caulfield12

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-adviser-kudlow-wife-loan-business-coronavirus-relief-program-easy-2020-4 This is the world we live in now. Shake Shack got $10 million and gave it back so “real” small businesses would have an opportunity. Kudos to them, at least. Meanwhile, Larry Kudlow’s wife was supposedly approved for a significant loan for her home-based art business. How is she even allowed to apply? And how is the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors only worth $2 million? Not buying that for a second.

In Indianapolis, protester Andy Lyons said he understands the health risks. But he wants the government to back off. "If I get sick, then I am going to bear the consequences of my getting sick," Lyons told CNN affiliate WTHR. "If anybody else gets sick, they bear the consequences of their free choice without government coercion to do so. That's what this is about." cnn.com https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/harvard-richest-9-million-cares-aid-033517131.html Roughly $45 million to Ivy League schools through CARES? WTH??? $41 billion endowment...

You can choose whether you get a flu shot or not, just as you can choose whether to drive a car, buy a gun or get on an airplane. Whether to wear a seatbelt or not. The likelihood of someone dying from this is magnitudes higher than for a person over 60 to make any of those five choices. At least with the flu, there’s a shot. While there’s certainly risk from drunk or reckless drivers or texting while driving, we consider these acceptable risks as members of society. The various rights and freedoms of everyday life in America, a series of tradeoffs. The question is when the risk to others starts to outweigh the benefits any one individual receives or enjoys. It’s one of the reasons that the social acceptance of smoking has decreased dramatically over the last fifty years in the US, right? “If the (Wuhan) citizen goes to the supermarket or takes a car to go shopping, and there is a person in the supermarket or car you come into contact with who has a fever or cough, the green QR ( mobile phone app) code will turn to yellow. If that person is diagnosed as a new case, the citizen must go to the designated place for isolation/quarantine for 14 days, and the total cost of the inspection, blood sampling, CT, accommodation, living expenses, etc., during this period is $1,143 and borne by the citizen himself. If the test is positive, the treatment fee of $60,000 shall be borne by the citizen themselves.” I don’t think you would see many protests with that particular policy in place in the US. It should be noted that up until the end of March (the 24th), the government paid all the costs for test/treatment.

Leaving the US is probably the last thing you want to think about right now, but there are lots of opportunities for someone with a PhD to teach in places like Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, HK, Japan, etc. You might lose about 2-4 weeks of holiday compared to a typical university schedule...and the "travel opportunities" are not nearly so enticing as they were a decade or so ago, for obvious reasons. It seems your degree is pretty highly specialized, if I remember correctly...but there might be a fit with a specific IB, A-Levels (A2 or seniors) or AP class. Assuming your salary is in the $60-75,000ish range, you might take a slight pay cut, but most teaching positions abroad carry very solid health insurance (ours here in Wuhan is probably going to need to be readjusted before we go back to work because it would only max out at $7,000 USD if any of us were to contract COVID-19, the government had previously been covering everyone inside the borders before it got so politicized.) Teachers wanting to make even more money can set up additional private lessons on the side, or contract with a private training center for a group or individual lessons in a specific subject area. (Can't honestly recommend China right now because of the anti-immigrant trend and the fact there's a current flight ban on entering the country.)

Right now, all production of the new “DT” generation of the Ram 1500 takes place in Sterling Heights, Michigan, while the older heavy-duty Ram trucks are built in Saltillo, Mexico. PPE highly likely made in China, unless 3M. With the exception of brands like American Apparel, most t-shirt mills do most– if not all– of their manufacturing outside of the United States. Maybe they can carry along pillows from that My Pillow guy next...he’ll probably be named new head of the SBA the way things are going. Oh, well.

Charlottesville Part Deux Trump responded: “I’ve seen the people. I’ve seen interviews of the people. These are great people.” He added that they have cabin fever and they want their lives back. “Their life was taken away from them,” he said. “These people love our country, they want to get back to work.” CNN.com https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/us-coronavirus-outbreak-out-control-test-positivity-rate/610132/ A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s COVID-19 Numbers Are Flat Few figures tell you anything useful about how the coronavirus has spread through the U.S. Here’s one that does. The test-positivity rate, then, is a decent (if unusual) proxy for the severity of an outbreak in an area. And it shows clearly that the U.S. still lags far behind other countries in the course of fighting its outbreak. South Korea—which discovered its first coronavirus case on the same day as the U.S.—has tested more than half a million people, or about 1 percent of its population, and discovered about 10,500 cases. The U.S. has now tested 3.2 million people, which is also about 1 percent of its population, but it has found more than 630,000 cases. So while the U.S. has a 20 percent positivity rate, South Korea’s is only about 2 percent—a full order of magnitude smaller. South Korea is not alone in bringing its positivity rate down: America’s figure dwarfs that of almost every other developed country. Canada, Germany and Denmark have positivity rates from 6 to 8 percent. Australia and New Zealand have 2 percent positivity rates. Even Italy—which faced one of the world’s most ravaging outbreaks—has a 15 percent rate. It has found nearly 160,000 cases and conducted more than a million tests. Virtually the only wealthy country with a larger positivity rate than the U.S. is the United Kingdom, where more than 30 percent of people tested for the virus have been positive.

