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Jun. 4th, 2020 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. I don't know if people are still reading me, but a handful are certainly enjoying the photos. Which is good - although FB has made it relatively easy now to share photos from FB to DW, by providing "Copy Image Location" readily available. So expect a lot more pictures.
Hey here's another one - it was taken in a forest in Costa Rica in 2017.
2. New York vs. the Corona Virus and well everything else..
(You thought I'd forgotten our nightly installment of the on-going saga of the State of New York fighting off the pandemic...and well whatever else 2020 has decided to dump on it. I hadn't.)
I'm rather amused by New York - it is definitely test happy. Or rather the Governor is. He's obsessed with testing. Go ahead and protest, he says, just get tested. And he's kind of proud of this. Also, he has NOT forgiven Trump and the CDC for not doing their job in February and letting New York test people accurately when New York requested it. (As previously reported in prior posts - New York had to develop its own tests and get them approved by the FDA - which happened Feb 29 (they tested before they got approval - otherwise we'd have shut down around March 30 not March 20). Not only that - it had to pay for them. It's been asking for reimbursement for the last four months now - and has only been partially reimbursed.)
We are seeing thousands of New Yorkers exercising their right to peacefully protest — twenty thousand protesters in New York City, one thousand protesters on Long Island and more throughout the state. But we still need to remain vigilant about spreading the COVID virus. New York has expanded Coronavirus testing criteria to include all protesters who attended recent events. I encourage any individual who participated in a protest to get a test. Be responsible, wear a mask and get a test. There are 700 testing facilities throughout New York and anyone can go to coronavirus.health.ny.gov and find a testing site near you.
Now, I feel guilty for not protesting AND not getting a test. I also feel like I'm being gaslit. I don't like this psychological horror show - I want out.
I would really appreciate it if people would stop trying to tell me what to do. (Looks pointedly at the internet.) I'm a critical thinker - you have to convince me with facts and logic and proof, playing on my emotions is NOT going to work. And I've been irritable lately, I'm likely to tell you to Piss Off and none too politely.
*The State Department of Financial Services will issue an emergency regulation to help businesses and consumers who suffered damage from looting and vandalism. DFS is directing insurers to expedite claims, provide free mediation of disputes and accept photos as reasonable proof of loss so businesses don't have to wait for police reports. More information is available at dfs.ny.gov.
Well, you have to give them credit - they've come up with a solution for just about everything.
* Medical schools statewide will be allowed to reopen on June 22nd. Medical schools are following appropriate precautions in order to safely prepare for and welcome new cohorts of medical students this summer and fall.
Well, if anyone is going to be following the precautions, one would hope it would be the medical schools.
* Two regions are on track to begin Phase 2 of reopening next week. The Mid-Hudson Valley is on track to enter Phase 2 on Tuesday, June 9th, and Long Island is on track to enter Phase 2 on Wednesday, June 10th, following a review of regional data by global public health experts.
Assuming of course the protests don't set them back a month or more. The Governor kind of responded to that problem today. Stating - "uhm, guys, the virus hasn't disappeared, it's still there. Please be mindful of that. And follow the protocol."
Speaking of? I watched part of the George Floyd Memorial Service on tape - and it kind of went against all of the protocols for COVID-19. This is ironic, considering that it has recently been reported that George had just recovered from COVID-19 and that may have contributed to how easy it was to kill him. Talk about tragic - the man survived COVID-19 only to be murdered by a bunch of white asshole cops over a 20 dollar counterfeit check. (I wish he infected the damn cops - karmic justice would be for those cops to die of COVID-19 in jail, alone, with no one they care about near them, and for their families to have to watch from afar.) They were wearing masks at least, but there was no social distancing and it was in an enclosed space.
I don't know. I hope no one gets COVID and I hope there were no superspreader's present. That family has suffered enough.
3. Hmmm... Genes May Leave Some People More Vulnerable to Severe COVID-19
Geneticists have turned up intriguing links between DNA and the disease. Patients with Type A blood, for example, seem to be at greater risk.
[Well, that's kind of good news for me, since I'm 0 positive, universal blood donor.]
