The Coronavirus thread

One of my parents’ best friends is in the hospital on a ventilator with Covid.

She wasn’t vaccinated, of course.

Her elderly mother also got it, but she was vaxxed and is doing fine.

Quote: AZDuffman

Who is? Just make sure to show up for work on Christmas Day.

But the point remains. Not everyone in these countries has the china virus. So by the very standard the liberals have set Biden is a racist for his travel ban.

You've not made a point, except your confusion. You can ban people from Utah. But you can't ban Mormons. You can fire someone for poor performance. But you can't fire them for being a minority. There's no protected status for people with infectious disease. And there's no protected status for countries. You can ban either.

(note: There are protections for disabilities, but not infectious diseases.)

Quote:

Trump’s Statements Equating the Muslim and Travel Bans

I reviewed the president’s comments about the ban—a list of which you can find below with fuller context—and found at least 12 statements where Donald Trump equated his plan to suspend immigration from certain countries with his original plan to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. I say at least because I have not watched all of his many rallies and have no access to his private correspondence. On another occasion, when asked after the election whether his plans to ban Muslims had changed, he reiterated that his plans on that subject were known. These dozen cases collectively demonstrate that President Trump understood his travel ban as a version of his Muslim ban.

Trump’s 12 statements occurred over a period of seven months from May 2016 to December 2016. They include nine separate situations and six direct denials to direct questions about whether the travel ban had changed his plans to ban Muslims. These statements occurred in various contexts, including private phone calls, written speeches, improvised speeches, interviews, and a debate. During this time, he described the travel ban as an “expansion” of the Muslim ban, a “bigger” version of the Muslim ban, and a “morphed” version of the Muslim ban.

https://www.cato.org/blog/dozen-times-trump-equated-travel-ban-muslim-ban

I note that there's no constitutional status for citizens of countries living outside our territories, but just noting the FAIL of comparison of Biden to Trump in this matter.

Quote: OnceDear

No. Sorry. You are wrong. that was an earlier 'South Africa' originated strain 501.v2 from the tail end of 2020

Same lineage. B.1.1.351 to B.1.1.529. The South Africans only found this one using genomic sequencing. They do more of that than the US. It’s probably already here and in Europe. They don’t know whether the disease it causes will be more severe, or more contagious than Delta, but it in a single day, it caused a $1 trillion loss in the stock market, new international travel restrictions, and a halt on elective surgeries in NY.

Quote: rxwine

You've not made a point, except your confusion. You can ban people from Utah. But you can't ban Mormons. You can fire someone for poor performance. But you can't fire them for being a minority. There's no protected status for people with infectious disease. And there's no protected status for countries. You can ban either.

Actually I have made a point. Trump banned travel from specific countries. Liberals said that was racist. Biden banned travel from certain countries. So by the liberal standard Biden is a racist.

As usual the liberals here cannot take their guy being held to the standards they set.

The more people that die the lower the unemployment rate will be. Maybe it is a good thing.

Quote: SOOPOO

So weak. The experts have decided that the Omicron variant is a big threat to the USA. So Biden is banning travel from the 8 South African countries that harbor the variant. But not starting until MONDAY!!!! How can you say it is unsafe but NOT start it immediately? It’s either unsafe, and then start the ban NOW, or it is not that big a deal and it can wait until Monday. Pathetic as usual. Apparently US citizens living in these countries will NOT be prevented from returning. Because, you know, the virus checks on your citizenship before infecting you…. It’s stupidity like this that has AZ and EB not wanting to trust anything our Biden administration tries to sell us.

This is what I thought of first--we "banned" flights from China but then allowed thousands upon thousands to come back here for various reasons without quarantine or anything. I am not saying whether banning entrants works or not; who knows where this new variant already is spreading...but we did the bans wrong the first time, so why double down on the bad policy? Make everyone coming in stay somewhere for a few days and test them before release into the country.

Isn't that what you would do in a health emergency?

SOOPOO is on point--the virus does not know your citizenship information.

Quote: DRich

The more people that die the lower the unemployment rate will be. Maybe it is a good thing.

Unemployment will keep moving lower as more people sit out of the workforce and stop being counted as "unemployed." The unemployment number is misleading. Has been for a long time.

