We bring you more on pandemics history, learn more about the airlines implosion, the best travel movies, the amazing story of Tunnel 29, bring you the best Covid-19 coverage, we learn more about the Fed, relief comes to self employed and gig workers, we see how awful the outbreak has been for the restaurant industry and a LOT more you guys. All here again for freeeeeeeeeeee. I almost bring it to you for free like I did not have other things to do with my time…why I keep doing this, what is wrong with me?
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COVID-19
Great site to track the pandemic in the US.
This is excellent! Obama’s Ebola Czar on What Strong Federal Response Looks Like. Ron Klain explains why government needs to speak with one voice—and what he’d do if he were in charge.
The high-level lessons applicable today are, first and foremost, let the medical experts be the touchstone of the responses—let them be the people who are formulating this strategy, let them be the spokespeople. And, secondly, use every power that the federal government has to harness that direction into effective action, whether that’s getting the right equipment produced and put in the right places, whether it’s getting the right people mobilized and put in the right places. The federal government has vast power to do things if a president is willing to use it effectively. Those are the two things, by the way, that are both missing from the current coronavirus response.
Tony Fauci is a national treasure. Tony can be most effective by being a part of this administration. He understands that to help us all, he has to work with Donald Trump. But he has done it without compromising his well-deserved reputation for telling the truth. In my Ebola team, when public anxiety rose, we had an abbreviation in the office: PTFOTV, which stood for ‘Put Tony Fauci on TV.’ That was our main response on the communications side. That would be my advice to the Trump administration as well: PTFOTV.
Another must read: Pandemics and the Shape of Human History. Takes you on a trip through history of pandemics. You will see the responses are so uneven across the board.
Even the mathematics of outbreaks varies dramatically from case to case. As Adam Kucharski, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the author of “The Rules of Contagion” (forthcoming in the U.S. from Basic Books), points out, the differences depend on such factors as the mode of transmission, the length of time an individual is contagious, and the social networks that each disease exploits. “There’s a saying in my field: ‘if you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen . . . one pandemic,’ ” he writes. Among the few predictions about covid-19 that it seems safe to make at this point is that it will become the subject of many histories of its own.
What makes this virus so alarming is the asymptomatic carriers. What We Need to Understand About Asymptomatic Carriers if We’re Going to Beat Coronavirus. Article goes deep into these carriers and has some suggestions on how to deal with this “dastardly bug“.
…not only can people be infected and experience no symptoms or very mild symptoms for the first few days, but this coincides with when the so-called viral load — the amount of virus being emitted from an infected person’s cells — may be the highest. That makes the virus a truly formidable opponent in our densely packed, globally connected world. We’re going to have to be smarter than this virus to stay on top of it.
TIME Magazine has a collection of great stories: Heroes of the Front Lines.
I have been consistent in shouting that the US response to this pandemic has been downright disastrous. These next three articles deliver an epic beating on the current administration and the clearly inadequate moron leading it…it just baffles me how anyone of intelligence can defend such series of phuckups, wow!
He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus.
How Did the U.S. End Up with Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags?
This Is What Happens When a Narcissist Runs a Crisis
So many things have changed in our daily lives…One of them is funerals. I Buried My Grandfather on Zoom. Of course, the more tragic moment is that victims die alone without their loved ones…how horrible is that!
Visualizing What COVIC-19 Does To Your Body.
Great short video on how South Korea handled the virus outbreak: The Big Lesson from South Korea’s coronavirus response. I am not going to put up the numbers here again of the number of cases and dead between US and South Korea.We are trying to deal with this and learn from history: 5 lessons from World War II for the coronavirus response.
1) Centralize and coordinate the government’s purchases of medical equipment, including personal protective gear
2) Repurpose existing institutions and take advantage of existing expertise
3) Availability of materials is a key constraint
4) The crisis itself creates strong incentives for manufacturing firms to produce critical equipment
5) The evidence supports a strategy of relief now and stimulus after the pandemic
I have said before here how surprised I am how Greece has handled the crisis so well. And the state of Ohio too with its Republican Governor who very early “got it” and moved with drastic measures while we were being told in Washington that everything was under control, the virus will magically disappear (WTF!!!!!) and what a fantastic job they were all doing, smh. Ohio also made this amazing video too: Flatten The Curve. Leadership matters!
MILES & POINTS
HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: New: The CitiBusiness AAdvantage Platinum now offers 70k AA miles. There is an offer for the United Explorer card offering 60,000 miles. The IHG Rewards Club card offering 140k points too, highest ever. For a standard workhorse card I recommend the 60k Chase Sapphire Preferred card. For a standard premium card I recommend the 50k Chase Sapphire Reserve card. For a standard 2% cash back card I recommend the Citi Double Cash card. Available with my links. Lets move on!
Not much is happening with almost no travel going on…Airlines and hotels have taken action to extend elite statuses, extend certificates and free nights and many other measures trying to hang on to their customers for the eventual return to the skies and hotels. We all long for that while stuck at home…
IHG Rewards also extended the free nights. Good, I had one expiring in August so it is good to now have it expired in December.
TRAVEL
These are some brutal presentation slides on the state of flying for the airlines, omg! Impact of COVID-19: Data Updates.
