Coronavirus 2019-nCov: Political Thread

[pie n eye]

It’s good to be skeptical. What fascinates me is that people who are skeptical of widely accepted or mainstream ideas don’t seem to apply that same skepticism to alternate, fringe beliefs even when those things are debunked. In fact, for some people, debunking often seems to further cement the idea’s validity because it is taken as evidence that the idea must be correct because why else would the shadowy, vague “they” be so intent on trying to discredit.

[ShockerPrez]

My wife was watching that, I was half way listening. The one thing that caught my attention was some part where they said drug producers aren't producing a large amount of drugs that have been useful in the past and decades old. This is because there are no patents on them and virtually no profit to be made. If that's the case, why doesn't the Bill Gates of the world build a factory to produce these drugs and just churn them out? Assuming you could get the ingredients to produce them. But if they were hard to get, I would think they would be more expensive and thus profitable to produce, patent or not.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what has transpired these past 3 or 4 months. What I have concluded is that the government is not led by the best and brightest. Politicians gonna politician, and they don't do **** because they care about you. They do it for self idolization and votes. The media will never give Trump the benefit of the doubt. People are stupid. A good number of people in our community are lazy assholes. People love the power to tell others what to do and act like they are better than you. Celebrities really, really love being the center of attention and cannot function without constant reinforcement and adoration. Trump needs to brainstorm non-verbally and keep most of it to himself. We are a society of scared bitches. My neighbors kids are effing loud. Government should never have the ability to shut down your business by force. If your customers don't want to patronize you, or you decide it's best to close shop fine, but it should be between you and your customers. Why does Home Depot and Wal Mart get to be open, but not Nancy's boutique? If someone wants it, it's essential. Government doesn't get to decide these things, and we shouldn't let them get a taste of being able to. The curve is flattened, open back up. Otherwise, people start to wonder WTF?

Sorry for the ramble.

[WstateU]

My wife was watching that, I was half way listening. The one thing that caught my attention was some part where they said drug producers aren't producing a large amount of drugs that have been useful in the past and decades old. This is because there are no patents on them and virtually no profit to be made. If that's the case, why doesn't the Bill Gates of the world build a factory to produce these drugs and just churn them out? Assuming you could get the ingredients to produce them. But if they were hard to get, I would think they would be more expensive and thus profitable to produce, patent or not.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what has transpired these past 3 or 4 months. What I have concluded is that the government is not led by the best and brightest. Politicians gonna politician, and they don't do **** because they care about you. They do it for self idolization and votes. The media will never give Trump the benefit of the doubt. People are stupid. A good number of people in our community are lazy assholes. People love the power to tell others what to do and act like they are better than you. Celebrities really, really love being the center of attention and cannot function without constant reinforcement and adoration. Trump needs to brainstorm non-verbally and keep most of it to himself. We are a society of scared bitches. My neighbors kids are effing loud. Government should never have the ability to shut down your business by force. If your customers don't want to patronize you, or you decide it's best to close shop fine, but it should be between you and your customers. Why does Home Depot and Wal Mart get to be open, but not Nancy's boutique? If someone wants it, it's essential. Government doesn't get to decide these things, and we shouldn't let them get a taste of being able to. The curve is flattened, open back up. Otherwise, people start to wonder WTF?

Sorry for the ramble.

Keep rambling...

[pinstripers]

The idea behind the shelter-in-place, shut down the economy. self-distancing thing was to keep the hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. Today most hospitals are nearly empty, are laying off employees, and losing money.Seems like it's working.

[wufan]

My wife was watching that, I was half way listening. The one thing that caught my attention was some part where they said drug producers aren't producing a large amount of drugs that have been useful in the past and decades old. This is because there are no patents on them and virtually no profit to be made. If that's the case, why doesn't the Bill Gates of the world build a factory to produce these drugs and just churn them out? Assuming you could get the ingredients to produce them. But if they were hard to get, I would think they would be more expensive and thus profitable to produce, patent or not.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what has transpired these past 3 or 4 months. What I have concluded is that the government is not led by the best and brightest. Politicians gonna politician, and they don't do **** because they care about you. They do it for self idolization and votes. The media will never give Trump the benefit of the doubt. People are stupid. A good number of people in our community are lazy assholes. People love the power to tell others what to do and act like they are better than you. Celebrities really, really love being the center of attention and cannot function without constant reinforcement and adoration. Trump needs to brainstorm non-verbally and keep most of it to himself. We are a society of scared bitches. My neighbors kids are effing loud. Government should never have the ability to shut down your business by force. If your customers don't want to patronize you, or you decide it's best to close shop fine, but it should be between you and your customers. Why does Home Depot and Wal Mart get to be open, but not Nancy's boutique? If someone wants it, it's essential. Government doesn't get to decide these things, and we shouldn't let them get a taste of being able to. The curve is flattened, open back up. Otherwise, people start to wonder WTF?

Sorry for the ramble.

On generic pharmaceuticals:

These are not profitable because the cost of increased regulations prices the US out of the market either on equipment ($40 million for a fill line, $10 million for a compounding suite, same for equipment prep and same again for component prep and packaging) dock, warehouse, offices) or labor. 67 direct labor equivalents, 10 people managers, 20 quality assurance/quality control personnel to run a 24/7 operation. 5 folks in marketing. Another 2 in regulatory. Payroll of 15 million per year minimum. 1 million per year in utilities. To turn a profit in 5 years you need to Manufacture 35 million per year in profit. That’s 100K per day. One line can produce 25k units per day. $4 profit per dose.

