18th of March! ) states the following....
" Update: 18 March 2020
At the weekend, the US travel ban for passengers from EU countries was extended to include the UK and Ireland. This relates to people, rather than goods. Royal Mail’s International services to the USA remain operational. We continue to accept and process traffic for the USA. Some delays are to be expected due to restrictions on movement to minimise the spread of the virus."
Mail is definitely still getting through as I had a package arrive in Texas yesterday that I had sent from here in Scotland on the 1st of May....slow but it got there.
Best wishes,
Brian.
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Ya know.... just when you think things cannot get worse! The news has shifted from Coronavirus to riots!
We managed to slip house arrest yesterday for our 39th anniversary. We saw my daughters and granddaughters for the first time in 3 months. We sat out in the yard and didn’t hold the babies.
On our way home on the Pennsylvania Turnpike the overhead signs said I95 into Philadelphia was closed. I thought it must’ve been an accident. We get home and turn on the news to see there are riots in Center City.
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The city is imploding - the place of my birth is a true embarrassment of lawlessness.
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Hey Stamp Friends,
Hope all is well! We're so glad that the restrictions are easing up a bit. Just me and my furry son Charlie chillin' at the riots. Cheerio!
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Ya better get outta there, Ernie -
yer shoes are gonna melt....!
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I just got to the part about your mother passing. I am sorry for your loss Michael.
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BuckaCover.com - 80,000 covers priced 60c to $1.50 - Easy browsing 300 categories
03 Jun 2020
02:05:21pm
re: Coronavirus 2
"An envelope I mailed to Brazil on May 27th was returned yesterday with a Canada Post sticker over the address that stated 'Return to Sender' Temporary Suspension of Postal Service."
We had two returned yesterday, same sticker, both mailed to New Zealand, one on April 23, the other on May 5. I think they sit around, waiting for a plane and then somebody finally gives up on a bunch and stickers 'em and sends them back.
Roy
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From one of our sellers in USA I got the following message.
"I received a letter with approvals that I sent to you. It has two postmarks, 31 March and 20 April. There is a sticker attached. It states, "Return to sender. Not deliverable as addressed. Unable to forward."
The address is my PayPal address which has not been a problem with any other mail or goods. Perhaps they are so overwhelmed they are just returning mail to get it out of the way rather than load a plane.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Better than in The Bad Old Days, when the Chicago post office was dumping container loads of probably-just-Xmas-cards into Lake Michigan.
Imagine that: so much First Class Mail that they could not manage to sort & deliver it.
"You're gonna miss me when I'm gone."
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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01:59:45pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Just think about all those wonderful covers floating around in Lake Michigan.
It's odd, if someone had told me about our present virus problem a year ago and asked me "Where will the worst area be?" I would have said India. I was listening to the news this morning and I think that is starting to happen. This is nowhere close to over yet, there's a lot of suffering left to happen and a lot of people left to die - maybe not here, but in other areas.
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Parts of the UK seem to think it's over according to my Sister near London. Things are opening up, Football is about to re-start and other sports too. Yet Autumn Stampex has been cancelled for the end of September/October which I feel is a bit early.
Maybe by then the British Pub will be open too ?
It will be the first year since, I believe, the 1960's when there has been no Stampex.
Sad.
Londonbus1....also sad.
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Yes certain things are being eased in the UK. Yes football is starting BUT under serious restrictions, No fans, everybody else (Substitutes, physios etc) to be 2 metres apart, other than the players of course.
The players are being tested twice a week and most teams are basically in lockdown together.
Of course we would all like to be in lockdown, isolating and staying apart from every other human to avoid the virus but if we did that we would all be dead of starvation.
Each individual must take responsibility for their own actions and assess what the risks are when they leave the house and how their actions will effect others they will meet once outside their own environs.
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I'm not interested in opening up a fire storm over this, but I wonder how others have made out being tested for Coronavirus. I was tested yesterday morning, AND IT WAS NOT A PROCESS WITHOUT DIFFICULTIES. The short of it is that the VA does not want to do it and you need a doctors recommendation to have it done elsewhere. It's a catch 22 (is that the proper phrase?). Thank you.
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I am worried that I may have the virus. Have felt weak and generally awful the past two days. It's been uneasonably hot here for this early in the Summer and I spent a lot of time outside in the heat earlier in the weekend. I put it down to dehydration but from what I can see, this may be an early symptom, lots of digestive upset, etc. Could also be food poisoning.
I cannot imagine where I caught it if I do have it.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Your problem sounds like it could be heat stroke related as a possibility as well. Definitely work on hydration and check with your doctor!
Heat stroke was the primary causal factor reported in my father's death back in 1997 where he worked outside clearing brush after moving to my mother's home place after retirement so it is definitely not something to ignore. He had a heart attack four days later while we were on the way to a family reunion one month after retiring.
So please take care of yourself!
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re: Coronavirus 2
My best wishes to everyone who has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, which pretty much includes everyone. Special wishes to those who are themselves or have relatives or friends who have been diagnosed with Covid-19. It is truly a terrible time, not one I ever expected to see in my lifetime, which of course is one of the problems. In 1995, I read The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. That book sets out the exact problems that have led to novel coronavirus; if only our political leaders had paid attention…. However…
Susan and I feel incredibly fortunate to have landed in British Columbia. We came to Canada in 1969 for my first job after university, and stayed. We have lived in Canada for nearly all of our adult lives, and are now Canadian citizens. We feel especially good about our move to British Columbia from Ontario in 1972, for we are now benefitting from one of the most progressive programs to deal with the novel coronavirus on the planet, thanks especially to one incredible woman, Dr. Bonnie Henry, BC's medical officer.
Largely because of her experience, her knowledge, and her incredible personality, BC is now one of the safest large provinces/states on the planet. Please let this New York Times article tell her story: The Top Doctor Who Aced the Coronavirus Test. It is truly a "good news" story. It's hard to believe that if other jurisdictions paid attention to her, including all of those in Canada, the entire planet would be in a better position to survive Covid-19.
Bob
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I got tested today at a drive through center and should know in 48 hours. I doubt I have it but my doctor felt given my age I ought to. Will update.
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The following was written in the context of the US situation.
I applied for and was accepted into a university study which sends me anti-body test kits so I can test myself every week. I have to answer a short survey (6 questions) and submit an image of the test result each week. Their was no cost to me for this but I am committed to do this for an entire year. The blood test does require a finger prick but considering that I stick two #15 needles in my arm every other day this is not an issue.
I only did this after unsuccessfully pressuring my dialysis provider to perform testing. Dialysis centers (including mine) are known hot spots with many, many cases of the Wuhan virus; everyone has other preexisting conditions and most are over 65. You would think that they would want to get out in front of the issue they they are still in reactionary mode. So far 6 people at my dialysis center have died from the virus.
So I took things into my own hands; I have learned that this is something that I really needed to do for myself. I suggest that folks not allow yourself to sleepwalk through the healthcare system. You have to become fully engaged in your own healthcare. Sitting back and assuming that a 'white coat' person has your overall healthcare situation in hand is risky. many of these folks are overworked and tend to be myopically focus upon whatever specialty they do (ie. cancer, respiratory, heart, kidneys etc.). Becoming your own medical advocate is not easy, it requires you to invest significant time into discovery and education. Stay away from the moronic news media and instead directly access the medical resources. Above all, use common sense and always remember to think about what is driving the information you are accessing (i.e. money, politics, etc.). Even organizations like the NIH, for example, have an 'agenda'. This is not to say they publish misleading information but be aware why they do what they do and how they do what they do. Lastly, has been clearly demonstrated with the virus, the 'experts' have been wrong at virtual every turn. Part of this was due to the virus being a virus, a bigger part of this was due to it being turned into a political football.
Apparently we now live in a society where every single thing is politically weaponized. It makes me sad to see this happen. This virus was serious, as serious as other viruses in the past like SARS and HIV. Inappropriate workplace sexual behavior is also an important issue. And global climate change is something we need to be doing research on. Racism, while at lowest all-time level, is something that we all should be against.
But this bit of weaponizing these issues really needs to stop, it is only hurting the issues and not helping advance real improvements. I think folks need to recognize when are intentionally being scared to death for political purposes.
Don
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"But this bit of weaponizing these issues really needs to stop, it is only hurting the issues and not helping advance real improvements. I think folks need to recognize when are intentionally being scared to death for political purposes."
Its not just the USA that suffers we in the UK suffer from these politics as well. Last week one political party was shouting "Don't open the schools", now they are shouting" Why are you not opening the schools".
Unfortunately society now expects everything to be done at once if not sooner and do not realise that things can take time to set up, and if you do not have it, politicians cannot change the laws of physics eg if you have class sizes of 30 kids and reduce the size to 15 kids for social distancing where are you going to find the extra 100% space?
As Don says do your own research, use your common sense and pray to your god that you and yours come through this.
