Coronavirus thread

[Martin Hash]

My son, Heath, is going back to work Monday, hell or high water. His boss is of the Fuck ‘em attitude.

You always have a choice.

I’m pretty sure Heath was part of that decision.

[GloryofGreece]

Looking like we don't know if you can get reinfected...still. Maybe we should use some caution and humility when deciding what pronouncements we should make about SARS-2. I hope that you cannot truly get reinfected for at least a year after getting it and maybe have dwindling immunity afterwords but something. A lot of viruses this is the case many even given you a few reliable years of immunity. We don't know yet and hence its another reason to limit what gets open and also a specific reason not to go out if you don't have to. Some people don't have to and many don't have to that often. People's jobs are different but if nothing else the government should be highly encouraging mask wearing everywhere by everyone. Then go further and incentive usage by corporations and individuals.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... e-who-says

[GloryofGreece]

In four U.S. state prisons, nearly 3,300 inmates test positive for coronavirus -- 96% without symptoms

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKCN2270RX

[Speaker to Animals]

There's just no telling anymore without comprehensive testing of the American population. You could probably do it with random testing of statistically valid samples of various regions.

There's just not enough tests. The CDC and FDC fucked us pretty early on this score, and for whatever reason the Trump admin definitely did NOT want people getting tested until very recently.

Our best scenario, it seems to me, is that there is a huge percentage of the population that test positive for antibodies and we can somehow show that the presence of antibodies confers immunity in most cases. If that happens we can probably start rebooting things.

But we need the data and the research first.

[GloryofGreece]

Prisons are good areas to test.

[Speaker to Animals]

The absolute worse thing you can do is make an ideological decision; e.g. "I really think markets should be preferenced before anything else so I just choose to believe that most people were already infected and recovery means immunity, even though I have absolutely no evidence to support that, and therefore I will just take the risk (really, I will impose the risk on other people) that I am wrong because ideologically I cannot accept the alternatives."

[Speaker to Animals]

I find it odd that we are taxing "essential" workers while handing out generous unemployment to the people laid off who cannot work from home. When you are in the military and get deployed to a combat zone, you also get hazard pay, but at the same time you do not pay taxes on the income earned while serving in the combat zone.

Why should people risking their lives in meat packing plants or Amazon warehouses pay federal taxes? Think about how insane it is that Amazon pays zero taxes but the working poor they have literally dying in those warehouses for lack of PPE and sick leave see part of their income hit with payroll taxes.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I find it odd that we are taxing "essential" workers while handing out generous unemployment to the people laid off who cannot work from home. When you are in the military and get deployed to a combat zone, you also get hazard pay, but at the same time you do not pay taxes on the income earned while serving in the combat zone.

Why should people risking their lives in meat packing plants or Amazon warehouses pay federal taxes? Think about how insane it is that Amazon pays zero taxes but the working poor they have literally dying in those warehouses for lack of PPE and sick leave see part of their income hit with payroll taxes.

Yeah, as mentioned before, I would make exactly the same salary on unemployment right now. I’m working from home, not risking anything, but if I was told to go back to a warehouse or something for a fraction of the pay, I’d laugh in their faces.

[SuburbanFarmer]

The absolute worse thing you can do is make an ideological decision; e.g. "I really think markets should be preferenced before anything else so I just choose to believe that most people were already infected and recovery means immunity, even though I have absolutely no evidence to support that, and therefore I will just take the risk (really, I will impose the risk on other people) that I am wrong because ideologically I cannot accept the alternatives."

You know I could give a shit about ‘markets’. My concern is keeping the supply chain going. If anything threatens the food supply, you will see a world of shit.

[Speaker to Animals]

The absolute worse thing you can do is make an ideological decision; e.g. "I really think markets should be preferenced before anything else so I just choose to believe that most people were already infected and recovery means immunity, even though I have absolutely no evidence to support that, and therefore I will just take the risk (really, I will impose the risk on other people) that I am wrong because ideologically I cannot accept the alternatives."

You know I could give a shit about ‘markets’. My concern is keeping the supply chain going. If anything threatens the food supply, you will see a world of shit.

That's everybody's concern. Nobody wants to starve. The government is not shutting down the food supply chains. Meat packing plants are shutting down because the companies that run them cannot stop the coronavirus from killing the workers.

This isn't a policy decision. They kept those plants open for as long as they could before enough workers died that they couldn't sustain it. Trump did not shut the meat packing plants down. The governors did not shut them down (though in the case of S. Dakota the governor's lack of social distancing order contributed to its spread and the threatening of our food supply).