NY Post: Rick Pitino on Whether John Calipari Should Coach the Knicks

Easy pass on Coach Cal. I’ve always viewed him as a coach who did less with more, and I want a guy who is willing to sacrifice their WL record early on for the development of our young guys. I think Cal would want to win right away and his rotations would piss me off, and I’m definitely not sold on him as an Xs and Os guy.

bobneptune: I mean CNN and MSLSD put the creepy porn lawyer on 100 times as some sort of expert and actually thought he would be a great candidate for president…. so yeah…. I question their objectivity a little bit. But if they say something and can back it up with facts, I’m happy to listen.

And Fox News (most notably their most popular host) and just about every other conservative media outlet gave a platform for years to a creepy businessman who was some sort of expert on the then president’s place of birth.

Difference is, we can quibble on whether what Trump did was illegal or not, but he actually DID have an affair with Daniels and then paid her off. Even Trump finally admitted that Obama was born in the US, period.

So why do you never call Fox News out the way you do the “mainstream media?” Which is especially ironic since Fox is more “mainstream” and more intellectually dishonest by wide margins.

That’s what makes you such a foil here…the smarter you try to appear, the dumber you look. But yeah, keep on defending “Honest Don” and his 20,000 lies and trashing the media’s coverage of him, even when he eventually costs thousands of lives by his minimization of this crisis.

Hahahaha…oh man, I just did a quick search for “Tucker Carlson Avenetti” and sure enough, from a month ago.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-mark-steyn-creepy-porn-lawyer-avenatti

Oh man, that’s embarrassing.

Ultimately, as bad as Trump has been, hardly any mistake you call him out on would have stopped this. Does anyone truly believe if we had doubled the CDC budget, we would be safe today? Or that a few more government officials here and there would have been able to stop this from coming here? Or that if we only had enough tests, every citizen would have been dutiful and obedient and followed instructions?

The only way any president could have stopped this involved three things no president would be likely to do:

1. Close the borders

2. Wilfully plunge our economy into recession as a precaution

3. Infringe upon civil liberties early and often *before* this became a crisis.

That’s it. That’s all that would have stopped this. And everyone screaming at Trump probably knows this.

Hubert – I don’t agree. There is a lot more the President and govt could have done. Instead they were all liquidating their stock market portfolios. Now Trump is trying to figure out how to bail out Doral.

It’s not about stopping it. It’s about doing what experts in infectious disease say to do early on to flatten the curve. Hard to do that when even prior to the event, the CDC and other agencies created to protect our health, our food supply, our transportation industry and our environment have been decimated for 3 years on direct orders from the president, and cronies and shills have been put in place to run the remnants of these agencies. It is hard to do when you play the blame game and minimize the nature of the beast, as Trump did for precious weeks and continues to do today. It’s hard to do when you antagonize the adversarial country which produces a huge percentage of our medicines/ingredients and medical equipment. It’s hard to do when you contradict the most respected member of the task force on a daily basis.

Interesting analysis in the NYT ( which relies on assumptions and extrapolation)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
I assume the US and other countries knew about the risk to some degree in December and had our and other governments locked our(their) borders to all incoming foreign travelers( admittedly an extreme measure, but rights always come into conflict and requires balancing the equities in each circumstance), the severity and magnitude of the seeds of the virus would have been mitigated substantially. This was happening right in the midst of the impeachment process and it strains credulity that anyone could have gotten DJT to focus on this issue. That nothing to that affect has leaked suggests that this may not have even been raised.

The link I posted had the headline: Study Finds Unexpected Coronavirus Symptoms That Could Be the First Sign of Infection: Digestive Issues.
Even the slow boy could divine this wasn’t a right wing hit piece with the smallest modicum of intellectual curiosity.

Because a clickbait-y headline is what matters. It’s as if the lesson you took from The Boy Who Cried Wolf is that we need to take all claims of wolf encroachment seriously, regardless of where the information comes from. This is why you are the sucker.

Trump’s worst crime and worst mistake was his happy talk, and his insinuations that this virus was no different than the flu, and that it was a hoax and nothing to worry about. Lots of dipshits across the land treat the words that come out of his asshole-shaped mouth as complete infallible truth.

To this very day I see morons on social media who are trying to defend Trump’s early March position that this whole thing is overblown. And as a result they’re still not taking distancing seriously, and as a result many will die unnecessarily.

That’s his worst crime and it’s unforgivable. My mom and dad live in Broward County, they’re both around 70, my mom has COPD and my dad is in chemo and has pulmonary fibrosis. They’re dead if they get this. If the president had taken this seriously from the jump they’d have better odds. But he fucking didn’t, and no amount of revisionist history or partisan ass-licking is going to change that plain and simple fact.

The only way any president could have stopped this involved three things no president would be likely to do:

1. Close the borders

2. Wilfully plunge our economy into recession as a precaution

3. Infringe upon civil liberties early and often *before* this became a crisis.

That’s it. That’s all that would have stopped this. And everyone screaming at Trump probably knows this.

Come on man, there’s so much wrong with this.

First of all, there’s a ton of space between “stopping this” and where we are now. No one is saying Trump could’ve and should’ve literally prevented the Coronavirus from coming to the United States.

What we’re saying is while public health experts and doctors (and Senators in private meetings with their donors after receiving classified briefings) were sounding the alarm, Trump and his sycophants on cable news, in Congress, etc. were doing the whole “it’s the flu” thing. This undermined the social distancing message until it was way too late to get this thing under any kind of control.