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Don wrote:
"Even organizations like the NIH, for example, have an 'agenda'.... Apparently we now live in a society where every single thing is politically weaponized. It makes me sad to see this happen. This virus was serious, as serious as other viruses in the past like SARS and HIV."
Whether we call it "the deep state" or politicization or whatever, bureaucratic organizations tend to become over time more focused on their own internal interests than the interests of the public they were originally established to serve. It's a little like rigor mortis. Once that process has begun, you're not likely to reverse it!
Whether we're talking about the EPA, State Department, Justice Department, FBI, police departments and the police unions, Congress, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook or whatever, self-preservation tends to becomes a primary concern for the organization. Unfortunately, this often comes without benefit to society generally and may even be detrimental.
Tom
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It's a shame that some members are now politicizing the present corona virus, so I figured I would get my two cents in
It can be a dangerous to try and generalize on the big-small government argument. Personally I respect a lot of what that stamp collecting president FDR did and think the winding back of some of the rules and regulations made during his period in office under more recent presidents of both major parties was a mistake.
So to the corona virus. I live in Thailand. It was one of the very first countries to have a case of the virus outside of China. We have a large tourist industry based on visitors from China. So let's look at the numbers relating to Covid-19 in Thailand. Today the Bangkok Post newspaper reported no new cases and no new deaths from the virus. Hopefully below the chart will show our total cases.
Now we have a population of 69 million here and a land mass about the size of France. We do not have the health spending levels of the West yet the numbers really put my own country, Britain, and the US to shame. Ah, you may be saying, the numbers can be fiddled. Well yes they can and the caveat that should be attached is that in Thailand there is no mass testing going on and testing is very selective. At a streamed Foreign Correspondents of Thailand meeting on Tuesday, the general, really unanimous, feeling was the numbers are correct. This is from a rather cynical bunch of foreign journalists. Two government doctors spoke, plus a retired Australian ambassador to Thailand, a foreign statistician and the head of a SE Asia news agency.
What did Thailand do that was so much different to Britain and the US. Well probably the most important thing was the politicians and generals, often the same thing here, handed the crisis over to the health officials who were on the epidemic committee formed after recent scares with MERS and SARS. From then on in they have pretty well kept in the background. The virus was beaten back in February and March. There were not large stocks of virus testing kits, but the policy was track and trace. Every case was followed up by testing and isolating contacts. If you think the Thai numbers look good, then look at Vietnam where the numbers are even better and they share a land border with China.
So what lessons are there for Western countries. For me it would be the thought that if we elect clowns we should expect a circus.
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"So what lessons are there for Western countries. For me it would be the thought that if we elect clowns we should expect a circus."
Well put! I actually DID laugh out loud!
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"FYI: I have just been notified that I tested positive for the Coronavirus virus. The VA has been unbelievably enempt in dealing with this situation.
Bob Armstrong"
I'm so sorry to hear that, Bob. Sending you best wishes for a VERY mild case.
We just went through the passing of a parent here (same town as Bob in Florida) and the hospitals were very strict about visitation and now they are ramping up becoming stricter because cases are again on the rise. Ditto for the Hospice. We are unable to have a regular funeral, so we will be having a virtual service with only the immediate family members actually present (9 of us - 10 is the limit). But after a vaccine is developed and travel is again safe we plan to have a memorial service up north for all the Canadian and Michigan friends and extended family.
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This isn't directly covid related, but I couldn't go to my Aunt's funeral last week because of these stupid limitations. She was a favorite aunt of mine and will be sorely missed. She didn't die of covid, but other issues.
On other note, my Daughter is nurse at a large Detroit hospital that dealt with a large number of covid patients. She took care of a lot. She has had several tests and negative every time. But she is only 30 and healthy so at lower risk. She is now telling me that that there are increased suicide attempts and now homicidal people being admitted to hospital. Some days she texts me that there is no or 1 new covid patient and 14 attempted suicides. Here in Michigan we are expected to have maybe 6000 covid deaths, but see an increase of 20,000 suicides. Most so far apparently from lockdown, lack of seeing friends, work, etc. So many overdose deaths today. It breaks my heart. We humans aren't designed to be alone.
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Hurrah! I am getting parole starting on the 29th of June.
Finally Scotland is starting to ease Lock Up (Sorry Lockdown).
England started to ease things last Monday.
All the countries of the United Kingdom went into lockdown on the same day in March.
Why are we in Scotland running behind?
This is entirely down to the power-crazed control freaks of the Scottish National Party!
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"This is entirely down to the power-crazed control freaks of the Scottish National Party!"
Control freaks or a sensible precaution against a second spike? Now there's a debate that only time will give us an answer to. Here in Thailand we had six new cases yesterday. Recent cases have been mostly Thais returning from abroad. What are the numbers like in Scotland Ian?
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WE were totally unprepared for the pandemic. Little testing capacity, insufficient Person Protection Equipment, hospitals dumping infected patients into care homes, everything had to be controlled nationally, allowing people into the country from all over the globe and too many exceptions to the rules and a complete lack of enforcement of the rules.
However we got the initial spike down and yesterday there were 2 deaths in Scotland from the virus.
There have been 4000+ deaths in total, half of which occurred in care homes and the vast majority of the others in the main urban centres.
Certain businesses were allowed to stay open throughout, others closed. When lockdown started to be eased certain types of shops were allowed to open with the smaller shops remaining closed. This made little sense as the smaller shops have lesser footfall and could better control the numbers and social distancing than the large DIY, Homeware, Garden Centres and supermarkets. It appeared to be the case that they could shout louder so they got their way and to hell with the smaller shops. If they were going to allow these big national chains to open they could have and should have allowed the smaller shops to open at the same time.
I did support the smaller shops prior and during this pandemic. The reason being is that their footfall is smaller, the probability of catching the virus is less.
Currently in the supermarkets the customers have to wear masks. Yet when you walk round NONE of the staff on the shop floor moving stock or stacking shelves are wearing masks. Totally illogical.
One must assess the risks of going out the house, why you are going out, where you are going, how you are getting there and back and pray to your god that you and yours survive this.
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Here in Manitoba we have got off very lightly, only 7 deaths and just over 300 infections and nobody currently in hospital. Stores are sanitizing carts and pin terminals and spacing is in effect.
From Sunday restaurants will be allowed to open for seated diners but spacing restrictions will have to be applied. Most other stores are already opened with restrictions on customer numbers and all have sanitizer stations at the entrances.
Travel isolation is being eased but we are unable to drive to the states but can fly.
Strangely more suicide deaths have occurred than from Covid. Mostly from overdoses.
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Here in Pennsylvania USA we’ve gone one step down to yellow which allows for restaurants to open with separated outdoor seating and most stores to open but you still cannot get a haircut. I finally had enough and sheared off my long Covid beard and gave myself a haircut. I put the half inch attachment on my trimmer and did my whole head. Shorter than my norm but it looks okay. We are supposed to go to green end of the month.
I see people I know on Facebook running out to do things the minute it opens up. Some states opened restaurants and people just needed to be there the very first day! We are still erring on the side of caution, we’ve done it this long so what’s a bit longer? Rather that than it being all for naught!
I fear all the recent “togetherness” of the protests will result in a massive spike, we will see!
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@Stockflyer
"Here in Michigan we are expected to have maybe 6000 covid deaths, but see an increase of 20,000 suicides."
This report, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tXIREDKFUZSIbURk6_TxzSvekp4xEJ1V/view
projects 2,039 deaths by suicide in Michigan for 2020, which includes 491 additional suicides relating to COVID-19
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Point of order:
Is it a lock down, or a loch down, in Scotland?
Asking for a friend.
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"Here in Michigan we are expected to have maybe 6000 covid deaths, but see an increase of 20,000 suicides"
"This report, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tXIREDKFUZSIbURk6_TxzSvekp4xEJ1V/view
projects 2,039 deaths by suicide in Michigan for 2020, which includes 491 additional suicides relating to COVID-19"
It seems everyone wants to drown themselves in so-called 'facts' and figures....
We will not know the true numbers related to all this until - just like every other pandemic in history - it has subsided and is for the most part,over.
My wife watches and listens to 'reports' on this throughout the entire day;
I prefer not to.....
God, family and friends (including those here) are much better things to dwell on in my opinion....and yes - that's all this is; one person's opinion.
**This is in NO way an attempt to tell anyone else what they should or shouldn't do or watch or listen to. (That's my 'disclaimer', which we seem to have need of in today's world now
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"It seems everyone wants to drown themselves in so-called 'facts' and figures....
We will not know the true numbers related to all this until - just like every other pandemic in history - it has subsided and is for the most part,over."
Quoted for truth.