Someone in the press corps brought up Nazi flags as well. Saying “we’re not even going to have a country left” because Joe Biden will bow down or cave in to China, North Korea, Iran, Mexico and Canada hardly seems relevant to a health care-related briefing.

What do you propose? Just throw out the entire last month’s shared national sacrifice and roll the dice? If we do it state by state, every single border is going to be blocked off from ones that are wide open. Why should those who are sacrificing pay the consequences for 5-10% who refuse to follow the guidelines? Why should those who foolishly went to Spring Break and are already recovered get the benefit of going back to work the earliest if they theoretically pass Covid or antibody tests? Why should the nursing home residents in Florida be exposed to illness because of the Six Degrees of Separation from beachgoers this weekend...likely passing it on to one of their caregivers inadvertently? If we had cell phone GPS tracking, this would be simple. People would be warned they wouldn’t receive any financial support from their insurance company or the government if it was determined they got sick from going to a location they couldn’t explain away as essential...other than the grocery story or required reporting to work (by government order.) Of course, hard to prove where it came from without contract tracing. They would just argue it was from the grocery store or drug store/pharmacy, right? Back to that solution which means surrendering privacy rights and giving up personal data to corporations and the government...to track everywhere you go, and you would have to explain all trips away from the house and justify your behavior in order to be treated in the hospital. So that would be fair...right? Of course all those people out protesting would protest THAT as well, right? If they do elect to take those risks, why should others have to pay the consequences for following guidelines? It’s no different than those idiots who try to cut to the front when there’s a merge due to highway construction with signs pointing this out miles ahead.

Sounds like something Nigel Farage came up with just to block Huawei 5G partial rollout in the UK...especially after Boris Johnson got so sick. The sad point is that this business would likely go to Ericsson or Nokia, as the US is not competitive (Cisco and Oracle get a small chunk). Current # of contact tracers: 2000 Total amount needed in the US: 100-250,000

Pretty soon the argument will be there shouldn’t have ever been a shutdown at all. Of course, Trump’s #1 indicator is the stock market and no deaths/cases/testing. Can’t imagine his reaction if the DJIA was down in the 15-18,000 range. But it’s just incredible to me that these same people arguing that hundreds of thousands if not millions died here in China...that it was unintentionally or purposefully released from the Wuhan virology lab to take the focus off Hong Kong protests and Xinjiang concentration camps or take market share away from the US...yet they still think it’s perfectly okay to completely ignore social distancing. This is after just one full month of social distancing...compared to three full months here. Now reports that 12,000+ Covid tests in Washington state are contaminated... Whatever happened to that Abbott device that President Trump displayed upside down (yet is perhaps the most popular innovation so far)...is Abbott struggling to bring it up to scale, or too many of them are going to private labs for higher profit margins? Whatever happened to hydroxychloroquinine?

Chicago Covid-19 death toll passes city’s 2019 homicide numbers in a span of weeks...286/1290 statewide related to nursing homes. More than 100,000 people defied Bangladesh's lockdown order on Saturday to attend the funeral of a senior leader of the Islamist party in the district of Brahmanbaria, according to the prime minister's special assistant, Shah Ali Farhad, and the Brahmanbaria police spokesperson Imtiaz Ahmed. The funeral for Maulana Zubayer Ahmad Ansari, an Islamic teacher, broke the country's ban of no more than five people attending prayers at one time, sparking fears of a new coronavirus outbreak emerging from the event. cnn.com

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-air-force-academy-commencement-politically-correct_n_5e9b7f91c5b664cb6c43d9fd He can’t even get the distancing amount right. CDC recommends six feet. AFA commencement used eight as the guide. Trump claimed it was ten feet. I guess that’s closer than the difference between millions and billions, so progress...

Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn’t guide U.S. policies, critics say https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/17/influential-covid-19-model-uses-flawed-methods-shouldnt-guide-policies-critics-say/ “It’s not a model that most of us in the infectious disease epidemiology field think is well suited” to projecting Covid-19 deaths, epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told reporters this week, referring to projections by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Others experts, including some colleagues of the model-makers, are even harsher. “That the IHME model keeps changing is evidence of its lack of reliability as a predictive tool,” said epidemiologist Ruth Etzioni of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, who has served on a search committee for IHME. “That it is being used for policy decisions and its results interpreted wrongly is a travesty unfolding before our eyes.”

