DramatistDreamer

Sounds like an apt title to me, lol.

As I have gleaned from what I've read SARS and MERS were/are more deadly than COVID-19 but COVID-19 is more contagious than either of those diseases. This Op-Ed has a bleak lede (I'm still in the midst of reading, so the content may prove even bleaker) but I suspect this pandemic is not only showing up all the deficiencies apparent in our socio-economic systems but it also has shown that on a global scale, governments, and to a certain extent people (who run corporations especially) have been prioritizing the absolute wrong things-i.e. profit over people, and this, coupled with the pandemic will be the undoing of our respective economies. It's not just about the lack of a social safety net, it is about placing more value over corporations than people. I've said for years now that not every business should be in operation and people often regard what I say as though I am saying something deeply offensive. What I've always meant is that if you have a business and you claim you can't afford to pay your employees a salary that is regarded as a living wage and cannot give them proper benefits, then you ought not to be in business. When the worst of the global financial crisis/recession happened as a result of the mortgage/loan crisis, many people wagged their fingers at many people who had lost their homes and said "well, if those people bought too much house and couldn't afford it, then they deserved to lose it!" Nevermind the aspect of mortgage companies and banks committing outright fraud with "liars loans", changing information on loan applications without knowledge or consent of the prospective homeowner and just approving loans for risky mortgages knowing full-well that they shouldn't have. Well, now I'm reading about "zombie companies" and "zombie corporations" that are existing on debt alone and will have to shut down, leaving employees (much of whom were already living hand to mouth) without any prospects. Why does America allow this kind of malfeasance in corporations and business but punishes it in an instant with people, (most of whom were not 'flippers') who wanted a house to live in? Now we see municipal governments scrambling to provide housing for homeless populations because the homeless, clustered together in areas (e.g. Skid Row), it is feared, will spread the coronavirus even deeper into the population. How and why was it acceptable to have large homeless populations in the first place? If these municipal governments are actually putting in place directives to place the homeless in unused buildings and hotels, does that mean that these populations could have been housed all along and the only difference is that there now exists a will to do it? Anyway, here's the link to the Op-Ed This Is How the Coronavirus Will Destroy the Economy Another thing I wonder is, why is it that cleaners and custodians get the worst pay when they obviously have some of the most important jobs? These jobs are also on the front lines and employees should be well trained, well paid and well protected by they are not? Could we have stanched the spread if our countries, businesses, institutions had more regard for cleanliness and the people employed to clean our facilities and public spaces?

If this wasn't what people were envisioning when Fanta Fascist first declared his intent to run, it means people were just determined not to pay any attention to his known (and documented) history of hubris.

Maybe he should've used some disinfecting wipes before he sat down in that chair to get that lapdance. Hey, if there was a sign that read "No Sex or Lysol in the Champagne Room", Bernard might have missed this.

Having a ticket of two 70-somethings is just not sustainable, imo. It's already been done. Biden may be regarded as a "safe" choice by many but there has to be some hint of pushing progress somewhere if Dems want to ensure that people actually go out to vote in a general election. Even though I voted for her, from the beginning, I had the distinct impression Tim Kaine as HRC's VP might not be enough of an inducement to get vast swaths of the electorate to the polls. I can't say that was definitive because...voter suppresion...but I noticed a distinct lack of enthusiasm (among many around me) toward that ticket when Kaine was named as a running mate. Enthusiasm still counts for something. Something that Obama definitely had going for him is that he was a unique candidate with a unique backstory and even though he faced criticism during his campaign, he was very hard to pin down, despite the best efforts to pin things on him, ideologically and otherwise.

This is not easy to gauge at the moment but if he doesn't choose a woman and/or POC as his running mate, I think he could be in for trouble with the most loyal voters of the Democratic base. With the severe disappointment over the suspension of Kamala Harris' campaign and then Elizabeth Warren's campaign (although Warren's campaign is a bit more complicated since she actually got to the primaries but didn't get many delegates during the process), there was a sense that two old white guys took all the oxygen in the room and I don't think just having say a woman as AG is going to cut it, from what I've been hearing when I talk to friends and relatives of mine, people want to feel as though they have a 'seat at the table' where power is concerned. President Obama was very astute in his realization that, as a relatively young black man, he needed some type of a balance, if only to pacify skittish Dems who might have thought he was a big risk to bet on. Biden needs that balance for different reasons, namely his advanced age, his propensity to utter gaffes and to remember things the way they never were, as you pointed out--all aspects that have made Dems skittish about him. Biden needs a sharp mind to back him. He also needs someone representative of his base. If Obama needed a Biden, clearly Biden needs an Obama-type this time around. Live by the market, die by the market. It's what he deserves.