Obviously it’s impossible to nail down exactly what the effects of disbanding the NSC directorate for global health were, but I think it’s pretty fucking fair to say they were, um, not good! Experts were up in arms at the time about how that decision left us much more vulnerable to a pandemic. Well, what do you know!

It’s not hard to figure out Trump’s calculations. He’s a simple man. You don’t get much of any political acclaim for things like pandemic preparation, so it’s just not something he ever gave a shit about. That’s all well and good until a pandemic occurs.

thenoblefacehumper: It’s not hard to figure out Trump’s calculations. He’s a simple man. You don’t get much of any political acclaim for things like pandemic preparation, so it’s just not something he ever gave a shit about. That’s all well and good until a pandemic occurs.

Well, look at the bright side, at least Trump is listening to experts and proactively addressing the potentially catastrophic impact of human activities on global warming. He’s beefing up regulations, transitioning our economy away from fossil fuels and toward zero-emissions, calling on the world to fight this spectre together, etc.

I’m a huge UK college basketball fan as my family is originally from Lexington. I’m wary of any successful college coach making the jump to the pros but I want to give my two cents about Cal because I think the image of him as just a good recruiter is flat out wrong.

Pretty much every year U.K. does well in basketball. Yes they have had some of the best recruits but there are plenty of years recently where they started out not so hot but as the season progresses they always get stronger and stronger. Cal has had many different types of teams bc every year a bunch of his players go pro. He’s had teams that had amazing guards, teams that were well rounded at all positions and teams that had good big men but no shooters. He’s always adapted his system and style to fit what was best with the team he’s had, not remain rigid with just one style of play. And as the year progresses his players and the team tend to get better and improve on their weaknesses. There have been many years recently where I thought “oh this year we’ll make the tourney but lose in the first or second round only to be pleasantly surprised by them going further than expected. I think he’s actually a pretty good development coach and I think that is actually a big reason why he gets so many top prospects.

Have I been shadowbanned? My last few posts just fully disappeared

I think my first choice for HC would be Atkinson-he seemed to do a good job with the young Nets, the Knicks are young, he’s a CAA guy, and he’s not Mark Jackson.

I think Calipari is a better coach than he’s given credit for the reasons swift laid out (my fam’s from Covington/Paintsville!) but I’d prefer Atkinson for the reasons above. The NBA is just such a different beast than college.

shutting down NYC is not the same as shutting down Lexington…So many more variables to control than in TN or KY.

These things are mostly true, but Hubert is right that we’d be in a better position had we acted sooner. We still have those same extra variables, and we’re in a worse position than we could have been. It’s not like this wasn’t obviously coming.

bob, Fox News has the right wing equivalent of Avenatti on 24 fucking hours a day. It’s a non-stop, unending fire hose of bullshit, an endless parade of Trump fellators and wingnut talking point peddlers, occasionally interrupted by ads for catheters and gold investments. I’m not going to say that other news networks don’t have their own bias, but Fox News wins hands down in terms of utter shamelessness.

But Avenatti doe. Whatever.

JK47:
bob, Fox News has the right wing equivalent of Avenatti on 24 fucking hours a day. It’s a non-stop, unending fire hose of bullshit, an endless parade of Trump fellators and wingnut talking point peddlers, occasionally interrupted by ads for catheters and gold investments. I’m not going to say that other news networks don’t have their own bias, but Fox News wins hands down in terms of utter shamelessness.

But Avenatti doe. Whatever.

So well said. How telling is bob’s lack of outrage at this scumbag president’s 5-year crusade about our first black president’s legitimacy? How many time did Fox et. al. have Trump on the show peddling that debunked racist bullshit to adoring fans?

Trump and Avenatti are birds of the same feather, malignant narcissists and pathological liars to the core.

bobneptune: But Trump should have known better….. got it!!!!! He did have the correct instinct and any moron with HS biology understood, his error was not going far enough fast enough.

It amazes me that you could read that article, and that’s your takeaway.

But what about but what about but what about but what about

“Bob has been on this site for years. He should know that referencing Tucker Carlson and Fox News as a news source is going to be received the same way referencing per game stats are. And for good reason. This is an educated, progressive thinking community looking to move conversations beyond baseline, antiquated bullshit.”

Keep patting yourselves on the back for how smart you are, and how “progressive” you are whatever that means.. The facts on the ground argue otherwise…..

“It amazes me that you could read that article, and that’s your takeaway.”

Seriously…. what amazes you?

The Politico piece features prominently a blurb by a world’s preeminent authority on infectious diseases the head of the revered WHO pillorying Trump for being too aggressive with the china restrictions. He goes on to say travel bans weren’t needed and of little use.

Scrolling down in the piece the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committed said:

Bera, who will chair a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing on the epidemic on Wednesday, said he’s concerned the Trump administration’s cautionary measures may be backfiring.

“We shouldn’t have an antagonistic relationship with the Chinese. We should be working hand in hand,” he said. Besides the diplomatic blowback, he said, the travel ban “probably doesn’t make sense,” since the outbreak has already spread to several other countries.

“At this juncture, it’s going to be very hard to contain the virus,” Bera told POLITICO, noting that his priority now is to get CDC’s epidemiologists into China to study the origin of the pandemic.

Bera added that the mandatory quarantines “may be overkill,” pointing to experts who say governments should opt for voluntary steps whenever possible, since people usually comply with self-quarantine orders to protect themselves and others from disease.”

