Leaderboard

These are certainly different times but how did GM, a jukebox company, a couple of typewriter companies, a postal meter company, and several other random companies produce over 6 million M1 Carbines in three years? The need is now apparently, but manufacturers can adapt if need be and are capable of doing so...assuming American workers are capable of it. Like I said, these are different times than the 1940’s.

That same friend taught me that, "the best navigators are never completely sure about where they are - but they're always aware of the uncertainty." Meaning - models are just that - models. We know they're wrong - but they might still be useful. Problems arise when people point to the models as truth - without knowledge about the uncertainty underlying the assumptions. Anyway. Y'all hunker down. Wash your hands. Stay home if your job will let you. Take the time to enjoy your people. And, don't forget to take a look around. You're going to see some of what makes America truly great as people and industries come together to innovate.

I would guess its because some things like N95 masks have an expiration date. No one knew we would need a bazillion of them. Then you have the media showing their ignorance by thinking it was appalling that people were told to use the expired masks instead of reusing them, or not using them at all. I see a website that says “Premium or high-acuity ventilators — most commonly found in hospital ICUs — typically have a PSOL gas delivery design and can currently cost between $25,000 and $50,000. Factors that can contribute to this price range include user configurability options and built-in safety features.” The Whitehouse is kicking around the idea of General Motors and Ventec Life Systems building 80,000 of them for $1billion. (Or $12,500 each) We are already in an overpriced healthcare system. Now we will have to make hospitals have the capability to take hundreds or thousands of patients into their ICU’s? That’s not going to happen. We were no more prepared for this than we will be for a nuclear/dirty terrorist attack, or the huge Earthquakes the geologists have told us will happen when the San Andreas or New Madrid Faults start shifting. Its impossible to be prepared, when it comes with a price tag that can't be met.

Proof that someone will make a meme out of anything to say what they want.

I'm always too busy in the Spring to hunt Turkey or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. There's been talk of an albino turkey in my neck of the woods and on the way into work this morning (working from home is not an option for me during this time) I got a glimpse of it. I will do my best to get a photo and post.

well those urban trees probably don't account for enough carbon to really contribute. What we are seeing though is a reforestation of acres across most landscapes. Agriculture becoming much more efficient has relinquished many acres back to forests. Another notable factor is that with increased C02 levels we see increased growth rates of not just trees but most plants. So if the globe is warming, we'll be better equipped to feed folks. Anyways back to pandemic

The job I just left was with a transportation provider and my customer was Kimberly Clark(Kleenex, Huggies, Cottonelle, etc) They were having pretty good luck in most places with truckload capacity. The real kink in their chain was on the loading side. Their DC's and production sites can't keep up with demand. They simply couldn't fulfill the orders being placed on them. They were doing mandatory OT. Demand for some products such as TP were 20x normal levels. In the 3 years I worked there this was the most chaos I've ever seen. 2nd worst time was the summer we had all those hurricanes. 2017? Another huge customer of ours was Kohl's but since they closed nationwide we actually have a lot of drivers without work right now. That's not something I expected. The safest driving jobs right now are the ones hauling food. Prior to all this, the Sysco DC in Nashville was destroyed by the Tornado and my old company was being asked to fill demand from their Knoxville DC. I'm curious if they are still doing that or not. My new job is with a beverage manufacturer. They are actually paying their hourly associates 20% more for coming into work right now and they are checking temperatures at the door. They are also making contingency plans to have all the office staff like me work out on the production floor if it comes down to it. So I could be running machines in a worst case scenario.

We are as a general rule. The truck stops have all closed their lounges and the restaurants are all takeout only now. They’ve prohibited the used of the refillable mugs. The roller grills and self serve foods have either been shut down completely or roped off and manned by an employee using the enhanced food service rules in place now. Everywhere I go (not just the truck stops, shippers and receivers as well) I see more wet surfaces from being freshly wiped down with disinfectant than I ever have before. The whole industry is taking this very seriously.

I resemble that remark!

E4 these are my thoughts as well. Anytime someone tells me "the models predict" I immediately think "what were the parameters used to run the model". Just like climate change models using historic C02 levels that aren't facts but broad guesses to then run a prediction is like throwing darts at a wall. In the forest industry we've used growth models for years and with some species and climates it works well, but with others its so wildly wrong that nobody uses them anymore.