It would take 73 consecutive days testing at 450,000/day to reach the 10% of population level most experts are recommending. Three times the amount we are currently capable of. And that’s not even going to be 10%, because many of those will be positive tests that need to be retested multiple times until it clears...not to mention the potentially reinfected, false positives/inconclusives, etc. The former director of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, is arguing it needs to be 10-20x that. Which would amount to 1.5 - 3 million tests per day. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/index.html Harvard is arguing 350,000 per day, compared to the present 150,000. Btw, it’s starting to look like the Civil War Era all over again. Florida, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina among the first to make plans to reopen, West Virginia, Arkansas and Georgia next?

They’re going to need a lot more than 450-500,000 tests performed per day (a 3X increase in current levels)...because all of these people now venturing out and about are just going to serve to increase that number of potentially infected or exhibiting symptoms. Amazon might be the only company in the world with the capacity to create an adequate and sustainable testing regimen for their own employees...of course, the irony is that a W-shaped instead of a V or even U insures even more profits for Bezos, the Walton Family, etc. Above and beyond that, you have all these cities like NYC being denied revenue for businesses as well as incoming tax receipts. How can there be a reopening when many of these cities are going to be technically bankrupted by coronavirus and can longer provide essential services? Obviously, they can double or triple taxes upon reopening to make up budget shortfalls, but that will just create more deflationary pressure...which leads to discussions of drawing down from pension funds that have already taken a 15-20% hit...and inevitably to cuts in Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. Of course, none of these will be considered until January, 2021. If they don’t help the cities and hospitals when interest rates are so low, they will regret it. Austerity policies are only going to hurt the middle class and poor, small business owners, those on fixed incomes. The Top 10% will be just fine. They will be making loans that lead to further indebtedness, buying up distressed properties and adding to their investment portfolio while others are forced to sell in order just to make ends meet. Tale as old as time.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/18/politics/cdc-coronavirus-testing-contamination/index.html Starting to get the full picture on early CDC testing failures.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/coronavirus-donald-trump-and-the-wizard-of-oz-presidency.html There’s a concept in economics known as diminishing marginal utility. What seems like a potential advantage (nearly unlimited and free airtime) will not look the same way to the American people six to eight weeks from now if they still have inadequate testing, no job, a return to stay at home policies...unemployment benefits not arriving or facing the spectre of them soon running out. Presidential elections are almost always decided on the economy...with the only exception being not wanting to change presidents during wartime. That said, by ceding all the responsibility and decision-making authority, he’s acting like the opposite of FDR. He wants the same fireside chats, but this time as an open platform to malign and disparage his political enemies instead of attempting to unify and comfort the country. Sooner or later...people in his base will start to wonder why he’s more concerned about ratings than doing something to improve and/or safeguard their lives. Great American presidents have never run in the opposite direction during challenging times. Lincoln never paused before Gettysburg when times looked particularly bleak for the Union and said let’s call this whole thing off, I am not at all responsible for the Civil War, let the individual states decide these issues amongst themselves. Instead of fighting for all the people, the reality is it’s turning out to be none of the people when your primary audience continues to be only 38-46% of Americans. Divided against each other we shall fall.

Looks like Waterloo, IA, will be joining South Dakota with another critical food plant shutdown the way things are trending...I get it, essential services, but you would think by now there would be some type of Federal guideline for when to shut down a plant like this (so as to take it out of the hands of mayors and governors.) You have the usual case of underpaid immigrant workers (some likely undocumented)/African American vs. the Fortune 500 interests and their political contributions, playing out with our nation’s critical food supply as the backdrop. https://wcfcourier.com/news/local/20-officials-call-on-tyson-to-shutter-waterloo-plant-for-coronavirus-outbreak/article_f4fd59a3-36ee-594e-b0cf-11eabdf4a8a9.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

The most incredible thing this week to me was Trump seriously considering adding a two hour radio call in show in addition to the daily briefings on t.v. Which shows just how interested he is in actually solving problems... all along, it has simply been narcissism, the desire to constantly be the center of attention. His primary concern with adding a radio show was 1) losing to Rush in the ratings, 2) being perceived as threatening to the Excellence in Broadcasting empire, lol. Well, nothing should surprise anyone at this point. Steve Bannon all along had been planning extensively with the Mercers to launch their own Trumpian broadcasting network, as it looked increasingly likely they were going to lose in 2016. Voters, so far, say they are erring on the side of caution, as public health experts have urged. In a Pew survey released this week, roughly two-thirds of respondents said they are worried about their state easing restrictions too quickly — twice the number of those who are concerned it won’t happen fast enough. Just over two-thirds of voters said they expect it to be at least a month before Americans should start returning to work and life as normal, with just 9 percent mentioning the one- or two-week gap Trump has suggested could happen, according to a Harris poll released this week. Among Republicans, 61 percent said it should be at least a month before Americans start returning to work and life as normal. https://www.yahoo.com/news/advisers-warn-trump-economy-push-232900771.html

First instructions for new normal at Chinese schools (seniors returning May 6th for the first time since mid-January.) Staggered lunches. 3 mandatory temperature checks per day. 3 mask changes per day.