Have you ever bought penicillin? $0.50 per dose is high! That’s why we buy it from China.

[ShockingButTrue]

The idea behind the shelter-in-place, shut down the economy. self-distancing thing was to keep the hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. Today most hospitals are nearly empty, are laying off employees, and losing money.Seems like it's working.

As with most of that data out there (unproven), that is absolutely fake news.

The city with the most fatalities, by far, just released a power point of data showing 66% (84% using no form of transportation) of deaths occurred at home. The data was collected from 113 local hospitals over 3 days.

The employment status of those who participated in the survey: Unemployed: 46%, Retired: 37% and Employed: 17%

The initial findings show that persons being newly (that means after the shelter-in-place was well in place) hospitalized are: Not working, not traveling, predominately older, predominantly non-essential workers, and predominately at home.

What's wrong with people wanting to feed their families? If persons 50 and under are so worried about catching this virus, stay home, and don't get your hair cut until sometime in July, or later.

[ShockerPrez]

On generic pharmaceuticals:

These are not profitable because the cost of increased regulations prices the US out of the market either on equipment ($40 million for a fill line, $10 million for a compounding suite, same for equipment prep and same again for component prep and packaging) dock, warehouse, offices) or labor. 67 direct labor equivalents, 10 people managers, 20 quality assurance/quality control personnel to run a 24/7 operation. 5 folks in marketing. Another 2 in regulatory. Payroll of 15 million per year minimum. 1 million per year in utilities. To turn a profit in 5 years you need to Manufacture 35 million per year in profit. That’s 100K per day. One line can produce 25k units per day. $4 profit per dose.

Have you ever bought penicillin? $0.50 per dose is high! That’s why we buy it from China.

That's kinda why it would be something for a billioniare with a lot of philanthropic desires to help poor people and underdeveloped countries who can still benefit from these drugs, right?

[wufan]

That's kinda why it would be something for a billioniare with a lot of philanthropic desires to help poor people and underdeveloped countries who can still benefit from these drugs, right?

Well, that is ONE business model should you want to spend 30 million dollars a year making a drug that can be replaced by a profitable one. I guess those 100 or so people making the profitable one can learn to code.

[wufan]

Another option would be to loosen regulations so that it can be profitable. I guess then you have 1000 regulators learning to code.

BTW, what drugs, specifically, aren’t being made that should be?

[ShockerPrez]

Another option would be to loosen regulations so that it can be profitable. I guess then you have 1000 regulators learning to code.

BTW, what drugs, specifically, aren’t being made that should be?

No idea, just heard them rambling about evil drug makers not making blah blah blah. I was half asleep. My main point was that they can't find anyone to make the needed drugs somewhere and Bill Gates likes to spend billions on his charity, so why not have him spend the money. Since he wouldn't care about the profitability. Since it would be a foundation producing them. I believe it was for stuff still being seen in the 3rd world countries.

[revenge_of_shocka_khan]

From what I can tell there is a lack of research on how effective school closures are at limiting the spread of Coronavirus. The ones that do exist are inconclusive. That being said, logically it seems to make sense that they would limit spread.

It still falls under the category of we have more information and supplies. Plans can be made to limit, to the best of our knowledge and ability, the spread among students while bringing them back to school. Tests and contact tracing can be done to ensure any outbreaks are contained.

Perhaps the answer is to close the school(s) for deep cleaning when clusters start popping up. Only problem with that is that there could be downstream infections (in the community). This could be partially mitigated by more effective contact tracing, which, along with testing, is something that is lacking in a lot of places.

[wsushox1]

Idk where to put this but the whole conversation re: drug supply chains made me want to type it out:

One of the reasons we've been able to keep inflation low (below 4% almost 40 years now!!!) for so long is by shifting our economy from a manufacturing/farming economy to a services, consumer consumption, and technology economy and offshoring much of our supply chain. In addition, in what remaining manufacturing there is the large majority have been able to cut human capital significantly through automation and machine assisted manufacturing.

These are all good things.

However, with the current situation and the likely onshoring of certain supply chains there is significant risk of inflation. Throw in a 4 trillion dollar liquidity put by the federal reserve, and I'm pretty confident we will see above 2% inflation over the next decade which is not inherently a bad thing at all. The only thing that could hold things back are: weak labor market and weak energy prices. That being said, the energy sector is not what it was even 10-years ago so low energy prices aren't quite the deflationary risk they once were.

[WstateU]

[wufan]

I’ve learned a lot, and will probably learn more. There was a lot of “unknowns” in February and March. With the information available at the time, I think it was good to **** down schools, and the idea of having only essential workers out and about was a good idea, though it was totally impractical and unfair. I’m glad we are now staging reopenings.

If we knew then what we know now, I would say ban travel and contact trace in early February. Leave the schools and businesses open, but quarantine the old folks homes. In local clusters, require masks for indoor public settings. Still a good idea to shut down mass gatherings indoors (sporting events).

[ShockTalk]

I’ve learned a lot, and will probably learn more. There was a lot of “unknowns” in February and March. With the information available at the time, I think it was good to **** down schools, and the idea of having only essential workers out and about was a good idea, though it was totally impractical and unfair. I’m glad we are now staging reopenings.

If we knew then what we know now, I would say ban travel and contact trace in early February. Leave the schools and businesses open, but quarantine the old folks homes. In local clusters, require masks for indoor public settings. Still a good idea to shut down mass gatherings indoors (sporting events).

"Shut" down schools??