Tolya Ugajin

Let's be especially morbid. Every working age adult gets Covid. About 0.5% of them die (that's the lethality for working age adults). You would have absenteeism issues for a few weeks, but your meat packing plants will still run fine. Might not be a bad idea to do what I did weeks ago - screw the TP, stock up on frozen and canned foods and things like pasta with long shelf lives and lots of ways to prepare. It's not that there are no healthy workers available - the total confirmed cases (all ages, not just people in the workforce) is just over 1.2% of the US workforce - , it's that for a variety of reasons (fear, disruption of school/daycare, incentives not to work, etc.) lots of healthy workers are not working.

Lethality rate for all persons (including those with underlying health conditions) for Covid is under 0.5%. For school age children, it is comparable to the lethality of measles (0.2%), which is also extremely communicable. I'm reasonably certain that schools were open prior to a measles vaccine being available in the mid-60's. Note, if anything the current lethality rate data for Covid is overstated, because, unlike measles, it is easy to have Covid and not be sure that's what it is (thus, many cases are not counted). When the cure prescribed will kill more people than the illness, it's time to fire your doctor.

Just gonna slide this in here... U.N. STUDY: GLOBAL EXTREME POVERTY COULD DOUBLE BY NEXT YEAR DUE TO COVID LOCKDOWNS by Kevin Ryan The economic fallout of the coronavirus shutdowns could increase global poverty by more than half a billion people, or 8% of the total human population. This would be the first time that poverty has increased globally in thirty years, since 1990. That according to a study by the research wing of the U.N. The paper estimates that if household income falls by 20%, which it is projected to do for several months, the number of extremely poor people could increase by 420 million, wiping out a decade of gains in the fight against poverty. The reason is that the shutdowns are affecting much more than just COVID-19 transmission, and the impact extends much further than the myopic debate on U.S. cable news. The short-sightedness of work closures, both here and abroad, has brought families around the world to economic disaster. Put simply, there is no demand for labor anymore. The great expansion of market economies that reduced the number of people living in extreme poverty from 36% of the world’s population in 1990 to just 8% in 2018 has been reversed by COVID restrictions. And now the number of poor is rising. Very fast. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 $𝟭.𝟵𝟬 𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲, up to nearly 16%, by next year. And with that massive increase in poverty will come an equally large increase in non-COVID death rates. For example: A report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, for example, estimates that 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮, 𝟭𝟰𝟬 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗶𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘀𝗵𝘂𝘁𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻-𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗖𝗢𝗩𝗜𝗗-𝟭𝟵 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱. In one African country, Malawi, a cost-benefit analysis of continuing relatively moderate restrictions, which include closing schools, curbing travel, and restricting health outreach work, found that it could prevent thousands of deaths from COVID-19, but would lead to lower incomes and increased hunger, making people more vulnerable to tuberculosis and malaria. The total net effect of the shutdown would be a loss of 26,000 years of life and two years worth of GDP growth. Overall, the report estimates that the costs of the lockdown outweigh the benefits by 25 to 1. In India, it’s not much better. When the country imposed its lockdown on March 24th, 140 million people lost their jobs, including tens of millions of migrant workers who suddenly had no income, no way to pay the rent, and no trains to take them home (those were also cancelled). Millions literally walked hundreds of miles back to their home villages. The county’s economy is now estimated to be shrinking at an annualized rate of 45%. Interruptions of diagnosis and treatment from just a three-month lockdown are projected to cause 500,000 excess deaths from tuberculosis in India. A team at Johns Hopkins University calculates that 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝟭𝟭𝟴 𝗽𝗼𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲-𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗿𝘂𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝟭.𝟮 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝟱𝟳,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗶𝘅 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘀. In Nepal, men have seen the hours they can work for wages fall by about 75%. In Uzbekistan the number of households where at least one person works has dropped by over 40%. Over 80% of Kenyans and Senegalese reported a loss of income in early April. Colombia’s shutdown has sparked mass protests in working-class barrios. Worse still, the price of food has also gone up. That’s because the shutdowns have restricted the labor needed to harvest crops. • In India vegetables that were harvested have been left to rot as they cannot be transported to market. • In Uganda the prices of most key foods have gone up by over 15% since mid-March and rations for refugees have been shut by 30%. • In the Philippines an “extreme” quarantine has seen squash, beans, and watermelons wither in the fields. In Bangladesh more than 70% of Rohingya refugees say they are now unable to buy food. In towns in Sierra Leone almost 60% of people said they had eaten fewer times than normal in the past week, according to the Yale Research Initiative. Fully 14% have gone a whole day without eating. In El Salvador, people have taken to hanging white flags from their windows to show that they have run out of food. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗙𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗮 𝗱𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗲 𝗵𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬, and sees “multiple famines of biblical proportions” within a few months. Unlike the U.S., poor and even middle-income nations do not have the resources (or ability to take on trillions in new debt) to be able to give out payments to their citizens to offset restrictions on being able to work. Nor can out-of-work laborers turn to family members in wealthy countries to send some extra cash, because there’s no work in wealthy countries either. Remittances are projected to decrease at least 20%. Experts now say countries should not be imposing lockdowns, but instead should strive to protect the elderly while letting adults go to work. SOURCES: https://www.economist.com/…/covid-19-is-undoing-years-of-pr… https://www.wider.unu.edu/…/Publications/…/PDF/wp2020-43.pdf https://news.yale.edu/…/measuring-effects-lockdowns-india-a… https://www.economist.com/…/indias-economy-has-suffered-eve…

