I would have thought that China and Korea offer evidence that a lockdown suppresses the virus. But as usual, it seems that all the critiques omit the nature of exponential growth. If you let it rip, it will rip big time.
The problem is that absent any other measures, this is still likely to be true when the lockdown ends, and you have wrecked the economy in the meantime.
(Disclaimer: I'm in favour of lockdown. But in my view the arguments are not as straightforward as anti-right wing critics would have you believe).
Well, if the advice from scientists was an endless series of lockdowns, or waves of the virus, we would be im Stuck. However, I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel, e.g., vaccine, the virus burning out, anti-viral meds. I'm not sure what the right wingers are advocating; do nothing has a horrible mathematical consequence.
Some right-wingers seem to think that the virus cannot infect them, and that therefore those it does infect are dispensable
I would have thought that China and Korea offer evidence that a lockdown suppresses the virus. But as usual, it seems that all the critiques omit the nature of exponential growth. If you let it rip, it will rip big time.
The problem is that absent any other measures, this is still likely to be true when the lockdown ends, and you have wrecked the economy in the meantime.
(Disclaimer: I'm in favour of lockdown. But in my view the arguments are not as straightforward as anti-right wing critics would have you believe).
Well, if the advice from scientists was an endless series of lockdowns, or waves of the virus, we would be im Stuck. However, I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel, e.g., vaccine, the virus burning out, anti-viral meds. I'm not sure what the right wingers are advocating; do nothing has a horrible mathematical consequence.
Some right-wingers seem to think that the virus cannot infect them, and that therefore those it does infect are dispensable
Well, the old are dispensable, according to various luminaries. As you say, somehow miraculously, they will be safe, and presumably their family. However, the Spanish flu rather meanly came in a second wave, killing young people.
It seems to me you have to assume the worst, and counter it.
I'm still pinching myself at some of these views. The economy comes first, never mind hundreds of thousands of deaths, or maybe millions, some of them suffocating in a hospital corridor.
I'm still pinching myself at some of these views. The economy comes first, never mind hundreds of thousands of deaths, or maybe millions, some of them suffocating in a hospital corridor.
Thing is, these aren't new views. We knew they held them. A lot of us just kind of assumed they only held them about other people. You know. Them. A moment's glance should have told us that their attitude to refugees, to homeless people, to the unemployed and disabled, were indicators of what they would gladly do to all of us if they could get away with it and it would line their pockets.
Dispatch from the armed USA: On an island not far from me, a group of armed people cut down a tree and dragged it to block the driveway of a family to force the family to quarantine themselves. Reason for this vigilantism: the family had out-of-state license plates.
I notice Toby Young chipping in, (twitter), apparently saying that we're spending too much money to save several hundred thousand old people. But again, he seems to view the virus as finite. That is, after killing the old, it will shut up shop and go back to bats, or whatever. How does he know this?
I would have thought that China and Korea offer evidence that a lockdown suppresses the virus. But as usual, it seems that all the critiques omit the nature of exponential growth. If you let it rip, it will rip big time.
The problem is that absent any other measures, this is still likely to be true when the lockdown ends, and you have wrecked the economy in the meantime.
(Disclaimer: I'm in favour of lockdown. But in my view the arguments are not as straightforward as anti-right wing critics would have you believe).
The arguments against lockdowns aren't as straight forward as right wing critics would have you believe either - the economy didn't do particularly well after Spanish flu.
spending £350 billion to prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money.
He argues on financial terms and current evidence that schools should return on 14 or 21 April. He finishes with the information that he already has COVID-19 and the conclusion
It isn’t worth spending £185 billion to save them, nor is it worth a 15% drop in GDP which will result in a greater loss of life. My death would be acceptable collateral damage.
That final sentence being quoted extensively and approvingly on Twitter.
But he is ignoring exponential growth, and really saying that after bumping off half a million old people, the virus will stop, presumably because everybody else will be immune. I would like to see the statistical analysis leading to that conclusion.
