Red Mosquito

Bi_3 wrote:

B wrote:

McParadigm wrote:As of this morning we are 42nd in per capita testing. We were in the thirties until late last week. We fell further behind.

Fuck you! Ask China!

Orange man's negligence means we will never catch up to the Faeroe Islands! This is a highly relevant statistic!

Ha ha! He gotcha, McP! We're more like 41!

B wrote:

Bi_3 wrote:

B wrote:

McParadigm wrote:As of this morning we are 42nd in per capita testing. We were in the thirties until late last week. We fell further behind.

Fuck you! Ask China!

Orange man's negligence means we will never catch up to the Faeroe Islands! This is a highly relevant statistic!

Ha ha! He gotcha, McP! We're more like 41!

Do not forget to honor Mauritius and the Channel Islands as well you rube!

*googles covid testing per capita statistics*
*finds and sorts list*

lets see, which of the more than 40 countries doing more per capita testing than us is the smallest? if I can find really small countries in there among those many others, that will make a good point about how unequatable their circumstances are to ours. who to choose?

Germany? definitely not
Italy? no
Canada? no
Russia? better not
Israel? no
Spain? Portugal? Denmark? Kuwait?
Norway? Singapore? Australia? Belarus?!

no. wait. here it is. Faeroe Islands. that’ll zing em.

ha ha what a great point I am making on the Internet

Bi_3 wrote:

B wrote:

Bi_3 wrote:

B wrote:

McParadigm wrote:As of this morning we are 42nd in per capita testing. We were in the thirties until late last week. We fell further behind.

Fuck you! Ask China!

Orange man's negligence means we will never catch up to the Faeroe Islands! This is a highly relevant statistic!

Ha ha! He gotcha, McP! We're more like 41!

Do not forget to honor Mauritius and the Channel Islands as well you rube!

Forgot Malta. Sorry!

Anyway, per capita testing is only relevant in areas where the virus is rampant and people are concentrated. For example, hot spots like New York, NJ, and Louisiana have done significantly more testing per capita than states like Maine and Idaho where it's not currently necessary (as another example, South Korea has done half the per capita testing over the US overall and they are the darlings of the Covid response). In a period where testing resources is limited, testing people who are not likely to have been exposed isn't a very wise use of resources, so in a nation as large and dispersed as the US it's not as meaningful a statistic. As testing capacity continues to improve then wider and possibly repeat testing should be measured.

Bi_3 wrote:Anyway, per capita testing is only relevant in areas where the virus is rampant

Uh, no? It’s relevant wherever the virus IS, which is more or less everywhere.

For example, hot spots like New York, NJ, and Louisiana have done significantly more testing per capita than states like Maine and Idaho...

Louisiana, an identified covid hotspot in the wealthiest nation on earth, has conducted fewer tests per capita than Denmark, Portugal, Israel, and 15 other countries.

...where it's not currently necessary.

While it’s true that Idaho is currently testing far below the national average, they have also seen recent spikes in cases and, in fact, have just recently invested heavily in expanding their testing capacity. Idaho doesn’t seem to agree with your assessment that testing isnt especially necessary there.

In a period where testing resources is limited, testing people who are not likely to have been exposed isn't a very wise use of resources

This is backwards. How, in a vast rural space where healthcare availability is minimal and often very distant, would you ever KNOW if the virus is spreading through the community...unless you were testing? “We don’t have to test this group because they don’t have any documented cases” is a sure fire way to not discover community spread until it is too late. It’s part of why the lack of federal organization and support for testing, the determination to undercount figures, and the late reactions of this administration have been and will continue to be every bit as mortally expensive to Americans as China’s secrecy and deception was.

But despite warnings about supply shortages by health experts and governors at least as early as February, the federal government took until late April to ramp up domestic production of swabs — a universal ingredient in the most common type of COVID-19 test.

Nasopharyngeal swabs, as they're called, are considered medical devices and must be long and flexible enough to get all the way through the nose to the back of the throat.

At an April 17 press briefing, President Trump said that in the next few weeks, the federal government would be sending millions of swabs to the states, and he added: "Mostly, it's cotton. It's not a big deal."

But Trump was wrong. Cotton can interfere with test results because it contains its own genetic material, so nasopharyngeal swabs are typically made of polyester, nylon, foam or some other synthetic material.

The government has the Defense Production Act, a tool the administration used in late March to require General Motors to produce more ventilators for coronavirus patients. But the administration did not act as quickly to use that tool for swab shortages, even though governors and medical experts were advising exactly that.

McP really needs to stop spending all his time on Trump and Covoid and give us that Blue Öyster Cult thread he promised 6 fucking years ago.

bada wrote:McP really needs to stop spending all his time on Trump and Covoid and give us that Blue Öyster Cult thread he promised 6 fucking years ago.

self was about to start an agents of fortune thread yesterday

Caught the blue oyster cult
Broke its wings
Then put it on display
Stripped of all its beauty
Once it could not fly high away

Is density dead?

https://dnyuz.com/2020/05/12/manhattan- ... -the-norm/

If companies want to save on real estate they are going to also look to save on their payroll. The idea that all jobs can just be done from home isn't reality. Lots of jobs will just go away while the necessary amount of employees to keep the machine running will sit at home with their small dog and laptop.

What the pandemic is really telling us is that some people don't need to work and have no utility in our Neewwww NorrmmAAllL. We probably need some form of UBI going forward but knowing America we'll probably just let people die in the streets.

verb_to_trust wrote:If companies want to save on real estate they are going to also look to save on their payroll. The idea that all jobs can just be done from home isn't reality. Lots of jobs will just go away while the necessary amount of employees to keep the machine running will sit at home with their small dog and laptop.