From those quotes I conclude there was much authoritative blow back to just the China restriction.

The common view here is Trump was a moron…. it was obviously the thing to do and he should have closed Europe at the first sign of contagion.

My point is his actions were hardly popular at the time. And science embodied by the head of the WHO thought it was foolish and negative.

He was clearly right…. he just didn’t go far enough.

Rand Paul tested positive.

“Bob has been on this site for years. He should know that referencing Tucker Carlson and Fox News as a news source is going to be received the same way referencing per game stats are.”

I guess you didn’t see this…..

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/19/tucker_carlson_calls_for_burr_to_resign_no_greater_moral_crime_than_betraying_country_in_a_time_of_crisis.html

Did Don Lemon or Rachel Maddow say anything similar about Sen Feinstein? probably not eh

lmao Feinstein should be investigated like the rest of them, even though her assets (unlike Burr’s) are in a blind trust, who the fuck is arguing otherwise

“Did Don Lemon or Rachel Maddow say anything similar about Sen Feinstein? probably not eh”

Sigh.

I don’t know, Bob. I don’t watch them.

>Bob said “Keep patting yourselves on the back for how smart you are, and how “progressive” you are whatever that means..”<

Progressive means: favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are.

That is LITERALLY what this site was created to do. It doesn’t end with basketball stats, though. If you want to argue against that, it won’t be embraced by this audience to any worthwhile degree for you. (And I am patting myself on the back for knowing that, because if I didn’t know that by now, I’d either be helplessly stupid or insufferably stubborn, and I am proud to be neither.)

He was clearly right…. he just didn’t go far enough.

Trump’s travel ‘ban’ just forced Americans abroad to come back – with no screening, no testing, no quarantine – and spread the virus further in their communities. It was a simple idea from a simple mind that exacerbated the problem because the administration was incapable of thinking through what they were doing and incapable of handling the aftermath of their decisions. But we shouldn’t expect anything else from the sort of people who think that a lawyer getting booked on talking heads shows means that everybody wants that guy to run for president. And who also seems to think that Knickerblogger is out carousing instead of self-isolating? “Arrogant self-destructive disrespectful people” sure sounds Trump-ish to me..

This argument should just stop. When others others on this site, ones who don’t like Trump, said blocking flights from China was a good move, nobody argued. When Bob says the same thing, you all jump on him and there is a big argument that is getting tiresome to read.

More on how badly our leadership is fucking this up.

Why is this asshole on tv talking about how awesome he is

two or three weeks ago…”oh..this is a hoax…” and ” it’s just one chinese person”…now its “a war against the virus”…his freakin tune changed real fast…

dios mio….el presidente es loco…

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/trumps-statements-about-the-coronavirus/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html

Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously, according to multiple officials with knowledge of meetings among those advisers and with the president.

Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18, according to two senior administration officials. When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market, the senior administration officials said.

…

Mulvaney then began convening more regular meetings. In early briefings, however, officials said Trump was dismissive because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.

I mean imagine defending literally any aspect of this response. A stupid, vain, incompetent, unqualified man revealed himself as such. It’s that simple.

Yiddish proverb: “If one KB poster calleth thee a jackass, pay him no mind. If the majority of KB posters calleth thee a jackass, get thee a saddle.”

“So Bob, forget about who said what in the media. What’s your assessment of Trump during this crisis? Anything you would improve upon, or you think he’s nailed it?”

First, since we all have a little extra time on our hands take a layman’s primer on virology by reading these books I’ve read about the subject over the last 30 years:

And the Band Played On (HIV)

Virus Hunters (the discovery of the first retrovirus and reverse transcriptase) (HIV and the politics within the scientific community)

The Hot Zone (Ebola)

The Speckled Monster (small pox)

You will get an appreciation for just how insidious these little fuckers are. This particular virus is terrible because it has the “perfect combination” of lethality (fairly low but still substantial) and transmisibility (fairly high).

Ebola is wickedly lethal (~ 60% mortality) but incredibly difficult to spread. You need direct bodily fluid contact to transmit (like HIV) but the infected person can’t spread it without fluid contact AND once the person is symptomatic he is obviously ill (bleeding eyeballs and mucous membranes) and he quickly dies so he doesn’t have much chance to spread it.

This little devil has a much lower mortality rate 1-3% but infected people often don’t know it for 2 weeks while they are shedding virus via cough droplets and many are totally asymptomatic shedding virus like a cross between Johnny Appleseed and Typhoid Mary.

It is the perfect storm of a virus.

To Be continued……

https://coronastrong.us/home – decent data. Hopkins is doing an OK job too. Orangeton’s CDC is clueless. He better not recover from this…

If we extrapolate and “account” for people who have the virus but are asymptomatic and will never be tested – you’ll get a mortality rate is about the same as with influenza. (flue)

Look at NYC. As we test more, cases have been doubling every day and half or so. So we know that there are thousands out there who have it but are not tested.

But even with the people who have tested positive, 22,717 and 114 deaths, – we are looking at the .05% mortality rate for conformed cases. This is actually much lower than influenza. When comparing apples to apples, meaning influenza hospitalizations vs deaths – mortality rate is .75%.

Experts told us that trump couldn’t win; they told us that real estate only goes up because they don’t make anymore land; they told us that .com bubble is nonsense and its different this time; experts told us that Saddam had WMDs. experts told us bitcoin is a form of currency; experts put Bernie Maddof in charge of NASDAQ.