And the good news is Washington State's curve is definitely beginning to flatten. Yesterday, the increase was only 7% compared to 14% just a week ago. King County (Seattle area) is doing very well. Most of the increase yesterday was on the east side of the state. Social Distancing is working.
spending £350 billion to prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money.
He argues on financial terms and current evidence that schools should return on 14 or 21 April. He finishes with the information that he already has COVID-19 and the conclusion
It isn’t worth spending £185 billion to save them, nor is it worth a 15% drop in GDP which will result in a greater loss of life. My death would be acceptable collateral damage.
That final sentence being quoted extensively and approvingly on Twitter.
Economic downturns do not need to result in a loss of life -- it's entirely down to how they are handled.
Dispatch from the armed USA: On an island not far from me, a group of armed people cut down a tree and dragged it to block the driveway of a family to force the family to quarantine themselves. Reason for this vigilantism: the family had out-of-state license plates.
Any guesses on whether they managed to cooperate in cutting down and moving a tree while maintaining a minimum of 2m separation?
On my daily walk on Sunday I saw a group of four people who were in the middle of cutting a tree and had managed to get it to tilt in the wrong direction - none of whom were 2M apart from each other. When I walked back they had been joined by a BT engineer who was trying to fix the telephone line through which the tree had gone.
Taking a tree down with a chain saw is not very hard. One person does it. Notch, then over cut the notch from the other side. Down it comes. More about thinking about where it will come down than the actual doing, and you need hearing protection. Buck it up (lop off the branches) with the chain saw and cut the trunk to length. People grab a hold every 6 feet and carry it off. The tree would have to be no more than maybe 15 inches diameter or the people would have to be too close. The tree could also be dragged from a vehicle hitch, which is probably what I'd do in this situation of blocking a drive.
spending £350 billion to prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money.
He argues on financial terms and current evidence that schools should return on 14 or 21 April. He finishes with the information that he already has COVID-19 and the conclusion
It isn’t worth spending £185 billion to save them, nor is it worth a 15% drop in GDP which will result in a greater loss of life. My death would be acceptable collateral damage.
That final sentence being quoted extensively and approvingly on Twitter.
Well, an obvious reply is, pick 5 people important to you, who you nominate to die; now, pick another 5 to have permanently scarred lungs.
Toby Young is the guy who wrote an article about how friendship is a myth, partly because only 4 out of 10 of his invitees turned up to his stag do. Later on, his wife published an entire article about his selfishness.
Link, buggered off to a hotel 4 days after the birth of their first child, because he was struggling to get enough sleep.
Taking a tree down with a chain saw is not very hard. One person does it. Notch, then over cut the notch from the other side. Down it comes. More about thinking about where it will come down than the actual doing, and you need hearing protection. Buck it up (lop off the branches) with the chain saw and cut the trunk to length. People grab a hold every 6 feet and carry it off. The tree would have to be no more than maybe 15 inches diameter or the people would have to be too close. The tree could also be dragged from a vehicle hitch, which is probably what I'd do in this situation of blocking a drive.
And, of course, everyone has a chain saw at hand. Just in case they need to do some ecological vandalism. Or, maybe fend of a zombie invasion. Even in a rural setting, how many times would anyone need to cut down a tree? Rare enough that it must surely be simpler to just hire in a professional to do it properly and safely if a tree needs to come down.
I don't know about despair, but I remain in the club of those who think life will be radically different after all this.
I still don't think I agree. There will be a significant recession, and a bunch of businesses will not recover from this shutdown, but I don't see a dramatic change in our way of life on the cards.
My personal expectation is that in a month we'll begin a gradual relaxation of the shutdown. At that point, things won't go back to how they were - people will be maintaining physical distance etc., but will go back to work. But because people are idiots, too many people will %$#@ it up, and immediately start having sweaty virus-swapping parties, and we'll have round 2 of the virus.
Even in a rural setting, how many times would anyone need to cut down a tree? Rare enough that it must surely be simpler to just hire in a professional to do it properly and safely if a tree needs to come down.