What the pandemic is really telling us is that some people don't need to work and have no utility in our Neewwww NorrmmAAllL.

It's a cold, sobering reality. Waking up to the strength of this realization every goddamn day. And the punch never eases. No bruises, no calluses. Just a suckerpunch a day, every day.

durdencommatyler wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:If companies want to save on real estate they are going to also look to save on their payroll. The idea that all jobs can just be done from home isn't reality. Lots of jobs will just go away while the necessary amount of employees to keep the machine running will sit at home with their small dog and laptop.

What the pandemic is really telling us is that some people don't need to work and have no utility in our Neewwww NorrmmAAllL.

It's a cold, sobering reality. Waking up to the strength of this realization every goddamn day. And the punch never eases. No bruises, no calluses. Just a suckerpunch a day, every day.

I feel it too man. So much uncertainty. Like, do I still matter in society when this all ends? I don't know the answer.

verb_to_trust wrote:

durdencommatyler wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:If companies want to save on real estate they are going to also look to save on their payroll. The idea that all jobs can just be done from home isn't reality. Lots of jobs will just go away while the necessary amount of employees to keep the machine running will sit at home with their small dog and laptop.

What the pandemic is really telling us is that some people don't need to work and have no utility in our Neewwww NorrmmAAllL.

It's a cold, sobering reality. Waking up to the strength of this realization every goddamn day. And the punch never eases. No bruises, no calluses. Just a suckerpunch a day, every day.

I feel it too man. So much uncertainty. Like, do I still matter in society when this all ends? I don't know the answer.

Exactly. I'm with you.

You guys could learn to code or become sex workers or deliver for Amazon. So many possibilities in our exciting new society.

durdencommatyler wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:If companies want to save on real estate they are going to also look to save on their payroll. The idea that all jobs can just be done from home isn't reality. Lots of jobs will just go away while the necessary amount of employees to keep the machine running will sit at home with their small dog and laptop.

What the pandemic is really telling us is that some people don't need to work and have no utility in our Neewwww NorrmmAAllL.

It's a cold, sobering reality. Waking up to the strength of this realization every goddamn day. And the punch never eases. No bruises, no calluses. Just a suckerpunch a day, every day.

Spoiler: show

Bi_3 wrote:

Mickey wrote:

Superblood Wolfmoon wrote:

Mickey wrote:But see that's exactly why I'm resistant to the anti-Florida discourse--not really much dumber than what happened 30 minutes outside of Denver on Sunday, or the reopen protests in Philadelphia last week, but it allows folks to be like "ah, batshit Florida" and exceptionalize it, hiding the fact that there are batshit, raving morons in every single state.

Absolutely correct. I live in Oregon, and most people think Oregon=Portland. However, I can assure you I live in a moronic hellscape of white-trash conservatives the likes of which would make the panhandle green with envy.

They are everywhere. And they are loud. And they have guns. And Facebook accounts.

Yeah, I lived in Nevada for four years so I got a good taste of west coast loonies. Don't have a ton of personal experience with Oregon but I had friends from there who talked about how nuts it could get, and obviously there's the Bundy family connection. Now we live in Pennsylvania and--surprise!--crazy people here too.

Pennsylvania or Cambridge, MA?

Everyone knows the elite schools closed their campuses months ago.

durdencommatyler wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:

durdencommatyler wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:If companies want to save on real estate they are going to also look to save on their payroll. The idea that all jobs can just be done from home isn't reality. Lots of jobs will just go away while the necessary amount of employees to keep the machine running will sit at home with their small dog and laptop.

What the pandemic is really telling us is that some people don't need to work and have no utility in our Neewwww NorrmmAAllL.

It's a cold, sobering reality. Waking up to the strength of this realization every goddamn day. And the punch never eases. No bruises, no calluses. Just a suckerpunch a day, every day.

I feel it too man. So much uncertainty. Like, do I still matter in society when this all ends? I don't know the answer.

Exactly. I'm with you.

Maybe this is time to re-calibrate instead of feeding the beast. Unless you are in commercial real estate. Then you are fucked.


It's interesting in the sense that for over the last decade there has been this social/environmental push to urbanize (not gentrify!), but it's been predicated on the idea of mass consumption of everything from art to coffee. I dont think that is going to go away, but it's gonna be hard sell to get white collar people back on the subway for 2 hours a day after working from their couches for several months. I could also see a huge spike in offshoring if businesses decide they don't need people to actually see each other.

I think a bit of urban flight might have some benefits, were it to come to pass, but a big shift seems unlikely. Among other things, in a future where companies exodus from a significant portion of currently-maintained urban work spaces, it seems pretty likely that a lot of those buildings survive by renovating and rebranding as living space. More available downtown living space, mixed with maybe 2-4% of WAH-capable professionals moving out of area, seems like it would bring about a fairly dramatic change in cost of living expenses...and the reality is that most people who live in cities would not be long enamored of the sleepiness of midsized communities.

Anyways, tech companies have the ability to move whole teams to WAH, and that certainly puts pressure on other companies that need those skill sets to remain competitive for talent...but those other companies will mostly still have some degree of on-site need, and will have to balance the offer of remote work against other factors.

As a for instance, the clinical information systems team at my hospital (of which I am a part) has been told that when the state reopens, none of us will have a dedicated workspace and our footprint will likely be shrinking from four floors of office space to two (no layoffs are expected). We are already piloting a device which provides more robust remote access, and restructuring our communications and processes for a mostly remote future. But current post-COVID operational plans still have most people in office at least two days a week, by necessity...a bit too often to make me want to move 40 miles out.