Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Seems like a decision has been made. Cruises restarting Aug. 1, 15,000 at Dolphins games, everything opening. Deaths don't matter. Get the party restarted.

 

It's a win-win for the maniacs in charge...they start generating some revenue for a while but they also spark off a massive increase in infections and deaths just in time to cause massive disruption to a little event people have to show up for on Nov. 3.

 

Sounds like 3 pages ago, too.

 

Don't be so sure any of this happens. The cruise lines have to announce cruises to qualify for government loans and assistance (since all their ships are foreign registry, they shouldn't get any). People still have to pay to get on them, and if not enough do, or if not enough skilled personnel, the ones who run the ships, are willing to work, boat don't sail. As for the Dolphins games, how many plans have we seen pro sports offer for reopening? A good many, and like this, they are all strictly aspirational at this point.
The symbol of this is a daily Delta round trip flight from Worcester to Detroit. They had to keep it running to qualify for the airline bailout. It has averaged one passenger a day for the last three weeks. I wonder who that guy is.

 

I hope you're right. But it really does seem to me that there is a segment of this country including its leadership that have decided it doesn't really matter how many people die from this.

 

A guy who found a genius way to get his own private 737, that's who.

 

Just play golf like Trump does.

 

If all the cruise ships leave port, that makes it much easier to sink them.

 

It seems like there is also a segment of this country that doesn't care -- or refuses to acknowledge -- that we cannot keep our economy and society shut down indefinitely. It's not the way human beings are wired.
The country's leadership has basically asked 330 million people to go on voluntary house arrest. Remarkably, most of them have complied without much fuss. That's largely because it seemed like a short-term situation. A few weeks, maybe a couple of months. There will be some pain, but we can survive. We'll get through it. Now there's a sense that the some of the leaders (particularly at the local and state levels) want to extend that to a few years, if not longer. We hit one checkpoint and they move the goal to the next one. Just a few more weeks, we promise. A few more weeks pass and, well, maybe give it a month. Before long it's been six months or a year and it seems we're no further along than we were on March 12 when all of this started.

That's not short-term anymore, that's a prison sentence. They're asking people to potentially give up years of their lives, as well as their livelihoods and everything they've ever worked for, with no guarantees that they'll get back to where they were two months ago. Then throw in a few poorly-conceived, agenda-driven power grabs (again, particularly at the state and local levels) for good measure.
A growing segment of the country is starting to realize this, which is why we're seeing more protests and anger. They're not saying they want people to die, they're taking a minute to stop and say, "Wait, is the risk of getting sick for a couple of weeks, no matter how unpleasant it might be, really worth the near certainty of losing everything we personally, politically, financially and nationally hold dear?"

 

I appreciate Nate Silver staying the course.

 

Every poll shows a large majority of people willing to continue under shutdown conditions for months at a minimum. Every one. They're not thinking "get sick for a few weeks," they're thinking "this thing could kill me."