Chainsaws are a stock item in normal hardware stores (less than $100 for a poxy little electric thing that is only useful for small branches, a few hundred for a reasonable-sized gasoline-powered one.)
I live in suburbia, and know dozens of people with chainsaws if I needed to borrow one. I choose not to do that, because the trees in my garden are rather close to both my house and my neighbour's house, and I'm also quite attached to my legs. To get a tree-trimming company to come and trim a couple of trees costs enough to buy me a couple of brand new chainsaws.
If you have to cut down one tree, once, it's cheaper to buy a chainsaw than hire someone to cut the tree down (as long as you don't screw up).
The captain of a nuclear aircraft carrier with more than 100 sailors infected with the coronavirus pleaded Monday with U.S. Navy officials for resources to allow isolation of his entire crew and avoid possible deaths in a situation he described as quickly deteriorating.
The unusual plea from Capt. Brett Crozier, a Santa Rosa native, came in a letter obtained exclusively by The Chronicle and confirmed by a senior officer on board the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, which has been docked in Guam following a COVID-19 outbreak among the crew of more than 4,000 less than a week ago.
“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do,” Crozier wrote. “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”
In the four-page letter to senior military officials, Crozier said only a small contingent of infected sailors have been off-boarded. Most of the crew remain aboard the ship, where following official guidelines for 14-day quarantines and social distancing is impossible.
“Due to a warship’s inherent limitations of space, we are not doing this,” Crozier wrote. “The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating.”
Remember how fast COVID-19 spread through various cruise ships? Now imagine it on a warship that doesn't have luxuries like individual cabins or a lot of extra space.
He asked for “compliant quarantine rooms” on shore in Guam for his entire crew “as soon as possible.”
“Removing the majority of personnel from a deployed U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier and isolating them for two weeks may seem like an extraordinary measure. ... This is a necessary risk,” Crozier wrote. “Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.”
You can read the whole four-page letter if you like, but it'll be upsetting if you have much of an imagination.
I would have thought that China and Korea offer evidence that a lockdown suppresses the virus. But as usual, it seems that all the critiques omit the nature of exponential growth. If you let it rip, it will rip big time.
The problem is that absent any other measures, this is still likely to be true when the lockdown ends, and you have wrecked the economy in the meantime.
(Disclaimer: I'm in favour of lockdown. But in my view the arguments are not as straightforward as anti-right wing critics would have you believe).
The arguments against lockdowns aren't as straight forward as right wing critics would have you believe either - the economy didn't do particularly well after Spanish flu.
Jonathan Portes writes about this in his latest column.
The arguments against lockdowns aren't as straight forward as right wing critics would have you believe either - the economy didn't do particularly well after Spanish flu.
Yeah, but the stock market did just fine, which may explain the allure of anti-lockdown arguments among those wealthy enough to have stock portfolios, or those fortunate enough to be subsidized by them. Also a good illustration of how the stock market is not the economy.
Taking a tree down with a chain saw is not very hard. One person does it. Notch, then over cut the notch from the other side. Down it comes. More about thinking about where it will come down than the actual doing, and you need hearing protection. Buck it up (lop off the branches) with the chain saw and cut the trunk to length. People grab a hold every 6 feet and carry it off. The tree would have to be no more than maybe 15 inches diameter or the people would have to be too close. The tree could also be dragged from a vehicle hitch, which is probably what I'd do in this situation of blocking a drive.
And, of course, everyone has a chain saw at hand. Just in case they need to do some ecological vandalism. Or, maybe fend of a zombie invasion. Even in a rural setting, how many times would anyone need to cut down a tree? Rare enough that it must surely be simpler to just hire in a professional to do it properly and safely if a tree needs to come down.
Okay, this one I'll take on. We have a damn lot of trees in this country. Also a damn lot of damage left over after windstorms, hurricanes, floods, and etc. If you have a chainsaw and the proper training to use it, you can be very useful after a tornado, or when a fucking tree comes down on your neighbor's roof or car in the course of an ordinary thunderstorm and needs moving. (Don't wait for the professional, the whole freaking metro area has tree branches on their homes and cars when this happens, as well as in the street.) And this happens basically every year where I live.
