Federal Government's Response to the Coronavirus

[jklo]

[MOD EDIT: Use this thread to talk the federal government's actions and policies to address the coronavirus]

You know, I have to think now that this project (and any other theoretical construction projects like Red-Blue, Blue-Lynn,etc) are very dead now.

Even if the US Government doesn't end up going bankrupt from all the bailouts they certainly won't be in the mood to spend anything on construction projects like this.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Lol what kind of libertarian nonsense is that?

 

[jklo]

Lol what kind of libertarian nonsense is that?

You can't just keep jacking up the deficit forever. There has to be a breaking point, and given how things are going with the pandemic, we're going to hit it sooner rather than later. I am assuming the bailout bill that just passed won't be the last of this pandemic.

 

[George_Apley]

You can't just keep jacking up the deficit forever. There has to be a breaking point, and given how things are going with the pandemic, we're going to hit it sooner rather than later. I am assuming the bailout bill that just passed won't be the last of this pandemic.

Interest rates on US debt continue to be in the basement. As long as the debt is dirt-cheap the US will continue to take advantage of it.

 

[TallIsGood]

The federal reserve bank is printing money and buying all the US Treasury debt. We won’t go bankrupt. More likely will have inflation as the Fed deflates the value of the dollar.

 

[George_Apley]

The federal reserve bank is printing money and buying all the US Treasury debt. We won’t go bankrupt. More likely will have inflation as the Fed deflates the value of the dollar.

Would have thought that would have been likely after all of the rounds of Quantitative Easing, but inflation barely budged. We'll see what happens this time.

 

[bakgwailo]

You can't just keep jacking up the deficit forever. There has to be a breaking point, and given how things are going with the pandemic, we're going to hit it sooner rather than later. I am assuming the bailout bill that just passed won't be the last of this pandemic.

Seems to have generally worked for centuries when we needed to do it.

 

[HenryAlan]

The federal reserve bank is printing money and buying all the US Treasury debt. We won’t go bankrupt. More likely will have inflation as the Fed deflates the value of the dollar.

We won't have any inflation until demand recovers. And by that time, the Fed will already have started to pull back on the expanded money supply.

 

[KentXie]

The US looks fucked. Current daily new cases averaging twice the peak of the second surge and it's not even winter yet. What an absolute failure of a nation the US is fighting off the pandemic.

I can only look at my friends who are stranded outside the US due to the travel ban with extremely jealousy, many of them currently stranded in Asian or Oceania countries that have successfully contained the virus. Honestly, being stranded outside the US is the greatest blessing in disguised there is.

 

[DZH22]

The US looks fucked. Current daily new cases averaging twice the peak of the second surge and it's not even winter yet. What an absolute failure of a nation the US is fighting off the pandemic.

I can only look at my friends who are stranded outside the US due to the travel ban with extremely jealousy, many of them currently stranded in Asian or Oceania countries that have successfully contained the virus. Honestly, being stranded outside the US is the greatest blessing in disguised there is.

France had 932 deaths today with 1/5 of our population. US is down to only about 19% of the world's death total, and there are over 1 million worldwide deaths outside of our country. Europe is in even worse shape than the US with their current surge.

With that said, you are correct that we are also fucked. But it's really the entire western world, not just here. If any of your stranded friends are in Europe, don't be jealous of those ones.

 

[KentXie]

France had 932 deaths today with 1/5 of our population. US is down to only about 19% of the world's death total, and there are over 1 million worldwide deaths outside of our country. Europe is in even worse shape than the US with their current surge.

With that said, you are correct that we are also fucked. But it's really the entire western world, not just here. If any of your stranded friends are in Europe, don't be jealous of those ones.

For certain, I'm not looking at Europe as a role model. However, Europe is much further along in their surge than the US; chances are, what we see in France now is what the US sees in 2-4 weeks, especially as hospitals are hitting their resource limits.

It's just frustrating, seeing a friend of mine in Taiwan where life has return to normal, with no community spread since April. Same as a friend in Australia where life more or less is back to normal. Unfortunately half of the US doesn't believe the virus is real (and even worse, a sizable portion won't take the vaccine when available) so even with a changeover of a more responsible administration, it's unlikely that more people in the US will take safety precautions more seriously until people start dying by the piles.

 

[bolehboleh]

I currently live in Malaysia and from March until September, the government was doing a great job handling the pandemic. The university that I work at was started hybrid learning and this country of about 32 million people had fewer than 140 deaths.

Then the politicians fucked things up. They required new local elections get held in Sabah (a state on Borneo Island), and because it was a great big fucking power grab, politicians from Kuala Lumpur flew there to push their agendas. Then when the election was over, and the politicians flew back and nobody quarantined. Now we're seeing over 1000 infections per day and the death count is going up.

Now we're all back to working from home, there are police checkpoints to make sure we don't leave our districts and people are frustrated again.