How can South Korea and Germany manage the same feat for 1/10th the cost, or roughly $10 per test? Very simple solution. The Federal government (not states, since they can’t magically create money out of thin air like Treasury) subsidize the cost, or the US will suffer billions more in economic damages when no corporations can assume the liability risk of going back too early without adequate testing systems in place to protect the workers. For antibody tests, the cost is even cheaper. The cost for a technician to (non)profitably analyze one test in 15 minutes would be roughly $160/hour or $40 for 15 minutes? So they need to charge the equivalent of roughly $300-325 hour to break even? Antibody blood tests have been used for about two decades in other disease-tracking initiatives, including for HIV in rural Africa, Ho said in a video call sponsored by the group Committee of 100. The kits cost $1 to $6 each, he added, depending on the volume purchased. Some US companies are already selling antibody tests to other countries. The California biotech company Biomerica sells COVID-19 antibody tests for less than $10 in Europe and the Middle East, according to Reuters. Chembio Diagnostics, a medical-device company based in New York, is sending its antibody tests to Brazil and plans to study them in the US, Reuters reported. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-antibody-blood-test-covid-19-2020-3

There’s another issue at play here. I have a friend (chemistry teacher) who used to work at my school in China and now back in California waiting to get his teaching credentials in order and for fall semester hiring to take place. He works temporarily in a grocery store doing stocking/inventory for something like $15/hr. Meanwhile, you have lots of people who are getting $832/week for unemployment, plus they’ll be getting an extra $600 per week on top of that. That works out to something like $6000 per month, $24,000 for four months max....$36/hr or $72,000 for a full year. How can we justify paying those actually at risk half or in many cases 1/3rd as much those essential workers (looking at you Wal Mart and Amazon)? How can we give Ruth’s Chris steakhouses a $20 million small business loan when they are sitting on something like $60 million in reserves? That’s really pushing it to define that as anything resembling a “small business.” I think it’s 500 employees or less...?

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2020/04/17/17-in-a-homeless-shelter-test-positive-for-coronavirus-dallas-county-says/ 38 test positive for Covid in Dallas homeless shelter...as many as 200 staffers and shelter residents have been exposed, the county’s health director said. More than 160 have been taken to hotels.

The amazing thing is how just 4-6 weeks of Covid arriving late (r) totally changed this year’s election. Biden if the race was interrupted indefinitely after Nevada never gets his momentum going. The entire race then hinges on health care and economic inequality (just imagining Sanders’ reaction to the aforementioned anecdote about private lab testing not being profitable enough.) Now, the Biden/Trump race hinges on Democratic governors, Trump “mistakes,” a “return to decency/empathy” and restoring normalized diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. Even the economic/unemployment numbers can be blamed on “coastal elites” shutting down the country and trying to take away our unique rights/freedoms, conspiring to prolong the shutdown in order to deny reelection. Those Dem governors and Crazy Joe Biden simply don’t want America to succeed, they instead want to turn America into a socialist nanny state like the EU. The big question here (blaming governors or taking credit for only successes, like the stock market now “only” being down 18% instead of mid 30’s) is whether 30-40% of the country in the middle of the spectrum politically actually buy what is being sold. Normally, it’s impossible during a presidential election year to narrow the blame to just governors or Congress when the economic success or (relative degrees of) failure begins and ends at the top of the ticket.

This risk is particularly acute in places of detention, such as prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers, as well as residential institutions for people with disabilities and nursing facilities for older people, where the virus can spread rapidly, especially if access to health care is already poor. States have an obligation to ensure medical care for those in their custody at least equivalent to that available to the general population, and must not deny detainees, including asylum seekers or undocumented migrants, equal access to preventive, curative or palliative health care. Asylum seekers, refugees living in camps, and people experiencing homelessness may also be at increased risk because of their lack of access to adequate water and hygiene facilities. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/19/human-rights-dimensions-covid-19-response So you have these rural issues...whereas SF, LA, Seattle...are worrisome for their own set of reasons, especially homeless populations. Vietnam veterans. Nursing homes are obvious. Prisons in Illinois have already been discussed. Heck, just the 30+ million group of those without any health insurance or a preexisting relationship with a local physician. Those without regular checking or savings accounts for direct deposit. When this is all over, investigating statistics in Europe among refugee/displaced groups, human trafficking victims...it’s going to exhibit quite emphatically how particularly vulnerable these poor populations really are in a health crisis. And how dramatically those groups can impact entire communities. But one can guarantee that’s the exact topic that will never be discussed or even raised in a coronavirus briefing “We’ll have to get back to you.”