Just get the freaking chainsaw, or else bake brownies for the nice neighbor who has one and will get your driveway cleared so you can make it to work.
Chainsaws are a stock item in normal hardware stores (less than $100 for a poxy little electric thing that is only useful for small branches, a few hundred for a reasonable-sized gasoline-powered one.)
I recently bought a poxy little electric thing. It's great - the last thing I need in my life is yet another reluctant petrol engine
(tomorrow - work out where the spark has gone on my 2-stroke hedge trimmer)
(You can buy chainsaw-resistant clothing and go on a safe-handling course. That's what I'd do before using a chainsaw because I'm not a fucking idiot and I like my limbs.)
I'm with @Lamb Chopped . I haven't got one, but would see it as completely ordinary if someone has a chainsaw. (Similar to how I haven't got a lawnmower, but that's also a completely ordinary thing for someone to have.).
It does stand to reason of course, that more households in Saskatoon or wherever Lamb Chopped lives are more likely to have chainsaws and such like gizmos than where Alan Cresswell lives.
I don't actually know anyone with a chainsaw. If there's a tree in danger of coming down, a quick call to the council and it's sorted (well, normally ... maybe not right now). They do seem doubly dangerous - a power tool with sharp edges, and if you get it wrong cutting a tree it could come down on you or a neighbours house. But, I also don't know anyone with a tree on their property - at least, nothing more than an apple tree or small ornamental conifer. Besides, if you want to take down a tree there's all that stuff about checking for preservation orders and confirming you have the right to cut it down. A professional will (hopefully) check it's legal to cut down a tree and do it safely - saving a few quid by getting a tool for that one job (and then, what do you do, leave it in the shed to rust for the next few decades?) might be expensive if the tree falls on neighbour's property and the council fines you for illegally felling it.
If you live in the country you're more likely to have trees on your property and, unless you live in a conservation area and they're visible to the public, you can cut them down if necessary. And, of course, you're more likely either to have your own chainsaw or know someone who can lend you one.
(I appreciate this has nothing to do with coronavirus, but we have two huge ash trees in our relatively small garden. Both are higher than our two storey house. Immediate neighbours have 3/4 trees each. We're pretty urban.)
It does depend on where you are, of course. Not many trees if there are rows and rows of terraced housing (row houses to those across the Atlantic) and back-to-backs. There can be quite large trees in areas with larger Victorian and Edwardian houses and out in leafy suburbia of course. I have a few trees in my garden but not big enough to warrant chainsaws but the bloke behind me has a whopper and recently had to get some fellas in to trim it as it was blotting out my next door neighbours light. I trim the hedge at the front with shears but sometimes ask my neighbour to do it with his lethal oil driven thing. I can't get it to work but he's happy to have a go.
I'm in sweet suburbia and almost rural but not quite now but I grew up on a council estate with spindly trees but with plenty of proper ones in the fields and woods nearby.
I'm deeply rural. Lots of trees, back garden is fenced/walled, front is gravel with laid hedge. We're losing trees to ash dieback and they have to be taken down if they're near a footpath in case they fall on someone.
Chain saw ownership does depend on where you live in the UK, my parents have a chain saw where they live now. They didn't when I was growing up when that garden just had a couple of apple trees and pruning was done by hand. One of the jobs done at the present house was taking down a 20ft high leylandii hedge, along one side of the garden. The previous owner grew the leylandii with a beech hedge as beech is slow growing, but grew too old to remove the leylandii. Plus dealing with gale felled trees and branches.
spending £350 billion to prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money.
He argues on financial terms and current evidence that schools should return on 14 or 21 April. He finishes with the information that he already has COVID-19 and the conclusion
It isn’t worth spending £185 billion to save them, nor is it worth a 15% drop in GDP which will result in a greater loss of life. My death would be acceptable collateral damage.
That final sentence being quoted extensively and approvingly on Twitter.