Quote: Tanko

...It’s probably already here and in Europe. They don’t know whether the disease it causes will be more severe, or more contagious than Delta, but it in a single day, it caused a $1 trillion loss in the stock market, new international travel restrictions, and a halt on elective surgeries in NY.

Absolutely sure to be in many countries by now. Shutting borders to keep variants out has never been much of a success, because it always (inevitably) comes too late.
I reckon Biden left it MUCH to late, giving till Monday and allowing US residents unrestricted returns to home. The virus won't care what passport you own.

So far, omichron seems to be highly contagious, having increased regional infections 13 fold over a couple of weeks. My money is on it also being immunity and vaccine resistant to the max.
Just in time for Christmas. Whoopeee.

So. New, contagious, maybe more deadly and maybe vaccine resistant? What should we do?

I'm with EvenBob on this. Mask up, FFP3 / N95 at the ready and stay away from church. Stay away from other household members too, if they won't bug in.
Put a moat around the bunker and fill it with neat bleach, and even family have to swim through it to get in or out $:o)

Quote: RonC

Unemployment will keep moving lower as more people sit out of the workforce and stop being counted as "unemployed." The unemployment number is misleading. Has been for a long time.

RonC is correct, of course. Unemployment rates (high or low) are a frequent talking point depending on what side you are on and how those numbers are going, but this report:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Discusses metrics that actually give some indication of how true employment numbers are going in this country. Here's a key paragraph from the summary on Page 2:

Quote:

The labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.6 percent in October and has remained within
a narrow range of 61.4 percent to 61.7 percent since June 2020. The participation rate is 1.7 percentage
points lower than in February 2020. The employment-population ratio, at 58.8 percent, was little
changed over the month. This measure is up from its low of 51.3 percent in April 2020 but remains
below the figure of 61.1 percent in February 2020. (See table A-1.)

Okay, so these are the measurements that basically answer the question, "How many people are working?" The Labor Force Participation Rate basically is just concerned with how many people within a particular age group are working.

When we look at the Labor Force Participation Rate (61.6%) and compared it to the Employment-Population Ratio (58.8%) one might be inclined to ask, "What is the difference between these two things? Actually, there's only one difference, the Labor Force Participation Rate includes people who are looking for full-time work as well as those working whereas employment-population ratio is only concerned with how many are working.

What are some of the snapshots we can take from this:

58.8% of the 16-64 population are working. (61.1% 02/20)
2.8% of the 16-64 population are not working, but are looking for full-time work. (2.2% 02/20)---This reflects LFPR of 61.6%
4.6% of people make up the Unemployment Rate, which is interestingly, fewer people than who are looking for work. (3.5% 02/20)

Anyway, neither political party is really to blame or thank for any of this as it really comes down to Covid-19 and is the reason that 02/20 is being used as the bellwether for these purposes.

What we see from the highlights above is that the unemployment rate is 1.1% higher (10/21) than it was for 02/20, yet, the percentage of the population actually working compared to 2/20 is 2.3% off. In other words, Unemployment is dropping at a rate faster than the rate at which jobs are coming back---largely owing to what seems to be a lack of willingness amongst lower-tier wage-earners to take jobs.

Of course, all of these metrics have been pretty poor for awhile. For one thing, there's no compelling reason to even include 16 and 17 year olds in the Labor Force Participation Rate, or the Employment-Population rate, but we do it. I should imagine that including those two ages has artificially pulled the numbers down for some time...many people in those two ages aren't really expected to work, so I don't know why those ages working should be considered the default.

With that, what we see is that something in the order of 0.6% of people became unemployed as a result of the pandemic (probably) and have yet to find other work, but are still trying...we can assume that 2.2% of the Labor Force Participation Rate (who are not employed) are, for statistical reasons, the same 2.2% who were unsuccessfully looking for jobs 2/20.

If those people had jobs, then the employment-population ratio would be at 59.4%, which would still be 1.7% off from the February 2020 numbers. I'm not entirely sure where that comes from, but if forced to guess, my guess would be jobs that simply do not exist anymore or positions that have been ended, at least, for the time being.

If the 0.6% found jobs, then the Unemployment Rate would be 4%, or a little under, despite the fact that 1.7% of work-eligible ages more than February 2020 would still not be working.

