COVID-19 Threads

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fauci-warns-of-stunning-number-of-deaths-from-coronavirus-212445433.html

Fauci being Fauci.

"beyond stunning....almost incomprehensible to have ICU beds completely full in some places." Is that really beyond stunning? Aren't we in the middle of a pandemic? Didn't he tell us we could potentially have over 2 million deaths? And now he's saying that possibly having 400,000 by the end of January (10-11 months into the pandemic) is a really stunning number?

Lots of scary sounding, fear mongering adjectives. Very little context, as always.

BTW, yahoo.com has to be the most pro fear-mongering, Democrat Party propaganda rag out there, it's just unbelievable at times how slanted their "coverage" is. Even had to throw in the comment about Trump and Republican governors because, well, just because every article has to be a hit piece. Who are the governors in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois?

 

Pretty sure it was mentioned in this thread. It’s amazing how many progressive reactions end up hurting the most at risk.

 

May have been mentioned by others as well but I definitely brought it up months ago. My wife is ESL certified and deals with probably 25-30 kids who fall into that group. I'm making some rough estimates here but of that group of 30 maybe 5 were in the classroom when the semester started and somewhere around 80% of the one who were online failed her class during the first 9 weeks. Her district forced the failing students back into that classroom when the second grading period started unless they could prove their absence was health related. She says the kids who just came back are absolutely LOST and completely left behind. It's a tragedy.

 

I wonder what Dr. Fauci would think about this. Probably would respond with something like, "that's unfortunate to hear, but that's not my area of expertise."

 

Incidentally, Dow crossed 30,000 today for the first time ever and will likely close in an hour at an all-time high. Time for Fauci to preach some doom and gloom.

My wife showed me her online gradebook and you can easily pick out which kids are in class and which are remote. And she teaches juniors at a high school with something like a 99.5% college attendance rate. This is the year they ought to be taking extra seriously, but the remote kids are doing nothing.

 

Shocking to me. I know it's been juiced by trillions of dollars of stimulus but still shocked. Has to be one of the largest transfers of wealth in US history, tech companies and their shareholders are making out like bandits. The lower to middle income people who aren't much invested in the market, getting totally screwed.

 

Transfer of wealth from whom, exactly?

 

It’s intentional. “Progress” to them means increased dependence on government, not an increase in independence.

If a governmental action causes more people to need the government as a result, it’s progress.

 

Very generally speaking, from about everyone to shareholders of tech firms.

 

Wealth is not a set amount of pie that everyone must eat from. Just because Amazon or Disney or Netflix stock increased does not mean that there is some equal and opposite decrease in wealth elsewhere.

 

If you view everything as proportional, this is certainly true. If you view things as "rising tide floats all ships", then not as much.

But one thing is for certain, people who participate in the market (what, 50% of adults?), are the only ones benefitting at all. Some of the middle class, all of lower middle class and lower class are falling further behind.

 

Eh - if I'm going to buy a home, I'm now competing against a proportionally wealthier set of tech buyers. I think the best place to look is Austin where they've become a tech hub and prices have skyrocketed.

 

Right, I get that.

I'm far from an economist and someone surely can explain it more eloquently than me, or tell me if I'm full of [ #2020 ] if that's the case, but it's my understanding that overall wealth hasn't really increased because the $3-4T stimulus (honestly don't know how much it's up to) has to be paid back by taxpayers. So relatively few see an increase in Assets on their personal balance sheets, but the American taxpayer as a whole is on the hook for the debt. In real simple terms, Jeff Bezos benefited HUGELY from the stimulus payments....he'll pay higher taxes to get that money paid back, but not near at the same ratio as what he benefited. Obviously just using Bezos as an easy example.

 

as is the case with any vaccine

 

Generally, I do view things as "rising tide floats all ships", but not really in this case. That's kind of the point I'm making. I think there are very clear winners and losers with what has gone on over the past 9 months, winners being tech shareholders and losers being the lower and lower-middle classes.

I don't think it's a coincidence that techies are in no hurry to get back to normal.

 

I'm in 100% agreement with you. The last sentence is certainly interesting.

 

Hard to argue with the success of the big tech oligarchs. They had an idea, they implemented it well, and they have been highly successful. I am completely on board and respect that. But I don’t like or trust them and they are as weird as scheiss.

 

Well, they owe a lot of their success to funding from their Ivy League friends and cheap overseas labor.