arch_8ngel

Thankfully, my daughter's kindergarten teach is doing about an hour worth's of Youtube videos each day to walk the kids through the lessons supplied by the school district.

Boeing is nowhere close to done with eating the shit sandwich they made for themselves. They were just downgraded to BBB rating for a reason.

That is an interesting way to spell socialism. (it's OK to admit that laissez faire capitalism doesn't cure all ills and sometimes social programs do provide a net benefit -- in this case attempting to smooth out the disruption of so many wage-workers not getting paid, all at once)

You can reliably freeze milk. Also, if you buy the stuff in the paper cartons, it is usually labeled as good for 6-8 weeks with just normal refrigeration.

I understand the concern. But the reassuring number is that the death rate for < 10 y.o. isn't just "low"... it is ZERO. I think it is extremely unlikely, that globally, no children under 10 y.o. with any of the issues that make it worse for adults have had the virus. Small reassurance, I know. But some kind of reassurance, at least.

This whole event is definitely going to involve a lot of reconsideration of how we choose to value lives of the elderly, versus the health of the economy. It is definitely an ugly truth that 80+ could have a 100% death rate, and if it was isolated to them, it is probably a significant net benefit, economically.

Does nobody actually read the news? This one doesn't appear to harm kids under 10 years old at all, with the 10-19 age group at the same relatively low risk level as 20-29. 60+ is where the stats get ugly, where at 80+, men are looking at a 20%+ chance of death.

From what I understand, most of the stories saying that they are resorting to triage for the elderly have been debunked and were based on a memo discussing PLANS to triage IF NEEDED. So they aren't at capacity YET, but they are planning for it as a worst-case scenario.

He is saying that 1% of 3.5MM is 35k not 350k. (i.e. 1% of 35MM would give you the 350k death number) If you're personally estimately 3.5MM infected (due to mitigating factors) then accompanying deaths should presumably work out to 35k if you're using a 1% estimate. (rather than 350k) A couple lines up you appear to do the same thing showing the death rate for 14MM infected at 1.4MM rather than 1% equating to 140k.

I envy your optimism. But with the current wave of closures, and the amount of deferred and cancelled travel, there is going to be a massive wave of service-sector layoffs coming. It is unlikely that will just bounce back, and the real question will be how well the government can help stave off bankruptcies.

It gets the term "helicopter money" from Bernanke's classic explanation of how to stave off a second Great Depression by literally throwing money from helicopters. The way they tried this during Great Recession was (1) Payroll tax holiday (2) adding/increasing a number of refundable tax credits and (3) massively extending unemployment benefits. The more immediate way to do this is probably along the lines of my suggestion of federal-level short-term disability payments for people that need quarantine or become ill. They're already trying to plan how to cover sick time for small employers that don't offer it.

I guess I was mis-remembering, but I had thought that the QE events back during the Great Recession were on the order of a full trillion, each. But now that I look it up, the first two were about on this current scale, with the third one being open-ended.

Over the last two years there was no realistic expectation that they would actually drop rates completely to zero, let alone THIS QUICKLY. It was certainly strongly speculated over the last couple of weeks, though, especially after the emergency 0.5% rate drop. Jonas - they aren't all out of ammo, though, as they obviously still have "helicopter money" at their disposal. Expect a couple of rounds of targeted QE to keep the most impacted industries from collapsing. Would also expect some kind of government provided short term disability to pay out to people that get sick and/or quarantined to avoid a wave of foreclosure and loan/credit defaults.

Assuming you're talking about Alex Jones, he is the guy that was pushing a bunch of conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook parents being "crisis actors". The guy is a wretched human being that makes his living actively making the world a worse place.

For people that are able to breastfeed exclusively, it really can be like turning on a switch, once the baby figure out how to latch. I know there are lot of people that have difficulties, though, so I don't mean to make light of that struggle.

Are they not planning to breastfeed? If the mom can nurse, the baby doesn't need anything other than breast milk until you introduce solids between 4 and 6 months. Good to have a backup in case the wife has nursing difficulties or the baby won't latch well, I guess.

The stock market value is not the economy, if that is what you are referring to quickly jumping back. The level of shutdown going on, and the level of supply chain disruption and customer disruption is very real and will have a very real impact. We may technically avoid a "recession" (two negative quarters) but we are definitely going to have at least a fairly major negative first quarter. If closures roll into April, then second quarter is likely down as well, giving us a recession, in the sense of the definition of the term. Just the impact of event cancellations, air travel and hotel cancellations, etc are going to be severe. And that is before you trade those all the way down to the other service sector jobs that are related with things like restaurants. And that is before you consider whether the oil war is a net negative, and consider how long it may drag out.

Varies by state. Usually food and gasoline, at least, are covered against gouging.

Yeah, arbitrage on luxury items (electronics or toys) is one thing, but for crisis related items it is deeply immoral and often illegal.

Do yourself a favor at get 10 lbs of rice and a few bags of dried beans, at least. (and if you like sweet potatoes, probably get 20 lbs of them, since they keep) It costs almost nothing, and if you lose your gamble on whether there is a supply chain issue, you will at least have something to eat that is complete protein. Make sure you have a decent supply of butter or oil, too. All things you can gradually work through even if the shit doesn't hit the fan, and super-cheap insurance if you end up needing it.

How much food do you typically keep on-hand? I'm in an area that during storm season we all stock at least 2 weeks, anyway. But with 2 young kids in the house, since i have the easy ability to be stocked for a full month, I see no reason not to hedge against the risk of either a supply chain disruption (whether that is shipping delays of some kind, or just grocery stores closing for deep cleaning) or just having the luxury of not needing to go shopping if my area is in the midst of an outbreak.

I am honestly surprised as hell that the buying panic didn't set in full force yesterday when European flights were cancelled for a month with the Wednesday night announcement. But I guess school closures weren't rolled out until today, and that is what makes it "real" for most people. Personally, as soon as there were confirmed cases outside of China I started stocking up a little more with each shopping trip.

The sales in our are over the last 2 weeks have been insane. Prices on meat I haven't seen since I was a kid. BEEF JERKY was on sale of all things. Never in my life have I seen a sale on beef jerky. Paying 3.50/lb for ground sirloin and $3/lb for whole pork loin is hard not to want to buy a second freezer.

Should have bought more stock in Walmart and Costco :p.

Good luck. I gradually stocked up on freezer and pantry items over the last few weeks, and have since been replenishing odds-and-ends every couple of days waiting for a day like this when people will inevitably get stupid.