caulfield12

It’s basically the same thing in baseball, with 30-something free agents (except for pitchers, especially lefties) getting pushed out of the game 3-5 years earlier than they used to. Or radical shifting and endless pitching changes...but just because the game is more purely efficient in terms of statistical outcomes, the product quality has actually decreased markedly. Leaving aside the world of sports, where are the incentives in this type of system for investing in design, innovation and creativity? Simply extracting the most value out of any transaction gives you an entire world of Wal-Marts and Amazons that function as near-monopolies and serve to stifle competition. In this type of environment, the bottom 80% of a society will cease to thrive. As more money shifts from the hands of the labor class, who are going to the markets and reliable buyers of the future? Eventually, you end up with a world where the opposite trends take hold, where competition is largely eliminated and producers, not consumers, set prices. And only a certain number of people can pay for products and services that used to be affordable to the majority. That’s where even completely decoupling from China, how are you going to limit production costs of the future? You’re looking at an almost completely automated society driven by AI and almost completely invulnerable to a health care crisis. No more driving careers as autonomous vehicles take over. No more assembly line workers. Almost no more blue collar workers left at all, except for certain niche areas that are more dependent on art/creative skills. It’s a wonderful future for those value added profit extractors who work in fields like a actuarial science and aren’t themselves wiped out by apps and algorithms, but doesn’t bode well for the rest of society. The entire developing world is pretty much going to be consigned to a perpetual gerbil wheel existence, frozen between 3rd world and 1st status.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week ordered bars in the state to reclose. But that's not stopping the owner of a bar in Odessa from welcoming customers during the July 4 holiday weekend. "The government has no business telling us how to deal with our health. That's what we're here for," Gabrielle Ellison, owner of Big Daddy Zane's, told CNN's Brooke Baldwin on Wednesday. Several bar owners in the state, including Ellison, are suing Abbott after he ordered bars to reclose June 26 as the state's number of Covid-19 cases skyrocketed. Ellison's customers "also have their rights," she said. "I'm not going to take theirs away from them like mine are being taken away right now." In the lawsuit, the bar owners claim the order violates the state's constitution by depriving them of their "liberty or freedom to operate their businesses." They also say the Governor is picking "winners and losers" by allowing hair salons and other businesses to remain open. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/us/texas-bar-owner-big-daddy-zanes-interview/index.html

Apparently you haven’t been paying attention to what has happened to the state of Wisconsin the last twenty years...or let’s just make it forty. It’s not a “both sides” issue. Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan might line up with very similar views on foreign trade and US jobs leaving the country, but their core belief systems about the actual intrinsic VALUE of American labor are quite different. If approached in a completely centrist/non-partisan fashion (3rd party or reform movement)...the position tends to be basically a neutral one. All evidence indicates it’s (support of unions or radical restructuring of the economy) going to be led by that generation of those under 30 or 35 starting to pull back to the left again due to two devastating financial crises in their lifetimes. 52% of Americans approved of labor unions, unchanged from 2010. 78% of Democrats approved of labor unions, up from 71% in 2010. 52% of Independents approved of labor unions, up from 49% in 2010. 26% of Republicans approved of labor unions, down from 34% in 2010. wikipedia.com Imo, the GOP has simply done a much better job of consistent messaging on issues like labor unions and welfare/social programs, and for a LONG time. As labor union membership has eroded by roughly 50% or more, the Democratic Party was then left with a conundrum that would reverberate from NAFTA/GATT/China WTO in the 90’s all the way to the 2016 election. The decision was made to fight for money from Wall Street and the financial services industry, believing labor unions were going to be stuck with nowhere to go. And you saw a generation of 35-55 year old disaffected blue collar/non college educated workers who felt completely taken for granted in Michigan, PA and WI rolling the dice and swinging the electoral college with 77,000 votes combined. You also saw it in recently in huge splits in Nevada over supporting Biden or Sanders (pragmatism vs. progressive litmus tests). Of course, there are also massive chasms when it comes to protecting white vs. black vs. brown jobs, with racism and anti-American/anti-immigration tides thrown into the combustible mix for good measure the last five years. The problem is that if you approach this from a data scientist perspective as opposed to a political economist’s, you’re going to be in the exact same position as those who work for Twitter, Facebook and Amazon...forced to “sell out” for profits of a limited few vs. what’s best for the greatest number of people. Otherwise, you’re going to have to create your own start-up that 100% mirrors your values on this issue and deliberately avoids any politicization. Mark Zuckerberg is the perfect example, where he straddles the line (or at least attempts to), creating the perception with charitable giving initiatives that he skews to the left (along with most of Silicon Valley with a few notable exceptions like Peter Thiel), when if you really pay attention to what he says and does, it’s always to protect the brand and profits over all other considerations. Why? $77 billion dollars in advertising revenue per year. We can call him the Michael Jordan of Silicon Valley, essentially...”because Republicans buy sneakers, too.” Just not sure how long anyone can be on “both sides” without eventually having to make a substantive choice here. While it would be nice to inhabit a utopian reality “beyond politics,” the odds of that happening anytime soon are slim and none.

