Florida State Seminoles

[hedge]

"I had hotel reservations at a few places as we were going to make a loop around the south. I also had airline tickets for my wife to meet me."

What, were you delivering an office memo (that could've been emailed) to a far away state by car (your preferred method) and were going to let your wife fly to meet you?

[eCat]

no I was hanging out in Tuscaloosa for a few weeks and she was going to meet me there

[bluetick]

Finally - news you can use. Companies buying up their own shares because they know they're greatly undervalued. A silver lining?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ ... id=UE01DHP

[eCat]

I thought this was worth reading

Feeling confused as to why Coronavirus is a bigger deal than Seasonal flu? Here it is in a nutshell. I hope this helps. Feel free to share this to others who don’t understand...

It has to do with RNA sequencing.... I.e. genetics.

Seasonal flu is an “all human virus”. The DNA/RNA chains that make up the virus are recognized by the human immune system. This means that your body has some immunity to it before it comes around each year... you get immunity two ways...through exposure to a virus, or by getting a flu shot.

Novel viruses, come from animals.... the WHO tracks novel viruses in animals, (sometimes for years watching for mutations). Usually these viruses only transfer from animal to animal (pigs in the case of H1N1) (birds in the case of the Spanish flu). But once, one of these animal viruses mutates, and starts to transfer from animals to humans... then it’s a problem, Why? Because we have no natural or acquired immunity.. the RNA sequencing of the genes inside the virus isn’t human, and the human immune system doesn’t recognize it so, we can’t fight it off.

Now.... sometimes, the mutation only allows transfer from animal to human, for years it’s only transmission is from an infected animal to a human before it finally mutates so that it can now transfer human to human... once that happens..we have a new contagion phase. And depending on the fashion of this new mutation, thats what decides how contagious, or how deadly it’s gonna be..

H1N1 was deadly....but it did not mutate in a way that was as deadly as the Spanish flu. It’s RNA was slower to mutate and it attacked its host differently, too.

Fast forward.

Now, here comes this Coronavirus... it existed in animals only, for nobody knows how long...but one day, at an animal market, in Wuhan China, in December 2019, it mutated and made the jump from animal to people. At first, only animals could give it to a person... But here is the scary part.... in just TWO WEEKS it mutated again and gained the ability to jump from human to human. Scientists call this quick ability, “slippery”

This Coronavirus, not being in any form a “human” virus (whereas we would all have some natural or acquired immunity). Took off like a rocket. And this was because, Humans have no known immunity...doctors have no known medicines for it.

And it just so happens that this particular mutated animal virus, changed itself in such a way the way that it causes great damage to human lungs..

That’s why Coronavirus is different from seasonal flu, or H1N1 or any other type of influenza.... this one is slippery AF. And it’s a lung eater...And, it’s already mutated AGAIN, so that we now have two strains to deal with, strain s, and strain L....which makes it twice as hard to develop a vaccine.

We really have no tools in our shed, with this. History has shown that fast and immediate closings of public places has helped in the past pandemics. Philadelphia and Baltimore were reluctant to close events in 1918 and they were the hardest hit in the US during the Spanish Flu.

[eCat]

Finally - news you can use. Companies buying up their own shares because they know they're greatly undervalued. A silver lining?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ ... id=UE01DHP

I'm pissed at the thought of any bailouts for any corporation.

If they can't prioritize health care and individual monetary needs over the corporations in a crisis like this then I am ready to vote out any of them

And I'm not speaking from my own concerns, I have a job that lets me work from home, at the moment, everyone in my family is healthy and I don't even know anyone that has the virus.

[bluetick]

Based on this thread....it would seem the politics are apparently a much more important and bigger issue than actual health issues related to coronavirus are.

https://news.yahoo.com/trumps-approval- ... 36517.html

Brand new Gallup numbers - Trump back down to 44% approval overall. 54% disapprove of his handling of the crisis, 45% approve. People overwhelmingly trust their state and local governments over what they hear from DC.

The president lies, then he lies about his lies. If you take the president at his word then you do so at your own peril. That in itself is an actual health issue.

[eCat]

in other news, the cruise line just sent me a notice they have upgraded me to a suite on a cruise that everyone knows will be canceled in June

I'm sure its some automated system based on cancellations, etc but its kind of shitty to get that notice.

[eCat]

Speaking of mixing politics and the virus

[Jungle Rat]

The people overran the stores because they did not believe a word Trump said. Hes lied to many times. Even the people knew better. I remember a story my grandpappy told me once about a boy who cried wolf.

Hi crotch! How's the ventilator working?

[hedge]

"Of course, if Obama had to deal with an emergency like this, people would have called him out as well. Its just the nature of politics. But you need to at least understand why he did and is doing what he did."

I think most people understand why he did what he did: B/c he is mentally incapable of comprehending science, personally incapable of deferring to people who know more about a subject (any subject) than he does (which is pretty much anybody on any subject) and morally incapable of putting the interest of the public before his own, which is the only reason he downplayed coronavirus, b/c he knew that doing the right thing by the public would mean "bad news" for the stock market and the economy, which is all he cares about, but only b/c he associates the success of the stock market and the economy with his own political success. It goes without saying he is the worst president ever, by far, but now he's the worst possible person at the worst possible time to be president. But yet and still, he doesn't give a shit about any of it, except for how it's going to affect him personally...

