The Liberal Gun Club Forum

Just a copy/paste of tonight's headlines:

GOP refuses Democrats’ demands for relief package, won’t negotiate over lending program

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said they would not agree to any compromise with Democrats that changed their proposal to add $250 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program.

● Read more »


U.S. surpasses Italy for most covid-19 deaths in world

The United States on Saturday has passed Italy for the most confirmed covid-19 deaths in the world, with more than 20,000 fatalities, a figure experts have called "an underestimation." The news came as Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said he hopes for “a real degree of normality” by November.

● Read more »


White House rejects bailout for Postal Service

Advocates worry the agency is vulnerable as it is projected to lose $2 billion a month because of the pandemic.

● Read more »


Why European unemployment isn’t spiking as it is in the U.S.

A range of programs across Europe seek to keep money flowing in times of crisis.

● Read more »


The military’s medical facilities remain mostly empty in New York. This is why.

The Javits Center and the USNS Comfort are treating coronavirus patients now, but the transition has been hampered on several fronts.

● Read more »

loc confirmed deaths recovered
S3 cc 1,776,157 d 108,862 r 404,236
US cc 529,887 d 20,602 r 32,001
NC cc 4,358 d 89
RC cc 105 d 2
again, appears to be a bit of taper, we'll see if it holds. australia (pop 25million) appears to be managing better, curve definitely tapering, assuming their numbers are accurate.
cc 6,303 d 57 r 1806

Seems we get a taper every weekend then a surge Monday or Tuesday. I think it's a feature of the shitty testing and reporting.

featureless wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:45 am Seems we get a taper every weekend then a surge Monday or Tuesday. I think it's a feature of the shitty testing and reporting.

you may be right. it's just a little wiggle, and after the weekend it does seem to go right back to "normal" pretty quickly.

there's a gold mine of information here, if only we knew how to interpret it. statisticians will go over this for decades. i think it's also useful to just write about our personal experiences with it, in the future people may care what it felt like. as some posts have suggested, things like this can transform a society's world view.

featureless wrote:Seems we get a taper every weekend then a surge Monday or Tuesday. I think it's a feature of the shitty testing and reporting.

Also worth noting, and this is purely anecdotal, but my area has been on a shelter in place order for weeks now. On the weekends, people do tend to stay home more, there is a noticeable drop in traffic from regular weekend traffic, probably mostly because of lack of entertainment options. But come Monday, driving around town you'd have no idea there was anything going on if you didn't see the random face masks. For instance, the people running a t-shirt screen printing business a few bays down from the studio are going full steam ahead as if nothing was happening. Not that I'm worried about them, small company, 1 boss and most often only 2 employees there in an 1,800 sqft facility, but they're hardly what I would call an essential business. With how fucked our unemployment system has been, and how slow the banks have been to roll out the PPP and SBA loans and grants, people are going to work to pay their bills, and I personally find it hard to fault them for it. I think that's a big part of what we're seeing in the weekend slumps and early week surges in numbers.

small business - no work, no eat. we know an older (like us) couple who invested everything in a hot dog shop and they can't afford to close, and they can't afford to get sick, (much less die) so some of the extremes they go to look ridiculous, like delivering orders on the end of a 6-foot pole. and the girls at the fast-food restaurant next door, they have to work or they starve. i feel for them, i can stay home for a month, or two, they can't.

Confession time. We have a big chink in our pandemic armor. Our daughter continues to work one day per week at the local burger joint. She needs the outlet and responsibility (not that she has any bills). We figure it's take out only and there are usually only 3 others working. Small town, only 150 cases in the county and those are in the big city to the south. It makes me nervous, but I'm loathe to have her quit. I'll make her wear a mask from here on. In fact, there may be one in her Easter basket to make it a little more fun.

featureless wrote:Confession time. We have a big chink in our pandemic armor. Our daughter continues to work one day per week at the local burger joint. She needs the outlet and responsibility (not that she has any bills). We figure it's take out only and there are usually only 3 others working. Small town, only 150 cases in the county and those are in the big city to the south. It makes me nervous, but I'm loathe to have her quit. I'll make her wear a mask from here on. In fact, there may be one in her Easter basket to make it a little more fun.

Get out the sharpie and put some bunny whiskers on it. Come on, you know want to.

I really do!

Glad your aunt is doing better featureless, seems like physicians are discharging patients as quickly as possible it gets them out of that high germ environment. I agree about your daughter, the lock down is tough on kids. Week before last we hit 80 degrees on one day and there were some kids out playing soccer in a park I was walking in. Two cops stopped and broke it up, the cops did it in a nice way but I've seen spontaneous baseball games, football...kids need to be active.