Folks, – our media and our politicians have been all duped by so called experts again. We live in a hyper sensationalized world, – so an over the top unreasonable hype/panic is a common sense result. Why is this unfathomable to most?

“So Bob, forget about who said what in the media. What’s your assessment of Trump during this crisis? Anything you would improve upon, or you think he’s nailed it?”

No elected official in the world has anything close to nailed it.

On Background I included a timeline in the link below to eliminate result playing.

stipulating Patient zero in the USA arrived back in Seattle 1/15 and was in quarantine by 1/20 with supposedly all of his leads/contacts being tracked down

Timeline:

12/31… China first notified WHO of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan.

1/7… Virus identified by China

1/11 … First death in Wuhan

January 23… WHO says that the outbreak did not yet constitute a public emergency of international concern and there was “no evidence” of the virus spreading between humans outside of China.

1/23… Wuhan placed under quarantine

February 4… the U.S. State Department issued a level 4 travel advisory mandating that foreign citizens who had been to China be turned away, and Americans who had been to China must undergo screening and possibly be put in quarantine for 14 days.

2/28 …. First US fatality

2/28… First case of community spread.

Now …. up until I don’t quibble alot with the way things played out other than he should have closed all the borders when he did the 2/4 travel advisory. That would have helped and it isn’t hindsight to say that now.

Repatriating Americans from overseas as long as they were sequestered for 14 days as they were when the evacuated Americans in Wuhan was all reasonable.

Up until 2/28 things were reasonably buttoned up. But the minute they found the first case of community spread we should have gone into full LDPM (lock down poker mode). Wuhan style. Ground the commercial fleet for 30-60 day’s. No international travel except for repatriating Americans after holding them in quarantine. No travel other than completely essential things (food, meds doctors)

To be continued….

Of course shutting down the country 3 days before Super Tuesday probably wouldn’t have been accepted very well….. by well…… about half the country….. but it would have been the right thing to do. Without question.

Isolation is the only safe haven from an easily communicable quite lethal virus.

JK…so lets say my analysis of limited available data is wrong and the actual mortality rate is what the experts say it is somewhere between 1% and 3%. So, – we leave that alone because it clearly upsets you.

Lets talk about the intensity in which this virus transmits. Its super infectious and the data on that is clear. Coumo who on the same day he shuts down entire empire state says that its too infections and reality is that 60% to 80% of all NY-erks will get it anyway.

So, if we all are going to get it anyway, other then driving ourselves into an economic depression, – what are we really accomplishing?

Read the article I sent (apparently KBPR’s pal). Willful ignorance and active stupidity right now is not a good thing.

GianaDani:
Jk..that is not a classy response…Here is from across the river:

New Jersey’s top public health official, Judith Persichilli, told NJ.com some frightening news last week when she said everyone would get the virus, including her.

“I’m definitely going to get it. We all are,” Persichilli said. “I’m just waiting.”

At the age of 71, Persichilli is at high-risk for severe illness relating to a COVID-19 infection. She said when she gets sick, it’ll probably be mild and will last for a few days.

Persichilli has studied all the COVID-19 pandemic models and consulted with experts on how best to prepare New Jersey for an outbreak.

There’s now like a billion articles on flattening the curve, including the one linked. Please go read them.

‘ol mitch on tv roasting folks…yeah – this is why I don’t follow politics…definitely would be nice if they could work shit out – quickly…

one thing that has stuck out to me by surfing all the news channels: we really do need to focus on bringing/subsidizing if neccessary key manufacturing sectors (pharmaceuticals) back in to the country…

Greece announced a lockdown on Sunday, restricting movement from Monday morning with only a few exceptions, to combat the spread of coronavirus.

Infected 695
dead 17

Thanks, Bob. I agree with most of that. My main complaint with him during this time is he doesn’t accept his own limitations. The doctors should be the ones running the press conferences and he should be there to back them up. That would clear up a lot of confusion. Of course, I accept that half the country is wired to hang him on anything, so they, via the press, are demanding him to speak almost every day, and he’s incapable of resisting the opportunity. It’s a toxic mix all around. I think we’d all be better served if we let the politicians step aside here like they (mostly) did in 2008.

Fwiw, I don’t think any elected official in the US did a worse job than Cuomo (who I like) and DeBlasio (who I believe to be an imbecile). The amount of cases in NY may soon surpass those in china. Eventually it may surpass the entire world given how little heed was paid by the people. But I accept that this is an impossible situatiin that no one in a non-authoritarian government has been able to get right.

Rama, I agree, and I have wanted to apologize for my spleen-draining rant of a few days ago. That was not, in fact, a result of the digestive article (as you say interesting possible piece of information, although who knows). I simply lost it from the stress of having to read his generic trolling. I love you guys and I love coming here, and he’s only one troll, but as a representative of the unapologetically brainwashed 43,2%, he makes me feel so hopeless right now.

I will try to tone it down (or just keep it to myself).

You don’t think McConnell and the Republicans would be cynical enough to put forth bills that they know the Dems won’t agree to, and then blame the Dems for being obstructionist?

Nah, that would be too reprehensible even for them, right?

Look, I disagree with bobneptune on just about every issue but that’s all right. He’s in the minority here in terms of politics but he’s entitled to his beliefs and he’s not a troll.