All of this is despite the fact that just under 200,000 people within the 16-64 age range died in some way related to Covid-19, at least, that's how those deaths were reported (source: CDC), but I'm not even trying to get into all of that. My point is that, with these deaths, you would expect that to result in a lower Unemployment Rate (those with jobs presumably being filled by someone else and those Unemployed now dead), greater Labor Force Participation Rate (assuming all jobs are filled and many in the age group dead) and greater employment-population ratio (again, with jobs filled and many of the people dead).

With that, the actual count of total jobs in the USA is clearly lower than the Unemployment Rate would suggest, but again, Unemployment Rate is not, and has never really been, a great measurement of anything.

Causes

1.) Covid-19, obviously, but mainly the shutdowns that occurred in states to do that which disrupted small businesses and caused many to close their doors permanently. Obviously, all jobs associated with these small businesses are gone until such time that those businesses are replaced by something else.

2.) More Covid-19 in that we are still feeling the impacts of reduced demand in service-related industries, at least, in some areas and market segments. As a result, some positions were eliminated and some locations/businesses were downsized.

For example:

https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/casinos-gaming/las-vegas-economy-is-booming-but-70k-jobs-have-yet-to-return-2433906/

Despite casino revenues, not all positions have returned to all Las Vegas casinos. For one example, many Las Vegas casinos have closed buffets entirely (did not reopen) or reduced buffet hours, so not all of those positions have returned.

3.) In other cases, some people simply do not want to go back to work. Generally speaking, this effect is most felt in the industries with wages on the lower end of the scale.

***If you were going to blame anyone, then you would probably want to blame those states that shut down to all but, "Essential," businesses almost completely as that caused widespread disruption in the economy that was probably unnecessary.

***You might also blame both parties for all of the stimulus money and expanded unemployment benefits that went out as that is what led to the pent up demand for goods and lack of desire, among many workers, to return to the workforce when the opportunity presented itself.

Quote: OnceDear

Absolutely sure to be in many countries by now. Shutting borders to keep variants out has never been much of a success, because it always (inevitably) comes too late.
I reckon Biden left it MUCH to late, giving till Monday and allowing US residents unrestricted returns to home. The virus won't care what passport you own.

Of course it comes too late...Monday or no Monday, assumes that the thing hasn't already begun spreading by the time it was discovered. I'm not exactly sure what the legal ramifications would be of shutting out your own citizens...not sure you can do that.

Quote:

So far, omichron seems to be highly contagious, having increased regional infections 13 fold over a couple of weeks. My money is on it also being immunity and vaccine resistant to the max.
Just in time for Christmas. Whoopeee.

So. New, contagious, maybe more deadly and maybe vaccine resistant? What should we do?

I'm with EvenBob on this. Mask up, FFP3 / N95 at the ready and stay away from church. Stay away from other household members too, if they won't bug in.
Put a moat around the bunker and fill it with neat bleach, and even family have to swim through it to get in or out $:o)

Vaccine resistant? If it's totally vaccine-resistant, then densely populated areas are going to be screwed without shutdowns, but that would be an economic disaster. If nothing else, then I would like to think we have learned our lesson that full-scale shutting down of all but, "Essential," business isn't a good idea.

Anyway, I wouldn't act on the assumption that it's totally vaccine resistant without knowing that.

Personally, I think the only reason that we bounced back as well as we have is that the 2020 massive shutdowns came during an optimal (if it had to be at all) time of the year. March/April/May aren't really the times of the year that we tend to have the most economic activity to begin with.

Also with shutdowns comes the potential for more stimulus and more expanded unemployment benefits which, when we look at the inflation rate this year, we have to acknowledge wasn't all that great of an idea the first time around.

What should we do? Nothing. Research it. Try to develop a vaccine that works against it. Perhaps businesses should go back to masking and social distancing guidelines, but that should be left up to the businesses to decide.

I'm vaccinated and I'm getting my booster here in the coming days when I can afford to spend two days borderline completely lethargic. If I get it, then I get it. If I die, then I die. I really have no doubt in my mind that I'm going to die sooner or later.

Anyway, I don't recommend doing anything economically disruptive (and was against the shutdowns in the first place, exception perhaps to large indoor gatherings/events---such as concerts) because it's clear that previous efforts simply did not work in that regard.

Like I said in 2020, you could shut the thing out, but it would require something in the order of a TOTAL shutdown (National Guard dropping food rations to houses and what have you) for some period of time. Anything else is just economically destabilizing AND is nothing more than kicking the can down the road.