4.This is the Strangest Economy Ever
In an age punctuated with almost biblical chaos—plague, brutality, and surreal images of the president posing with a holy book he fumbles like a strange cut of meat—there has been one queasy and bizarre constant: “... and stocks rose.” On Wednesday, U.S. deaths from COVID-19 officially surpassed 100,000, and stocks rose. On Friday, the Commerce Department reported that GDP plummeted nearly 5 percent in the first three months of the year, and stocks rose. Over the weekend, Americans took to the streets of large cities and small towns to protest the killing of George Floyd and call for an end to years of police brutality and systemic racism against black Americans, as their mostly peaceful movements were often attacked by police and beset by chaos tourists smashing the windows of local stores. And stocks rose.
In fact, stocks seem to do nothing but go up these days. April was the best month for the Dow since the Reagan administration, and stocks were up in May as well. In the time that officially recorded U.S. deaths from COVID-19 increased from 100 to 100,000, the S&P 500 rose by 20 percent. What is going on?
A common answer to that question is that “the stock market is not the economy.” This observation is very popular, technically true, and often useless. Furniture sales, food service employment, and average home values in Idaho aren't the whole economy either, because the economy is a machine of many parts. By comparison, people don’t go around screaming “My neck is not my body!” as if it means something. Your neck is a part of your body, and the stock market is a part of the economy; in both cases, if the former is acting in an irregular way, it’s probably worth looking into.
When we look deeper, the story that emerges is confusing and contradictory. Americans locked in their houses with children, work, and baked bread have created an extinction-level event for small businesses, which has resulted in unprecedented layoffs and furloughs. But thanks to government stimulus, overall income has increased, and Americans have shifted spending to the virtual economy, compressing 10 years of anticipated e-commerce growth into a matter of weeks.
The COVID-19 crisis is simultaneously thrusting Americans into the pre-urban homestead economy of the 1830s, re-creating the Depression-era joblessness of the 1930s, and pulling forward the virtual economy of the 2030s. We are living in the weirdest economy ever.
In at least three ways, this recession is completely bizarre and ahistorical. And each weirdness helps explain the perceived gap between the stock market and the rest of the economy.
First, the economy is not really “broken,” as it was in the Great Recession, when the U.S. housing market collapsed like a wobbly Jenga set as the stock market, labor market, and manufacturing industry all came clattering to the ground at once. Instead, a global pathogenic pulse, whose reverberations are being felt in every corner of the world, has suddenly interrupted an otherwise normally functioning economy. That means we can’t solve the economic crisis until we solve the public-health crisis.
But that logic also leads to the assumption that if the public-health problem is solved, the economic recovery could be quick. That’s why stocks have jumped on optimistic rumblings about vaccines trials. When every company is in the plague business, every stock is a vaccine stock—and every cheery vaccine headline is a corporate-equity stimulus.
Second, this crisis combines an unprecedented shutdown of the physical economy with an unprecedented federal effort to distribute emergency cash to tens of millions of families. In April, consumer spending suffered the worst drop on record in the same month that personal income saw the biggest increase on record. Read that again. It sounds totally implausible, but here’s how it happened. As department stores, restaurants, and shops closed, consumer spending and employment in those places plummeted. But the federal government also passed the CARES Act, which distributed thousand-dollar checks to tens of millions of families and increased jobless benefits by $600 a week. As a result, the typical unemployment-insurance recipient has been earning 34 percent more than he or she did while working. With millions of Americans earning more in unemployment than they were at work, personal income soared in April by 10 percent.
The CARES Act, along with emergency moves by the Federal Reserve to shore up the financial sector, are almost certainly a major factor behind the stock-market recovery. For evidence, look at the timing of the S&P 500’s big reversal—the week after March 21. What happened that week? The Fed announced that it would do whatever it takes to avoid a financial collapse, and the president signed the CARES Act into law. Corporations and labor aren’t always aligned, but here they are: The federal bonanza has made both investors and workers richer.
Third, although retail is in the toilet, just about everything that has to do with housing is fine. New-home sales are higher than they were one year ago. Mortgage applications are higher than they were in late February. Grocery sales have boomed, and Wayfair furniture sales are up. Thumbtack, an online marketplace for independent workers such as yoga instructors and electricians, is showing a full recovery in home construction, home maintenance, and moves. With the physical economy shut down, American have been sent back to the 19th-century economy, before the boom in urban services, when families cooked, cleaned, worked, reared children, and cared for animals at home (recent pet-product sales are way up).
A profound message is lurking in these green shoots: The plague economy is extraordinarily unequal. Many high-income workers can afford to buy new homes because they are, for now, inoculated from the economic devastation by virtue of the fact that they can do their jobs from home. Remote work serves as an employment vaccine for a large swath of the white-collar workforce.
