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COVID News
Mar. 18th, 2020 10:19 amDave is doing fine. He went to the doctor yesterday, turns out he has foliculitis, a skin infection, and is now on antibiotics. Something whacked his system out and caused his temperature to kick up a little bit. We had Mexican food for dinner Monday night, and his was extra-spicy, which may have been a contributing factor. We weren't particularly concerned, but you never know these days.
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We watched the first season of The Good Place last night, a rewatch for Russet and me, first time for Dave. It was amusing listening to his theories, all of which were totally off-base. Highly recommended show, it just ended its run with its fifth season on NBC, the entire series is up on Netflix.
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In Italy, a hospital ran out of a special valve used by ventilators/respirators that has to be swapped out every 8 hours. Some enterprising people figured out that they could be made on 3D printers for $1 a unit! Pretty awesome, eh? Except the company that makes them, that cannot supply them, is pissed and is suing to stop them from making them. *sigh*
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It looks like airlines in America are going to get a bailout to the tune of %50billion or more, or every single one of them are going to go bankrupt. It's a ridiculous problem with the 'guaranteed shareholder return' mentality that the stockmarket has. It used to be that buying stock in a company was a speculative venture, not anymore. Now, if a company has money on-hand, it's punished. That money could be put to better use! Upgrade equipment! Stock buy-back! Pay the CEO more! Activist shareholders have been known to sue corporations that have too much cash on hand. Not that the airlines could maintain enough cash on-hand to tide them over through this slump: the most profitable American airline made less then $4B last year.
So through loans and grants, they're going to get a lot of cash. And probably with few strings requiring any reforms, like not charging $25 for any checked bag.
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More stories of $1,000 to every American tax payer. While this isn't a terrible idea, it's a shame that this will probably just be blindly distributed to everybody rather than more strategically targeted to those that need it most. Me, I make about $1,000 a month, so this definitely helps me. But my wife makes about 6x this a month, so do we really need that? If you look at someone who relies upon that as their monthly take-home plus food stamps and other government assistance, it's critical and they need more than that.
And what about small businesses that are closing temporarily? Many of them may be closing permanently and not knowing it yet. My favorite olive oil/balsamic vinegar shop in Scottsdale announced a temporary closing, I have no expectation that their landlord is going to suspend their rent. The Body Shop closed its mall locations, Penzey's Spices closed its stores, as has many others. A lot of small businesses are going to need help, yet I expect a lot of gov't aid is going to go to big corps that really don't need it. Except the big corps are really good at whinging and getting the government's attention.
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Our Beloved Leader says he "always knew it was going to be a pandemic." Yeah. Just like he could've been a doctor, he knows so much about this stuff. He was down-playing the pandemic in January when it was obvious to most people what was going to happen.
****
And finally, as we knew it would ultimately happen, we now have positive COVID cases in all of the United States, the District of Columbia, and I think all of the American Territories. It was just a matter of time. And we've had over 100 deaths.
****
We watched the first season of The Good Place last night, a rewatch for Russet and me, first time for Dave. It was amusing listening to his theories, all of which were totally off-base. Highly recommended show, it just ended its run with its fifth season on NBC, the entire series is up on Netflix.
****
In Italy, a hospital ran out of a special valve used by ventilators/respirators that has to be swapped out every 8 hours. Some enterprising people figured out that they could be made on 3D printers for $1 a unit! Pretty awesome, eh? Except the company that makes them, that cannot supply them, is pissed and is suing to stop them from making them. *sigh*
****
It looks like airlines in America are going to get a bailout to the tune of %50billion or more, or every single one of them are going to go bankrupt. It's a ridiculous problem with the 'guaranteed shareholder return' mentality that the stockmarket has. It used to be that buying stock in a company was a speculative venture, not anymore. Now, if a company has money on-hand, it's punished. That money could be put to better use! Upgrade equipment! Stock buy-back! Pay the CEO more! Activist shareholders have been known to sue corporations that have too much cash on hand. Not that the airlines could maintain enough cash on-hand to tide them over through this slump: the most profitable American airline made less then $4B last year.
So through loans and grants, they're going to get a lot of cash. And probably with few strings requiring any reforms, like not charging $25 for any checked bag.
****
More stories of $1,000 to every American tax payer. While this isn't a terrible idea, it's a shame that this will probably just be blindly distributed to everybody rather than more strategically targeted to those that need it most. Me, I make about $1,000 a month, so this definitely helps me. But my wife makes about 6x this a month, so do we really need that? If you look at someone who relies upon that as their monthly take-home plus food stamps and other government assistance, it's critical and they need more than that.
And what about small businesses that are closing temporarily? Many of them may be closing permanently and not knowing it yet. My favorite olive oil/balsamic vinegar shop in Scottsdale announced a temporary closing, I have no expectation that their landlord is going to suspend their rent. The Body Shop closed its mall locations, Penzey's Spices closed its stores, as has many others. A lot of small businesses are going to need help, yet I expect a lot of gov't aid is going to go to big corps that really don't need it. Except the big corps are really good at whinging and getting the government's attention.
****
Our Beloved Leader says he "always knew it was going to be a pandemic." Yeah. Just like he could've been a doctor, he knows so much about this stuff. He was down-playing the pandemic in January when it was obvious to most people what was going to happen.
****
And finally, as we knew it would ultimately happen, we now have positive COVID cases in all of the United States, the District of Columbia, and I think all of the American Territories. It was just a matter of time. And we've had over 100 deaths.
