MacGyver

New York City schools closed through April 20. May not reopen this year.

Yeah, that means the Fed’s magazines are pretty well empty at this point.

It may be a garden hose on a house fire, but the Federal Reserve just cut rates to zero and announced a $700m quantitative easing package: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/15/fed-unveils-emergency-action-effort-to-support-economy-from-coronavirus-130608

Illinois Governor Pritzker is ordering all bars and restaurants closed until March 30th.

You bet. This is bad advice. States need to be delaying primaries.

The only options left are the extreme ones - self enforced social isolation would be best - but we’ll likely see more states do like Ohio and just close everything this week.

I’m surprised he let them use his name.

I think this is what had my hackles up, Dave: Sorry for the Twitter link - I couldn’t find one on YouTube. Mind you, I understand the underlying sentiment - this is going to be really hard on small business owners. But, this is bad advice - and is contrary to what public health advocates are asking.

Prayers for y’all. Summertown isn’t that far. If y’all need something, give me a shout.

Lower Broadway is being closed immediately: All bars and restaurants in Ohio are being closed.

I don’t consume a lot of traditional media. I can’t remember the last time a TV was on in my house tuned to anything of the sort. But I’ve got friends with terminal degrees in public health and pandemic response who are really worried right now. These are folks who were on the ground in Africa during the Ebola crisis and who worked SARS and H1N1. I’d trust them with my life - and these are folks who are used to parsing everything through the lens of risk. There are a lot of folks on here who are more politically conservative than me. That’s great. I love debating big ideas. But, your media is purposefully misleading you right now. For whatever the reason. You need to take this seriously - if for no other reason than the country is going to get more liberal if you die. And, it’s worth noting that here in Tennessee alone - we’ve lost so much capacity in terms of rural hospitals. Where are you going to go when you need treatment? Even in my 40-49 age bracket - this has 20x the mortality rate of a bad flu year. Take it seriously y’all.

It’s worth noting that the above may be disinformation. I’ve linked the DoD briefing notes from Friday where they’re specifically asked - and the current head of CENTCOM says he has no knowledge of any leadership of true IRGC being targeted or killed. https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2112178/marine-corps-general-kenneth-f-mckenzie-jr-commander-us-central-command-holds-a/ It’s also worth noting that this is there first time this name has been mentioned in either Farsi or Arabic media.

Several reasons. The CDC failed to leverage the work others had done and developed their own test. That test was later found to have problems with reliability after shipping. So it set us back a couple of weeks. The administration does share a lot of blame for failing to treat this with the seriousness it deserved up until earlier this week. Now, tests are being severely rationed because while we've got plenty of actual tests at this point- we don't have the reagents to operationalize them at anywhere near full capacity. Specifically, we don't have enough RNA isolation and RT-PCR kits. So, we're starting way behind the curve. We don't actually know how far behind the curve we are. We'll know in the next few days. You made the right decision staying home. You don't want to be stuck 2000 miles from home.

Prayers for you and your wife. Keep us apprised. I was also just notified of someone who has tested positive and is not doing well at all. He’s six days in the hospital - and just got results back this evening. He’s older and has several mitigating conditions.

I expect you’ll see national restrictions and flights grounded in the next few days. Even with as little testing as we’re doing, you’re still seeing cases double every three days. This is the exponential doubling we’re worried about - and lack of testing likely means we’re a few days closer to Italy than we think. We may be too late - but on our current path, estimates suggest we could have 9.4 million sick and 1 million dead at the same time. Note that we have 95,000 ICU beds in the US - and this load would suggest we’d need 460,000. This isn’t a guess or some worst case scenario. This is math coupled with what we’ve seen in Italy - another first world country. Seriously. If you can hole up for a couple weeks - consider it your civic duty.

I found it quite funny that the only “antibacterial” cleaners on the shelves were the ones made out of stuff like orange peels, and essential oils and all that stuff. I guess it’s sort of the same as “there are no atheists in foxholes.”

I’ve offered to shop for all of my neighbors - all of whom are older. It’s the least I can do - they’re all like grandparents to my kids. Don’t disregard your mental health in all of this. It’s okay to take a step back and step away from stuff like social media, the TV, and even TGO for a bit if you need to. It’s going to be important to protect your sanity in the coming days. Find someone you can reach out to and check in on. Buddy up with someone and check in regularly. If you need someone to chat with check in on here - or shoot me a PM. I’m certain we could get a group of people willing to reach out. For those of faith - pray. Find solace in a community of faith. If you or someone you know gets sick - let us know. We’ll get through this. It’s going to be tough. We’re going to need everyone to do their part. Take heart.

Went to pick up a few things for my wife this evening. As long as you weren’t looking for toilet paper or potatoes??, everything seemed quite well stocked. Walked straight to the self checkout and was on my way. I hope it stays that way.

Be sure to post a link if they make it available.

It’s absolutely the right decision. I hate it for the city of Nashville that’ll probably lose out on ~$30M? in related revenue. This is a giant convention - but certainly not the only one canceling. There are a lot of small businesses that are really going to hurt. If you’ve got a restaurant or small business you frequent - this might be a great time to purchase a gift card or two to use when this is over.

The world is an awfully small place You might have thought we would have learned that on September 11th. In America, we’ve largely been conditioned to be pandemic voyeurs - maybe noticing as somewhere else suffers. That’s about to change. Look out for yourselves - but check in on that elderly neighbor. Maybe the older couple down the street whose kids have moved away. The single parent who’s just trying to make ends meet. We’re in this together - that has always been - and always will be America’s greatest strength.

That's it. There's not a hospital system on the planet that has the burst capacity to handle what's happening in Italy right now. The only way you keep people from dying who otherwise wouldn't is to slow the rate of infections down - even if total numbers wind up being the same over time.

I’d be thrilled to have anyone tell me I was wrong 2 weeks from now. Just do me a favor and make sure you’ve got a little bit of extra food in your pantry for when you’re right.

NBA just suspended its season after Rudy Gomert tested positive. Trump announced travel ban from Europe for 30 days. The average American may begin to take this more seriously. I’d avoid checking your 401k, but I expect we’re going to see circuit breakers tripped in the markets tomorrow.