$2/hour bumps in salary, that was insulting enough. But to have even those gains erased by premature openings that put those same workers at even higher risk (and back at previous salaries) while MANY were getting raises for staying at home...and topping it all off with the administration trying to kneecap ObamaCare one final time, it’s like something out of the French Revolution “let them eat cake!” days of centuries past. Social mobility is becoming almost non-existent, with the US hovering near the top of the world charts in wage and wealth inequality figures...clustered right there along with a slew of banana republics and authoritarian regimes.

Trickle down economics has been a lie for those same 40 years, starting with David Stockman and Reagan, through the Paul Ryan’s and Grover Norquists of today. Cutting taxes on the rich and corporations, attempting to starve or defund the Federal government through austerity policies and “balanced budget” posturing...we didn’t even need to go back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, we ran surpluses for three years under Clinton largely due to increasing revenues/receipts from capital gains and estate taxes. That said, I don’t believe that you can accurately blame economists more so than, let’s say, Ayn Rand or the Koch Brothers. Perhaps we can all neatly lay this at the doorstep of Alan Greenspan, but he was empowered and embraced by presidents of both parties. In the end, economists or think tanks are unelected policy creators, but it’s the corporations and Top 1% pulling the string behind the scenes to fund their self-fulfilling research and theories that have hollowed out 2/3rd’s of the former middle class.

Right, it was actually the PLA, or Chinese army units. That was for the first 2-3 weeks, they were also involved in delivering supplies/PPE, helping to lock down the city, secure highways/borders, transporting patients to hospitals, etc. Because we have two massive door to door delivery companies here, and they were classified as essential workers, just like the grocery stores...since these workers (there are literally an army in blue as well as black and gold uniforms) are independent contractors, they had no choice but to work, even without tipping. Orders that used to be turned down for $1-1.50 to go 3 km during normal times were suddenly being picked up at 75 cents. Entire blocks or neighborhoods could make group orders together. Everything was delivered to the apartment complex main gate and picked up there. Seniors had someone assigned to make sure they were getting supplied. Every 2-3 weeks free vegetables and limited fruits would show up. After the first couple of months, one designated person per household could go out but only for essential tasks (and only two hours, and couldn’t travel to other districts/areas of the city), and then they had to sign in/out, temp check, green QR code check...and go through that at the grocery store again as well, and then repeat the process to come back into the apartment complex. With banks closed, someone even collected propane gas (for cooking) cards and deposited money into those accounts so everyone would still be able to cook after getting resupplied with new tanks.

Maybe if a certain someone actually stood up and modeled the behavior of pretty much everyone in the GOP now except for Rand Paul and wore a mask in public, and cared at least a little bit about global human rights violations (well, we did bomb a couple of runways in Syria when we were assured Russian soldiers were already safely bunkered) more Americans would actually be aware of atrocities around the world. Think if all the time talking about hydroxychloroquinine or weekend golfing was invested in something much more productive?...definitely not sending out late night tweets bragging about being the “Lone Warrior” left fighting a vast majority of his own countrymen over something quite simple to do that wouldn’t make him less of a man. He’d just have to admit he was actually wrong for the first time, well, ever.

And we’ve simply never had a viable tracing program ramped up when we knew this was potentially coming as early as January 8th, if not late December....either on a Federal, state or local public health department levels. Information is now coming out about water supply contamination in Northern Italy the last two weeks of November...when many business travelers/tourists were going back and forth from the Wuhan area in pretty significant numbers. There’s no way that it wasn’t on the radar screen as early as December, at least in the Pentagon/national intelligence community (which a certain someone always ignores, almost as if the Daily Brief was covered in germs.)