Reub is here to disrupt and to be an attention-seeking jackass, and he crosses the line into saying things that are offensive. I think he feigns his own stupidity for attention. He’s still posting under the fake woman name he had to invent after he was banned here for rape apologism. Which he’ll deny, but which happened.

He’s the rare poster here that actually makes this place worse.

So, if we all are going to get it anyway, other then driving ourselves into an economic depression, – what are we really accomplishing?

What a fucking humiliating tell that you haven’t paid attention to a word of what the public health experts are saying. I figured even the dumbest Trump chuds alive understood the logic of “flatten the curve.”

Has GianaDani ever outright denied that she is Reub? Giana are you Reub?

Today is a rough day for anyone trying to make a straight-faced argument that Trump knows what he’s doing.

In case you missed it, he’s been tweeting all day about how less vulnerable populations need to get back to normal life soon, likely within a week or so.

This would probably kill 1,000,000+, and eventually the economy would just get re-wrecked from everyone being sick all the time anyway, but at least President Big Boy might get a “markets rebound” headline or two out of it!

to which then – another 8 weeks maybe of keeping everyone in place?

fucking trump, what an idiot: hey, next week i expect to see them bars and beaches full again…

i hope everyone here is staying safe and healthy and their family is too…

Rama, are you certain reub is 60? That is stunning. I always assumed, based on the intelligence of his posts and his general behavior, the reub was somewhere between 12 and
16 years old.

He talked a lot about going on cruises, so I made some assumptions. It is possible he is a kid and making that up, but that seems highly unlikely – I don’t think going on cruises would occur to my 15-year-old boy as a thing to reference. And he could be independently wealthy and retired at 45, but again, doesn’t seem likely given the references he’s made over time. So, almost certainly 60+, though by deduction, not statement.

In case you missed it, he’s been tweeting all day about how less vulnerable populations need to get back to normal life soon, likely within a week or so.

He’s saying we need to reassess in a week or so. That makes perfect sense. Why shouldn’t we reassess periodically?

Do you understand what’s in play if we don’t leave our houses for 4 months?

just saw this which made me smile:

Don’t think of me as an extreme lifelong introvert.

Think of me as a highly qualified quarantine consultant.

I guess it is probably extra fucked up to be a troll during a crisis, so I banned GianaDani.

thanks bc…politics is one thing – but, too many, shit – all of us pretty much have too much at stake right now to take a little “nudging” well…

Do you understand what’s in play if we don’t leave our houses for 4 months?

i know it’s a super broad question, so many different segments of the economy – what’s your sense on how long of a “shut-down” versus how long it might take for some different segments of the economy to rebound/recover…

it seems this situation is at least another 8 to 10 weeks or so from hopefully stabilizing…will that be too long a period for most small businesses to survive?

definitely will need a plan at some point for getting all the unemployed (think i saw we’re at 30% right now) back to work…

**What if a vaccine is developed by mid April but we already canceled June?**

From what I’ve read and heard from experts in the field, it will take 14 months minimum for a vaccine to be available. Have you read otherwise?

i think the only person on earth who believes a readily available vaccine would be ready by mid-april is our fearless leader…anyone else based in reality knows it is off in the distance…

pepper:
i think the only person on earth who believes a readily available vaccine would be ready by mid-april is our fearless leader…anyone else based in reality knows it is off in the distance…

I agree, but I still think the 8 week call was overreaching. A lot can change after two weeks.

This is a recipe for hospitals being overwhelmed and being forced to make the kinds of tragic prioritization decisions we saw/are still seeing in Italy.

I didn’t say (and neither did Trump) that the whole world should go back to work in two weeks.

How many tests do we have? At what rate are we producing them? How overtaxed are our hospitals? We don’t know what the answer to these questions will be in two weeks. It is blindingly obvious that you can’t project that information very far out, so frequent reassessment and adjustment is the right call.

WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!

Yeah, I don’t know why we just don’t see the nuance that Trump is using with this stuff. Geez, guys.

If you read the reporting from today, Trump is not merely being pushed in the direction of reevaluating the situation every few weeks. That would not be newsworthy, and he would not be obsessively tweeting about the idea.

He is being pushed into sending people back to work prematurely, plain and simple, and the idea is appealing strongly to him.

Just to give you an indication of how ridiculous it is to even be talking about this right now:

Kit Delgado
@kit_delgadoMD
·
26m
Spoke to an NYC ER doctor colleague today who said their ER is intubating 1-2 patients *per hour*. That’s a 12 to 24 new ICU admissions requiring ventilators per day. NYC hospitals about to hit max capacity. Other cities/hospitals must act now to be ready #CoronavirusOutbreak

We haven’t hit the peak of this thing in any part of the country.

I just opened this email from a bar on Bowery:

“ As with most of our nightlife/hospitality community, we are closed until further notice due to COVID-19. This has left our entire staff (over 30 employees) without a job. Rumors of government aid and unemployment for all are not currently a reality; the unemployment website keeps crashing and getting through on the phone is an impossibility, which leaves countless members of our amazing team unable to apply. Many of our bartenders, DJs, and barbacks live week to week, relying on this income for basic necessities for themselves and their families.”

This is gonna get ugly fast if we already can’t take care of people who aren’t,t getting paychecks

Do you really think the economy will come roaring back when countless numbers of the allegedly invulnerable people are going to be getting sick every single day?