On Friday I stopped at a small shop run by an Asian couple, the wife was telling me that they have to drive to LA to get their supplies, we're off the beaten track and businesses in the more populated areas are getting the attention.

As suspected, COVID-19 was in the US while CDC was telling everyone that the risk to us was low.

“The virus was freewheeling in our community and probably has been here for quite some time,” Dr. Jeff Smith, a physician who is the chief executive of Santa Clara County government, told county leaders in a recent briefing. How long? A study out of Stanford suggests a dramatic viral surge in February.

But Smith on Friday said data collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, local health departments and others suggest it was “a lot longer than we first believed” — most likely since “back in December.”

“This wasn’t recognized because we were having a severe flu season,” Smith said in an interview. “Symptoms are very much like the flu. If you got a mild case of COVID, you didn’t really notice. You didn’t even go to the doctor. The doctor maybe didn’t even do it because they presumed it was the flu.”

Just as New York has strong ties to travelers from Europe, who are believed to have brought the coronavirus there from Italy, the Bay Area is a natural hub for those traveling to and from China.

https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... california

CDC and the Trump administration missed so many opportunities, I don't want to dwell on the past but I do hope that House committees are planning on doing a post-mortem on this pandemic in the US.

LA, Long Beach and San Diego are full of empty cruise ships that still have to be moved periodically and they house limited staff.
https://www.latimes.com/travel/story/20 ... california

lurker wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 8:10 am

featureless wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:45 am Seems we get a taper every weekend then a surge Monday or Tuesday. I think it's a feature of the shitty testing and reporting.

you may be right. it's just a little wiggle, and after the weekend it does seem to go right back to "normal" pretty quickly.

there's a gold mine of information here, if only we knew how to interpret it. statisticians will go over this for decades. i think it's also useful to just write about our personal experiences with it, in the future people may care what it felt like. as some posts have suggested, things like this can transform a society's world view.

I run across ten year old gun forum posts about panic pricing (prices so low I laugh) and other things. I also enjoy reading the forecasts and predictions from the past about things. I do think it is good that we write down these experiences and stats in real time. Some day, we may look back at the numbers and be amazed at how low they were at the time we were pondering another trip to the store. Hopefully, everyone on these threads will be around to read them in a year or two.

K9s wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:42 pm

lurker wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 8:10 am

featureless wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:45 am Seems we get a taper every weekend then a surge Monday or Tuesday. I think it's a feature of the shitty testing and reporting.

you may be right. it's just a little wiggle, and after the weekend it does seem to go right back to "normal" pretty quickly.

there's a gold mine of information here, if only we knew how to interpret it. statisticians will go over this for decades. i think it's also useful to just write about our personal experiences with it, in the future people may care what it felt like. as some posts have suggested, things like this can transform a society's world view.

I run across ten year old gun forum posts about panic pricing (prices so low I laugh) and other things. I also enjoy reading the forecasts and predictions from the past about things. I do think it is good that we write down these experiences and stats in real time. Some day, we may look back at the numbers and be amazed at how low they were at the time we were pondering another trip to the store. Hopefully, everyone on these threads will be around to read them in a year or two.

It took me quite awhile to watch anything after 9/11 about 9/11, it was still too raw. I suspect the same will be true with this pandemic, though I have no doubt Hollywood writers are working on new TV series or films about it. And any medical, fire or police procedurals in the Fall will be full of it along with soap operas. Netflicks has a new series "Pandemic" which I'm watching slowly, it's not about this pandemic. This will be sliced and diced for years to come and all the research and papers issued during this period will be critiqued like never before.

I do hope when we have the next one that there is a decent administration in the WH that hasn't cut funding to necessary agencies.

My little brother's office was right where the plane went into the Pentagon. We found out a couple days later that he had been held up in traffic and arrived on site about two minutes after the event. He immediately went into rescue and then recovery mode so it was a couple days before he got a break and could start contacting us.

That was another of those "no one could ever imagine this happening" events that followed the publication of a best seller Tom Clancy novel detailing exactly such a scenario.

Ha. I was just talking with my daughter who duly noted that the only people who didn’t see this coming were people who’ve never read sci-fi, looked at a post-apocalyptic movie, (or any zombie movie) or someone who has absolutely no imagination. I told her that I didn’t vote for him.