The Wuhan virus study that I am participating in has recently seen a large jump in the positive antibody tests (percentage) in our state population; two weeks ago it was 3% but now it is 8-10%. But if you look into the increase, it has little to do with a ‘second wave’ or jump in the number of North Carolina people who have/had the virus. Instead it largely reflects an exponential increase in the number of test kits they have distributed in the last 10 days.
https://www.wakehealth.edu/Coronavirus/COVID-19-Community-Research-Partnership/Updates-and-Data
You can spin the same data in both directions. If my agenda was to scare people then I could report that the study was showing a huge uptick in the number of verified COVID cases in NC. If my agenda was to downplay the seriousness of the virus then I could report that the study is showing an increase due to the way the study has had an increase in test kit distribution.
I think people need to better understand why the information is being spun and the underlying agendas of the people who are reporting it. In my opinion the news industry has been struggling ever since the internet changed the way we live. We no longer rely upon a few newspapers or mainstream media television channels for our information; the number of ways we get our information has exploded.
Desperate times calls for desperate measures and this is what I think we are seeing now in the news media. They know that fear, division, and hatred will help cement their ‘base’ viewers and keep them clicking and supporting their advertisers. It does not matter what the current event is; racism, viruses, climate change, sexual abuse, the media does their best to generate fear and hatred. They need us to be mad at each other, it is more than just a question of making money it is how many of them are even surviving.
Don
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I just realized I hadn't posted an update on my situation. I did get tested and was negative. What I apparently had was an E coli infection, bad enough but not the big one. Thanks to all who expressed concern.
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What Mel said.
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Well the wonderful 'reopening' has turned in many places into a hot mess. There perhaps isn't much to say and maybe it's best not to. I posted my misgivings about rushing back on here and in a few cases was ridiculed for it. Haven't seen comments from those folks lately.
I hope it all works out.
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Oh Bob, get well soon! Have you told Mike and the club members? If not, I can email him for you.
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"
Well the wonderful 'reopening' has turned in many places into a hot mess. There perhaps isn't much to say and maybe it's best not to. I posted my misgivings about rushing back on here and in a few cases was ridiculed for it.?"
Here are the facts 42% of all deaths have occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Those populations make up .06% of the total US population. Instead of putting the entire country on lockdown when the vast majority wont even know they've acquired the virus, it would be much more effective and humane to lock down the nursing homes instead of destroying the means of production that care for the nursing homes. Any good Dr. will tell you, the cure cant be worse than the illness.
Moderator: Edited for unnecessary comments.
(Modified by Moderator on 2020-06-30 16:56:52)
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'Unnecessary comments'?
Never seen that on here before. Could it have been another reference to me as 'Doctor Snick'?
This could go in a lot of directions, none of them good. Let's all just move on.
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"... Here are the facts 42% of all deaths have occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities ..."
Here are a few more:
- Coupla million people work in those facilities.
- Those workers live with many more millions of people.
- Unchecked community spread infects those workers.
- Given varying incubation periods & asymptomatic transmission, even frequent (eg, weekly) testing of those workers will not stop the virus from reaching the people who live in the nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
- Zero testing & zero social distancing is a poor choice of policy.
People who think that the issue is whether/not they are willing to risk contracting a virulently contagious disease are, uh, proceeding on the wrong basis.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Yo Ikes!
"- Zero testing & zero social distancing is a poor choice of policy."
I agree with you on this but throwing 50 million people out of work is also a poor choice of policy.
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Unfortunately the leaders of countries were/are on a hiding to nothing.
No matter When How or What they did do or didn't do they were/are in a lose lose situation.
Remember there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Your own interpretation of the statistics may or may not help you come through this.
It is each individuals own personal responsibility to act in a way that protects themselves and protects society as a whole.
Unfortunately this has been ignored during this pandemic. Its all been about "it is my right to do as I please" and sod the rest of you.
Man's grip on the planet has always been by his fingernails and every pandemic in the past has proven that.
All you can do is educate yourself, isolate yourself and pray to your god that you and yours survive.
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01:22:05pm
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Then why do I pay taxes Ian? (he said with a smirk)
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One pays taxes for the government and local government to provide services to YOUR community.
They decide what services they will provide to the whole community and you will decide what services you will use.
If you do not use all the services that they provide then you can take satisfaction that your money is paying for a service that someone else may desperately require.(eg Blind, Deaf, Elderly, Unemployed etc etc etc)
Of course as you get older you may need the services that you do not use at the moment. You could say it is like insurance, its there if you need it.
As far as a one off situation like a pandemic you cannot expect any government to be properly prepared as you do not pay enough taxes to cover every contingency, you will have to pay for it after the event.
Governments cannot protect you 100% during a pandemic. It is up to YOU to take responsibility for YOUR actions and do YOUR duty to protect YOUR loved ones and YOUR community.
Governments can help get the men and materials in the right place at the right time and issue guidance on how to keep safe.
The responsibility to enact and follow that guidance is YOU and YOUR community.
The only alternative to control a pandemic is Martial Law.
You know, as well as I do, that can never happen in parliamentary democracies. Unfortunately that is why more people will die because of their and others actions before this pandemic is over....if ever!
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I might regret this, but a comment anyway... The US is going through a bad time right now. Because of the rush to get the economy up and running ASAP many people are dying. Of course it's possible that people would have died anyway if they didn't restart. As Ian said - You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't! I'm a Canadian so it really isn't up to me to complain about what the US does. I just hope the border stays closed!
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" I'm a Canadian..."
Where is that?
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"The US is going through a bad time right now. Because of the rush to get the economy up and running ASAP many people are dying."
My sympathy is with all countries going through a bad time right now.
This pandemic started way before now. People didn't take it seriously and amended their lives in sufficient quantities to make a different outcome to what we have today.
The W.H.O. told the world what to do but the politicians and the general public thought they could carry on as normal.
We have all seen the pictures of various mass gatherings prior to "lockdowns" and during "lockdowns", whether it be night clubs, street parties and even more stupid, mass demonstrations.
You reap what you sow.
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06:36:40pm
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Sorry Ernie, I didn't mean to confuse you with geography. Take a map of the US and go North, you'll eventually find Canada, go South and you find Mexico. Remember, North for Canada and South for Mexico. I know it's really confusing but I'm sure you can figure it out ... eventually!
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Harvey said:
"Because of the rush to get the economy up and running ASAP many people are dying."
Actually, Harvey, the problem in the US is the reluctance (refusal in some cases) by many to follow the social distancing and face mask guidelines as mayors and governors proceed with unlocking the economy in their individual jurisdictions. Overall, the the death rate has been dropping for weeks and continues to drop. The number of virus ICU patients continues to drop. Hospital stays for virus patients are still declining and, anecdotally, the severity of the hospitalized virus cases is declining. What is rising is the number of tests (500,000 per week now, I believe) and the associated number of positive tests. The CDC said this week that as many as 20 million Americans have already had the virus. (Robert Redfield: "...between 5%, 6%, 7%, 8% of the American public has experienced infection, whether they recognized it or not.")
The US media have focused on advertising revenue for years and tend to sensationalize stories whenever possible to maximize revenue. The virus story is no exception. Much of the story is never broadcast and what is broadcast isn't always accurate. It's a complicated story that is easily misunderstood by those in the media trying to present it.
I'm in Indiana and our state is doing great, as are many other "fly over" states in the middle of the country. The media's focus is elsewhere—as usual.
My wife and I began our virus isolation plan March 10 because of the extreme risk she faces should the virus find us. We're still avoiding all unnecessary contacts and excursions outside the home. My wife has learned how to teleconference with her doctors. We wholeheartedly endorse the re-opening of the economy as quickly as possible. We don't expect to see a vaccine until next year at the earliest. (As I have mentioned before, my wife was involved with setting up phase 3 trials for new cancer compounds for several years. So we understand what is involved.) We expect the number of treatment options (if not prophylactics) for patients to rise fairly quickly in coming weeks. The number of treatment options under development is astounding! We're looking forward to easing back into a more normal lifestyle this summer as more of these options become available to treat virus patients.
Tom
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"No matter When How or What they did do or didn't do they were/are in a lose lose situation.
Remember there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Your own interpretation of the statistics may or may not help you come through this. "
I’m beyond sad and disillusioned! The US is deeply embroiled in shameless politics and they are digging in deeper instead of saying, “hey we need to work together to solve this”. The same politicals who screamed the president shut down travel from China to protect us that he did this to be racist, now stand in front of the camera and say he didn’t respond fast enough! The same ones who encouraged the protests now are blaming the president for the resulting surge in cases. Every relief bill gets bogged down as politicals add garbage the president won’t agree to just to slow it down.
You get an overwhelming feeling of helplessness knowing that elected officials will put their own agendas ahead of the good and well-being of the citizens!
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It would be horrendous to think that the fear mongering and shut downs were politically motivated but frankly I am having a hard believing it is anything else.
Here is a simple question. The number of reported cases is growing but the number of deaths is not, what does this mean?