It’s not about roaring back (it won’t). You send people to work so it doesn’t plunge deeper. Recessions are normal. Painful, but normal. A depression will fuck us up much worse than this virus. You send people back to work to avoid that. Not for some stupid V shape recovery. That ship has sailed.

I think that “assessment” is a daily issue…if the major element is assessing testing feedback to see where we are on the “curve”…it is not clear how useful the data is right now…I mean the ratios of infected to tested vary widely and it seems that it is correlated to how densely populated the areas are and/or what area of a state is being tested..I am not even sure how helpful the testing data is right now…appears that Washington state/Illinois and NY have made the biggest leaps in a week in terms of volume of tests while other states with smaller volumes have a wide disparity in their ratios which makes no sense….I haven’t heard any commentary on how meaningful the data is to date and if it isn’t when will it be…because only at that point can informed decisions be made…

Our current policy is (rightly) based on the Imperial College report which largely uses Italy as its baseline.

I would be surprised if our numbers look like Italy’s.

Unquestionably things are going to get worse in the US before they get better. We desperately need those military hospital ships in NY ASAP, more medical equipment etc… But imo there’s something unique going on in Italy that we don’t quite understand yet that explains the number of critical cases and deaths over and above a shortage of hospital beds, ICU equipment etc….

They talk about the age of the population (older than average) and that a LOT of them are smokers, but I also heard that they’ve had bouts of TB via immigration in some of the areas that have been hardest hit (can’t vouch for that). I suspect there are several factors contributing to it over and above the hospital issue. It may even be genetics. Italy is the worst case scenario, but imho (not being an expert on any of this), not a good baseline expectation. It’s what you try to prepare for.

There is no time for silly deficit fear-mongering–print the damn money and send it.

I’m a “hard money” libertarian that hates our current monetary system. I have been screaming about the Fed, deficits, debt, and the banking system for decades. The idiots won that political battle decades ago and now we are screwed. That ship has sailed. We are standing at the abyss. We should unquestionably print the money and get it to people and small businesses and do everything possible to save the financial system. We can worry about replacing this abortion of a system some day when competent people are in charge and hogwash is not being taught in our universities.

The idiots won that political battle decades ago and now we are screwed. That ship has sailed. We are standing at the abyss.

Uh-huh, sure. This country is going to go to hell due to the deficit any day now. Just you wait. It’s right around the corner.

Ironically, turns out what actually might send it to hell is the Pete Peterson deficit-scold mumbo jumbo to which so many politicians in both parties (but weirdly enough, much more so the Democrats) adhere.

Hubert, I think the point you’re missing is we really have only two choices: we can crash the economy and save lives now, or we can crash the economy later while millions die that otherwise didn’t have to.

I don’t agree. But your choice of words is vague. What does “crash the economy” mean? Plunge into recession or depression? Recession is inevitable but a depression is by no means assured. IMHO, that’s an avoidable outcome that is worse than the virus.

That article was indeed terrifying but to be fair it wasn’t sourced or supported with quotes at all. Having said that, I believe it.

It made a particular point I hadn’t considered (and again, they projected it, but it’s probably true):

Trump is devastated that he can’t hold rallies. He sees these pressers (which should be for the doctors) as his only spotlight.

You have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to our monetary system, banking system, the flaws with fiat money, the history and politics of how we wound up with this monetary system etc.. So please do us all a favor and just STFU on this one subject. I have no problem with your politics and only rarely get annoyed with your baskteball opinions , but you don’t know what you are talking about when it comes to money, banking and the Fed. Please put a cork in it and trash Trump and Frank all you want.

You’ve convinced me, the deficit apocalypse is right around the corner! China is going to invade to collect on its credit! We’re a week away from being Zimbabwe! Quick, stop letting poor people live with any shred of dignity!

well…according to Prez..unless you put names next to those citations/quotes…it is fake news…

I think you’re drastically underrating the economic effects of sending people back to work, only to see scores of them have to take time off immediately with plenty of those cases resulting in hospitalization and possibly death.

I’m not. The math is pretty simple: the economic impact of somewhere between 40-80% of the work force getting sick and missing 2 weeks is substantially less than the economic impact of 100% of people missing work for for two months.

Admittedly this relies on the current data in which the hospitalization and death rates of low risk people being low remains constant. And it also doesn’t consider that it gives the virus millions of chances to mutate into something more devastating. Again, I’m not saying everyone should go back to work. I know there are risks. We have to wait and reassess.

JK47: Those hacks at Associated Press just make shit up. Yeah, I’m sure that’s how they operate.

Come on now.

It was presented as an editorial analysis, not a news story.

I’m just saying no one in the story went on record, even anonymously, is all. That has to be noted, I think.

public service announcement…I have been doing a bunch of cooking since i am stuck at home…I was working with dry red kidney beans and was using a slow cooker…and no matter how long I cooked them they were still hard….I was looking up on the “internet” what I was doing wrong and found out that red kidney beans have some toxin in them that unless you get the temp to 180 degrees…it doesn’t break down the toxin and you can get really ill…digestive stuff…nausea…so, anyone trying to make some Indian kidney bean currie or other dishes…like me…and using dry kidney beans…make sure you boil those things…

Well that escalated quickly. Guess it’s not goink well for Strat.

Strat, you miss ur meds today?

doesn’t that dais fill y’all with confidence and hope?

Look at how unsettled Brix is, as she knows that if she’s gone, there’s nobody left.