Sounds exactly like Umair Haque at medium.com or Eudaimonia.

Why should it be surprising? In the 1950’s and 60’s, US manufacturing was over 40% of GDP and banks/finance was around 10%. Now, we no longer build anything. Those numbers have completely reversed since the early 80’s. And yes, Clinton/Rubin played a significant role, but where were the complaints from the S&P 500 companies? The stock market, CEO’s and consumers made out like bandits, for the majority of workers in labor unions, not so much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_for_the_American_Dream Chomsky is better than Robert Reich on this, who’s still essentially a centrist leaning progressively but not attempting to completely deconstruct the entire foundation or system.

At a May 30 birthday party in Texas, one man reportedly infected 18 friends and family with the coronavirus. Reading reports like these, you might think of the virus as a wildfire, instantly setting off epidemics wherever it goes. But other reports tell another story altogether. In Italy, for example, scientists looked at stored samples of wastewater for the earliest trace of the virus. Last week they reported that the virus was in Turin and Milan as early as Dec. 18. But two months would pass before northern Italy’s hospitals began filling with victims of COVID-19. So those December viruses seem to have petered out. As strange as it may seem, these reports don’t contradict each other. Most infected people don’t pass on the coronavirus to someone else. But a small number pass it on to many others in so-called superspreading events. “You can think about throwing a match at kindling,” said Ben Althouse, principal research scientist at the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Washington. “You throw one match, it may not light the kindling. You throw another match, it may not light the kindling. But then one match hits in the right spot, and all of a sudden the fire goes up.” Understanding why some matches start fires while many do not will be crucial to curbing the pandemic, scientists say. “Otherwise, you’re in the position where you’re always one step behind the virus,” said Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. https://www.yahoo.com/news/most-people-coronavirus-wont-spread-121034275.html Why do a few infect so many? NY Times report on why r-nought numbers have been misleading for spread.

What is the market size of the Bars & Nightclubs industry in the US in 2020? The market size, measured by revenue, of the Bars and Clubs is roughly $27 billion. 1 Million Number of eating and drinking locations nationwide in 2017. 14.7 Million (10 percent of the U.S. Workforce): Number of restaurant and foodservice jobs nationwide in 2017. $799 Billion (4 percent of the U.S. GDP): Projected sales for the restaurant and foodservice industry nationwide in 2017. $2 Trillion annual economic impact of the restaurant industry (just under 10% of GDP)

CDC says U.S. has 'way too much virus' to control pandemic as cases surge across country The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to get it under control as some other countries have, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday. The U.S. stands in stark contrast to countries like South Korea, New Zealand and Singapore as it continues to report over 30,000 new infections per day. "This is really the beginning," Schuchat said of the U.S.'s recent surge in new cases. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/29/cdc-says-us-has-way-too-much-virus-to-control-pandemic-as-cases-surge-across-country.html Finally, the real expert and likely head of CDC in a new administration is speaking out after being hidden since the first couple of task force briefings. https://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/Guy-Philips-I-can-t-breathe-Farhan-Zaidi-masks-MLB-15368883.php “F—- that guy!”