A back of the envelope calculation suggests about 50,000 deaths in the 30-49 age group - assuming an 80% infection rate. Not hundreds of thousands, but not insignificant in itself
List of countries with at least 5,000 known COVID-19 cases.
United States - 187,321 (177,010 / 6,461 / 3,850)
Italy - 105,792 (77,635 / 15,729 / 12,428)
Spain - 95,923 (68,200 / 19,259 / 8,464)
China - 81,518 (2,161 / 76,052 / 3,305) 4.2%
Germany - 71,808 (54,933 / 16,100 / 775)
France - 52,128 (39,161 / 9,444 / 3,523)
Iran - 44,605 (27,051 / 14,656 / 2,898)
United Kingdom - 25,150 (23,226 / 135 / 1,789)
Switzerland - 16,605 (14,349 / 1,823 / 433)
Turkey - 13,531 (13,074 / 243 / 214)
Belgium - 12,775 (10,374 / 1,696 / 705)
Netherlands - 12,595 (11,306 / 250 / 1,039)
Austria - 10,180 (8,957 / 1,095 / 128)
South Korea - 9,786 (4,216 / 5,408 / 162)
Canada - 8,505 (7,242 / 1,162 / 101)
Portugal - 7,443 (7,240 / 43 / 160)
Brazil - 5,717 (5,389 / 127 / 201)
Israel - 5,358 (5,114 / 224 / 20)
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries, nine of them (New York, New Jersey, California, Michigan, Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington, and Louisiana) would be on that list. New York would be ranked between China and Germany.
Brazil and Israel have joined the list since the last compilation.
Taking a tree down with a chain saw is not very hard. One person does it. Notch, then over cut the notch from the other side. Down it comes. More about thinking about where it will come down than the actual doing, and you need hearing protection. Buck it up (lop off the branches) with the chain saw and cut the trunk to length. People grab a hold every 6 feet and carry it off. The tree would have to be no more than maybe 15 inches diameter or the people would have to be too close. The tree could also be dragged from a vehicle hitch, which is probably what I'd do in this situation of blocking a drive.
And, of course, everyone has a chain saw at hand. Just in case they need to do some ecological vandalism. Or, maybe fend of a zombie invasion. Even in a rural setting, how many times would anyone need to cut down a tree? Rare enough that it must surely be simpler to just hire in a professional to do it properly and safely if a tree needs to come down.
I guess it depends where you are and what kind of trees. After a neighbour constructed next door at our cabin and cut the roots of some 60 ft spruces, I did hire a guy to take the ones down too close to the cabin for me to chance it. Just over $1000 per tree. Ouch! If we'd hired for all that needed to come down after a plow wind, it'd been more than $30k. A gas powered 24 inch chain saw is maybe $400 to 600.
I don't actually know anyone with a chainsaw. If there's a tree in danger of coming down, a quick call to the council and it's sorted (well, normally ... maybe not right now). They do seem doubly dangerous - a power tool with sharp edges, and if you get it wrong cutting a tree it could come down on you or a neighbours house. But, I also don't know anyone with a tree on their property - at least, nothing more than an apple tree or small ornamental conifer. Besides, if you want to take down a tree there's all that stuff about checking for preservation orders and confirming you have the right to cut it down. A professional will (hopefully) check it's legal to cut down a tree and do it safely - saving a few quid by getting a tool for that one job (and then, what do you do, leave it in the shed to rust for the next few decades?) might be expensive if the tree falls on neighbour's property and the council fines you for illegally felling it.
Totally different situation. First, we don't have councils we can call to get trees taken down, or much of anything else, really. We have city hall, which would laugh in our faces if we actually expected them to DO much of anything besides issue permits and give sage advice. If you can't cut down your own tree, you go hire a tree-cutter. There are plenty of them. (They are also freaking expensive. They quoted our neighbor 600 dollars to take down a dead tree between our houses.)
