Magox

It all depends though. If we don't flatten this curve by no later than June, then we won't see this. And not only that, we need to be able to effectively have policies in place to control any other potential outbreak we may see after that. If we don't effectively isolate any other potential outbreak then it will be a W recovery. If we don't effectively flatten the curve until after June and we don't begin phasing back the workforce at that time then it will look more like an L shape recovery.

The Nike Swoosh recovery is what I see.

Thanks for that. WIth that said, this isn't an apples to apples comparison of what I was talking about. What I was suggesting wasn't an either-or proposition. It was a phase-in of the workforce and economy looking at many different variables, such as geography, more testing, better understanding of the disease, provable therapeutics, maintaining subsets of social distancing policies, antibody testing to phase those back into the workforce, etc etc. And of course, none of this would even begin until the curve has been flattened. Meanwhile we have yet another 6.648 Million people who just filed for Jobless claims this past week. Totaling nearly 10 million in the past two weeks. The idea that we wait until a vaccine is suicide.

Guess it really doesn’t matter anyways, the only ones watching those channels are people who already hate the president or people at airports. and there aren’t many people at airports

Let's just say that I disagree with what you said. But I understand where you are coming from.

I get that. There is no magic panacea. It will help speed the recovery some, but it's essentially just pain pills to make the recovery more tolerable from a human suffering standpoint. We shouldn't discount that. They are citizens and they are suffering.

Got ya! That all makes sense! Every bit of it

We'll see how effective the Relief bill will eventually be. But what is it exactly that you are against in it? Are we talking about these miniscule pet projects such as the $25 Million for the Arts deal? I say miniscule from a relative basis. Money was provided to state and local governments. I don't see how there is anything wrong with that. There was over $100 Billion given to hospitals. There was $350 Billion for small businesses with strings attached, where they had to keep all their employees still employed. There was $500 Billion for Big Business. It's not the hotels, airlines and other big businesses fault, they needed a lifeline. This isn't like the banking crisis of 2008 where we bailed out banks that had these crazy business practices. This is not a moral hazard issue which was my main argument against the bank bailout bill. Even though now rethinking it, in principle I am still against that bill but it was a necessary evil. I would like to understand why you are so vehemently against the Relief Bill?

There are so many variables involved the most important being how quickly we can begin phasing back the workforce and at what utility rate. Every day that we are in this shut down mode is every day that businesses are killed and/hobbled. I was thinking that we would begin phasing in some of the workforce by May, now I'm not so sure of that.

She will have hers, the Senate will have theirs and then Trump/Mnuchin will have one. I'm not sure one will get passed because I see everyone outside of Trump/Mnuchin trying to get in their pet projects or in the Republicans case trying to severely limit it. This is going to be a much tougher and contentious negotiation than the Relief Bill. Nancy got very little what she wanted out of the Relief bill, she will look to exert herself. Senate Republicans will push back hard. Meanwhile Trump will be like "Pass Something Now"

I'm not arguing this. But, that is how it is. The government pays back Treasury bond holders, so whomever that may be are the ones that get paid. And the U.S has not shown one inkling that it cannot repay its debt. When you see issues like you saw Greece or Argentina with their debt defaults, it wasn't because of the amount of debt they had accumulated, it was because they couldn't repay the cost of servicing that debt or at least the fear of that. The U.S right now at this moment is going to have a tremendous shortfall in revenues, that will bounce back whether we do stimulus bills or not. But what an effective stimulus plan would do is quicken the recovery, get the economy back on track sooner and more importantly help out millions of people get employed and/or businesses get lifted. In regards to your second point. What's the point of making that argument. That's like saying Chicago Bulls only won those NBA titles because of Michael Jordan. We have the US dollar, and there is nothing remotely close to replacing that at this point in time.

And you are right, at the end of the day without demand it doesn't matter how cheap the money is it won't make a difference. This relief package that was recently passed was not a "stimulus" bill, it was a relief bill to help make partially whole what was lost. And what was lost will not be made fully whole by this $2 trillion dollar relief bill. But it will help lessen the depth of the hole that we will suffer. This infrastructure idea is an essential need. There are countless studies that show improved roads etc leads to more efficiency and $$'s. And as I have stated, infrastructure enhancements is a function of government, so we aren't talking about something else. AND, it is a form of demand. It's not the answer to solving our problems but think of it as a kick start. There would be construction jobs, construction materials etc that would be purchased and created. It's these sort of kick start measures that can help an economy moving. I don't know if people truly realize how deep this hole is going to be. We can snap back to full employment quicker than the 2008 downturn, but the 2008 downturn had structural issues. Demand side economics helped on the margins but the problems were structural in nature. This downturn is worse and less sever than the 2008 down turn. The hole is going to be MUCH MUCH deeper. But the issues aren't structural, a good old Demand side economic stimulus can definitely get us right back on track. I'm not advocating that it makes the country hole, it just needs to accelerate the recovery. If you accelerate the recovery, less people will suffer for shorter periods of time.

That's the rub. Efficiency from government in many aspects are not optimum. With that said I'd rather have someone who knows how to cut red tape and Trump is someone who could do that. Keep in mind, infrastructure improvements is a government function.