Right now, I'm listening to by fiancé's family chat from 2 provinces via skype on our weekly drinking party. Better than any song.

Atheists, Muslims, and born-again Christians have no sense of humour when it comes to religion. You should be fine - normal Christians don't get upset with Jesus on toast or Walking Dead characters named Jesus, so why should they be upset about a Jesus avatar. Besides, popular portrayals of Jesus look more or less like an average hipster today.

Where you pulled that out of your behind is beyond me. You laid out a hypothetical of no lockdowns in the US at all but that would still mean a loss of imports and exports, along with a nonsensical tangent about retail. I used actual data to estimate economic impact of that scenario. Most jobs being effected by the lockdowns have nothing to do with import or export - they are service jobs primarily - restaurants, bars, travel, and retail being the hardest hit sectors. Under the scenario YOU laid out, those would all still be open. International travel is accounted for under imports and exports (which I assessed). There would likely be some dropoff restaurant and bar business, but would it be dramatic? Probably not - and, just as people have done anyway, take out and delivery would make up for a substantial amount of lost dine-in. I cited neither jobs as interchangeable nor incomes. I did indeed point out that PRODUCTS can be interchanged. Germany isn't sending us cars? No problem, US factories can indeed easily ramp up to accommodate the loss of those imports. France, Italy, Spain, etc. are no longer sending us wine? Oh dear, good thing China and Japan are no longer buying California wines, so there is more domestic wine available than before to counteract the loss of imports. Note, in my assessment, I didn't actually discount the economic effects due to such product substitution, I merely pointed out that they would happen. The bottom line was, with the domestic economy not locked down, the impact of lost exports and imports that we've actually experienced (using real live data you could google the same way I did) is some but not tragic job losses. Oh, and I should have pointed out, some of those lost imports and exports are certainly caused by domestic demand and production being shut down, so, guess what, there would be even less job loss. If you want to engage in facile arguments and misleading claims, by all means, find someone else to chat with.

All you need is for Peter Jackson to make a trilogy out of the Silmarillion there, and tourism will be back in no time. Of course, if he bastardizes it the way he did The Hobbit, I just might feed him to sharks.

Personally, I love baby goats. Preferably in this form:

Ummmm, maybe this sort of thread isn't really for you after all? Counting doesn't seem to be your strong suit. By the way, you're "11" was also supposed to be 12, so this is 13.

Rather vague and subjective, isn't it? What do you mean by "try"? The best what? How is it measured? It makes me think of one of my favorite movie lines of all time.

Looks like standard Grey.

Locking down an island 3,800 kilometers from the nearest continent is also a tad easier than locking down a country with around 14,000 kilometers of land borders that also happens to account for 1/7th of the total global economy. But the loss of overseas trade doubtless had hurt your economy even more than it has the US. As for our form of government, we've become so dysfunctional that I'm starting to think a return to good old fashioned monarchy would be preferably.