As a person who has an average of 200 medical procedures per year, I am pretty close to the action. Here is what I see…I have seen a surge in the number of people at the hospitals and clinics over the last 6 weeks. Just yesterday I was at the Vascular Surgeons and the place was packed. I was in the hospital last week and had to wait over 5 hours in Pre-Op due to how busy they were. I am now trying to get a new surgery date and they are telling me that they do not have a free space in the schedule for 4 weeks.
This is a stark comparison to February, March, April, and May when the same places were ghost towns. I was literally walking in the same day and getting surgeries. My cancer infusion center saw the number of folks getting their treatments drop to 50% of normal; half the folks who were getting chemo and radiation decided to stay home instead of getting their life saving treatments. For the first time in 6 years I was finding parking spaces right next to front the door and got incredible attention/care because the nurses and doctors had plenty of time and bandwidth for me.
But now the flood gates have opened and all of the procedures and treatments that has been put off for months are now getting done. So what does this mean for the COVID hospitalization numbers? It means that any and everyone who is going into the hospital or other treatment centers and is found to have had the virus gets counted for a COVID hospitalization even though they are actually in the hospital for something else. They may have had the virus back in March, but they are counted as a COVID hospitalization this week because they tested positive for the antibodies.
For example, here is my latest COVID test, it is a bit hard to see but it tests for both Immunoglobulin G and Immunoglobulin M. They have dialed this in to test for SARS-CoV-2, I put a few drops of blood into the test fixture, add the reagent, wait 10 minutes, and it tells me if I previously had the virus or if I currently have the virus. This test is similar to those being used in hospitals to test the flood of people who are now coming back in.
Follow the money, not the fear mongering.
Don
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You sure that's not a pregnancy test Don. Stay safe.
This following longish message came to me via a family member on FB, I have no idea who J Wade is or their qualifications but the words seem apt and sensible.
From a person called J.Wade
"Chicken pox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don't think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you're older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don't just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it's been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.
Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in your body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed-out they're going to have an outbreak. Maybe every time you have a big event coming up (school pictures, job interview, big date) you're going to get a cold sore. For the rest of your life. You don't just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it's been around for years, and been studied medically for years.
HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system, and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It was decades before viable treatments were developed that allowed people to live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, bone disease, liver disease, cognitive disorders, and some types of cancer. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.
Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.
So far the symptoms may include:
Fever
Fatigue
Coughing
Pneumonia
Chills/Trembling
Acute respiratory distress
Lung damage (potentially permanent)
Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)
Sore throat
Headaches
Difficulty breathing
Mental confusion
Diarrhea
Nausea or vomiting
Loss of appetite
Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)
Swollen eyes
Blood clots
Seizures
Liver damage
Kidney damage
Rash
COVID toes (weird, right?)
People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.
Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused deaths.
This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.
For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, for people who refuse to take even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:
How dare you?
How dare you risk the lives of others so cavalierly. How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as "getting it over with", when literally no one knows who will be the lucky "mild symptoms" case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30 year olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.
How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don't yet know, but with what we DO know, are smart enough to be scared of how easily this is spread, and recommend baseline precautions such as:
Frequent hand-washing
Physical distancing
Reduced social/public contact or interaction
Mask wearing
Covering your cough or sneeze
Avoiding touching your face
Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces
The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are, in my opinion. Not only does it flatten the curve and allow health care providers to maintain levels of service that aren't immediately and catastrophically overwhelmed; it also reduces unnecessary suffering and deaths, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus in order to come to a more full understanding of the breadth of its impacts in both the short and long term.
I reject the notion that it's "just a virus" and we'll all get it eventually. What a careless, lazy, heartless stance."
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"... I agree with you on this but throwing 50 million people out of work is also a poor choice of policy ..."
Contrary to popular wisdom, it is possible to set a value on human life and, in fact, we do it all the time.
Ages ago, Congress began requiring that agencies promulgating safety rules must estimate the total cost of implementation (eg, to private industry) and divide that by the number of lives saved, and compare that cost-per-save with the value of a human life.
Unsurprisingly, Congress was unwilling to pick a number, so they mandated that every agency pick a number, with the result that the value of a human life varies quite a bit; a typical number is U$D 5m per.
If you put 50 million people out of work and supporting them cost U$D 100,000 each, the cost of implementation is U$D 5 trillion dollars. (We'll leave aside the fact that the money is spent inside the US economy, so the nature of 'cost' gets kinda soft.)
If you spend U$D 5T and save 1 million lives, the cost per save is U$D 5m per life saved, which is right around the common statutory pass/fail point. Obviously, one can argue:
- that the number of lives to be saved is less than one million, or
- that a few months of income support does not look like one hundred thousand dollars per person, or
- that there are 'only' 30 million unemployed to date.
I find these calculations a little silly, because I reject the dichotomy: letting an epidemic run rampant to kill hundreds of thousands of people (and sickening millions more) will, uh, dampen aggregate demand.
That, in turn, will reduce corporate earnings and, in turn, step on the stock market ... and reduce the amount of money that would eventually be spent out of all those 401-k accounts.
So 'saving' the U$D 5T you would have spent supporting the 50 million unemployed does not get you to zero, because the economic damage of an epidemic run rampant is not zero.
I submit that you are going to be out a few trillion no matter what you do.
My own guess is that people are worth saving, even if the only thing we have in common with them is citizenship & species.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
Ian, not my words but they resonated with me.
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How dare you? Sounds a lot to me like a sudden onset of medical morality.
For years hundreds of thousands of other people have been walking around immunocompromised and the majority of society did not care. No one cared about going to the grocery store while they were sick with the flu or a cold. No one was concerned about throwing their diapered baby into the grocery store cart and leaving feces on it. No one cared about wiping down the gas pump handle. No one cared that their kids had snot running down their noses and sent them to school anyway. No one cared about going to work sick, even healthcare workers showed up ill. All these things put our lives in danger but no one cared.
But now apparently it is the time to ask ‘How Dare You? The hypocrisy society is now showing is a bit overwhelming from the chair of this 7 year immunocompromised person. I guess I could take a similar stand and say ‘welcome to my world’.
Don
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Aye Don people can be dirty, filthy, self centred and arrogant. They do as they please.
BUT
Not everybody!
There are some wonderful, caring, unselfish, brilliant people out there.
It takes all sorts and I never tar everyone with the same brush!
"How Dare YOU!" Could be used in all these circumstances you describe. It could be used for littering, queue jumping, cycling on the pavement and almost anything else.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Ikey,
That sounds really, really good. But...society is ordered in such a way where everyone has his or her part to play and role to contribute. How many millions of people do you have to put out of work before society itself unravels?
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Retired Ap. Book Mod, Pres Golden Gate Stamp Club, Hi Tech Consultant
02 Jul 2020
05:45:58pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Well said Sheepshanks Vic. I was reading the same post in another platform and was thinking of posting it here.
Now here are some sobering facts, from a friend in France who developed a nasty bout of Covid-19 in OCTOBER 2019. Just tested it now, as they were not testing prior suspicious cases until now, and more interesting, a routine blood test taken during a routine check up 3 days earlier than her symptoms in October 2019 showed nothing.
Source of infection, unknown.
She ended up critical on ventilator at home, and was bed ridden for a month. Turns out, every person she was in touch with at the time also had the virus (they all thought it was the flu) and these people traveled to Germany and the UK among other places, which is where they showed their "flu symptoms". They, and those they were in contact with, are now being tested for Covid-19 antibodies, for scientific research purposes.
So we are finding a lot more about the virus spread now, and anyone who does not take the minimum precautions today...when we know how wide spread it is... for themselves and for others, is either a fool or a potential willful killer.
The virus is out of control and a minimum amount of precautionary steps is all that we ask...those of us at risk, and anyone else!
Want to be scared...just watch the multi-part series on the "black death" on Amazon, Netflix, or other TV channels.
The sooner we put a stop to the spread, the sooner a real recovery can occur..otherwise we will all be like Florida, Texas and other places...having to stop, restart, stop and restart again any potential economic recovery. We have somehow wasted 3 months by half measures, which will not be effective.
rrr...
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re: Coronavirus 2
None of you are medical doctors. Go back to your stamp albums.
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Retired Ap. Book Mod, Pres Golden Gate Stamp Club, Hi Tech Consultant
02 Jul 2020
06:17:32pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Ernie, curious..how many active new cases a day in your home state of Florida will it take to bend your mindset? 10,000 (today's numbers), 20,000 ?
I often heard the expression, just saving one person was worth the effort.
Today's rounded death numbers per John Hopkins Center's stats ): >10 million cases worldwide. >500,000 deaths. US numbers: >2.5 million. >125,000 deaths.
I don't have to be a doctor to understand these numbers.
rrr...