K9s wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 12:49 pm The U.S. has surpassed Italy for the most confirmed covid-19 deaths in the world, a figure experts have called 'an underestimation'

The U.S. toll is now 19,424, surpassing Italy's total. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the virus is confirmed in a laboratory test and has called the American figure "an underestimation."

Yet the local ‘experts’ on Facebook claim (without any shred of credible source whatsoever) that the government is counting all deaths as caused by the Coronavirus, thus inflating the number.

Their stupidity is breathtaking.

Stiff wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:13 pm
Their stupidity is breathtaking.

Especially since we know the opposite is true. Italy, Spain and some locations in the US are reporting deaths at home that haven't been tested or recorded. So we are actually under counting.

Is your aunt doing better, Featureless?

People will talk. Even when they don’t have anything worthwhile to add to the conversation. Like the old saying goes, “Opinions are like assholes... everybody’s got one.”

Bisbee wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:26 pm Is your aunt doing better, Featureless?

People will talk. Even when they don’t have anything worthwhile to add to the conversation. Like the old saying goes, “Opinions are like assholes... everybody’s got one.”

They’re entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.

sig230 wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 3:23 pm My little brother's office was right where the plane went into the Pentagon. We found out a couple days later that he had been held up in traffic and arrived on site about two minutes after the event. He immediately went into rescue and then recovery mode so it was a couple days before he got a break and could start contacting us.

That was another of those "no one could ever imagine this happening" events that followed the publication of a best seller Tom Clancy novel detailing exactly such a scenario.

It was a hard day, esp here on here--we're 25 miles due West of Ground Zero. My best friend's brother was in Building 7--he told me what he went through, seeing the 2nd plane crash into the South Tower, and seeing body parts falling. A 2nd grader in my kid's elementary school lost his father. This feels the same, only it doesn't end, day after day. My brother tells me he lost a few people he knew, including one of his union brothers. Our town is maintaining a horrendous 10% death rate, 26 deaths out of 263 cases. When I go out for a walk I stay a minimum of 20 feet away from everyone.

We go nowhere, get stuff delivered, then dis-infect everything.

Mikeinmich wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 6:10 pm Ha. I was just talking with my daughter who duly noted that the only people who didn’t see this coming were people who’ve never read sci-fi, looked at a post-apocalyptic movie, (or any zombie movie) or someone who has absolutely no imagination. I told her that I didn’t vote for him.

Or had my wife’s microbiology class. She taught about pandemics every semester for twenty years. She gave examples of how fast the disease could spread using modern air travel and crowded air planes and terminals. The students were shocked when they heard that cabin air on most flights has a percentage recirculated and not hepa filtered.

Bisbee wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:26 pm Is your aunt doing better, Featureless?

Thanks for asking. She's feeling incrementally better since her crash Friday night, so that's good. Test came back negative. Everyone, including her doctor, is like WTF? I've got 2 docs, a PA, a RN and a PhD in infectious disease in the family all saying WTF about the test result. We have so shit the bed on all of this! It would be hilarious if people weren't dying and the economy wasn't getting hammered. Couldn't write a better SNL skit.

Always nice to hear good news, Featureless! Great!

YT, I think your town is at least being honest. It's bad and they are telling you it's bad. I hope that means everyone takes it seriously. I cannot say the same about all cities and states. Our state is clearly only releasing numbers they want to release when they want. The graphs are too uneven.

Also, I cannot help but wonder how the newly unemployed service industry workers are holding up. No matter how bad it gets, it's worse if you don't have an income, a residence, and insurance.

featureless wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 8:06 pm

Bisbee wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:26 pm Is your aunt doing better, Featureless?

Thanks for asking. She's feeling incrementally better since her crash Friday night, so that's good. Test came back negative. Everyone, including her doctor, is like WTF? I've got 2 docs, a PA, a RN and a PhD in infectious disease in the family all saying WTF about the test result. We have so shit the bed on all of this! It would be hilarious if people weren't dying and the economy wasn't getting hammered. Couldn't write a better SNL skit.

Once in Savannah a body wrapped in trash bags and duct taped was found stuffed under the foundation of a house.

Homicide was suspected.

Looks like the new thing to do is to use convention centers in areas with outbreaks. Our "reported' numbers are not really high, but mobile morgues and convention center hospitals make me wonder if they are holding back something.

Georgia to convert Atlanta convention center to temporary hospital
https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/georg ... VLazbRsjP/

Mobile morgues suggest Georgia’s coronavirus crisis is far from over
https://www.ajc.com/news/mobile-morgues ... pNo5oJplO/