In April, the National Association of County and City Health Officials estimated that communities would need 30 contact tracers per 100,000 people. But there are far fewer contact tracers than that in eight states rife with Covid-19 infections, according to new data obtained by CNN from Nephron Research, an independent health care research firm that has been monitoring contact tracing across states. As of Monday, Florida has about seven tracers per 100,000, Texas has about 11 tracers per 100,000 and Arizona has about five tracers per 100,000. Just six states have more than 30 contact tracers per 100,000 residents, led by New York and North and South Dakota. www.cnn.com Dakotas here a bit of a shock...must be due largely to scares over meat/poultry processing plants. Gov. Kristi Noem has been really outspoken, but negative attention on her state has dramatically decreased from 6-8 weeks ago. A lot have been tough on Cuomo and de Blasio, but almost every health expert recently has given the highest marks to NY/NJ in terms of overall response and especially a scientifically-centered methodology for bringing outbreaks under control. What’s really frustrating here is having months and months ahead of time to prepare and basically having a 12% national success rate in terms of states ramping up capacity on tracing...rather than reacting to this only after the situation becomes Italy/Spain/Brazil or NYC-levels of horrifically dire. https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/06/28/beachgoers-heckle-broward-county-4th-july-chen-vpx.cnn Beachgoers heckle officials after July 4th announcement CNN's Natasha Chen discusses how beachgoers reacted as Broward County, Florida, officials announced that their beaches will be closed July 4th weekend over coronavirus concerns.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he would "settle" for a Covid-19 vaccine that's 70% to 75% effective, but that this incomplete protection, coupled with the fact that many Americans say they won't get a coronavirus vaccine, makes it "unlikely" that the US will achieve sufficient levels of immunity to quell the outbreak. With government support, three coronavirus vaccines are expected to be studied in large-scale clinical trials in the next three months. "The best we've ever done is measles, which is 97 to 98 percent effective," said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "That would be wonderful if we get there. I don't think we will. I would settle for [a] 70, 75% effective vaccine." A CNN poll last month found one-third of Americans said they would not try to get vaccinated against Covid, even if the vaccine is widely available and low cost. In an interview Friday, CNN asked Fauci whether a vaccine with 70% to 75% efficacy taken by only two-thirds of the population would provide herd immunity to the coronavirus. "No -- unlikely," he answered. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/28/health/fauci-coronavirus-vaccine-contact-tracing-aspen/index.html

Progress!!! The trend lines are daunting. From May 23 through Tuesday, the total number of confirmed cases more than doubled in the counties centered on Austin (Travis), Houston (Harris), and Dallas; nearly doubled in Fort Worth (Tarrant); and roughly tripled in San Antonio (Bexar). In Maricopa County, Arizona, which comprises Phoenix and its sprawling suburbs, the total number of cases more than quadrupled from 8,151 on May 23 to 34,992 yesterday. In Florida, daily new cases in Miami-Dade County rose from 113 on May 24 to 947 on June 22. The map of cumulative cases maintained by the Georgia Department of Public Health is a soothing shade of blue across most of the state—except for the bright red marking Atlanta and its sizable surrounding suburbs of DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties. Statewide, both Florida and Texas announced more than 5,500 new cases yesterday, a record for each. Public-health experts expect the numbers to continue rising for weeks. In Arizona, “we are experiencing a second surge after an early-May plateau,” Joe Gerald, a professor at the University of Arizona College of Public Health, told me. “This surge is much larger than the first one and basically our foot is still on the accelerator. It is going to get worse before it gets better.” In Texas, Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, described the situation in equally ominous terms. “I’m extremely worried,” he told me. “I sometimes use the word dire because the numbers are just accelerating so dramatically. If you look at the curve [of case growth], it’s very much an exponential curve.” Both Gerald and Hotez, like Adler, told me that if the current trend is not slowed, hospitals’ capacity in their areas will be overwhelmed in the next few weeks. “The implications are: We’ll see in Houston what we saw in New York City in the spring, which is a surge on intensive-care units and hospitalizations, and we’ll reach or exceed capacity,” Hotez said. “You don’t want to do that, because that’s when the mortality rates start to climb.” Yesterday, Houston’s massive Texas Medical Center projected it could exceed its intensive-care capacity by as soon as today. Coronavirus hospitalizations in the Houston area have nearly tripled since Memorial Day, the Houston Chronicle has reported. Likewise, the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized in Maricopa has more than doubled since late May, and just 12 percent of the state’s intensive-care-unit beds were available as of yesterday. The pressure on local medical workers is growing so intense that Ross Goldberg, the president of the Arizona Medical Association, told me the state may soon need to ask for volunteer health-care professionals from other states, as New York did earlier this year. “Obviously there is going to be a finite amount of space and a finite amount of staff,” Goldberg, a surgeon in Phoenix, said. “Is this a time where we start looking for help elsewhere? That is something we need to be considering.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-sun-belt-spikes-could-be-a-disaster-for-trump/ar-BB15Y4tT

