Coronavirus
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The 2008 and 2009 graduating classes were hammered by the state of the job market. Short of folks with degrees in health care or IT related fields, this class will also have it rough if not worse.
class of 2008 right here. i went to our department's job fair day and had 4 interviews with major milwaukee companies scheduled. in the first two interviews it came to light that the companies had no open positions but were interviewing people anyways 'for their files'. the 3rd and 4th interviews I opened with "do you have any jobs available" and after getting a no, I said thank you and walked out.
ended up self-employed/own home business for many years after school, but it got me through!
Dan
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You guys... lamborghini started producing surgical masks and THEY EVEN HAVE A LITTLE LAMBORGHINI TAG! When, and I say when because there will be a when, when there is pandemic memorabilia in decades this will be up there in the automotive world.
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THEY EVEN HAVE A LITTLE LAMBORGHINI TAG!
Is it to stop the bull from coming out of your mouth, or just to let everyone know that what comes out of your mouth is bull?
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first things first, WI is looking hopeful - the number of new cases has been steady over the last few days, instead of increasing. rate of spread is slowing and social distancing is working. lets hope the election shenanigans dont compromise our progress.
second things second.
I was thinking that this 4/20 is going to be the biggest 4/20 in history, due to the number of people at home and the number of people who need a fricken break from real life. thoughts?
Dan
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I was thinking more along the lines of the 4th of July being ‘yooge, but you may be on to something. What site are you using to track virus data?
I have been using https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
but It may not be very accurate as it seems to rely on user data like a wiki page.
Working from home hasn't been as glamorous as I thought it might be. The stress has been worse from communication breakdowns and employee laziness.
Im grateful to still be employed for the while. I still head in to the office for ~2 hours a few times a week to take care of some things I cant do from home and am surprised by the amount of people who are just out doing things. I cant imagine they are all unemployed. I feel moreso they are supposed to be working but just aren’t.
Mother Truckers like
@YoungCR and people in the medical field like @DrLeadFoot deserve some serious recognition for keeping things going while in survival mode. -
I was thinking more along the lines of the 4th of July being ‘yooge, but you may be on to something. What site are you using to track virus data?
I have been using https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
but It may not be very accurate as it seems to rely on user data like a wiki page.
Working from home hasn't been as glamorous as I thought it might be. The stress has been worse from communication breakdowns and employee laziness.
Im grateful to still be employed for the while. I still head in to the office for ~2 hours a few times a week to take care of some things I cant do from home and am surprised by the amount of people who are just out doing things. I cant imagine they are all unemployed. I feel moreso they are supposed to be working but just aren’t.
Mother Truckers like
@YoungCR and people in the medical field like @DrLeadFoot deserve some serious recognition for keeping things going while in survival mode.for wisconsin, i'm using the one Rek posted
someone is personally tracking the wisconsin numbers, no idea where he got it from. it has daily update projections based on averages of the last few days, shows percentage of spread increase, etc.
you must be confused about DrLeadFoot, he's in the RE game. doesnt detract from how hard he is working for people, though!
and about all the people out and about, you're right it seems like there is too many. i've only been out to buy food and once to go to work when "at home" wouldnt cut it for tech support.
my big complaint is when i've been to the grocery store (just twice in the last 30 days) to buy as much food as possible without risking stuff spoiling I see people walking out of the store with like a single bag of chips and a case mountain dew. did you really need to go out for just that?! and if you are going out for that, buy like fricken 20 bags and 10 cases so you dont go out again!
Dan
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I suppose I haven’t chimed in yet. I appreciate the thanks but really it’s mostly business as usual besides the extensive hand washing, distancing and some scheduling conflicts.
I was out for about 2 weeks straight before this week, bounced around the East for about 5 of those days. The freight rates were good, van rates were up just slightly because the “spot market” bubbled for loads likely considered essential. Spot freight is basically non-regular, on-demand shipments that pay higher with tight deadlines.
I could have profited really well had I chosen to deliver loads paying $5-6/mi going into NYC but that’s not much higher than normal and wasn’t worth going into essentially a war zone and risking my health.
Below are the average Rate Per Miles in 3 segments. As mentioned van stayed about the same because the bubble evened out the loss that flat bed saw due to business closings. This chart was published Monday 4/6.
My only concerns so far have been reduced staffing and truck availability. I picked up at a warehouse in Indianapolis that said they’ve been short staffed for a year now, 3 guys were loading trucks at this 70k plus sq/ft warehouse. I’m sure most places were short staffed from illness as well. Because only essential business are open, those are the only ones shipping out and all the available trucks are competing for that freight. If store demand levels out or drops a little, freight rates will go down as well. This year has already been a crazy year for trucking companies closings, I would assume quite a few more will call it quits.
It’s important that we flatten the curve but we also need to get things going again before we crash harder. I don’t think it’s gonna be effectively safe to do so before that happens though. The kicker is rushing back into things will just bite us like China opening their movie theaters for less then a day.