Basically everybody's got trees if they've got a yard bigger than a thimble--which is most of suburbia, and all, I should think, of rural counties. Some people have more and bigger trees than others. But sticking a tree front and center in your front yard, between house and street, was and remains a popular way of "doing" your yard. And of course eventually those things need dealing with--if for no other reason than they drop a limb during a strong wind.
As for preservation orders, Okay, you aren't supposed to take out a city tree (these are the ones lining the streets and usually planted in the hellstrips between sidewalk and road) without letting somebody know, and they'll usually make you replace it, often with the identical kind of tree. But other than that, it's the rare person who has a historic tree under their care, let alone an endangered species--and I can't think of any other reason why there would be such a thing as a preservation order. It's not like we're short on trees.
There are Youtube videos to teach you how to take down a (small) tree safely, if you don't know someone in real life who can teach you. Only an idiot tries to take down a huge tree single-handedly or near a structure and without expert advice. But there are a freaking ton of little trees around here, as well as the big monsters. And very often there's enough space between houses that quite often the tree couldn't come down on anything if it wanted to (well, a picnic table or something, but you can move that).
So basically a chainsaw is a garden tool, just on steroids. You can get rinky-dink ones if the bigger ones freak you out (they do me). They are also heavy buggers and not the sort of thing I can easily imagine a crowd of people chasing around the streets with. I suspect the dweebs who did this had a tree conveniently positioned (like the one that used to be at the bottom of my driveway) and possibly owned it, as well--because a next-door neighbor would be ideally situated to notice if someone were breaking quarantine.
So yeah, a bit highhanded and rude, but NOT ERMAGARD THEiR SHOOTING UP THE TOWN.
I own one of those rinky-dink pruning chainsaws, electric. I am pretty scared of it. I got it because I have never been able to get a petrol one started, and they are very very scary. About 10 years ago, a bloke in Romsey was up a ladder with his chainsaw, and nobody was with him. He had an accident and bled out. Please note that I heard this story about 1,000,000,000th hand.
Also, another bloke in Romsey got leprosy, or leukemia, or legionnaires disease from potting mix, maybe all three. Gardening is very very dangerous.
Taking a tree down with a chain saw is not very hard. One person does it. Notch, then over cut the notch from the other side. Down it comes. More about thinking about where it will come down than the actual doing, and you need hearing protection. Buck it up (lop off the branches) with the chain saw and cut the trunk to length. People grab a hold every 6 feet and carry it off. The tree would have to be no more than maybe 15 inches diameter or the people would have to be too close. The tree could also be dragged from a vehicle hitch, which is probably what I'd do in this situation of blocking a drive.
And, of course, everyone has a chain saw at hand. Just in case they need to do some ecological vandalism. Or, maybe fend of a zombie invasion. Even in a rural setting, how many times would anyone need to cut down a tree? Rare enough that it must surely be simpler to just hire in a professional to do it properly and safely if a tree needs to come down.
I guess it depends where you are and what kind of trees. After a neighbour constructed next door at our cabin and cut the roots of some 60 ft spruces, I did hire a guy to take the ones down too close to the cabin for me to chance it. Just over $1000 per tree. Ouch! If we'd hired for all that needed to come down after a plow wind, it'd been more than $30k. A gas powered 24 inch chain saw is maybe $400 to 600.
yeah, $10k to take down a stand of pine trees that the drought and drought-breaking rain had destabilized so that they were slowly leaning towards the house, waiting for a windy day. That was about a decade ago. Now we have a fence-line of native bushes that I have to trim every now and then with various implements.
So now, the White House is saying possibly 100,000 dead.
That's the absolute lowest number. Best case scenario is actually between 100,000 and 240,000 dead - Washington Post. That's with mitigation, which is not happening throughout the whole country.
I would have thought that China and Korea offer evidence that a lockdown suppresses the virus. But as usual, it seems that all the critiques omit the nature of exponential growth. If you let it rip, it will rip big time.
The problem is that absent any other measures, this is still likely to be true when the lockdown ends, and you have wrecked the economy in the meantime.