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Ralph,
I am working from home and only go out to buy groceries. I go at 7:00 am when there is no one else in the store. I'm doing my part. I've read the accounts of the horrible delirium and terrifying hallucinations. To be honest, it scares the $#% out of me. BUT....my wife goes to work every single day and interacts with people and then comes home to me...is all my hand washing a waste of time? My daughter comes and goes about her business. Were not retired people Ralph. Life goes on. Ok... thought experiment... YOU, Ralph, have just been made emporer of the U.S. what would you have everyone do? Should my wife quit her job? Can we move in with you?
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06:46:08pm
re: Coronavirus 2
"How many millions of people do you have to put out of work before society itself unravels?"
The question possibly should be "How many millions of people have to die before society itself unravels?"
Thank God the borders are still closed. Something has to be done before this mess is totally out of control.
I know I'm going to be really crapped on for my comment, but I really think human lives are more important than jobs, at least for a while until this mess can be fixed!
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Harvey,
The point you and others keep missing is that jobs = human lives.
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07:45:22pm
re: Coronavirus 2
I understand your point, I really do - suicide rates are up because of people being out of work, possibly violence is up for the same reason. But speaking for myself I'd much rather be alive not working, than die with a job!
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re: Coronavirus 2
""How many millions of people do you have to put out of work before society itself unravels?""
"The point you and others keep missing is that jobs = human lives."
Does it not all come down to the dreadful logic of necessity, the classic case being the shipwrecked sailors far from land, no food. To survive they eat each others limbs, but sooner or later the limbs run out. Then who dies so that some may live.
The same can be applied to the current situation because if people stay at home and isolate then many will survive but if everyone carries on regardless that number will be far less.
Yes jobs will be lost, businesses will close, poverty will run rampant but ultimately those jobs will come back. Someone will step in to fill the gap and start those firms again. (this is where the rich get richer).
Better that we try and stay away from crowds, wear a mask when out around people and stay home if exposed, lessen the number of contacts as much as possible. Short term pain for a long term gain.
If I can draw a sort of comparison, the USA and many other countries went through the bad days of the depression but arose leaner and stronger. The USA in particular created jobs and came out as a far better nation to become a world superpower.
I accept that it is easier for some folks than others but we all have a part to play in overcoming this pandemic. We can only do our best as individuals.
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re: Coronavirus 2
It has to be a balance between economic well-being and public health. The extremes of either will not be very palatable. In February and early March the UK government was basing its policy on a 'herd immunity strategy' which was on the extreme end of economic well-being coming first. If they had stuck to it the UK would eventually have come out of the crisis with a smaller, leaner, fitter and younger population. The downside would have been the early loss of the old and infirm. Fortunately the government made a u-turn in mid March once some of the modelling showed 500,000 deaths due to the virus. That has probably saved 400,000 lives. To put this in perspective Covid-19 has now killed more Brits than the WW2 blitz because of an extremist policy in February and early March.
Just to expand slightly on the 'herd immunity strategy', it's a Darwinian derived idea of the old and sick animals falling off the end of the herd to be eaten by lions and hyenas. Not a very pleasant thought. We can achieve herd immunity, but it's by vaccination. That is why we had a herd immunity to smallpox. Once it was removed from the wild immunity was no longer needed. Much the same happened with polio.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Unfortunately this is a pandemic.
It means people will die. Not just by the disease but by other methods, be it suicide, not treated for other ailments or starvation.
Man is so arrogant that they think they have the knowledge to beat anything that comes along.
Mother Nature knows otherwise.
At the moment the human race is being culled whether we like it or not.
Yes there are certain things one can do to reduce the risk BUT it is up to each individual to decide what level of risk they are prepared to take and accept the consequences of their actions.
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re: Coronavirus 2
"... is all my hand washing a waste of time? ..."
This sort of black'n'white digital thinking is not helpful.
If you touch your wife - or anything that she touches - washing your hands will reduce (not eliminate) the viral load to which you are exposed.
Less is better.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
"Digital thinking"
That's cute. I gotta remember that one.
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re: Coronavirus 2
"…Man is so arrogant that they think they have the knowledge to beat anything that comes along.
Mother Nature knows otherwise…"
Agreed. Risk is not always the enemy, sometimes the enemy is the solution. There is a good chance that the shutdowns have only delayed the inevitable while at the same time have added more pain, misery, and deaths. In this case my opinion is that we failed at balancing our willingness to assume risk with the business of living. Risk is comprised of two things; likelihood and impact. Due to the fear mongering and perhaps for political reasons, I think risk decisions were made incorrectly. Instead of targeting and of concentrating on those who were truly being impact (seniors and those with pre-existing conditions) those in control decided to impact the entire society. The impact to younger, healthy people is nothing near the same as the most vulnerable population.
I guess they could use the excuse that in the beginning they did not know for sure that impact would not be ‘one size fits all’. But that excuse is no longer applicable, we now know that for younger healthy people the risk is a small fraction of older and those in frail health. Yet the thinking remains ‘close down everything’. For example, a local university (Clemson) reported that 1/3 of the football team had tested positive for COVID. Of the 37 players who tested positive half had were asymptomatic and there have been no hospitalizations. The total number of COVID related deaths in the US for those under 30 is only a few hundred.
The younger people are the ones who we needed to be leading the charge in developing herd immunity. But yet we are still seeing sweeping close downs without talking about who is actually being impacted. It make no sense to me unless the real reason for the shut downs is political.
Don
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re: Coronavirus 2
Perfectly articulated 51Studebaker. At this point anyone who doesn't think the shut downs are, in large part, politically motivated is in fantasy land.
One week people are saying the sky is falling and we're all gonna die because people are at the beach and then the next week the very same people are applauding the "courage and patriotism" of all the idiots congregated together to throw rocks and burn police cars.
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Well Ernie.. nearly all the pictures I've seen of people frolicking at the beaches in your neck of the woods show almost none of them wearing masks or keeping distance. They're all partying like it's pre Pandemic.
My college aged son took part in demonstrations when they first started. (He got tear gassed twice.) He said nearly all of them wore masks. That tells me the source of resurgence is not the Left, it's the selfish fools on your side of the divide.
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Snick,
I dont know what your son has been doing but I'm not talking about anyone out of doors keeping safe distances and wearing masks. I'm referring to the lawless, riotous mobs that caused so much destruction to private property. Was your son involved in those "demonstrations"?
Oh, and so now you can see a crowd of people on television and you can ascertain their political leanings and on what side of the political divide they fall? Wow! You really are good.
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re: Coronavirus 2
" That tells me the source of resurgence is not the Left, it's the selfish fools on your side of the divide."
We have an old saying in Old Caledonia:-
"It takes one to know one"
Throughout the world we have governments of ALL political persuasions. NONE of them have been successful fighting this.
Covid will kill YOU.
Whatever your political ideals, whoever you want to blame, makes no difference, covid is here to stay,
catch it and you may.........DIE.
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"It takes one to know one."
Ian,
Once again your sage wisdom shines through. I always know I'm making way too much sense when someone has to resort to name calling.
Ian, you and your wife stay safe!
Ernie
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Ernie:-
I am like you I stay at home, I shop carefully by using the small local shops (their footfall is a lot less than the supermarkets), and always wear a mask. There is sanitizer in the car for when I come out the shop.
My wife went back to work on Monday. She travels by bus, she waits longer for a specific bus as it does not come from the city and has less passengers, the first thing she does when she arrives home is take off the mask, throw it into the bin and then scrubs her hands.
We keep in touch with family by 'phone and there is no contact with others. It is not easy to live this way but I do not want to end up looking at the growing potatoes from below.
Keep you and your family safe,
Ian.
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"... anyone who doesn't think the shut downs are, in large part, politically motivated is in fantasy land ..."
My fantasy land is 3 miles from Elmhurst Hospital, where refrigerated 40' trailers were parked, side-by-side, and filling-up with dead bodies when people began doing the silly things (avoiding unnecessary errands, donning masks, et al) that brought the infection, hospitalization, and death rates down, and down, and down.
The idea that you can let the virus run rampant thru children & young adults without consequence (dead adults, long-term lung damage) is the politically-motivated fantasy.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Ikey,
That's because your Democratic leadership failed you. They spent more time focusing on the healthy rather than protecting the frail. See 51Studebaker's previous post. We have had it much better down here in Florida.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Ikey,
www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20200513/coronavirus-florida-desantis-florida-nursing-homes-safer-than-other-states%3ftemplate=ampart
Cuomo needs to do more to protect the most vulnerable. He needs to stop worrying about healthy young people hanging out at Jones Beach and Fire Island.
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re: Coronavirus 2
"Cuomo needs to do more to protect the most vulnerable. He needs to stop worrying about healthy young people hanging out at Jones Beach and Fire Island."