Interesting idea. Let's run some numbers. Exports account for just over 12% of our economy. Thus far, the drop in exports (goods and services) is 9.2%, which works out to just over a 1% hit to the US economy as a whole lost due to exports falling off in your scenario. While surely some of that loss is due to reduced production for exports caused by shuttered businesses, let's assume the total hit to the economy is the full 1%. So, in your hypothetical situation, the US economy loses 1%, but, since the US economy was growing by over 2% previously, it still grows, albeit at a slower pace. Imports account for about 15% of our economy. Thus far, those are down 6% overall. Using the same math as above, this works out to a 0.9% hit to our economy. Now, assuming both these hits in full, the US economy is almost flatlining, but not shrinking. In addition, there is a dynamic between imports and exports that is difficult for a non economists (such as us) to quantify. For instance, if we don't import cars from Germany and Japan due to Covid, doesn't that quite likely drive up demand for domestic cars, thereby creating more jobs (or at least more overtime) for US autoworkers? Similarly, many low end industrial products are made overseas, while higher quality versions are made here. Some of the lost imports is certainly made up by switching to US sources, creating more jobs. Many products (such as petroleum and especially agricultural products) are both imported AND exported, so, again, lost imports are offset by lost exports. But, again, let's take worst case scenario, and assume the full impact is felt on our GDP. GDP growth is then flat/slightly upwards through the pandemic. At the end of 2019, there were 1.4 million more available jobs than available workers in the US. At the time, there were roughly 164 million workers in the US workforce. Assuming that 1.9% creates a similar percentage of lost jobs, that's 3.1 million jobs lost (1.9% of the 164M + 1.9% of the 1.4M) - a tenth what we've seen so far. An excess of a 1.7 million workers is hardly an economic calamity. In fact, that's where the US was in 2015. I don't recall 2015 as an economic catastrophe, do you? Would you rather be back in 2015, or where we are right now, in terms of the economy? Not really a hard choice. As far as your examples of retail businesses on the edge - that has been happening for 2 decades now - it would have and will continue to happen regardless of Covid, as retail continues to go the way of the manual transmission (still available, still preferred by some, but only 13% of car models offer it as an option). No, all our current problems would not have vanished if we hadn't shut down, but they clearly would have been MUCH less than they are.

and yet capitalism has lifted more people out of extreme poverty in the last 20 years than all the global social programs combined, while socialism has proven time and again to lead to starvation and tyranny the loss of rights and no socialist country in history has ever been a democracy. But, hey, you keep wrapping yourself in comfortable lies, while those who understand history know that in the 20th century the countries with capitalistic economies largely gave up their "imperialist expansion", while the National Socialists in Germany started a rather large war as it embarked on rapid imperialist expansion, the United Soviet Socialist Republic took over Eastern Europe and fomented war throughout Latin America and Asia, and currently China, which at least has the honesty to call its ruling (and sole) party Communist uses imperialistic expansion (via economic means mostly) like nobody's business in Africa while bullying around its Asian neighbors. But, hey, at least they all have strict gun control and socialized medicine.

CNN let us know that the lockdowns could result in 1.5 million more dying of TB. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/06/health/tuberculosis-deaths-lockdown-scli-intl/index.html and that more people may die of hunger as a result than of the disease itself https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-n-warns-hunger-pandemic-amid-threats-coronavirus-economic-downturn-n1189326 and that 75,000 more are at risk due of suicide and overdoes due to lockdown-related strss. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/08/health/coronavirus-deaths-of-despair/index.html

MIT is a respectable institution, but it is hardly "right wing". For instance, one of the authors of this essay is the left-leaning Tax Policy Center's Chairman, and a brief review of the other's affiliations and research interests also indicates he is left of center. Using these two to represent a "push from the right" is a bit like NPR using David Brooks as their "conservative" voice - he's only conservative compared to most people in New York City. You make it sound like there is something wrong with a competitive capitalist market creating both winners and losers. It creates more winners than losers (as evidence by the recent trend of people joining the upper class faster than joining the lower class by a 2 to 1 margin), and compared to the very abundant historical evidence (Venezuela, USSR, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba for instance) creates a lot more winners and a lot less losers than the alternatives. It sucks to lose, but not nearly as much as knowing you can never win.

At the moment, most of those jobs are just waiting for the governors to stop the self-inflicted madness and allow the businesses to reopen. Restaurants can bring back wait staff, "nonessential" retailers can bring back their people, factories can reopen, etc. The longer it drags on, the more small businesses will be destroyed, and the more time it will take for the damage to heal. Perhaps now that the CDC has suddenly realized surface transmission is not a significant risk and that 500 doctors have signed a letter that the lockdowns are likely to cause more health problems than the virus, we can get back to letting the facts determine policy, rather than a hysterical media with its own agenda.

