Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[da_nang]

Finland is closing the region of Uusimaa off from the rest of the country. That's almost a third of the population (and two thirds of the confirmed infected).

Huge chunk of my family and relatives right there, many of them vulnerable.

At least I have phone contact.

[Frumple]

Our government decreed that people who cannot pay their rent anymore cannot be evicted by their landlords / housing corporations for the duration of the crisis.

Furthermore, they cannot be charged any collection costs for being behind on payment.

Good for them, at least. Now if only more countries would follow the examples like that

[McTraveller]

nobody's going to be misled if you say a virus is trying to do something

You underestimate the "misleadability" of the general public  .

Do you even into egregores.

Ok I admit I had to look that up.  And no, I don't 


EDIT: So how about those unemployment numbers?

[Frumple]

I like the graph circulating for it. You got decades of your normal little craggy graph peaks, and then at the end just this gigantic straight up fucking flat vertical line literally several times higher than anything before it and showing no indication of slowing down. It's like a little pack of appalachian mountains waddling up to Olympus Mons or somethin'.

[sluissa]

A chunk of that, definitely not all, but a significant chunk of it should go away once things open back up.

Things won't be normal for quite a while but somewhere a balance will be struck between going back to what we knew, or getting used to what's ahead.

Definitely might be a rough road getting there though.

[Jimmy]

A large part of the graph is due to the hidden truth that many people were underemployed in the first place. Kept on casual or low hour part time jobs, they avoided being counted in the official unemployment figures. Now that their employers have cut them loose, they're finally being represented in the statistic they belong, namely people who do are not being employed to their ability.

[Dostoevsky]

Our government decreed that people who cannot pay their rent anymore cannot be evicted by their landlords / housing corporations for the duration of the crisis.

Furthermore, they cannot be charged any collection costs for being behind on payment.

Good for them, at least. Now if only more countries would follow the examples like that

There is some language (that I haven't read carefully, I admit) in the US relief bill that tries to limit evictions for a period of time, but I wouldn't be surprised if it only applies in a limited fashion.

As to unemployment, may indeed be slow as one can't just flip a switch to go back to companies running at full speed. In theory the government aid package just passed (and subsequent ones in the months to come, I bet) can help grease things a bit, but the systems they set up to handle it are going to be completely overwhelmed.

And the amount of debt that's going to accrue is also going to make things weird - wouldn't be surprised if we end up going into the same territory as Japan with theoretically untenable debt levels. Japan's been making it work (sort of). But for the US the combination of interest rates and global reliance on US debt & the US dollar could make things even more odd.

Not saying we should sacrifice on the altar of capitalism, of course. Just that things may have to adjust, probably in a mix of good ways and bad ways.

[Bralbaard]

I like the graph circulating for it. You got decades of your normal little craggy graph peaks, and then at the end just this gigantic straight up fucking flat vertical line literally several times higher than anything before it and showing no indication of slowing down. It's like a little pack of appalachian mountains waddling up to Olympus Mons or somethin'.

Olympus mons actually has a very very gradual slope. This unemployment graph looks like the dwarf fortress learning curve.



Now part of that is because everybody gets fired at the same time, where in a normal crisis it would be spread out over several months and would look less bad, but still it is worrying.

[McTraveller]

*sigh* there is a reason why "unemployed" and "underemployed" are tracked by separate metrics.... you may not agree with that reason I guess, but there is a reason.

This is just the beginning of the "long term impact" of this whole mess.

[Doomblade187]

Apparently the House won't have a vote on the aid Package until Friday? Haven't looked for confirmation, but it's not a great sign for April rent.

[Dostoevsky]

Yeah, two-ish reasons: a) logistics issues basically (partly due to a reported lone Republican mucking things up), and b) they want to give members a day to read the final bill.

PBS has a decent summary of a few of the major buckets of aid here, though I think its description of the giant $454 billion fund is simultaneously spinning it too positive and negative (in different respects).

Edit: meant to mention that according to it the eviction limitations are pretty narrow indeed, so nuts to that.

It is missing parts like the $150 billion for state and local governments, and goodness knows what else - I won't claim I've read all 880 pages either.

[misko27]

A large part of the graph is due to the hidden truth that many people were underemployed in the first place. Kept on casual or low hour part time jobs, they avoided being counted in the official unemployment figures. Now that their employers have cut them loose, they're finally being represented in the statistic they belong, namely people who do are not being employed to their ability.

Ah but these are quite specifically unemployment claims, which is a very specific sort of statement about what sort of jobs people were having before they filed for these. You have to have a, quote, "real job" of sorts in order to file. I wouldn't be surprised that it's that bad even for the people who counted as fully employed, honestly: the Postal Service is on track to dissolve by June without government help (which it will get in this bill), public transport in NY is down anywhere between 25% and 90% in some areas (like the Metro-North, which connects the hardhit Westchester County and New Rochelle with the City; that's down to 90%), they're reducing services and stopping some trains. There's a damn near apocalypse of a lot of different fields of jobs.

Also, my sister just had a cough. A very bad cough, the worst I'd ever heard from her. Coughing desperately, deeply, interspersed with this very hoarse, desperate sounding breathing in-between. She said she felt like she was choking on something.

[ChairmanPoo]

Italy has had another diagnosed cases spike

[martinuzz]

That can be good or bad.

Bad: new spike
Good: they have more tests available and the spike is artificial because more people are getting tested

Those diagnosed cases don't really say much.
People hospitalized, and deaths are more meaningful statistically.

[ChairmanPoo]

Deaths are a delayed statistic. Bear in mind those who die got infected weeks ago.

Hospitalization likewise  but less so.

Case diagnosis flawed as it is, is the thing that is delayed the least and gives you a clue as to which part of the curve you're at.

I'm worried