Why people are so angry right now and protesting - is in part because of the things discussed in the article above. American's have been sent back to a 19th century economy - where certain folks are much much better off than others.
Hey here's another one - it was taken in a forest in Costa Rica in 2017.
2. New York vs. the Corona Virus and well everything else..
(You thought I'd forgotten our nightly installment of the on-going saga of the State of New York fighting off the pandemic...and well whatever else 2020 has decided to dump on it. I hadn't.)
I'm rather amused by New York - it is definitely test happy. Or rather the Governor is. He's obsessed with testing. Go ahead and protest, he says, just get tested. And he's kind of proud of this. Also, he has NOT forgiven Trump and the CDC for not doing their job in February and letting New York test people accurately when New York requested it. (As previously reported in prior posts - New York had to develop its own tests and get them approved by the FDA - which happened Feb 29 (they tested before they got approval - otherwise we'd have shut down around March 30 not March 20). Not only that - it had to pay for them. It's been asking for reimbursement for the last four months now - and has only been partially reimbursed.)
We are seeing thousands of New Yorkers exercising their right to peacefully protest — twenty thousand protesters in New York City, one thousand protesters on Long Island and more throughout the state. But we still need to remain vigilant about spreading the COVID virus. New York has expanded Coronavirus testing criteria to include all protesters who attended recent events. I encourage any individual who participated in a protest to get a test. Be responsible, wear a mask and get a test. There are 700 testing facilities throughout New York and anyone can go to coronavirus.health.ny.gov and find a testing site near you.
Now, I feel guilty for not protesting AND not getting a test. I also feel like I'm being gaslit. I don't like this psychological horror show - I want out.
I would really appreciate it if people would stop trying to tell me what to do. (Looks pointedly at the internet.) I'm a critical thinker - you have to convince me with facts and logic and proof, playing on my emotions is NOT going to work. And I've been irritable lately, I'm likely to tell you to Piss Off and none too politely.
*The State Department of Financial Services will issue an emergency regulation to help businesses and consumers who suffered damage from looting and vandalism. DFS is directing insurers to expedite claims, provide free mediation of disputes and accept photos as reasonable proof of loss so businesses don't have to wait for police reports. More information is available at dfs.ny.gov.
Well, you have to give them credit - they've come up with a solution for just about everything.
* Medical schools statewide will be allowed to reopen on June 22nd. Medical schools are following appropriate precautions in order to safely prepare for and welcome new cohorts of medical students this summer and fall.
Well, if anyone is going to be following the precautions, one would hope it would be the medical schools.
* Two regions are on track to begin Phase 2 of reopening next week. The Mid-Hudson Valley is on track to enter Phase 2 on Tuesday, June 9th, and Long Island is on track to enter Phase 2 on Wednesday, June 10th, following a review of regional data by global public health experts.
Assuming of course the protests don't set them back a month or more. The Governor kind of responded to that problem today. Stating - "uhm, guys, the virus hasn't disappeared, it's still there. Please be mindful of that. And follow the protocol."
Speaking of? I watched part of the George Floyd Memorial Service on tape - and it kind of went against all of the protocols for COVID-19. This is ironic, considering that it has recently been reported that George had just recovered from COVID-19 and that may have contributed to how easy it was to kill him. Talk about tragic - the man survived COVID-19 only to be murdered by a bunch of white asshole cops over a 20 dollar counterfeit check. (I wish he infected the damn cops - karmic justice would be for those cops to die of COVID-19 in jail, alone, with no one they care about near them, and for their families to have to watch from afar.) They were wearing masks at least, but there was no social distancing and it was in an enclosed space.
I don't know. I hope no one gets COVID and I hope there were no superspreader's present. That family has suffered enough.
3. Hmmm... Genes May Leave Some People More Vulnerable to Severe COVID-19
Geneticists have turned up intriguing links between DNA and the disease. Patients with Type A blood, for example, seem to be at greater risk.
[Well, that's kind of good news for me, since I'm 0 positive, universal blood donor.]
4.This is the Strangest Economy Ever
In an age punctuated with almost biblical chaos—plague, brutality, and surreal images of the president posing with a holy book he fumbles like a strange cut of meat—there has been one queasy and bizarre constant: “... and stocks rose.” On Wednesday, U.S. deaths from COVID-19 officially surpassed 100,000, and stocks rose. On Friday, the Commerce Department reported that GDP plummeted nearly 5 percent in the first three months of the year, and stocks rose. Over the weekend, Americans took to the streets of large cities and small towns to protest the killing of George Floyd and call for an end to years of police brutality and systemic racism against black Americans, as their mostly peaceful movements were often attacked by police and beset by chaos tourists smashing the windows of local stores. And stocks rose.
