Post by md717 on Apr 10, 2020 0:29:45 GMT -5
Surprised by a couple of things.
I see there is virus discussion which inevitably intersects with politics on the main board. I guess times are indeed unprecedented.
Surprised that there hasn't been much virus discussion on this sub-board or the main board in a few days.
Surprised that Mikey went to promoting martial law.
Surprised that there are topics on anything else.
There is really one and only one thing that is important at this moment in time - the virus and our response to it. Until we get through this, not much else matters.
There are 17 million Americans who have filed for unemployment in the last three weeks. Not a single one of our state unemployment offices is staffed for this eventuality. Benefits will not be flowing any time soon for most filers.
I've been tracking PA and Lancaster County cases, paying particular attention to new cases per day. If you look at new cases in PA from say, 3/30 through 4/4 - that exponential curve looks really, REALLY scary. If you actually plot that curve out and project it forward, we would have been at something like 3,000 new cases in PA today. Instead we were at 2,000. Starting on 4/5, the curve flattened.
In Lancaster County, the curve has definitely flattened and may be declining. I'm very eager to see tomorrow's numbers.
There are currently 596 positive cases in Lancaster County and 17 deaths. In a county of nearly 500,000 people. And yet our county is shut down just like the other 66 counties in PA. Pretending that the same level of shutdown is required in a county like mine as in, say, Philadelphia or Delaware counties is folly. People I know are losing what they've worked their entire lives to build - by fiat from our Governor who has usurped powers that he does not possess. If this goes on much longer, I may be next.
The Governor, in his infinite wisdom, went public with his "no evictions" proclamation. Well, when he shut down the Magisterial District Justice courts, he made evictions a practical impossibility. No need to broadcast that writ large. So I have 11 tenants, without whose rent I have no hope of paying 11 mortgages. So far in April it looks like I may get 100% of the rent owed. How's May going to look? June? It's fair to say I'm pretty stressed as more and more people lose their jobs.
The bottom line is that we have to find a safe way to get most Americans back to work as soon as possible.
When I was a kid (starting at age 12, finishing at age 15 or so) my father and I built a cabin in the mountains - in Perry County. My parents were lower middle class, and couldn't afford much for a "vacation home." The lot that they bought was ridiculously steep (and thus pretty cheap) along Laurel Run. When the cabin was finished you would walk in the front door at ground level and walk out the back door onto a deck 18' off the ground. I think the cabin was 24' deep. That's quite a grade. Anyway . . . for water we pumped it up the hill from the stream at the bottom of the valley. I'm guessing it was something like a 40' change in grade, from the stream to the holding tank in the basement.
The pump couldn't pump air - it had to pump water. Thus it had to be primed - the tube from the pump to the stream had to be full of water in order for the pump to begin pumping and create the vacuum required to pull in more water from the stream.
We would prime the pump - but the pump was an old (even in the 70's) piece of crap and wasn't terribly reliable or consistent. Once it kicked in, it worked great. But when it quit, the "prime" would slowly drain down the tube and back into the stream. My brother and I quickly learned that the longer the pump was out of commission, the longer it would take us to refresh the prime (by hauling water in buckets up the hill from the stream) and get it back in production. We eventually learned to have multiple buckets of water in the basement to refresh the prime as quickly as possible in an interruption to save our backs from hauling even more buckets from the stream. The longer the pump was down, the more water it would take to get it going again.
Our economy is losing its prime. With every passing day, it is going to take more effort (water) to restore the prime and get it going again. To torture the analogy a little further - eventually the pump that is trying to pump air will burn out entirely.
Hope you're all well (even Pila!) and surviving this mess as best as you can.
I see there is virus discussion which inevitably intersects with politics on the main board. I guess times are indeed unprecedented.
Surprised that there hasn't been much virus discussion on this sub-board or the main board in a few days.
Surprised that Mikey went to promoting martial law.
Surprised that there are topics on anything else.
There is really one and only one thing that is important at this moment in time - the virus and our response to it. Until we get through this, not much else matters.
There are 17 million Americans who have filed for unemployment in the last three weeks. Not a single one of our state unemployment offices is staffed for this eventuality. Benefits will not be flowing any time soon for most filers.
I've been tracking PA and Lancaster County cases, paying particular attention to new cases per day. If you look at new cases in PA from say, 3/30 through 4/4 - that exponential curve looks really, REALLY scary. If you actually plot that curve out and project it forward, we would have been at something like 3,000 new cases in PA today. Instead we were at 2,000. Starting on 4/5, the curve flattened.
In Lancaster County, the curve has definitely flattened and may be declining. I'm very eager to see tomorrow's numbers.
There are currently 596 positive cases in Lancaster County and 17 deaths. In a county of nearly 500,000 people. And yet our county is shut down just like the other 66 counties in PA. Pretending that the same level of shutdown is required in a county like mine as in, say, Philadelphia or Delaware counties is folly. People I know are losing what they've worked their entire lives to build - by fiat from our Governor who has usurped powers that he does not possess. If this goes on much longer, I may be next.
The Governor, in his infinite wisdom, went public with his "no evictions" proclamation. Well, when he shut down the Magisterial District Justice courts, he made evictions a practical impossibility. No need to broadcast that writ large. So I have 11 tenants, without whose rent I have no hope of paying 11 mortgages. So far in April it looks like I may get 100% of the rent owed. How's May going to look? June? It's fair to say I'm pretty stressed as more and more people lose their jobs.
The bottom line is that we have to find a safe way to get most Americans back to work as soon as possible.
When I was a kid (starting at age 12, finishing at age 15 or so) my father and I built a cabin in the mountains - in Perry County. My parents were lower middle class, and couldn't afford much for a "vacation home." The lot that they bought was ridiculously steep (and thus pretty cheap) along Laurel Run. When the cabin was finished you would walk in the front door at ground level and walk out the back door onto a deck 18' off the ground. I think the cabin was 24' deep. That's quite a grade. Anyway . . . for water we pumped it up the hill from the stream at the bottom of the valley. I'm guessing it was something like a 40' change in grade, from the stream to the holding tank in the basement.
The pump couldn't pump air - it had to pump water. Thus it had to be primed - the tube from the pump to the stream had to be full of water in order for the pump to begin pumping and create the vacuum required to pull in more water from the stream.
We would prime the pump - but the pump was an old (even in the 70's) piece of crap and wasn't terribly reliable or consistent. Once it kicked in, it worked great. But when it quit, the "prime" would slowly drain down the tube and back into the stream. My brother and I quickly learned that the longer the pump was out of commission, the longer it would take us to refresh the prime (by hauling water in buckets up the hill from the stream) and get it back in production. We eventually learned to have multiple buckets of water in the basement to refresh the prime as quickly as possible in an interruption to save our backs from hauling even more buckets from the stream. The longer the pump was down, the more water it would take to get it going again.
Our economy is losing its prime. With every passing day, it is going to take more effort (water) to restore the prime and get it going again. To torture the analogy a little further - eventually the pump that is trying to pump air will burn out entirely.
Hope you're all well (even Pila!) and surviving this mess as best as you can.
