Comments

1

It's as if a neutron bomb has hit our fair city...

2

I miss playing piano at Vermillion.

3

Korea and Japan didn’t have to board up their store windows. I wonder why.

5

If there are speakeasies, they probably wouldn't be brought up in the comments section of a widely read blog, and also likely not in the posts either. You're probably being facetious though, and I just can't tell.

[Seriously, if you knew of or happened upon one, would you really tell someone?]

6

Astronaut Anne McClane:

"Reminder that stress happens when expectations aren’t in line with reality. When we can’t change reality, it’s best to focus on our expectations.

Expect to do things differently.

Expect to need to adapt.

Expect to be out of your comfort zone.

Expect to put others first."

https://twitter.com/AstroAnnimal/status/1239784270232682496?s=20

7

@6 Great advice. We were planning a vacation in Europe this summer but are now focusing on maybe just going camping right here in the great state of Washington or a driving tour of the West (has will be cheap).

8

There goes number 3 (smells more like number 2 tho), shoehorning again

9

Why are the places boarded up?

10

@8 What, like shoehorning all your political hobby horses for endless free stuff into the corona crisis even though European ‘socialism’ has done squat to protect them?

11

@9 see @3

12

Capitalism is value in motion, if capital is not moving, it is dead, the system itself dies, the economy collapses.

This is what grabbing a shark by the tail is like, folks. Even if we survive the virus, we’re still fucked.

13

@12. We have the ideas and policies to fix capitalism; when the invisible hand is forced, they may yet see the light of day.

14

Everybody has their own pet theory of where petty crime comes from.

15

@12 Maybe you'll still be fucked but the rest of us won't.

16

I really find this absurd. People are acting like this is the end of the world. This is the best worst time ever to be alive. This country is being exposed for the house of cards it is and how easily it can be brought to its knees economically. The capitalist podium we have placed our existence on is a huge fucking sham. Our government is craven, corrupt, inept, and sociopathic AND IS GASLIGHTING THE SHIT OUT OF US.

Still. A little perspective is required.

People have lived through war, famine, and genocide. Having to stay home and not work to prevent people from getting sick and people from dying (both of which are happening here) is not the same thing as the country being bombed out, people being rounded up and put on trains and put in concentration camps and tortured and murdered, millions of people starving to death due to lack of food, or the fucking zombie apocalypse.

Watching how people are behaving right now is making me wonder if people in this country are capable of living through real crisis anymore. This is bad and it is going to get worse and people need to do their part to help each other and everyone else get through it. Behaving like it's the end of the world when we're looking at 18 months to 24 months of this virus making people sick and killing people is not helpful.

It has been years since Hurricane Maria and the island of Puerto Rico was decimated, 5000+ people died and there is still almost a total lack of infrastructure or anything that existed prior. This entire country is going to be like that or much, much worse if people do not get grip.

17

this is economic suicide.
the virus has caused no economic damage.
at all.
the insane over-reaction is gutting the economy.
mass insanity at the highest levels.
all in all a pretty embarrassing way for a once great civilization to fart away....

18

15,

Given that the most vulnerable demographic reliably votes GOP, you’re more fucked than you think. That’s your voter base. Once they’re all dead, your party will join the Federalists and the Whigs.

The demographic this is not killing, when it does vote, votes socialist.

Have you seen the crowds at CPAC? Looks like Lifecare Center of Kirkland. And we know of at least one contagious attendee.

Gen Z on the other hand are crowding the shores of Clearwater Beach.

19

@18: You're in a desperate attempt to conflate the pandemic with economic theories and arrive at a conclusion so profound that everyone will accept.

Keep trying.

20

It whips ass that we created a system where we turn into thunderdome if you have to miss 3 days of work. Very healthy economy.

21

@20. It is to avoid Thunderdone that we do so. It helps to think in multiple variables, if your squirming brain doesn't try to escape first.

22

19,

And what do you have to offer? Thoughts and prayers?

23

@10
Lol.

I do wish this blog had some sort of rant control mechanism in place.