I know that the majority of this board is against racking up more debt to the nation. And I won't get into my thoughts at this time on the national debt and the clear advantages that we have as a nation in regards to that. So my focus on this particular topic is Trump's push for another $2 Trillion for infrastructure. I think many of us saw Trump's presser yesterday. The amount of people that may die could be really high. The economic damage that this downturn is going to cause is going to be devastating. There will be companies that don't make it out of this, that will permanently go out of business. Yes, at some point those companies will be replaced but the longer we are shutdown the more companies that will be in this group. This will not be a V sort of recovery that within a year we will be where we were before this happened. At least not as the way things are looking now. The $2.2 Trillion will provide some relief but the economic damage will be much greater than that. The important thing is that very little of this is because of bad business practices. With all that said, Trump is actually right here. Improving Infrastructure is a function of a government and it is something that has been on his and the Democrats agenda for a while. There is no better time to borrow money than right now. Interest rates are below .25%. That is unbelievably low and since most of this debt is pushed out to long-term treasury bonds, the cost to service this debt is very low. So if you were a business owner, and you just went through a down turn and you needed to go to the bank to get a loan. And this loan would help you beef up your staff and improve and purchase new equipment that would have had to have been purchased anyway, wouldn't you just borrow as much as you possibly could considering that the interest rates are near 0%? You'd be helping by providing more jobs and getting your business back to order as quickly as possible. The concept remains for the government, we are in a deep hole and each day that passes by that hole gets deeper. This is a time where government can step in and help with relief to its citizens and improve the infrastructure with better roads, bridges etc. As far as I'm concerned, all the things that government was planning on doing or likely to have been doing at some point, they may as well appropriate that now. The government will never have interest rates as low as they are now and it only makes good business sense to borrow now while rates are this low.

You very well may be right. But even if you have a persuadable group of 10-15% of the voting public, that is a substantial number. Between, PA, MI and WI Trump won those states with less than 100k votes between them all. All it takes is a percentage point or two to make the difference.

Whenever these punk "journalists" come out with these gotcha questions, he should just repeat the same line "Yet another gotcha question. Next" . That way he can point out their gotcha questions and just move on.

This is what gets me. He could still substantively push back but when he starts talking about ratings or brings the discussion back to him, that's where he loses some people. If he could just not be so narcissistic, he would do himself lots of favors.

You could be right but that isn't what they are anticipating for this one. Read the two studies that are linked in that article.

From my understanding all viruses or virtually all viruses mutate and that the pattern of mutations that this one has taken are not out of line with others. That "herd immunity" as the shape it is appearing it will take would be affected by herd immunity

So I found this Twitter thread by Nate Silver to be very interesting on the possible mortality rates. And here is an article on it from Allahpundit, who is an analytical guy who delves into these things. Basically, there are two studies that they are looking at and both the studies are in regards to the possible true rates of infections which of course alters the mortality rates. Looking at the mortality rates right now is not an accurate gauge because it doesn't take into account all the people who haven't been tested, and there are a lot of them. There is a chance that some countries are beginning to build a "herd immunity". Of course that means they are suffering more so now than other countries but potentially puts them in better shape over the course of the next 12-18 months. There are a number of qualifiers and it is certainly not definitive in any shape or form. But the more data that we are learning the more accurate these studies are becoming. I've said all along, I believe by the time this is all said and over with, the true mortality rate will be between .2-.3% And that for those that are under the age of 60 and/or without any respiratory and some other diseases that the mortality rate will be in line with the regular flu But for those that have these risks, it will be considerably higher.

We most likely won't completely follow Germany's model. Ezekiel Manuel and Scott Gotlieb both have similar plans and I'm guessing anytime now Trump will setup some sort of task force to begin looking at this. The idea of just having those who have tested positive to begin I don't think will be model. I think they will be included but I just don't see that as the model. It's too restrictive, specially for a country as free as the U.S

Slowly open the economy and social activities...Lifting restrictions could start with children and young adults....Parents should be allowed to assess the risk that their children could become infected with the corona virus and bring it back home...If the initial opening works, we should allow people in offices to go back to work in places where Covid-19 infections have died down. Businesses need to require workers to follow rules on physical distancing with fellow workers and customers.... We would then open museums and other venues to small numbers of people . I wouldn’t be opposed to this

That's the thing....Flattening the curve where? Each Urban area is essentially it's own affected location. By the time this is over with there will be some sort of outbreak in probably 20-40 different urban areas throughout the country. Truth be told, I think it's going to be the weather more than anything that will lower infection rates throughout the country. I think the South is going to be in better shape than the north. But I also believe population density will also play a role. Less urban areas will most likely experience less outbreaks than urban areas. I wouldn't be surprised that you see predominately southern and less urban populated areas beginning the ramp up of the work force. I think about a month from now you will see the first signs of it and from there pick up at a pretty decent pace. I could be wrong.

The problem Doc, is that once the "curve is flattened" the risks that you just cited about being asymptomatic and not wanting to infect other people, they don't go away. That will still remain. Flattening the curve is only about one thing and one thing only. Not inundating the hospitals so that it affects capacity. The risk of that will always exist until the Virus is either dead or people are able to be vaccinated. With that said, I do agree, there needs to be more data. The Health experts Fauci and Birx are both saying over and over that they are learning a lot about it and are gathering that data. I believe that whatever Trump decides will have the approval of Birx and Fauci. And again, as I have said over and over, ultimately it will be up to the governors. The governors have access to Dr. Fauci and Dr Birx. And then EVEN after that, it then is up to each company after the governors. So there are two more checks in place. All the Federal government can do is provide federal guidance.

He's either willfully being a partisan and being dishonest about it, or he's an idiot. One or the other. Which is why I don't respond when he replies with idiocy. When he actually responds with some sort of semblance of a rational and honest thought, I reply back.