(Disclaimer: I'm in favour of lockdown. But in my view the arguments are not as straightforward as anti-right wing critics would have you believe).
Well, if the advice from scientists was an endless series of lockdowns, or waves of the virus, we would be im Stuck. However, I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel, e.g., vaccine, the virus burning out, anti-viral meds. I'm not sure what the right wingers are advocating; do nothing has a horrible mathematical consequence.
What are the right wingers advocating? The only thing that sort of makes sense to me is that they think that as they can afford to stay home, they're safe behind the walls of their mansions so long as the workers in their shops, offices and factories keep making money for them. Then when someone develops a vaccine or the virus burns itself out they can emerge from their mansions to resume their lives of privilege with no harm done except a reduction in the pool of potential staff they can exploit to make more money. The lives of the poor are mere commodities that are expendable in their quest for greater personal wealth.
You seem to be saying that 'right winger' is equivalent to 'rich person'. Who voted for Brexit?
Comments
Some right-wingers seem to think that the virus cannot infect them, and that therefore those it does infect are dispensable
Well, the old are dispensable, according to various luminaries. As you say, somehow miraculously, they will be safe, and presumably their family. However, the Spanish flu rather meanly came in a second wave, killing young people.
It seems to me you have to assume the worst, and counter it.
Thing is, these aren't new views. We knew they held them. A lot of us just kind of assumed they only held them about other people. You know. Them. A moment's glance should have told us that their attitude to refugees, to homeless people, to the unemployed and disabled, were indicators of what they would gladly do to all of us if they could get away with it and it would line their pockets.
What is sown, however involuntarily, is indeed being reaped.
One can only hope that, in the not-too-distant future, they are summarily slaughtered (politically).
Showing his true colours as a thoroughbred git.
The arguments against lockdowns aren't as straight forward as right wing critics would have you believe either - the economy didn't do particularly well after Spanish flu.
Economic downturns do not need to result in a loss of life -- it's entirely down to how they are handled.
Toldja there'd be dweebs.
On my daily walk on Sunday I saw a group of four people who were in the middle of cutting a tree and had managed to get it to tilt in the wrong direction - none of whom were 2M apart from each other. When I walked back they had been joined by a BT engineer who was trying to fix the telephone line through which the tree had gone.
Well, an obvious reply is, pick 5 people important to you, who you nominate to die; now, pick another 5 to have permanently scarred lungs.
Link, buggered off to a hotel 4 days after the birth of their first child, because he was struggling to get enough sleep.
I still don't think I agree. There will be a significant recession, and a bunch of businesses will not recover from this shutdown, but I don't see a dramatic change in our way of life on the cards.
My personal expectation is that in a month we'll begin a gradual relaxation of the shutdown. At that point, things won't go back to how they were - people will be maintaining physical distance etc., but will go back to work. But because people are idiots, too many people will %$#@ it up, and immediately start having sweaty virus-swapping parties, and we'll have round 2 of the virus.
Chainsaws are a stock item in normal hardware stores (less than $100 for a poxy little electric thing that is only useful for small branches, a few hundred for a reasonable-sized gasoline-powered one.)
I live in suburbia, and know dozens of people with chainsaws if I needed to borrow one. I choose not to do that, because the trees in my garden are rather close to both my house and my neighbour's house, and I'm also quite attached to my legs. To get a tree-trimming company to come and trim a couple of trees costs enough to buy me a couple of brand new chainsaws.
If you have to cut down one tree, once, it's cheaper to buy a chainsaw than hire someone to cut the tree down (as long as you don't screw up).
Remember how fast COVID-19 spread through various cruise ships? Now imagine it on a warship that doesn't have luxuries like individual cabins or a lot of extra space.
You can read the whole four-page letter if you like, but it'll be upsetting if you have much of an imagination.
The U.S. Navy's response?
'Stay on your plague ship' seems like a pretty harsh decision for peacetime.
A childhood favourite of mine.
Jonathan Portes writes about this in his latest column.
