I know people in Palm Beach County who are seeing a very different view of things than a poster on this thread.
I haven’t posted on this thread for awhile. Skimming through several pages of posts, seems like nobody has changed their minds/stances on things. No surprise.
Came here to post an observation. We bought a car today so Covid-19 car buying post/observations. All the negotiating was done by phone/email which is what I prefer doing anyway. We are familiar with the make/model so didn’t need to do a lot of kicking of tires. The salesperson brought the vehicle and paperwork to our home and everything was handled at a distance, test drive and paperwork. One of the easier car purchases we’ve had from our side.
On the dealer side, the salesperson reported the extra work for the dealership. Some people come in and want to test drive 5-7 cars. Each one needs to be wiped down after each test drive. Since we knew what we wanted - model, color - we were easier for him but he still needed to bring it to us (or choice over visiting the dealership) and a co-worker had to collect him.
He reported that after about 6 weeks of things being dead, they are SUPER busy now. Prices were reduced and financing is very attractive - 0% for new and very low for used. Obviously there is pent-up demand despite loss of jobs, income, stock market value.
We started looking back in late February then decided to wait when Covid-19 blew up in the US. We actually wound up switching makes when we picked up the process again. The other make (more basic vehicle) wasn’t budging much on prices despite emailing many dealers.
I sat in on a Zoom with real estate professionals about the state of our housing market. They consider six months of inventory to be “balanced.” At the bottom third of the market, there are only two months’ stock so still a seller’s market. At more than $1M, there is nine months’ stock so people were told to price well. The May stats won’t hit until mid-June. I’ll be curious to see whether there’s been a change.
Nice to see you back and posting.
My lease is up in August but planning on doing it next month. Same make and model just latest model.
They will bring car to my home and drive the other car away.
We got way too many miles last time, which I told my husband were unnecessary, but it fell on deaf ears. Going to reduce # of miles this time around.
CA is really cranking up the testing. Several counties, including LA, has offered to test anyone and everyone in their jurisdiction. Per the San Jose news, CA conducted ~25% more tests in the last week. (On a per capita basis, CA has been slower than some other states to test.)
So it should be no surprise the the number of new cases is going up; the good news is that the % positive is going down (as would be expected with mass testing).
This is very distressing.
It would be great news if this absurdly optimistic estimate of the infection fatality rate, 0.26%, were true. But there’s little reason to believe it IS true, and the CDC has no business advancing it.
The CDC could have done their own prevalence testing to get this data. But they didn’t. They could have taken a look at Spain, where after random sampling 70,000 the infection fatality rate (IFR)was calculated to be around 1.0% [Spain has an exceptionally old population, so we expect the IFR to be high there.] They could have looked at the state of Indiana, where after random sampling the IFR was determined to be about 0.58%. They could have looked at a whole lot of estimates worldwide.
Or they could have noticed that their IFR predicts that every single person in Brooklyn and Queens has already been infected, and all those who were going to die have already died, which we know is not true.
But they didn’t. A once proud organization has been brought to this. It’s terrible.
Illinois is still only testing those with symptoms and front line workers. The media makes a big deal out of “opening new testing centers”, but they’re by appointment only and they’ll screen your eligibility when you call. With the deck stacked in that direction, I am often surprised the numbers aren’t higher.
Hospitalizations are way, way down. Our local hospital has been at 10% occupancy for weeks, and losing over a million dollars a day.
None of it matters much. People are out and about, doing their own thing. It’s becoming a charade. Coworker had a meeting yesterday… on a golf course in a neighboring state. Chicago can’t close streets to help the restaurants out because some government morons signed a contract that they’d have to reimburse the outside private company that leases the parking meters. They matter more than Chicago’s own business owners.
School ended yesterday. I told DD, now that school is out, she may come shopping with me if she wants to get out of the house. She did. Mask compliance is 100% in all stores I have been in, and she is better off there than hanging with 10 friends as are many from her cohort.
Daycares will be slowly opening next week, which ought to give us more data to help decide what to do with schools in the fall.
I’m a poster who has in fact changed my mind. I now think daycares, K-12 schools and summer camps should be cautiously opened, because children don’t seem to be the little plague vectors for covid that they are for flu. The caution would be to watch whether we were seeing significant transmission from children to adults, and be ready to change plans if it appeared.
I agree with your new assessment.
I just came back from mailing a birthday present at the post office (some masks I made) and buying a few items at grocery store to make with dinner. All 3 employees at post office had masks under their chins (but the one who helped me did pull mask up to cover nose & mouth to help me. The other customers weren’t wearing mask—I was and left promptly after getting a few stamps and mailing package.
The grocery store still had 100% properly wearing masks. I got my groceries and left. There was a medium number of folks in the store. Parking lot was 80% full. Not many people getting take out. No one in shoe store. One person bringing dog in for grooming. Quite a few people walking around near shops.
Our state had 0 new cases today.
Way back somewhere there was conversation about the impact of social distancing on the spread of influenza and other diseases. Here’s an early look at some data https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01538-8 It looks like we did shut down the flu season. Other impacts have positives and negatives.
@HImom 0 new cases? What state? Find it hard to believe that number is legit.
So far, so not good in San Diego with restaurants starting to open: https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/san-diego-county-gives-covid-19-update-discusses-testing-options/509-4d38af85-27a6-4e5d-8630-0ed72bcb8918
Pacific Beach is the college party area. My favorite part is the letter from the bar, at the end. “Simply, everything spiraled out of control. We needed to be ready for the crowd. We weren’t.” At least they admitted it.
Only one new death reported today in the county (3.3 million population) - 35 years old with underlying medical conditions. Most of numbers are about 6 to 8 deaths per day, older demographics, virtually all with underlying conditions.
Looks like the facility in Lake County, IL is drive-up, no appointment.
There is screening. Obviously, if you are presenting with symptoms, you can get tested.
Certain groups will be tested with and without symptoms: individuals exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 case, employees of correctional facilities, healthcare workers, first responders, government employees, employees of critical infrastructure such as grocery stores and pharmacies.
Be careful what you wish for. That’s what Georgia did and yikes.
The German Gangelt study was remarkably comprehensive with greater than 90% of the population sampled. They estimated an IFR of 0.37%. Given the older demographic, that is consistent with an estimated 0.26% by the CDC for the younger US population.
Italy and Spain are such a mess, in addition to the generalized problems inherent in wholly socialized health care systems, that I wouldn’t extrapolate too much from their experiences.
Sure maybe true IFR is somewhere between 0.2% and 1.0%. Even in an uncontrolled virus sweep of 40% of the population, and with R0 of 2.5 that’s as far as it would go, this is not a disease that would have engendered the type of panic that would have shut down the economy to the extent the forced shutdowns did, especially as it became obvious that it was affecting primarily the very elderly who are well past their productive years.
Except they’re NOT selling vaccines or treatments. Just promises. What do you think they’re telling us when they dump 30 million dollars worth of stock? That it’s going to work???
Or that there’s a sucker born every minute, and that includes all those who just invested in your promise?
IL has tested 53k/1m, CA 37/1m, MA 73k/1m, NY 80k/1m, RI 116k/1m. Both IL and CA are not that high on testing and both of them have highest new cases. TX is getting close to 2000 new cases with very low testing.
Does anyone wonder if we are being trolled on this thread? Is everyone here a legitimate parent? I wonder this. I signed up for this account when my daughter was applying for colleges and she has been out many years now. I come back to the Cafe for book recommendations and when there is a national crisis and I am interested in how other educated people in different part of the country see what is going on. But now, I have never before questioned authenticity, but some posters seem so deliberately provocative that I am questioning credibility.