Nation-wide
"As shown, deaths in young people (from babies to college students) are almost non-existent. The first age group to provide a substantial contribution to the death toll is 45-54 years, who contribute nearly 5% of all coronavirus deaths. More than 80% of deaths occur in people aged 65 and over. That increases to over 92% if the 55-64 age group is included."
Why is everyone still talking about sweeping remediation's for all age groups?
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I live in a county that has like 36 active cases top to bottom...what are the odds? And yet people are doing the right thing. Meanwhile the sardines 90 miles South in N.Y.C. seem more cavalier about things !
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re: Coronavirus 2
I am not sure that geographic location is the best perspective and I know that the virus does not care if the person is a conservative or a liberal. I think that the best delineation is age and pre-existing conditions.
And in regard to the COVID numbers I posted above that note those with pre-existing conditions are not shown. It seems obvious that the older populations have more pre-existing conditions. I spent time looking for information on the younger people that have succumbed to COVID and have not yet been able to find a case of a healthy (no pre-existing conditions) person under 30 who has died. I assume there may be some out there but they would most certainly be rare.
So the key metric for decision makers about shutting things down and setting other restrictions to know is, how many HEALTHY (no pre-existing conditions) people are dying from this virus? Has anyone seen data on the number of healthy (no pre-existing conditions) people dying from COVID? I have not seen this metric yet people have no problem fear mongering, scaring everyone, and making judgments on young people in protests or at the beach. Even worse, state and local politicians in the US shut down an entire country without knowing how it was actually impacting the majority of the population. This was not and is not intellectually honest in my opinion.
They should be focused on those who are actually at risk. Cancer kills over 500,000 US people each year including many who do not know they even have it. No one would tolerate it if we ordered everyone in a state to undergo chemo and radiation as a preventative measure. Instead we target our efforts to the populations who are likely to have it.
Don
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02:12:23pm
re: Coronavirus 2
Yes, the majority of the people dying are older, but where are they getting it from? Maybe if they kept the older people in total lockup they would be safer, no contact with younger relatives! Lock 'um up in a cell with no contact with the outside world and slide a bit of food under the door occasionally. If they happen to be bed ridden, well ... I guess we just let them die! Until the vaccine arrives, if it does, we must try to keep the numbers of infected down in all age groups. Yes, you have a right to work, but let's be sensible about it, please!
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Reductio ad absurdum argument. No one said to 'Lock 'um up in a cell with no contact with the outside world'.
I have been immunocompromised for years. I have carried a mask with me for the last 7 years. I avoid crowds and practiced social distancing as much as possible for the last 7 years. I carry a baggie with 80% alcohol soaked paper towels with me for the last 7 years. I have dedicated clothes and shoes which I only wear in germy locations, I strip down in the garage and never bring them into my house. Yes, I avoided groups of children, those who were ill or sick, and avoid some public places at times.
The solution is to focus on the pre-existing condition folks, have them limit their exposure and take the right precautions. There was a small window where the world could have prevented this virus from spreading but the Chinese Communist party made sure that did not happen. Trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted is just stupid. The best we could have done was focus the efforts on the people who are actually at risk, not force the entire world into hiding in their homes.
Many folks are arguing that there is a now second wave or now it is spreading. If this is so then they are making my argument; we only delayed the spread. I asked months ago ‘how long will we be sheltering?’ There is still no vaccination for SARS years later. There is no vaccination for HIV decades later. There is an annual flu vaccination which is hit and miss each year. So how long do the shut downs last? Why not target those who are really at risk and allow other to go about their business?
Don
Edit: Remember the original justification for shutting everything down? We were told that it was because the hospitals systems would be overwhelmed. Then we were told that masks would not help. Funny how this is all forgotten now.
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'I'm referring to the lawless, riotous mobs that caused so much destruction to private property. Was your son involved in those "demonstrations"?
Ernie you really need to watch something other than Fox News. Antifa is not burning down the country.
I felt the need to clarify this although it doesn't of course matter to you but it does to me. My son was NOT rioting, looting or damaging property. He is a fine young man with a responsible job who felt very deeply about the death of George Floyd and others. Again, he and most others there took the trouble to wear a mask. I make no judgement on all the folks crowding beaches and bars without masks other than to assume they are thoughtless. I don't think that's much of a stretch.
I intend this to be my last comment on this thread. I respect the opinions of those with whom I disagree but I don't apparently share some of the values expressed on here. I believe in prioritizing human life, not jobs or the 'economy'. I wish you all well.
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Uh, Snick...
I've not met your son so I wont cast aspersions but to suggest that the riots and lawlessness over the past couple of months and that continue today are somehow a figment of Fox News is just plain wrong. From a leading insurance industry trade journal:
"Rioting that erupted in cities across the United States after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd in Minneapolis may rival the 1992 Los Angeles riots to become the most costly civil disorder in United States history."
Yes sir...its a major problem and a really big deal. Lots of families lost life savings and businesses.
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Shutting down the economy briefly in order to allow time for the health system to gear up for fighting this virus made sense, but federal agencies along with many cities and some states were totally unprepared. It took a few weeks to get our act together, but we achieved the goal of "flattening the curve." At that point, we were still learning how to deal with the virus, but we did have more flexibility and more options on how to proceed.
The virus wasn't going to go away. We all knew that (or should have). We simply slowed the inevitable spread of the virus and began focusing on avoiding health care system stress while the development of treatment options, prophylactics and vaccines got underway in earnest.
Anything beyond that level of control made little sense because the cost of doing so in terms of destroying businesses, jobs, families, the social/community fabric and individual lives of those who couldn't or wouldn't seek treatment for other health issues or were otherwise suffering and didn't survive, was too great. Those are just the obvious personal issues.
Here in the US, there is also the trillions in new debt that will unfairly burden future generations. I suppose the same is true across much of the globe. And then there are the opportunity costs.
Just imagine how much better off we would be in the US had the federal government, state governors and city mayors not mismanaged this to such a degree. They all had expensive plans (courtesy of the taxpayers!) sitting on their shelves to guide them through various types of crises and still many failed. Too many federal agencies as well as state and local leaders have demonstrated they were not up to the challenge and didn't have the qualified staff they needed in order to deal with this crisis. The economy was in great shape, but not now. Hopefully, we'll be better served next time!
Tom
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06:09:54pm
re: Coronavirus 2
My very last comment on this topic: It really sounds like a lot of you care more about $$$$ than lives. What exactly is a human life worth, or does it depend on the age of the person? This thread is getting really nasty! Maybe it's time we all got back to stamps instead of politics!
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"Too many federal agencies as well as state and local leaders have demonstrated they were not up to the challenge and didn't have the qualified staff they needed in order to deal with this crisis."
Yup! We had folks in charge of public health that had no public health experience! Our senior medical officer was an obstetrician who had to quit for breaking lockdown rules. Her replacement is a General Practitioner! Sheer stupidity!
How they got the job god knows!
We also had a committee of 50+ scientists "advising" the government. There were opposing views within that committee so it was a no-brainer that the politicians didn't know who to listen to and they made some poor decisions. (The best committee is a committee of one.)
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"This thread is getting really nasty! Maybe it's time we all got back to stamps."
If you dont like it just stop reading it.
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The idea that the virus should be allowed to run rampant thru younger people because they do not die like flies ignores:
- some young(er) people suffer catastrophic damage, and the more the virus runs rampant thru young(er) people the more catastrophic damage we will see, and live with, and pay for; and,
- some young(er) people come into contact with the more-vulnerable people (live with them, work with them, take care of them), so the more the virus runs rampant thru young(er) people the more that "just protect the vulnerable" is betrayed as an illusion; and,
- there is no free virus. You can pay to fight the virus, or you can pay to live with the primary & secondary & tertiary costs of the virus run wild.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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"Throughout the world we have governments of ALL political persuasions. NONE of them have been successful fighting this."
Well let's name a few that have been quite successful and have governments of various political persuasions. New Zealand, Vietnam and Thailand which was the first country to report a case outside of China. "Ah", you may well say, "New Zealand is an island so it's easier for them." Then again Britain is an island and we have had a far worse outcome than Germany which isn't.
If it was all down to the individual's response then we could quite rightly blame the individuals for their own bad health. But 30,000 more people in British care homes have died compared to last year, and that's before the new winter flu strain makes it to Europe. Can we blame the old people for the government allowing Covid-19 to run wild in the care homes?
At times like this we need a good government response. This is why we live in societies and pay taxes. Of course we can't live in a bubble and risk is always there, but to ignore the problem like the president of Brazil is doing is a recipe for disaster. Which government would you prefer live under, New Zealand or Brazil?
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Harvey said:
"It really sounds like a lot of you care more about $$$$ than lives."
The solutions to complex problems are rarely black and white and they always come with unintended and unexpected consequences. Many decision makers have difficulty identifying, much less analyzing, the secondary and tertiary consequences a pandemic presents. These individuals were never equipped to tackle complex problems. Unfortunately, such skills are not a prerequisite for our political office holders or the managers of bureaucracies they are elected to oversee.