In fact, stocks seem to do nothing but go up these days. April was the best month for the Dow since the Reagan administration, and stocks were up in May as well. In the time that officially recorded U.S. deaths from COVID-19 increased from 100 to 100,000, the S&P 500 rose by 20 percent. What is going on?
A common answer to that question is that “the stock market is not the economy.” This observation is very popular, technically true, and often useless. Furniture sales, food service employment, and average home values in Idaho aren't the whole economy either, because the economy is a machine of many parts. By comparison, people don’t go around screaming “My neck is not my body!” as if it means something. Your neck is a part of your body, and the stock market is a part of the economy; in both cases, if the former is acting in an irregular way, it’s probably worth looking into.
When we look deeper, the story that emerges is confusing and contradictory. Americans locked in their houses with children, work, and baked bread have created an extinction-level event for small businesses, which has resulted in unprecedented layoffs and furloughs. But thanks to government stimulus, overall income has increased, and Americans have shifted spending to the virtual economy, compressing 10 years of anticipated e-commerce growth into a matter of weeks.
The COVID-19 crisis is simultaneously thrusting Americans into the pre-urban homestead economy of the 1830s, re-creating the Depression-era joblessness of the 1930s, and pulling forward the virtual economy of the 2030s. We are living in the weirdest economy ever.
In at least three ways, this recession is completely bizarre and ahistorical. And each weirdness helps explain the perceived gap between the stock market and the rest of the economy.
First, the economy is not really “broken,” as it was in the Great Recession, when the U.S. housing market collapsed like a wobbly Jenga set as the stock market, labor market, and manufacturing industry all came clattering to the ground at once. Instead, a global pathogenic pulse, whose reverberations are being felt in every corner of the world, has suddenly interrupted an otherwise normally functioning economy. That means we can’t solve the economic crisis until we solve the public-health crisis.
But that logic also leads to the assumption that if the public-health problem is solved, the economic recovery could be quick. That’s why stocks have jumped on optimistic rumblings about vaccines trials. When every company is in the plague business, every stock is a vaccine stock—and every cheery vaccine headline is a corporate-equity stimulus.
Second, this crisis combines an unprecedented shutdown of the physical economy with an unprecedented federal effort to distribute emergency cash to tens of millions of families. In April, consumer spending suffered the worst drop on record in the same month that personal income saw the biggest increase on record. Read that again. It sounds totally implausible, but here’s how it happened. As department stores, restaurants, and shops closed, consumer spending and employment in those places plummeted. But the federal government also passed the CARES Act, which distributed thousand-dollar checks to tens of millions of families and increased jobless benefits by $600 a week. As a result, the typical unemployment-insurance recipient has been earning 34 percent more than he or she did while working. With millions of Americans earning more in unemployment than they were at work, personal income soared in April by 10 percent.
The CARES Act, along with emergency moves by the Federal Reserve to shore up the financial sector, are almost certainly a major factor behind the stock-market recovery. For evidence, look at the timing of the S&P 500’s big reversal—the week after March 21. What happened that week? The Fed announced that it would do whatever it takes to avoid a financial collapse, and the president signed the CARES Act into law. Corporations and labor aren’t always aligned, but here they are: The federal bonanza has made both investors and workers richer.
Third, although retail is in the toilet, just about everything that has to do with housing is fine. New-home sales are higher than they were one year ago. Mortgage applications are higher than they were in late February. Grocery sales have boomed, and Wayfair furniture sales are up. Thumbtack, an online marketplace for independent workers such as yoga instructors and electricians, is showing a full recovery in home construction, home maintenance, and moves. With the physical economy shut down, American have been sent back to the 19th-century economy, before the boom in urban services, when families cooked, cleaned, worked, reared children, and cared for animals at home (recent pet-product sales are way up).
A profound message is lurking in these green shoots: The plague economy is extraordinarily unequal. Many high-income workers can afford to buy new homes because they are, for now, inoculated from the economic devastation by virtue of the fact that they can do their jobs from home. Remote work serves as an employment vaccine for a large swath of the white-collar workforce.
Why people are so angry right now and protesting - is in part because of the things discussed in the article above. American's have been sent back to a 19th century economy - where certain folks are much much better off than others.