https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2020/06/26/road-trip-coronavirus-safety-tips-gupta-vpx.cnn https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/reopening-coronavirus/travel_vacation.html Texas and at least five other states -- Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Tennessee and Utah -- reported the highest single-day totals of new Covid-19 cases, according to the state's health departments. Florida, seen possibly as the next US epicenter, reported its highest one-day total of new cases on Saturday with 9,585 cases. But only between 5% and 8% of Americans (roughly 20 million) have been infected with the virus, with the numbers varying by region. That means 90% or more have not been infected and are susceptible to infection, highlighting the need to act aggressively to combat rising infection rates, Dr. Robert Redfield said. “The average length of stay for a 30-year-old with COVID in the hospital is two weeks,” Dr. Kavita Patel said. “It’s not like they’re just healthy and out the door. There’s a 5 percent mortality rate if you’re 35 years old in Florida and get hospitalized. We’re definitely in a very scary area in this phase.” www.cnn.com

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-woman-double-lung-transplant-chicago/ There is another story I’ve found about a 19 year-old, and, in this case, another twenty-something woman needing a double lung transplant due to their lungs being completely destroyed by Covid.

Dr. Pepper doesn’t taste like sugary prune juice or cough syrup, it’s the greatest soft drink ever invented. And no, servers/wait staff out there, you can not just arbitrarily decide to substitute Mr. Pibb and think it won’t be noticed, as it definitely will. Another important point, we Dr. Pepper addicts like the fountain taste at Sonic Drive-In or Chick-Fil-A as much as any chain or franchise. And definitely prefer in an aluminum can (Big 12 logo) or glass bottle to the plastic twenty-ounce variety.

I blame it on the high concentration of Cracker Barrel restaurants in TN. That, and Waffle Houses. Whenever you encounter this particular combination, along with at least one NASCAR track in-state, that’s where the invisible enemy will surely lurk.

“Even in a health crisis, the American people don't forfeit our constitutional rights.” Mike Pence So why don’t we then also celebrate those who give HIV or herpes to their partners, knowingly or unknowingly? The number of 2017 HIV deaths per 100,000 was just 1.7, so where are the protestors fighting against wearing masks who also fighting for the freedom to never wear condoms as well? After all, the long-term health consequences of being infected with Covid-19 can be just as bad or worse than with an STD diagnosis.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-arizona-lost-control-of-the-epidemic/ar-BB15YqRy Washington Post article, predicting much worse situation in AZ by mid-July than even Brazil...as evidence is showing extreme outside temps are pushing more indoors, where it can be more easily be spread through centralized air conditioning systems

Well, yeah, that’s completely outside of the realm of possibility due to the current political environment...and ongoing actions (or inaction) to deliberately sabotage or obscure the reality of what’s actually going on because it simply doesn’t match the re-election tone like Defund the Police or protecting Mt. Rushmore do. https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1170028-state-of-emergency-set-to-be-extended-through-july/?utm_source=newsletter-20200626-0541&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news For example, Thailand hasn’t recorded a case in 31 days but still extending state of emergency through July because schools nationwide are reopening. Or the Quantas CEO who is predicting no international flights out of Australia until July, 2021.

US official mortality rate=5.0% 20/2.3=8.7 That still gives you a mortality rate of much closer to 0.6 than the 0.2-0.3 that we were projecting about a month or two ago. Six times more deadly than the flu. That’s a pretty significant multiplier, imo. Sammy Hagar for next Texas Lt. Gov? https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/sammy-hagar-coronavirus-sacrifice-095512563.html Rocker Sammy Hagar said he’s willing to sacrifice people to the coronavirus ― himself included ― if it means saving the economy. The former Van Halen frontman told Rolling Stone magazine on Tuesday that he would also be happy to play shows “before there’s a vaccine, if it’s declining and seems to be going away.” “I’m going to make a radical statement here. This is hard to say without stirring somebody up, but truthfully, I’d rather personally get sick and even die, if that’s what it takes,” the musician said as part of an article that asked touring artists how they were coping with being off the road. “We have to save the world and this country from this economic thing that’s going to kill more people in the long run,” Hagar continued, saying he would “rather see everyone go back to work” and “if some of us have to sacrifice on that, OK.” “I will die for my children and my grandchildren to have a life anywhere close to the life that I had in this wonderful country. That’s just the way that I feel about it,” he added. “I’m not going to go around spreading the disease. But there may be a time where we have to sacrifice. I mean, how many people die on the Earth every day? I have no idea. I’m sorry to say it, but we all gotta die, man.”