I’m no economist, those are just the insights I have. We’re all in this together and truly depend on each other. Hopefully we’ll just have to continue with these small sacrifices before things turn around.
Source for those more interested beyond my explanation: https://info.landstar.com/acton/attachment/17279/17279:f-3e8fc845-af35-4976-850f-26d5451a9a5b/0/s-0327-2004/-/q-0127/l-00a5:4c3ae/?sid=TV2:iib4lU8vp
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thanks for the insight.
i agree about the timing of when its safe to get back to life as normal and how much economically will change by then is scary. i have faith though. when this is over, we still have X number of people that are going to spend X amount of money and feed the economy, just like it was before. its just where the money is directed might change. businesses will fall, but businesses will rise.
Dan
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Hmm. Transporting reefer isn't as lucrative as I would have expected...
My $.02:
I think we did the right thing mandating stay-at-home early so that our healthcare system isn't overloaded. We're better off here than a lot of other places because of it. However, this virus isn't going away. Eventually, people are going to have to start going back to normal life. Until 90-something percent of people have either gotten it or been vaccinated it's still going to be out there spreading. I don't think we can all social-distance for a year until a vaccine is available, so in the meantime, we're kind of screwed. We just need to control the rate that it spreads so that our healthcare system can handle it, and do the best we can to protect vulnerable populations.
Probably not what people want to hear, but that's what it looks like from where I'm standing.
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first things first, WI is looking hopeful - the number of new cases has been steady over the last few days, instead of increasing. rate of spread is slowing and social distancing is working. lets hope the election shenanigans dont compromise our progress.
second things second.
I was thinking that this 4/20 is going to be the biggest 4/20 in history, due to the number of people at home and the number of people who need a fricken break from real life. thoughts?
I went to city hall in Greenfield to vote, which is a quarter mile away from my house, only go find out I needed to vote at Whitnall HS. I don’t understand why it went on as scheduled.
4/20 goes on all month this year
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Hmm. Transporting reefer isn't as lucrative as I would have expected...
My $.02:
I think we did the right thing mandating stay-at-home early so that our healthcare system isn't overloaded. We're better off here than a lot of other places because of it. However, this virus isn't going away. Eventually, people are going to have to start going back to normal life. Until 90-something percent of people have either gotten it or been vaccinated it's still going to be out there spreading. I don't think we can all social-distance for a year until a vaccine is available, so in the meantime, we're kind of screwed. We just need to control the rate that it spreads so that our healthcare system can handle it, and do the best we can to protect vulnerable populations.
Probably not what people want to hear, but that's what it looks like from where I'm standing.
its harder to see the long picture that the short term.
lets assume your scenario plays out. 90% of people get the virus, 10% are vaccinated. based on a conservative death rate from the virus of 2%, that means 140,000,000 people on earth will die. based on the hospitalization rates, that means 3 billion people will need to go to the hospital. hospitals will probably be overwhelmed, and wont have enough ventilators for everyone. assume another 2% of people die because they cant get help. you don't think 280 million people dead forever and a failing medical system will have a greater impact on our world than 15,000,000 people unemployed for a year?
Dan
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its harder to see the long picture that the short term.
lets assume your scenario plays out. 90% of people get the virus, 10% are vaccinated. based on a conservative death rate from the virus of 2%, that means 140,000,000 people on earth will die. based on the hospitalization rates, that means 3 billion people will need to go to the hospital. hospitals will probably be overwhelmed, and wont have enough ventilators for everyone. assume another 2% of people die because they cant get help. you don't think 280 million people dead forever and a failing medical system will have a greater impact on our world than 15,000,000 people unemployed for a year?
Nah, I said "Until 90-something percent of people have either gotten it or been vaccinated". Just like with all the other infectious diseases that we vaccinate for, something like 96% (forget the actual number) have to be vaccinated in order to keep the disease from spreading amongst the remaining population. This is why the developed world is starting to see measles outbreaks again, because our vaccination rates aren't high enough anymore. In a year from now, I don't think 90% of people will have been infected. That's a hard number to predict.
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Another thing to consider is that a slowing global economy will kill a lot of people too, the number just isn't as visible because they will be poor people that die from various causes. First world countries have the resources to do something about it when a crisis hits, the third world doesn't. High unemployment is inconvenient for us, but for them it causes malnutrition, disease, crime, armed conflict, etc.
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Hmm. Took a break from obsessively shopping for cameras (like I said I didn't want to do... being sucked in to the void... Ahh!) and re-read this. Still not sure I really communicated what I meant to say. My point was that, in fact, we need people to get this virus, but we need to control the rate at which people are infected, while at the same time protecting people who are vulnerable and won't recover from it. This is assuming that once people have gotten it and recovered are no longer susceptible to it. So far I haven't heard of anyone getting it twice...