This feels very topical.

How else are folks supposed to vote? This pandemic might just be milked long enough that people actually think it’s a good idea. Goodnight America.

This is something I don't understand. How is GM gonna make ventilators? I can't imagine the assembly line changes and training and supply line logistics that have to be worked out. I would think it would take a month of work before they made one ventilator.

Yes, but I can’t afford it right now.

Well, damn. That’s a good looking knife!

Indeed. And 112 million masks wouldn't have lasted long either, on the order of a week or so with best practices that preclude reuse. That's it -- that's all we had for contingencies. Had this been a significantly worse pandemic, the tolls would be staggering. Speaking of expiration dates, our stockpile of pharmaceuticals and domestic capacity to produce them would probably be another surprise to most. Even with the DOD SLEP testing and evaluating their efficacy after expiration dates, a lot of people aren't going to be getting their medicine in very short order. Even covering 10% of the population over existing capability seems well out of reach -- that would be on the order of 30 million patients once ICUs are full. Well outside the bounds of what we could expect to achieve without giving it armed services like budgets (which I'm not opposed to). We are, in the end, consumers, living figuratively paycheck to paycheck.

I just rolled through one of our terminals and they had an associate doing health checks on all inbound drivers asking questions and checking temps. All of our dispatch/road assist/computer based in house associates are telecommuting. We’ve got as few associates in the building as we can.

Just about to say the further out of town you get the better chance of getting essentials are. However limits apply to everything right now. Paper products, meats, sanitizers and cleaning products, and breads. Otherwise shelves are looking less bare than in weeks past and crowds are low and distancing intact

If you have an Aldi near you, they have TP each time I visit. Go in the morning for the best luck.

I will admit I was wrong. This is starting to appear to be a much larger problem than I gave it credit for. I should know better than to second guess David and MacGyver.

If you're a truck driver, you should be taking extreme measures to avoid getting this virus and urging other drivers and those who interact with drivers to do so as well. After medical professionals and first responders, no other profession is more important. If drivers start getting infected, interstate commerce stops. All that TP that's getting restocked overnight due to truckers... and the food... that supply chain stops. Driving a big rig isn't like retail or food service where you can pull any Joe or Jane off the street to do the job with some OJT. If any part of the supply chain breaks down, our situation would get a lot worse. Truckers are probably the most vulnerable group.

For the most part, models are computer-generated predictions and thus follows the "Junk in; junk out" rule of computing. This is the source of my skepticism of the whole human-caused climate change model - particularly since it was discovered that the modelers had an agenda. In a manner it distresses me that scientists have come to rely on computer models so much. While I get that the bigger things absolutely require massive computer analysis it also lends itself to faulty modeling, and that's where common sense must prevail.

If you want to see a visual breakdown of where our money went, here it is.

On a positive note, I've seen more people and kids outside the past few days than I have seen in the last 5 years combined. My neighbors are outside checking on one another but mostly keeping a safe distance. Kids are out playing instead of being glued to the TV's. I've seen parents slowly drive around with their kids in the bed of their truck. They are getting creative on entertainment.

Some general comments... Costco, Walmart, and other businesses are now opening one hour early one day a week to seniors only. This is great for seniors because shelves will be restocked overnight and the crowds will be less. Check their websites or the stores for hours. I think Costco is Thursday at 9AM... not sure. Us seniors can shop for neighbors or other family members. What group is now essential to protect? Truckers. We're protecting medical professionals, but truckers move the goods. If this spreads among truckers, we have a very serious problem. People are ignoring the safer at home order. It started well on Monday, but Thursday I went to Beaman Park for my normal run, expecting the remote park to be empty as usual, but the crowd was the biggest I have ever seen. The parking lot was filled with parents who would rather risk a deadly disease than spend one more day inside with their 6-year-olds. Little human petri dishes were running around everywhere. I left without getting out of the car. The testing system is overwhelmed. My training partner tested Friday Mar 20 in the morning and STILL doesn't have test results back. Since she flew one of the last flights back from Europe and other crew members have tested positive, she very likely has the disease. She has subsequently recovered with only strong flu symptoms. The best approach now is to pretend you have the disease and dress accordingly if you must go out. I'm sure most of us have masks and gloves and some type of portable disinfectant. Since I do rental repairs, I had all this stuff in my van already. EDITED TO ADD Does anyone know if there has been a recent increase in robbery/burglary? I'm curious to see if we need to urge our normally clueless friends to get their noses out of their phones and be more vigilant.