The virus and its impacts involve both the economy and lives. In the US alone, over 40 million people have filed for unemployment. Many of those people have already begun returning to work. Others will be returning to their jobs in the coming months. Others, due to the permanent closure of thousands of small businesses as well as bankruptcies/restructuring of larger companies, no longer have jobs to return to.
The people most affected by this virus lockdown are members of lower income families. The longer the various state and local lockdowns drag on, the more these families are going to suffer. The more they suffer, the more lives will be lost for a variety of reasons. Those of us who are retired or work in relatively secure jobs have much less to worry about. It's easier for us to overlook the pain and suffering of those less fortunate victims of the lockdowns. It's all too easy for us to focus on the risks we personally face from the virus and at the same time fail to comprehend how the damage to the economy this summer could affect all of us in one way or another a few months or a few years down the road. It's those damned unexpected consequences that will haunt us for years to come.
Tom
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This thread as a whole is a perfect example of every government's reaction to the pandemic around the globe;
NO-ONE is an expert on this - EVERYONE'S opinion on how to handle it on a national/global scale is different from the next.
You have all PROVEN this in this very discussion thread.
EACH of us would react/respond in different ways if any of us were in charge on a large-scale situation.
Human lives matter.
Human suffering - for whatever reason - matters.
The one thing that matters MOST in all this is the one thing that is frowned upon talking about here;
GOD and trust in HIM alone.
Why? Because after 2000 years, He's still intimidating people.
I've voiced whats been on my heart and mind....back to stamping now and you can continue your "discussion."
As Jacob Marley so aptly stated - "...look to see me no more..."
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re: Coronavirus 2
To paraphrase Bacon...'People prefer to believe what they prefer to be true.'
Don
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re: Coronavirus 2
Just plotted out the daily new infection trend for the U.S. from June 16 to July 3.
Looks a lot like Mar 17 to April 3.
It's about to get real. Again.
Hospitalization uptick is next.
Then deaths.
You can't bullshit a virus.
Full stop.
The only mystery is whether Florida or Arizona will be the next epicenter.
This is not an opinion. I am using the 3-day rolling averages for the US and the EU from Feb 24, 2020 to Jul 3, 2020 for comparison. The U.S is, once again, in an explosive exponential growth phase. You may not like it, but it is.
Hopefully the mortality rate will be lower due to better understanding of best practices, but hospitalization rates are likely to strain hospital capacity in the very near future, especially those states with the most permissive re-opening protocols.
This isn't the second wave. We are still in the first wave. It didn't go away because some politicians said it did.
Please try to continue your social distancing, etc. We WILL get a vaccine eventually, but remember the weakest among your "herd" and do what you can to keep them safe until the vaccine is available.
I'm not advocating all or nothing policies. Just keep using common sense. I don't wear a mask in the parking lot of the grocery, but I put one on before I go inside. I make a large order weekly that is delivered directly to my car's trunk without going in, but I will go in (with a mask) and pick up a few random items.
I'm able to work from home most of the time, but occasionally I have to go in to the central office and I take precautions.
To paraphrase Ikey Pikey: My father dodged U-boats in the North Atlantic and Panzers on D-Day. I can be a little flexible.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Here is the US COVID deaths March 1 to July 1.
The trend is for evident; the fact that the number of reported cases is way up and that the number of deaths is dropping is good news.
Deaths are not up for two primary reasons.
First and most obvious is that more testing is occurring. Currently the US is doing 600,000 tests a day while in April/May it was 100,000 per day; a 6 fold increase. Additionally the use of antibody testing is now widespread and anyone who previously had COVID is now being counted for the first time.
Secondly there is a significant shift in whom the virus is infecting. Back in the springtime the medium age of reported COVID cases was 65 years old; today it is 35 years old. In most states the age group of 20 to 44 now account for nearly half of all cases being reported.
The history of this virus is that is only kills older adults with preexisting conditions. The only reason that COVID deaths might go up from here is if the virus suddenly changed and became lethal to the younger population. (I know of no one who is predicting that to happen.)
Those with pre-existing conditions do indeed need to continue to take precautions and be extremely careful. For older people without pre-existing conditions the most preventative thing you can do is to remember to never touch your face until you have washed or sanitized your hands. Quality masks are helpful if you are living with others (they should be the ones wearing the masks). Limit your chance of exposure by staying close to home and away from the public. This does not mean that you cannot see the family at all, it means that they can come over to see you but everyone stays on the front porch/six feet away and the grandkids do not climb into your lap. No hugging or kissing. Family members should be wearing good quality masks, no bandanas or homemade masks. (Some homemade masks are done right but many are not, why risk it?)
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/immunocompromised.html
Medical facilities and nursing homes should be changing the air handler filters daily, installing UV devices, and isolating their population from contact with anyone who has COVID. If the US had done these three simple things back in March, the vulnerable older adults with preexisting condition would have seen far fewer deaths. I think the moronic politicians and state officials have finally figured out to not be sending active COVID patients back into nursing homes but are still are not mandating air handler maintenance or the addition of UV devices.
The last thing that we can count on increasing in the US is the media and politician negative rhetoric and fear mongering; this is the election season after all.
Don
Edit: There is virtually no press or discussion on UV sterilization. This is a very effective method for killing pathogens in the air and is widely known by anyone who has an immunocompromised person in the house or facility. It is not an expensive remediation and makes a great present for any susceptible person with pre-existing conditions.
https://www.amazon.com/Pure-UV-Germicidal-photocatalytic-conditioning/dp/B07BPHD2LM/ref=sr_1_12?dchild=1&keywords=uv+disinfection+light&qid=1593943439&sr=8-12
I recommend that a device like this be installed by a professional although a handy person can do it.
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re: Coronavirus 2
"... The history of this virus is that is only kills older adults with preexisting conditions ..."
If one ignores the not-so-older people who, for example, do not go to the ER when they are having a heart attack because the ER is overrun with virus cases, and the ER staff are falling ill. (That hospital admissions for heart attacks fell dramatically during March-April in the NY-NJ-CT area is well-documented.)
And if one ignores the fact that, once the virus is running rampant amongst young people who will survive their hospitalization, postponing "elective" surgeries means that people who need surgery are not getting surgery. ("Elective" means "scheduled", it does not mean unimportant.)
There is no free virus. There is no protecting only the nursing home patients while the virus runs rampant thru the broader community.
You can fight the virus in the bars (by closing them), or you can fight the virus in people's homes (by removing & isolating the infected to dedicated facilities) ... which of these is faster & cheaper?
Or you can let the tsunami wave build, and think that you are going to catch that wave at the doors of the nursing homes, the assisted living facilities, the retail stores, the apartment & office building elevators, the pubic transit trains & buses, and all of the other places where someone can get infected and then infect someone else.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
Brechinite,
The UV-C wavelength in the 200 to 280 nm is the most effective spectrum. NOTE: UV-C wavelengths can cause damage/injury if used incorrectly. Do not look directly at a UV-C light and do not expose your skin directly under UV-C wavelengths for any period of time. UV-C germicidal lights are mounted or installed in a way to avoid direct human contact. You can see them in most hospitals mounted high on the walls near the ceiling and pointing upwards; they are often found near an air flow.
Don
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re: Coronavirus 2
Thanks for the info Don.
I can't remember what the wavelength that was used on me when I had psoriasis. The treatment involved being placed in a full sized cabinet and blasted with UV. The first treatment was for 10 seconds and every second day thereafter the time was increased.
I was given protective eye wear but I must admit I used the protection but I kept my eyes closed just in case.
UV can be dangerous, during the treatment I had a night of agony as it felt like my hips had been micro-waved. I had expected that might happen as I was made aware by others that it had happened to them.
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re: Coronavirus 2
"Here is the US COVID deaths March 1 to July 1.
Image Not Found
The trend is for evident; the fact that the number of reported cases is way up and that the number of deaths is dropping is good news.
Deaths are not up for two primary reasons. "
Edited by request:
Deaths are not up because they are a trailing factor. Increasing hospital admissions come first, a few weeks from now. Then you can look at deaths a few weeks after that to make a judgement. Most Americans are (sadly) statistically illiterate, so it's not unsurprising that someone would say something that this.
But just wait a few weeks. Just like last time (in early April). The numbers look bad again. Very bad. Make a note to check the death rate in 4 weeks. I personally believe that there are reasons for hope (better early treatments, for example), but in areas where the hospitals are overwhelmed, it will not be pleasant for some folks, sad to predict.
And yes, I sure hope I'm wrong this time. I wasn't last time.
A lot of our fellow citizens depend on us to see this threat clearly.