24

@6. So, we need to do everything that Americans are terrible at doing. We're screwed.

25

The economy should've just budgeted better and they wouldn't be in this mess,

26

Right up to when all the coastal regions are underwater and a third of the world is uninhabitable, there will be people declaring our system a huge success.

27

17: Please, feel free to go out there and get coronavirus. I hope you have good insurance.

29

@26,

Well that scenario just sounds to me like a prime opportunity for some hard working, bootstraps wielding entrepreneur to get rich manufacturing personal amphibious post-apocalyptic attack and transport vessels!

Oh, and bootstraps! What are those starving post apocalyptic survivalists going to use to pull themselves up by if nobody's supplying bootstraps!

30

27
How many people in Seattle, or in the entire country, have died from coronavirus that were not already old and dying?
Old people dying is not a national emergency.

31

still Early, 30.

32

@10 -- speaking of Shoehorning:

"To stop the spread of the coronavirus, state and local governments have shut down as much of communal life as possible. People are also social distancing, staying out of public spaces to slow transmission of the disease.

But this has destroyed demand for goods and services, putting the United States on the path to a recession that could easily become an outright depression.

Washington is, finally, working toward a response. But even the most ambitious proposals are nowhere near powerful enough to actually stop the coronavirus from destroying the economy.

To do that, policymakers have to go beyond stimulus or bailouts for select industries. They have to take responsibility for economic life on a scale not seen since the New Deal."

"In forcing people to stay away from each other, the outbreak has made our mutual interdependence clear.

This, in turn, has made it a powerful, real-life argument for the broadest forms of social insurance.

And for the party that pioneered American social insurance, the party of F.D.R. and L.B.J., it’s an opportunity to once again embrace direct state action as a powerful tool for preserving and promoting prosperity.

If the era of small government is over, and it is, then it’s well past time for Democrats to seize a moment that belongs to them."

One comment from the article by Jamelle Bouie, excerpted above, "The Era of Small Government Is Over":

"Maybe it's time for the Banks and the 1% we bailed out a decade ago to bail out the 99% this time around.

We should rethink the nature of the economy. Let's not bail out the airlines, let's nationalize the airlines, if they need a bailout then we own them, we take back all those stock buybacks we subsidized.

Let's think about everything that should be public; municipal wi-fi, etc. Any other ideas?

All of a sudden the Republicans and the 1% want socialism when times are bad, let's keep it when good times return."

--PNBlanco, Montclair, NJ 6h ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/opinion/coronavirus-bailouts-stimulus.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Shoehorn that.

33

“God. This stupid paper can’t go under fast enough and put all these trolls out of their misery.”

Says the guy who called for summary executions of people selling hand sanitizer on the ferries, then dropped his handle and vanished like a fart in the wind.

34

33: Really, he's been on here every day. No one "vanished."

35

@24 -- Well, @33 just did.

Vanished.
Like ALL of the S&P 500's
Gains since trumpfy took over.

Live by the Stock Market.
Perish by it too.

36

@35 -- @34. not @24.

37

Seattle expert estimates 20,000 novel coronavirus infections in the U.S. now

Updated March 14, 2020 at 4:14 pm

By Sandi Doughton

Seattle Times staff reporter

"A Seattle expert is estimating about 20,000 people in the U.S. are now infected with the new coronavirus, nearly 10 times more than the roughly 2,300 confirmed cases.

"Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, posted his estimates in a series of 13 tweets Friday night. “I could easily be off 2-fold in either direction, but my best guess is that we’re currently in the 10,000 to 40,000 range nationally,” he wrote."

If the actual number of cases is 10x the mortality rate drops to a tenth of the current estimate.
If there are 40,000 cases that drops the mortality rate to 5% of the current hysterical figure.
Both figures well below the rate for the common flu.

And in fact, they are finally going to realize some day that people have been getting and surviving this virus for months already, before CNN and MSNBC decided to shit their pants about it.

Jackasses.

38

@32
Sounds good to me!


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.