Yeah, but the stock market did just fine, which may explain the allure of anti-lockdown arguments among those wealthy enough to have stock portfolios, or those fortunate enough to be subsidized by them. Also a good illustration of how the stock market is not the economy.
Okay, this one I'll take on. We have a damn lot of trees in this country. Also a damn lot of damage left over after windstorms, hurricanes, floods, and etc. If you have a chainsaw and the proper training to use it, you can be very useful after a tornado, or when a fucking tree comes down on your neighbor's roof or car in the course of an ordinary thunderstorm and needs moving. (Don't wait for the professional, the whole freaking metro area has tree branches on their homes and cars when this happens, as well as in the street.) And this happens basically every year where I live.
Just get the freaking chainsaw, or else bake brownies for the nice neighbor who has one and will get your driveway cleared so you can make it to work.
I recently bought a poxy little electric thing. It's great - the last thing I need in my life is yet another reluctant petrol engine
(tomorrow - work out where the spark has gone on my 2-stroke hedge trimmer)
I wouldn't have one because I'm not very ept.
I'm in sweet suburbia and almost rural but not quite now but I grew up on a council estate with spindly trees but with plenty of proper ones in the fields and woods nearby.
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries, nine of them (New York, New Jersey, California, Michigan, Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington, and Louisiana) would be on that list. New York would be ranked between China and Germany.
Brazil and Israel have joined the list since the last compilation.
I guess it depends where you are and what kind of trees. After a neighbour constructed next door at our cabin and cut the roots of some 60 ft spruces, I did hire a guy to take the ones down too close to the cabin for me to chance it. Just over $1000 per tree. Ouch! If we'd hired for all that needed to come down after a plow wind, it'd been more than $30k. A gas powered 24 inch chain saw is maybe $400 to 600.
Totally different situation. First, we don't have councils we can call to get trees taken down, or much of anything else, really. We have city hall, which would laugh in our faces if we actually expected them to DO much of anything besides issue permits and give sage advice. If you can't cut down your own tree, you go hire a tree-cutter. There are plenty of them. (They are also freaking expensive. They quoted our neighbor 600 dollars to take down a dead tree between our houses.)
Basically everybody's got trees if they've got a yard bigger than a thimble--which is most of suburbia, and all, I should think, of rural counties. Some people have more and bigger trees than others. But sticking a tree front and center in your front yard, between house and street, was and remains a popular way of "doing" your yard. And of course eventually those things need dealing with--if for no other reason than they drop a limb during a strong wind.
As for preservation orders,
There are Youtube videos to teach you how to take down a (small) tree safely, if you don't know someone in real life who can teach you. Only an idiot tries to take down a huge tree single-handedly or near a structure and without expert advice. But there are a freaking ton of little trees around here, as well as the big monsters. And very often there's enough space between houses that quite often the tree couldn't come down on anything if it wanted to (well, a picnic table or something, but you can move that).
So basically a chainsaw is a garden tool, just on steroids. You can get rinky-dink ones if the bigger ones freak you out (they do me). They are also heavy buggers and not the sort of thing I can easily imagine a crowd of people chasing around the streets with. I suspect the dweebs who did this had a tree conveniently positioned (like the one that used to be at the bottom of my driveway) and possibly owned it, as well--because a next-door neighbor would be ideally situated to notice if someone were breaking quarantine.
So yeah, a bit highhanded and rude, but NOT ERMAGARD THEiR SHOOTING UP THE TOWN.
Also, another bloke in Romsey got leprosy, or leukemia, or legionnaires disease from potting mix, maybe all three. Gardening is very very dangerous.
yeah, $10k to take down a stand of pine trees that the drought and drought-breaking rain had destabilized so that they were slowly leaning towards the house, waiting for a windy day. That was about a decade ago. Now we have a fence-line of native bushes that I have to trim every now and then with various implements.
That's the absolute lowest number. Best case scenario is actually between 100,000 and 240,000 dead - Washington Post. That's with mitigation, which is not happening throughout the whole country.
You seem to be saying that 'right winger' is equivalent to 'rich person'. Who voted for Brexit?