Trump must be thinking "All that lying and bullsh*t on Friday for nothing!" I think this means that 90-100% of the financial gains made under Trump have disappeared (like he claimed the coronavirus would have by now). If the polls are accurate-

Mr. Mayor needs to take his @ss home, he can workout at Gracie Mansion. I'm sure there's plenty of room there because it's well...a mansion. As for whether people will forget this and go on about their business by summer or the election, we're most assuredly heading toward a recession (which, with disastrous trade deals, we were likely heading there anyway) so I doubt the damage from this pandemic will be over anytime soon. It will be rooted in many people's minds months from now, which hopefully by then the actual disease will have been subdued by then.

Isn't slashing interest rates something that happened a few years before the global financial meltdown happened? This administration is always looking for a way to creative "easy lending" and free-flowing money for the banks.

"Honey, that was 15 years ago". I always remember when Kim said that to Douglas.

A random thought: I've often decried the seemingly unnecessary killing off of legacy characters just for what appeared to be a short-term boost but then you had situations where a real-life actor would die and the show would often choose not deal with it and leave it out there. I sometimes wonder why the show never acknowledged Michael Louden's death? I seriously doubt it was on account of any desire to not be seen as "capitalizing" on tragedy since TPTB at that point didn't seem to hold either their actors or their characters in any particular regard as the BTS stories we've heard have proven as much. Perhaps they fel that it wouldn't be worth it with Larry Brygmann on the verge of exiting by then or the fact that killing off Bryant Montgomery just a few short years ago had made them reluctant but I think ATWT missed an opportunity to give Lucinda (who had a fraught relationship w/Duke) and Margo and Tom (who had his own battles with Duke over Lien) something to do. Even Lily. I guess Andy was long gone by then but Scott could've been brought back for a brief story arc, which would likely have been more compelling than most of what the show had going on in those years. The shock and grief might have provided a powerful exit for John Dixon. That Elizabeth Daily clipped that jumped in during Bob and Lisa's scene. Is that the actress who played Annie Stewart on that Cascade commercial?

There was a NYT article some months back about some people who were actually able to make a full-time business selling on Amazon's marketplace. So, depending on what they're selling, yeah, I do think it is possible to make that kind of money...for now. This could change since 3rd party sellers have recently been getting a poor reputation for often being linked with selling counterfeit goods.

That's right, I forgot all about this!

I've been glancing through the posts that I've missed in this growing thread, mainly to make sure that I'm not duplicating a post that someone has already posted previously (which seems to be happening quite a bit in this thread) and am seeing some comparisons between China and South Korea? Really? I hope not. You cannot compare S. Korea, a democratic country with 51 million people to China, an autocratic country with 1 billion people. It's absurd. S. Korea has been doing some things that all countries should be replicating like testing many people every day (on average Korea was testing at least 10,000 people per day, employing accessible testing mechanisms like drive-through testing at specialized off-site locations but even the way S. Korea was able to trace members of that cult/church to locate people from testing is something that also made use of S. Korea's technology and culture (the head of that church was made to come in public, bow and issue a public apology as well as a promise to cooperate with the authorities) is not easily employed in other countries. There are definitely things that the Western/rich countries have to learn from smaller countries, particularly ones that have endured other pandemics and epidemics and health crises but please recognize the cultural, political and historical differences that differentiate countries and their methods for addressing crises. More testing though, is definitely something that every country should be doing. If the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere can manage to do this, the U.S. definitely has no excuse to at least ramp up testing. Then again, people in Haiti still have vivid memories of the deadly cholera outbreak that occurred in the wake of the 2010 earthquake caused by U.N. peacekeeping forces dumping waste into rivers and streams, infecting the water system. It's in the article. He had already been a third party seller on Amazon before he decided to buy "pandemic" surplus supplies from a local outfit that had gone out of business. Having gotten away with initial sales, he and his brother decided to ramp up the search for more supplies but was shut out by Amazon, who shut his online reseller outfit down.

This jerk now claims that he will likely donate his stockpile, backtracking from his previous assertion that he would try to sell the items locally, which is also a backtrack from his initial excuses that he was providing a public service by buying up all the local stock and selling items on Amazon for jacked up prices. Now that Amazon (who themselves bowed to intense public scrutiny and criticism for providing a platform for price gouging) and Ebay have blocked price gougers like this guy, he's changing his tune. An utter lack of ethics all around.

Spain is now becoming the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, which I had already anticipated would come to pass once Italy broke the threshold for Europe becoming the epicenter of the the virus outreak.

There was an Op-Ed piece by a health professional noting that Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong achieved better results by doing things somewhat differently from China. I'll post it when I can find the article.

More lies from Trump, presumably to 'goose' the stock market.