As an old friend taught me a long time ago, “all models are wrong, but some models are useful.” We've still got a lot of unknowns here - and they’ll likely not be known until we’ll after this current crisis is done.

I'm kinda partial to Darwin. If you're too dumb to hunker down.......

Not this a$$hole. I'm a spiteful son of a biatch with a long memory.

Conspiracy Theories, Coronavirus, TGO and YOU For as long as I can remember, TGO has never really provided "safe waters" for people who want to preach conspiracy theories and rile-up the masses. There are plenty of places for that sort of thing on the Internet and yes sometimes the conspiracy enthusiasts (or nuts, if you so prefer) are proven right in the end. But since there are so many other places for it and since we feel that the ravings of fringe believers tends to bring down the property value, we prefer that our members engage in discussions based in reality. Lately the moderators have begun removing posts fanning the flames of conspiracy around the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic. Generally speaking, I am supportive of their actions. Here's why: Priorities First and foremost, we have a present problem to deal with so let's start by putting our focus there. We have members who are and have been personally affected by COVID-19 and chances are this is just the beginning. If we are going to invest our mental and emotional energies into something, let's invest them in encouraging, supporting and helping our own community. Respect Again, we know that we already have members of TGO affected by this pandemic. So far they (and we) have been fortunate and it's turned out well. That could change. We don't want that to happen, but the statistical projections indicate that by the time the dust settles none of us will have many degrees of separation from someone that died as a result of the virus. I just think maybe it's a little disrespectful to the people currently fighting this virus and eventually to those who lose the battle for us to sit around and imagineer boogeymen behind a virus that science currently says evolved naturally. Stay In Your Lane, Bro Following right in behind the matter of respect is the simple fact that unless you're an educated, degreed, certified ass-kicking virologist, geneticist, research scientist, or have data from a respected source that is... you should probably stay in your lane. Remember the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020? That happened because social media said there was a shortage of toilet paper. So the people believed it, reacted like scared sheep, and ran right over the edge of the cliff with arms full of Charmin. There's no reason for us to allow the next big social media fear-fest to start with or take root on TGO. We can control what happens here, so our intent is to manage it so that there's at least one place you can visit online that doesn't feel like the lunatics are running the asylum. You're welcome for that. Even if you don't appreciate it right now. And So What If That Conspiracy Theory Is Accurate? The President, love him or hate him, has already said that there are going to be consequences on the other side of this current situation for the way that China mishandled this. Even if they didn't bio-engineer it, their government hid the outbreak from the world until it was busting out of their borders. So far the Prez has done everything he's said he would do... right or wrong... so we can be pretty confident that the US isn't going to just let this slide. So, even if the latest conspiracy theory is accurate... you and I can't do a thing about it. Establishing and maintaining a military to preserve our sovereignty, the strength of our borders, and the security of our interests is the one thing that the government should be doing. It's maybe the only reason the government should exist if you ask some. But they are equipped to do something about it. Not us. Not even Chuck Norris. Let's let the government handle the boogeyman. And if they need our input on that, there will be an appropriate time to tell our elected representatives what we'd like to see done. And I'm sure that our actual scientists will be following up on all credible leads that help them expedite a treatment or vaccine for COVID-19. So if that takes them back to a secret lair somewhere in Communist China where they're having unprotected sex with bats while eating live frogs... so be it. In the meantime, let's stay grounded in reality here. It's scary enough and it requires our full attention.

News Flash! Hell just froze over!

They are in line at the gun shop.

I'm sure he will have a chapter dedicated to it in his book

Sadly too too true. Make that True^2 True to the power of two? I’ll be here all night, everyone.

I'd recommend something long and thin, preferable in stainless so it's easier to clean. Maybe a mare's leg with plenty of Vaseline. Interesting way to carry concealed. Not too sure about how quickly you could get to it or how the horse would react. Certainly nobody would suspect you had a gun IN the horse. In the interest of putting it crudely, I'd suggest a mare.

Talk about deep concealment.

Handgun carry in a horse ?? I would think the horse might object to that