The important part is the rate at which people are infected. If every person that gets it infects two other people, then the healthcare system has to treat 100 people one week, 200 people the next week, 400 people the next week, and so on until it's completely out of control. Unfortunately, without extreme draconian measures, there's no way to completely stop the virus from spreading, nor is that really even desirable. We need people to get infected and recover so that the population at-large develops an immunity to it. That's what the immune system does. Other than a vaccine, there's no other way to stop the virus from spreading. Even if 90% succeed at social distancing 90% of the time, that's still 2% of people that are spreading the virus around. That's "flattening the curve". However, the point I was trying to make was that we can flatten the curve as much as we want, but the more we flatten it, the longer it gets. We've done a great job at turning exponential growth into linear growth, but I'm arguing that if the healthcare system is operating below capacity and the spread starts to decline, then we're doing too much social distancing and the economic hardship will outweigh the benefit of slowing the spread of the virus.
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Well said. That’s the crazy part is that even seemingly low percentages are still great numbers give our population of 328 million.
This article was interesting because of how they were able to socially trace the fallout of the spread from this event.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/coronavirus-biogen-boston-superspreader.html
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what I meant to say. My point was that, in fact, we need people to get this virus
Unfortunately, without extreme draconian measures, there's no way to completely stop the virus from spreading, nor is that really even desirable. We need people to get infected and recover so that the population at-large develops an immunity to it.
it can be controlled. we've done it with other viruses. i know this one is more contagious, but we were also poorly prepared.
i agree that heard immunity is a possible answer. but a lot of people have to die for that answer. if even half the planet gets it, thats still around 100,000,000 people dead. we have to try other things first. 5,000,000 die on earth per year. dont forget the first time a person gets it twice that whole idea is out the window.
Dan
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I got some good news last week Thursday, and I think we all need some good news about this.
I only know one person who had this disease, a friend of my Dad's/acquaintance of mine. Heard from my Dad that last Thursday he has fully recovered.
He went into the hospital on or around April 30th and tested positive for coronavirus. He went home.
The guy is a friend of my Dad's from the VFW, a Korean War veteran who is 90 years old. When my Dad forwarded me the e-mail that Mr. B had contracted the disease, I thought he was for sure a goner given his age.
Unfortunately I don't know a lot of details about how bad it was and such. My Dad is pretty freaked out about this so I didn't drill him for a whole lot of answers.
I hesitated to even type this given the only other person I told immediately slapped me down with "WELL PEOPLE HALF HIS AGE ARE DROPPING DEAD LEFT AND RIGHT!". But whatever, I understand some people are really concerned this is the end of the human race. With the talk here of hundreds of millions of people dying from this, I decided to take the chance and put out a positive note.
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I got some good news last week Thursday, and I think we all need some good news about this.
I only know one person who had this disease, a friend of my Dad's/acquaintance of mine. Heard from my Dad that last Thursday he has fully recovered.
He went into the hospital on or around April 30th and tested positive for coronavirus. He went home.
The guy is a friend of my Dad's from the VFW, a Korean War veteran who is 90 years old. When my Dad forwarded me the e-mail that Mr. B had contracted the disease, I thought he was for sure a goner given his age.
Unfortunately I don't know a lot of details about how bad it was and such. My Dad is pretty freaked out about this so I didn't drill him for a whole lot of answers.
I hesitated to even type this given the only other person I told immediately slapped me down with "WELL PEOPLE HALF HIS AGE ARE DROPPING DEAD LEFT AND RIGHT!". But whatever, I understand some people are really concerned this is the end of the human race. With the talk here of hundreds of millions of people dying from this, I decided to take the chance and put out a positive note.
Thanks for sharing, my father and mother in law both had it a couple weeks ago and are doing fine now as well, they are in their 60's and he at least is not the healthiest.
I realize this may be controversial but I think my family all had it around Christmas. All of the symptoms match and we were down for about a week, fever, headache, exhausted, lingering cough, etc. I think it has been going around here way before it was publicized but was not being diagnosed properly. An older guy at our church was sick for about a month around the same time and was told he had double pneumonia. It took him a long time but he is better now. Looking back I feel it is quite likely that he had it as well, there are reports from doctors around the country of odd pneumonia cases before the COVID-19 was documented properly. Being an instructor at a Technical school I am around a lot of people daily so I would assume that is where I got it. Maybe I am crazy but I'm not the only one who thinks it has been going around for a while.
This would actually be a positive thing because it means more people have had it and now have antibodies.
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This would actually be a positive thing because it means more people have had it and now have antibodies.
I think it will be very interesting when the antibody test is available and they start testing to see who has had it. I bet a lot of people will be really surprised to find out they had it and didn't know - because they didn't have symptoms, or like in your case, had it before it was in the media or symptoms were so minor they passed it off as a cold or something else.
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