[eCat]

oh horseshit

you may not agree with what he is doing but acting as if past presidents or current politicians have morals and are guided by this altruistic reasoning to do right by the public is just stupid.

Not to mention that no president we can remember has had to deal with a crisis of this magnitude.

You're asking for a president who gives speeches and then races off to fight Aliens like in that 4th of July movie.

What you have is someone who is trying to stay in front of something that is blowing up around the globe. No politicians perhaps other than South Korea have been able to provide appropriate leadership, and given their proximity to China, I can imagine they had a first hand look at what was happening - heck in the UK they were implying herd immunity would be a side benefit of 60% of their population getting the virus.

[hedge]

Ironically, his behavior has made things worse for the stock market, the very arena that he wanted above all else to mitigate problems. I'm not saying the market wouldn't be down now no matter what he had done, it would be, but I feel pretty sure it wouldn't be the outright panic we've seen if we had had somebody sober, sane, and even moderately intelligent at the helm. And even more important, someone whom most people at least believed cared about the them and their welfare. Markets don't lie, and they have passed their judgement on this clown, and it ain't coming back anytime soon, certainly not enough to help Trump any...

[hedge]

"What you have is someone who is trying to stay in front of something that is blowing up around the globe."

Now that really is horsehit. Stay in front? This clown was telling everybody that it's just going to go away, "like a miracle", 2 weeks ago. Not much longer than that ago he was saying we only had 15 cases and that it was going to go to zero very soon, and that we had everything under control. He's an idiot and he didn't have a goddamn clue what he was talking about. If you're OK with that, fine, but don't sit here and tell me he had any concept of what was going on and that he was jut trying to "stay in front of it". He's been behind, way behind, the curve on this thing since Day 1. Some "leader"...

[hedge]

Rat posted this article a couple pages back, I guess you didn't read it, but many people have watched it in real time and already knew all of this:

During press questioning at the White House today, Donald Trump was asked whether his tone about the coronavirus challenge had suddenly changed. For weeks, he’d been mocking the virus threat—at rallies, in tweets, and in press remarks. But both yesterday and today, he’d suddenly shifted to warning that the public-health and economic problems were real, and would remain so for a long time.

What changed?

Trump denied there had been any shift in tone, and said (as you can see here):

“I have always known. This is a real pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic....

“I’ve always viewed it as very serious.”

This is a flat-out lie.

Setting the lead for many Republican politicians and for most coverage on Fox News, Trump had for many weeks pooh-poohed the idea that the virus should be taken seriously.

He has said it was “contained” and “under control” (as McKay Coppins pointed out).

He has said “It’s going to disappear” and, “We have very little problem in this country” (as David Leonhardt pointed out).

He said three weeks ago that the U.S. had “15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” (as the White House briefing transcript shows).

He tweeted just eight days ago that “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation” (as The Hill pointed out).

Here's the link again in case you want to click on any of the links within the article that show him actually saying all those things, just so you don't think it's fake news...

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2020/ ... VHOyRLUJr0

[hedge]

If he really knew or even thought it was a pandemic long before it was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, why is he on record as saying we had it under control and that it was going to go away "like a miracle?" Well the obvious answer is that he's lying his ass off (duh), but even if you believe his bullshit, if he really thought that it was a pandemic and didn't do anything, that's worse than criminal. He's basically saying he knew it was a pandemic and still chose to blow smoke up everyone's ass rather than address it as a serious problem (or even as a minor problem). So he's either a liar or else he's just outright evil. Luckily, he's too fucking stupid to be truly evil, unless you consider stupidity like his a kind of evil...

[hedge]

Here's a website with cool graphics showing the extent of pandemics throughout history...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/histor ... deadliest/

[eCat]

I'm sure the Atlantic is an unbiased observer when it comes to evaluating Trump's performance.

[hedge]

Biased or not, they are reporting Trump's own words (which most people saw in real time anyway), so what difference does it make?

[hedge]

But it's a good strategy, certainly one promoted if not invented by the Dear Leader himself, to discount anything you don't want to hear as "fake news". Pretty hard to hold to that position when they're reporting the actual words of the man himself (with links), but somehow Trump (and, evidently, many of his followers) manages to do it even then...

[Jungle Rat]

"No politicians perhaps other than South Korea have been able to provide appropriate leadership, and given their proximity to China"

Bullshit. DeWine took the lead after Trump dropped the ball basically saying Fuck you to Trump. And he's a Republican. He knew this wasn't a hoax. Most Governors followed DeWines lead once they realized Trump had no fucking idea what he was doing. And thank god he did or else it would have been much worse. Check out Trumps tweets from this morning. Americans are dying because of a virus he blew off and he's posting about poll numbers. He's fucking out of touch with reality. Way out of touch.