Artful Dodger

In addition to the obvious privacy concerns, what I worry about under such a system is that the Federal Reserve would attempt to force people to spend by gradually removing funds from bank accounts via negative interest rates. For at least ten years, the Fed's repressing interest rates has punished savers. In future recessions, under such a system, policy makers would undoubtedly see negative rates as a tool for forcing people to spend to get the economy moving again. What you don't spend, you would lose, via negative interest rates. If they go ahead with this, and because it's a terrible idea I'm sure there's a lot of support for it (because there are few adults running our country right now), I assume people would move to alternative forms of currency, like Bitcoin.

Unfortunately, for a growing number of people today, everything is about politics.

This is an awful choice between someone who fundamentally does not have the temperament to be president and who has failed to carry out his primary campaign promise of clearing out the swamp (Trump) and the aging and increasingly impaired nominee of a party that has gone totally insane. (Biden). Biden seems like a fundamentally decent guy, but I doubt he's strong enough to withstand the crazies on the left of his party who have all the energy and enthusiasm right now. It will be very telling to see who he picks as his running mate. I didn't think it was possible, but this is an even more depressing choice than the one we had four years ago.

I like her as well. Executive experience, foreign policy experience, and her nomination would also make it very difficult for the Democrats and the national media to scream "racism."

I live near Washington DC and my hometown newspaper is the Washington Post. I just checked its website and there's no mention of the deaths. In fact, a search reveals there's been no mention of CHAZ at all in the Post for the last four days. It's as if the editors think if they don't report on it, it doesn't exist or will go away.

I hope neither were African-American or they'll have to set up a separate protest enclave within the protest enclave.

I voted "no" because I don't want to be reminded about political or social problems when I'm watching sports. Sports is supposed to be an escape. On the other hand, if it makes the players happy and they play harder and as a result, the Bills get one or two more wins, I'm all in favor of it.

Fitzpatrick is a really smart guy, and I think the beard is the first part of his post-football strategy. Once he stops playing, he'll cut the beard off and no one will recognize him. He'll be totally anonymous and be able to get through airports without having to talk to fans.

There's Belichick and Lombardi And then down here, the rest of the list starts. Of all the coaches on that list, I still like Marv Levy the best, and not just because he coached the Bills. He was smart and classy, fought in WW 2, and quoted Shakespeare to his players. I love the idea that when he was speaking to players he would go off on historical tangents and his players couldn't figure out the heck what he was talking about. I also liked his sense of humor -" You know why Hitler lost WW 2? He couldn't win on the road." <rimshot> But his players loved him, and didn't he do the HOF introductions for all of the players from those Bills teams who have so far been elected to the HOF? If there was such thing as karma, Levy would have won at least a couple of those superbowls.

I'm one who believes we should open back up as soon as is possible once the risks have been mitigated, but when President Trump issued his guidelines for reopening last Friday, he suggested that reopening was "implementable on a statewide basis at governors' discretion." And yet four days later, the attorney general is threatening governors with legal action if they impose stringent rules for dealing with the coronavirus. So what's changed between last Friday and today? No wonder governors get so frustrated with Trump.

It's truly an odd coincidence that out of hundreds of large Chinese cities, the viral outbreak developed in the city where China has its most prominent virology research lab.

I don't have any more information. But if it's not true, then we're royally effed until they develop a vaccine.

I actually agree with you. If people are going to die anyway, we might has well have a working economy. We can't all sit around for an entire next year waiting for a vaccine to be developed. So once we've got enough masks and ventilators and hospital beds, then people should gradually get back to work and practice social distancing as much as possible, recognizing that some people are going to get sick and some will die. But once you've had the virus and survived, you've got immunity, and then you can resume living a normal life. I just don't understand why so many people celebrate a plateauing in the number of cases as some kind of major victory. If you can't leave your home, it's not much of a victory.

Last time I looked, Austria was in Europe.

From the Guardian newspaper: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/less-than-1-of-austria-infected-with-coronavirus-new-study-shows "Less than 1% of the Austrian population is “acutely infected” with coronavirus, new research based on testing a representative sample of more than 1,500 people suggests." "The research, if replicated and confirmed elsewhere, would appear to scotch hopes of countries being remotely close to relying on “herd immunity” – where enough of the population is exposed to the virus to build up a combined immunity – as a viable policy option." If the same is true for the United States, it means that if we open up in May, the country will be in about the same place it is now, except that hopefully we'll have more masks and ventilators available for the many people who are going to get sick and need to be hospitalized. Social distancing and shutdowns were never meant to eliminate the virus; they were meant to ensure that we don't all get sick at the same time and overwhelm hospitals. You can bend the curve, but the curve is still there. The price for opening up the economy is that a lot of people are going to die. That's true if we open up in May; it will be true if we open up in July. It will be true until a vaccine is developed.

800 people died in Italy today from the CoronaVirus. That's a big number no matter how you look at it. 600 died yesterday; 400 died the day before. Yesterday, 221 people died in the US from the CoronaVirus. 172 died two days ago; 122 died three days ago. Are you starting to see a pattern here?

That's really bad, but at least part of it is due to the lack of available testing until now, which, as I think of it, is also really bad.

Older than Methusalah, who couldn't accelerate through the hole either after he turned 600.

It's not where you are; it's where you're going.

In the "one less thing to worry about department", due to the CoronaVirus, ISIS has banned its followers from carrying out jihad in plague stricken countries. https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/isis-issues-travel-warning-over-coronavirus-pandemic/ ISIS also suggests that the Faithful should wash their hands frequently and place their hands over their mouths when sneezing.

Don't think so. Through its slow reaction to this viral outbreak, China has discredited itself in the eyes of much of the world which is now dealing with a public health crisis. China has been going hard on soft power around the world, and it's going to take a long time to regain that trust. They also managed to cripple their economy and will likely throw the rest of the world into recession. It's also highlighted for the rest of the world how much stuff, including pharmaceuticals, comes from China, and that will probably change in the future. All these things are of much greater consequence to them than some temporary problems in Hong Kong. This is a complete disaster for them. It's a real life example of a butterfly effect. Someone ate bat soup made from a bat that didn't live right, and three months later, the world economy is nosediving into a recession and trillions of dollars have been lost in the stock market. Or it's equally likely it came from a lab and escaped accidentally; we'll never know.

That, and the fact that if large numbers of people get sick at the same time, medical facilities are overwhelmed. If you can bend the infection curve down so that not everyone gets sick at the same time, then the mortality rate goes down.

If Trump had been on the case since at least January, surely we would have had more than a few thousand working testing kits by now, the middle of March?

Rex Ryan and his pregnant brother Rob. Clowns shouldn't be allowed to coach football teams.