Malaysia's biggest advantage is summer-like weather all year round because the virus doesn't spread as easily in the hot weather (and people can be outside more often).

Oh well.

 

[DZH22]

Now we're all back to working from home, there are police checkpoints to make sure we don't leave our districts and people are frustrated again.

Were these checkpoints also around any other times from March through September? I hope we never end up with measures as draconian as that here in our state or the country. Mentally, I still need that illusion of being free.

 

[bolehboleh]

Were these checkpoints also around any other times from March through September? I hope we never end up with measures as draconian as that here in our state or the country. Mentally, I still need that illusion of being free.

I should be clear. I keep hearing that there are check points but I haven't seen them. My wife and I just moved from Selangor to Kuala Lumpur today and we didn't have any problems. I know our contractor and movers have had some problems doing work in certain districts in and around the Klang Valley and they've even said "no" to certain jobs because they won't be able to to get there

For people who still have to travel to work, they are required to get letters from their employers that say they work in another district - that way if there is a police block, they'll have evidence that they need to be there.

This is still less draconian than what we dealt with from March til June - at that time they were utilizing the army and police prevent movement from one place to another.

Sadly, my mother in law's dog became deathly ill during that time so my wife had to apply for permission to cross state lines and euthanize the poor dog. The police officer rejected the excuse with the strong suggestion that she reapply claiming her mother was having a nervous breakdown due to loneliness. That got us our travel pass and we drove the two hours to see her.

After the inositol lockdown, things got pretty free here - we even took a three hour drive to the east coast and had a club med holiday.

But then, after the elections in Sabah there was a spike in cases and here we are again

 

[KentXie]

Were these checkpoints also around any other times from March through September? I hope we never end up with measures as draconian as that here in our state or the country. Mentally, I still need that illusion of being free.

It's unfortunate that most of the time, draconian measures have to be introduced because people can't be trusted to do the right thing (i.e. quarantine when they know they should, wear masks when they should). It's possible to fight the pandemic without draconian measures but more people need to actually care about the pandemic. Because many Asian countries have a cultural mentality to do no harm to others and thus are more than happy to wear masks when need to, they have been able to maintain their freedom without illusions because the virus's spread is contained, even in cases where they were subjected to short term draconian measures.

 

[George_Apley]

^ The western impulse (magnified in the Anglo-American world) against collective responsibility crushes us with things like this. Radical individualism doesn't work in crisis situations.

 

[ra84970]

I'm not sure those expectations from this past summer included a 95% efficacy vaccination being made available before the end of 2020. If I recall last summer, the hope was for a 50-75% efficacy vaccine by Q2 2021.

The past week's news from Pfizer-BioNtech, Moderna and AstaZeneca have been true gamechangers. The fact that Moderna's vaccine can be stored in -20 degree celsius freezers that already exist in most every pharmacy in the country is especially significant.

Availability =/= widespread adoption. Though we may have something available by the end of this year, it's going to take a concerted effort to even get the first 5% of the population to be fully vaccinated with both required doses to get to 95% immunogenicity. And, it may take all of 2021 to get to the 70+% adoption level needed to allow all the restrictions to be relaxed. Given how anti-vaxx thinking has entrenched itself in many communities in the US, it's hard to see that we get to 90% and we can only hope that ~80% adoption of a two-dose vaccine is going to happen.

CBS's coverage of the US COVID vaccine plan :

 

[bolehboleh]

^ The western impulse (magnified in the Anglo-American world) against collective responsibility crushes us with things like this. Radical individualism doesn't work in crisis situations.

You are correct - but I've been here long enough that I'm certain I could write a book on the differences, positives and negatives of collectivism vs individualism.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Availability =/= widespread adoption. Though we may have something available by the end of this year, it's going to take a concerted effort to even get the first 5% of the population to be fully vaccinated with both required doses to get to 95% immunogenicity. And, it may take all of 2021 to get to the 70+% adoption level needed to allow all the restrictions to be relaxed. Given how anti-vaxx thinking has entrenched itself in many communities in the US, it's hard to see that we get to 90% and we can only hope that ~80% adoption of a two-dose vaccine is going to happen.

CBS's coverage of the US COVID vaccine plan :

Getting high compliance with the double dose vaccines is going to be a huge challenge. We can barely get people to take one dose of vaccines, much less two doses at a timed interval. And without that goodbye 95% efficacy.

This is going to take way more discipline than Americans have demonstrated in this pandemic!

 

[ra84970]

Getting high compliance with the double dose vaccines is going to be a huge challenge. We can barely get people to take one dose of vaccines, much less two doses at a timed interval. And without that goodbye 95% efficacy.

This is going to take way more discipline than Americans have demonstrated in this pandemic!

I am hopeful that a lot of people in this region will get the two doses. But, I'm struggling to imagine how we get the anti-maskers to take the vaccine.