Actually, most Senators didn't realize that the additional unemployment benefits would result in many people making more on unemployment than working - depending on the state, the "break even" point is roughly $50-$55K (most states cap benefit in the low-$400's per week, add in $600/wk, multiply by 52 weeks/yr, that's what you get) - which works out to $25/hr. It's hardly unbelievable that most Senators were unaware of this (remember the whole "we have to pass the bill to see what's in it" from a few years ago?). This particular concern was raised just a few days before the vote, by one particular Senator, who almost got the billed scuttled by the GOP controlled Senate because of it, but McConnell made a political decision and bullied his caucus into line to pass it. With politicians who, on camera, express concerns that Guam will tip over, it hardly beggars the imagination that many do not read all the details of a bill before they vote. We can argue all day about what the minimum wage should be (my personal feeling is it should not exist, which is good enough for such "democratic socialist" paradises as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, among others), but you and many others ignore the simple fact that as minimum wage increases, jobs are lost. McDonald's, for instance, now employs less than half the people it did in 2012 - with significantly more restaurants. Why? Some of our most populous states mandated $15/hr minimum wages, and jobs were quickly automated away. Look at any other similar restaurant chain (or, frankly, any low-wage business) and you'll see the same. Heck, for that matter compare an auto plant today - heavily roboticized - to one of 30 years ago. When the cost of labor rises, the investment of capital to replace labor through automation becomes more attractive, and jobs are lost. As far as negative income taxes, approximately 20% of US "taxpayers" currently "pay" negative effective rates on federal income taxes. 44% pay no net federal income taxes. As far as a push for it coming from "the political right" - perhaps you can provide a quote of someone on the right? A quote more current than a reference to Milton Friedman, who has been dead for 14 years? Because I have to say I've never heard a single person on the right treat the basic income models (whether via direct payment or negative taxation) with anything but disdain. Friedman pushing for tax credits for the poor during the Reagan administration hardly qualifies as a "push from the political right". And we have that many (1 in 5) with negative taxation AND have 83 federal welfare programs that cost over $1T annually (and that excludes Medicare and Social Security, which run another $1.5T), so I'm at a loss at how it's expected that those programs will be shuttered due to a negative taxation scheme. As a former president once said, the closest thing to immortality is a government program. Heck, the Rural Electrification Administration is still around 85 years later, and you'd be hard pressed to find a rural home today without access to electricity. Yes, we do see an ever-expanding list of tax credits and tax deductions that preferentially favor lower-income people, but that has more to do with making the tax rate cuts at the higher end more politically palatable than anything else. Those tax rate cuts come and go based on who controls Congress, but the credits are pretty much eternal. Finally, I'm baffled why you think those now making more on unemployment than they did working will be "reluctant to go back to those employers". Will they suddenly have skills that command higher wages? No. Will there suddenly be more higher paying jobs? Unlikely. No, when the benefits are cut off (either due to them expiring or because they are recalled and so they are no longer eligible) it seems far more probable that they will go back to their old jobs, or comparable jobs they have the skills for, and which pay a comparable wage, because the alternative is to have no paycheck.

They were fully understanding...once a GOP Senator pointed it out the day before it was voted on. Prior to that, it's unlikely they understood it or, the GOP at least, would have attempted to change it during negotiations. Unemployment benefits are paid by the states, but with a hefty share of it coming from a federal tax called FUTA. The extra $600 are subject to additional federal eligibility rules. Considering how Congress has behaved for the last 25 years, you're being awfully generous to assume they understand how benefits are processed. I'm not even sure what your 3rd paragraph means.

This happened a lot in the old days. I'd come online to find people having SLex in my bed or on my "toys". So I'd get in voice (and also text) and start a running commentary while eating popcorn. One time the guy actually told me to get out of HIS house, and the girl believed it...until I started tossed the bed around. Apparently having a bed turned upside down and bounced like a basketball really kills the mood.

Gosh, that Tolya is a smart fellow because, gosh, he can do math and relies on more than one source for information before he opens his yapper. As long as I've logged in to see why someone had tagged me (thanks, BTW) I'd like to share an anecdote for the folks who went on and on about how messed up the unemployment system is, how it doesn't pay workers, how hard it is to collect unemployment, how it's biased against the worker, I don't know anything, yadda yadda yadda. I recently got a notice that one of my employees had filed for unemployment after being laid off back in March. Having just spoken to the employee (actually one of our managers, who makes far too much to risk being fired over a fraudulent attempt to collect unemployment) a couple times the prior day, I found this curious. After verifying with him that he had not filed for unemployment, I responded (by fax and overnight mail, both with confirmed delivery prior to the deadline) to the notice disputing the claim, pointing out that the employee still worked for us, had not had a gap in employment for more than 20 years, that the hire date on the form was wrong, and offering to provide a copy of the most recent pay stub to the unemployment office to verify his continued employment. The employee also reached out to the unemployment office to say he had not filed. Today, I got a notice that the unemployment office had awarded him unemployment benefits anyway. And here I had thought I'd seen it all.

Because nobody here has seen those posts or anybody here knows who the target is? Kinda a stretch.

Rihjt now, my biggest pet peeve is this guy with the vendetta against Zak for zoophilia...