Think about the fact that there is a renowned medical expert who corrected Trump on a few things, and Trump’s response is not to stop doing the things he’s corrected on, but to get rid of the renowned medical expert. It’s so bonkers.

You have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to our monetary system, banking system, the flaws with fiat money, the history and politics of how we wound up with this monetary system etc.. So please do us all a favor and just STFU on this one subject.

Strat, I meditated on Carl Menger. I STUDIED Carl Menger. Carl Menger was a friend of mine.

Strat, you’re no Carl Menger.

This is abominable

He does not have the chops to pull any of this off. This is not going to go well.

He pivoted from small businesses to bailing out Boeing really quick.

Berman must be bored…he just put out a puff piece on Iggy in the Post…tough times….

Here’s a statistic for anyone naive enough to believe you can “isolate” the vulnerable while letting younger people go back to school and work: there are currently about 2.6 million grandparents raising their grandchildren.

What’s President Big Boy’s plan to prevent those kids from infecting their grandparents?

I really don’t think the 10 year olds who are being raised by their grandparents are going to be called upon to go to work and save the economy.

I said:

school and work

Despite how many times you’ve said it isn’t, selective quarantine is extremely feasible and in fact very simple. It’s just how like during war time only certain people go to war. The gov’t draws a line based on your risk factors. If you’re on one side you go to work.

Dude. Come on. Foreign/non-state actor armies are not viruses. What they do to the people selected to go to war is not contagious. Don’t get me wrong–war is hell and immoral in all kinds of ways, but it ain’t analogous to a virus that damn near ensnares anyone who gets within six feet of it.

’m obviously exaggerating a bit when I say that, but not when I say this: the suicide rate in an America with 30-40% unemployment is going to dwarf every scientist’s worst case scenario for the coronavirus.

The Imperial College report said the “isolate the vulnerable but let the invulnerable live” strategy comes with about 1,000,000 surplus deaths.

People might not be super psyched to go to work once the shit hits the fan and the bodies start piling up. Especially considering this disease seems to hit younger people harder than initially advertised.

I said:

school and work

Ok, well no one said we need to send kids back to school. School is not essential to the economy. Kids should stay home.

Come on. Foreign/non-state actor armies are not viruses. What they do to the people selected to go to war is not contagious. Don’t get me wrong–war is hell and immoral in all kinds of ways, but it ain’t analogous to a virus that damn near ensnares anyone who gets within six feet of it.

I hear you, but you’re missing the point.

When we go to war, we select people based on their viability. We don’t take women and children, for instance, or men who can’t run a 1/4 mile without getting winded. Not everyone goes to war.

Likewise, not everyone will go back to work. If you have asthma, lung issues, lupus, are above 60… Whatever. You draw a line. On one side, you need to stay home. On the other, go to work and keep the economy floating. We have enough people in this country who can get sick for two weeks and not go to the hospital over it. No matter which week’s numbers you use, getting sick doesn’t mean hospitalization. The vast majority can recover from this at home.

The Imperial College report said the “isolate the vulnerable but let the invulnerable live” strategy comes with about 1,000,000 surplus deaths.

I’d like to see that citation. I am fairly certain they did not run a scenario in which we first quarantine everyone for two weeks and then execute the strategy. I thought it was an either/or.

I just forced my wife to watch Mulholland Drive with me based on the say-so of some posters here. Let’s just say that thanks to you f-in’ a-holes I ain’t gettin’ any tonight.

And furthermore, you are a stank bunch of misogynist fucks. “Oh, THAT’S why they liked it!” (ps i forgive u)

Hubert: Ok, well no one said we need to send kids back to school. School is not essential to the economy. Kids should stay home.

Case in point: Sure, all of my mom teachers can go back to work if their kids are not in school. Especially the single moms. Right.

I rest my case.

I just forced my wife to watch Mulholland Drive with me based on the say-so of some posters here. Let’s just say that thanks to you f-in’ a-holes I ain’t gettin’ any tonight.

Yeah dude you should have asked us about whether it were suitable for date night, being that it’s (maybe) about a nightmarish wish-fulfillment fantasy by a scorned ex-lover before she kills herself in a jealous, spiteful rage

Hubert: That’s because we won the war! That’s how you end a depression: global warfare. And at the end, the victor is rich from the spoiled and its economy is fixed.

Maybe we should just let a murderous psychopath disguised as a take charge kind of guy take over…I mean, whose economy recovered faster than Germany’s in the 1930’s?!

The Honorable Cock Jowles: Yeah dude you should have asked us about whether it were suitable for date night, being that it’s (maybe) about a nightmarish wish-fulfillment fantasy by a scorned ex-lover before she kills herself in a jealous, spiteful rage

Not that far off from my marriage, but I digress…

Once was enough for my wife, too. But I’m already chafing from the quarantine conjugality, so sorry, bud.

; )

Hubert, I generally like you, wish I had listened to your advice about stock risk, but stay in yr lane my dude

The Honorable Cock Jowles: Once was enough for my wife, too. But I’m already chafing from the quarantine conjugality, so sorry, bud.

After nearly 30 years of “blissful” marriage, the desire for 6 feet of social distancing is measured vertically…

The “partial quarantine” idea is a lot like Phil Jackson’s “two-tiered” approach to team building. You do a half-assed job of “win now” and a half-assed job of “rebuild” and suck at both.

The economy isn’t going to be humming along when there are hundreds of thousands of people dying, horrifying scenes of suffering, an overwhelmed health care system and an overall feeling of terror. Trump is clearly ignoring the medical professionals and listening to his idiot son-in-law and I simply do not believe there is a coherent plan in place.