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Retired Ap. Book Mod, Pres Golden Gate Stamp Club, Hi Tech Consultant
06 Jul 2020
01:58:22am
re: Coronavirus 2
"Deaths are not up because they are a trailing factor. Increasing hospital admissions come first, a few weeks from now. Then you can look at deaths a few weeks after that to make a judgement. You clearly have NO IDEA what the data means. That's OK. Most Americans are (sadly) statistically illiterate, so it's not unsurprising that someone would say something that this.
But just wait a few weeks. Just like last time (in early April) when you told me I was an alarmist, my response is the same. The numbers look bad again. Very bad. Make a note to check the death rate in 4 weeks. I personally believe that there are reasons for hope (better early treatments, for example), but in areas where the hospitals are overwhelmed, it will not be pleasant for some folks, sad to predict."
Well said Lars. This is a pandemic caused by a new and deadly virus, not a seasonal low grade cold or flu, and we have to stop treating it like a mild seasonal annoyance!
Just to highlight what is happening in states that relaxed their Covid-19 quarantine rules early, just look at these selected charts (of new cases by day). And then let us unfortunately look at their death rates in a month or so.... I am afraid the numbers will exceed even the most worrisome estimates of experts (like Dr Fauci)quote: I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around.
Do you really think we can restart the economy if we don't get the surge in cases under control? It will shut again, and not by government regulation, when it is too dangerous for young and old to resume life as normal. Meanwhile, it is also sickening and killing our front line care givers!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/texas-coronavirus-cases.html
https://azbigmedia.com/business/covid-19-cases-in-arizona-surpass-98000-total-deaths-top-1800/
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne-florida-coronavirus-saturday-july-4-20200704-e5lqdwvuhrcb5f2ynyplzprtrq-story.html
etc...
Rather than accept mandatory mask wearing and distancing..the easy steps... we could end up eventually with a mandatory nationwide quarantine in place, because doing it at random county by county, city by city or state by state will not work unless we stop all travels? Look outside the US...it has been done!
rrr...
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re: Coronavirus 2
I think this thread reflects the clash between negativity and positivity; and negativity has won.
Vince asked me a few days ago ‘why do you bother here’? Over the last 6-7 years I found that maintaining a positive perspective was critical for my survival. Being told that you have a 95% of dying in the 6 months helped me understand the value of a positive perspective. For me, positivity is a choice I made as part of a survival strategy. It is a choice that I have been told by countless medical professionals saved my life.
The media and politicians have all been working overtime in pushing negativity down our throats; it does not matter what the topic may be negativity is the order of the day. I have been trying to inject a bit of what I learned about optimism into the community but this appears to be problematic. To me it feels like there is little room or tolerance for balance or positivity in this community. You are literally screamed at that your positivity is WRONG and/or told that you are advocating everyone should get an illness and suffer.
I think some positive folks here refrain from posting because they know they will get push back. I truly appreciate others like Brechinite, who while we sometimes do not agree, often uses humor in threads to lighten the negative tone and tenor. Of course the Mods cannot address the negativity, there is no rule about being upbeat or having balance.
For some of us, the sky is grey much more than it is blue but we try to persist in the fight against the darkness of negativity. This fight is hard enough on a daily level but adding push back for being positive in a hobby community makes it intolerable. So like Vince and others I will sit back down and not bother; those who want to spread their negativity can have at it and enjoy their ‘I told you so’ victory.
Don
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re: Coronavirus 2
Jings!....Crivvens!.....Help Ma Boab!
We are all human so we all have human foibles.
Some are optimists some are pessimists. Is it a half full or half empty bottle of whiskey?
If we always agree wouldn't life be boring!
If we all stopped discussing or arguing we would not learn anything new.
Yes I have not always agreed with some members views but that does not stop me respecting them for the views they hold.
Tolerance and fun is my motto.
As I used to say to new employees:-
" We are a team here, we play ball together but remember its MY bloomin' ball!!
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re: Coronavirus 2
Yes, the number of new infections each day is rising faster than the number of new fatalities each day.
Yes, one reason is the time-shifting effect, eg, infections rise, then hospitalizations rise, then fatalities rise.
But another reason is that more (NOT ALL) of the newly infected are younger, and they enjoy a lower (NOT ZERO) risk of death from the virus, whether this week or next.
This does not mean that letting the virus run rampant amongst young people is a clever idea.
https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=24986#180694
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who notes that a 41-y/o Broadway song'n'dance man died yesterday after three months in the hospital, and that there were plenty of optimists on The Titanic)
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re: Coronavirus 2
It is up to each individual how they interpret the statistics and what conclusions they come to.
Of course statistics are not facts!
They are numbers arrived at via a system. The system is seldom defined to the public. How they are collected, collated, what parameters are used influences the result. Thus it can be difficult to compare results between different systems.
Governments issue guidelines or laws that individuals should or have to obey. It is an individuals choice whether they observe or obey them.
What the "herd" decide to do determines the outcome.
My choice is to keep myself and my loved ones as isolated as possible as I recognise that the "herd" mentality is not for me and mine and I keep an eye on the "herd" so I can avoid any possible problems.
You can argue over statistics and their meaning until the cows come home, I couldn't care less, I shall strive to keep my family safe.
Life is too short!
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re: Coronavirus 2
"Yes, one reason is the time-shifting effect, eg, infections rise, then hospitalizations rise, then fatalities rise.
But another reason is that more (NOT ALL) of the newly infected are younger, and they enjoy a lower (NOT ZERO) risk of death from the virus, whether this week or next."
IkeyPikey, this appears to be very relevant for Florida. Apparently a large number in Florida hospitalized with COVID-19 are young people hospitalized because of other things (like automobile accidents), and they were only discovered to have COVID-19 because the hospital tested them on admission. So they weren't hospitalized BECAUSE of COVID, but WITH COVID.
That's the good news. The bad news is that Florida has a VERY large elderly population and COVID-19 is more rampant than thought.
I don't wish bad results on anyone. I hope things work out fine. I'm just not naive enough to think positive thinking is all we need. I have one brother over 65 in Florida and another brother over 70 in Tennessee. They both still work full-time. One in a hospital. One as a military contractor. I'm over 60 and work in banking. We are all considered "essential" employees. I would LIKE to say that I'd be happy to sit on my ass for two years while the 20 somethings frolic, but even if they DID pay enough in taxes to pay me NOT to work, I have two problems with that notion:
1. I'm not a slacker. Never have been.
2. I don't want to add one dollar more than necessary to the national debt my children are going to inherit.
This is real.
We need to get real.
Unicorns and rainbows ain't gonna cut it.
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re: Coronavirus 2
Another senseless murder last night at a gas station. Jacksonville's murder rate continues to easily outpace its deaths from COVID-19.
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re: Coronavirus 2
"Another senseless murder last night at a gas station. Jacksonville's murder rate continues to easily outpace its deaths from COVID-19."
Manitoba 2020 Covid deaths 7, Winnipeg, the largest town pop. 700,000, homicides 20 so far this year. Last year was a record 44.
The latest was a young 27 year old mother randomly shot on the street, currently police are holding 14 and 15 year old youths as suspects.
Sad world.
Edit, today the homicide number in Winnipeg went to 21. Manitoba total now 34.
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re: Coronavirus 2
I wrote:
"... there is no free virus. You can pay to fight the virus, or you can pay to live with the primary & secondary & tertiary costs of the virus run wild ..."
And, along comes:
Sweden Has Become the World’s Cautionary Tale
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html (paywall down)
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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re: Coronavirus 2
Hi All
Miss my stamps and auctions but enjoying my retirement in Central Mexico.
Been exiled to my patio since middle of March as too many people in town not wearing masks (locals and gringos)and now Mexico is getting it hard, No shortage of anything here,
Most of the restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies all have free delivery and also hairdressers will come to your place wearing masks, Also easy to get deliveries from Coco and Amazon etc, Most of the cleaning ladies are staying home with full pay, Weather is awesome and my mango tree is full of fruit, All the best to you all
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re: Coronavirus 2
Lee,
miss you, too, sweetheart. Glad you're getting your fill of mangoes. After that, what else is there... oh yes, stamps. Miss those from you, too.
David
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re: Coronavirus 2
Couldn't get much worse here.
Like many other places in our world, Israel is experiencing the 'second wave'. It has been spreading like crazy and arrived in our village (200 families) at the end of last week. 8 have tested positive including 5 children. Because they were on school buses or in after-school clubs, then over 50% of the population has been in quarantine which has since risen to 70%. Now it's like a ghost town !!!
My Grandsons have been tested and are awaiting the results. If they are positive then my wife and I must stay home too !
There is a positive. The country are very organized healthwise and very much 'on the ball' when it comes to the Coronavirus. So only 3 have died during this 'second wave'.
That is, of course, 3 too many but a success when compared to some other places.
There is a 500 shekel fine ($140) for anyone walking around without a mask. There have been many arrests, some quite violent.
Londonbus1.....not at all violent.
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