Raven:
It’s funny, nature really does abhore a vacuum. We get rid of GianaDani, and here come Hubert.

Dude, you have a lot of balls to say this considering how stupid what you just did was.

You posted Pueyo’s article and told me to read it, but you obviously didn’t finish it, you just glanced at a few of the bold quotes.

Why don’t you go *finish* the article you told me to read. I read it when it came out a week ago. Spoiler alert: it’s my argument, dipshit.

The Hammer = quarantine for weeks
The Dance = a dance of measures between getting our lives back on track and spreading the disease, one of economy vs. healthcare.

Jesus, man. You’ve called out two people in two days who you don’t have the capacity to hang with. I know you’re trying to endear yourself to the pack by fighting with the unpopular kids, but maybe pick fights with one of the mental midgets like Z Man or reub instead.

And for fuck’s sake man, finish an article before you tell someone to read it. Christ almighty, you’re one thick little chucklefuck.

So China is the Sixers? Korea is the Celtics?

Oh,

Hubert: but maybe pick fights with one of the mental midgets like Z Man or reub instead.

Don’t sweat it Raven, these are the rantings of a deeply insecure blowhard who is desperate for validation. He’ll say anything to try to appear more intelligent than the crowd, and will never admit fault no matter how indefensible his positions.

PS who’s more aligned with reub’s positions, Hubert or me?

a deeply insecure blowhard who is desperate for validation.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

(I know you’re really slow, dude, but FYI… People who are desperate for validation don’t hold the line on beliefs they know are unlikely to be accepted. They behave like you and Raven.)

I mean “The Hammer And The Dance” is all well and good but we’re not really doing The Hammer, we’re doing kind of a half-assed version of it and we started too late. As far as “The Dance” part, well, that takes a lot of competence, bureaucratic skill, foresight… does that sound like the sort of area where Trump and senior adviser Jared Kushner are going to excel? These guys don’t know how to pull something like that off. They’re real estate grifters. And they think they’re real fucking smart and don’t need to listen to experts. I really strongly don’t trust those guys to pull off “The Dance” to be brutally fucking honest.

They should avoid getting cute and just do whatever the fuck the medical professionals say. But they won’t. As much as I hate those corrupt ignoramus fucks I wish them luck. I hope it works out. Probably won’t but here’s to hoping.

Last week I violate a direct order from my superiors because it put my colleagues’ and their families lives at risk. Hopefully state governors will do the same when Trump makes a colossally dumb decree that people should go back to work against the advice of infectious disease experts. Hubert et. al. have no fucking idea what the long-term economic implications will be either way. But we definitely have an idea what the mortality and morbidity implications are.

Trump’s words and actions in dealing with this crisis are far more deserving of impeachment and removal from office than the Ukraine stuff. This is somewhere between criminal negligence and homicide.

I would agree, JK, that our current government is extremely unlikely to pull this off. I don’t think our president is capable of executing any strategy that requires 2-4 weeks of commitment.

But it does seem like you combined my argument with his. Trump’s position is “I need to get stocks up before the election.” I’m talking about avoiding 1929.

And yes, you’re right: we have not yet deployed an effective hammer. I said that needs to happen first.

I respectfully believe far too many of you greatly underestimate the possibility that the cure is a flood that will drown many of us. That is all. The doctors are just trying to stop the virus. They’re not supposed to think of the economic impact.

Who knew that being called a thick little chucklefuck could make me feel so warm all over. I guess it is indeed all about context.

Llcoolbp — i grew up in your area. Being in the pandepicenter now (well fine, NYS has taken that over, everything’s a competition…), I’ve been really getting into the beauty of spring. Hummingbirds, forsythias, daffodils. Revel in them, assuming you get outside before dark. If you don’t, get a lunchtime walk.

JK47:
I mean “The Hammer And The Dance” is all well and good but we’re not really doing The Hammer, we’re doing kind of a half-assed version of it and we started too late. As far as “The Dance” part, well, that takes a lot of competence, bureaucratic skill, foresight… does that sound like the sort of area where Trump and senior adviser Jared Kushner are going to excel? These guys don’t know how to pull something like that off. They’re real estate grifters. And they think they’re real fucking smart and don’t need to listen to experts. I really strongly don’t trust those guys to pull off “The Dance” to be brutally fucking honest.

They should avoid getting cute and just do whatever the fuck the medical professionals say. But they won’t. As much as I hate those corrupt ignoramus fucks I wish them luck. I hope it works out. Probably won’t but here’s to hoping.

That’s exactly the problem, also in Italy. In time of crisis you have to be able to think long term as a politician, and it means also sacrificing the now for the sake of the future, and also sacrifice popular consensus. To do the hammer and the dance, for example, you really have to do it, and it means taking a strong control over institutions for a long period of time, like in some kind of sanitarian dictatorship, it’s not easy at all.
I’m afraid also Italian effort is half assed and it will lead to a soft hammer/never dance future (like the Knicks), at least for the foreseeable future. I think hammer and dance ar like the spurs, a kind of read and react system that requires a very good organization and perfect management.
China did a strong hammer (like Phila) because they don’t really care about popular consensus..

Who knew that being called a thick little chucklefuck could make me feel so warm all over. I guess it is indeed all about context.

Good morning, Raven! I’m glad you finished reading something 😉