Well, we can’t travel but we can watch movies at home! 60 Best Travel Movies that Inspire Wanderlust.
What a shot of the Greek Parliament building in Athens!
Lol! Every party in San Francisco.
PERSONAL FINANCE
This may help some of you: Here’s What the Relief Packages Give Self-Employed Workers.
Very educational infographic: The Fed’s Balance Sheet: The Other Exponential Curve.
ODDZ & ENDZ
Wow, what a find, what a story! Who brings you stuff like this huh? You know how demoralizing it is to put hours into a single post and then check my “stats” and see not many are reading my blog and almost nobody clicks on anything to at least give me the illusion that somebody even cares! Ahhh, that felt good so where were we? Oh yeah, this story is AMAZING: The Story of Tunnel 29. Must click, trust me! Escaping East Berlin underneath it. I once did that but I took a train from West to East Berlin!
Amazing resource: The Social Distancing Festival. This is a site for celebrating art from all over the world, showcasing amazing talent, and coming together as a community at a time when we need it more than ever.
I have a couple of articles how the virus has just ravaged the restaurant industry:
By the Numbers: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Continues to Devastate the Restaurant Industry – The charts are just brutal!
“It Was Gone Overnight” One restaurant’s struggle to weather the pandemic. – If you did not shed a tear after reading this, well, you can leave!
Working from home, this guy is amazing!
Comparing Obama and Trump pandemic preparedness. LOL, this is brilliant!
BLOG BUZZ
We are now entering BLOG BUZZ, a section for advanced hobbyists and veterans of this fast imploding hobby and also a section where I go on and on about some stuff that happens in my life because it helps me feel better about myself.
That was a weird Easter stuck at home…
At least I go out and run, here are the miles I have covered the past three weeks: 28.2, 31.1, 27.3. Now if I could only stop eating…
I am missing sports. Then again, I am not really missing them as much as I thought. This is all so weird.
There are only three days now: yesterday, today and tomorrow.
And I leave you with this…
TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
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Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
Good morning!
Thanks for the.links. Too bad the Wall Street Journal is gated. There have been terrific articles of late.
I am a subscriber. Sometimes their editorial page pisses me off but I don’t read it 🙂
It pisses you off. But you don’t read it.
It sound’s like you are having a Biden moment. Perhaps your wife (or your sister) , should do a mental intervention.
yawn
There are ways. A few decades ago I would not have said this, but you should pay for great journalism. It’s a dying art form critical to democracy. Slowly killed by predominantly Facebook. Actually the biggest threat is to rural areas. Few citizens will have time to check on their representatives.
Also Craigslist as far as killing off the classified ad departments which were THE most profitable ads per column-inch. There are already newspapers going out of business and more will fall. A lot of the ones left will be zombie papers at best.
>>>>>>>> you should pay for great journalism
I agree. Everything you do NOT want to lose you should pay for it!
It is so easy blaming China, Facebook, Trump, FoxNews…for everything 🙂
Yeah, newspapers have been going down for a while, even Warren Buffett recently bailed out of them
Sometimes it’s that obvious. FB could have easily taken a symbiotic approach and given local newspapers a kickback. Instead FB kept all the advertising $$. And now we are stuck with a shItload of fake news links on FB while local news are dying. I agree that losing revenue from classifieds was a major factor as well. In short, local news paper were unable to make money online which normally would fine. However, it leaves to door wide open for crooked politicians to exploit the system.
Maybe it is the deplorables’ fault 🙂
That photo was taken by someone while a delivery guy stopped to take a photo of the building with the Spanish flag..WOW, thanks for that
Looks like I have enough to read for today at home, really appreciate you sticking with this while your favorite blog Frugal Travel Guy bit the dust #legacy
Thanks for the kind words!
Yeah, FTG..what a sad legacy indeed.
The Big Lesson from South Korea.. and Taiwan in particular is – Don’t trust China.
There’s a reason why the countries near China: Taiwan and South Korea (and Japan..) have handled this really well: They are used to misinformation coming out of China.
The SARS outbreak started back in Nov 2002, but China suppressed the information until Feb 2003 and thereafter they continually under reported the number of cases. Taiwan learned from this and kept their temperature and health screening checks in place for months after China told WHO that they were free from the virus. They know that you can’t trust China.
That’s why Taiwan enforced stringent controls of people from Wuhan starting already on the last day of December 2019. At that time there were only 27 cases in total reported in China. China also claimed that there was no human to human transmission. China kept suppressing information for the rest of January giving the virus ample time to spread all over the world while feeding incorrect information to the WHO.
It’s not by chance that Taiwan and South Korea took drastic measures early on against the virus. China’s neighboring countries are very experienced in how China handles information regarding viruses or just information in general.
Perhaps that is the real lesson to learn for the west
I do not contest much of what you are saying. At all.
BUT….still…WTF does that have to do with how we in the US were caught so unprepared huh? THAT is my point! Our responses was disastrous and I would rate it a big fat 0/10. Period. That was, is and will be my main point dude.
Why the phuck we did not learn anything? At all? We could have imposed that “ban” to flights from China WAY earlier and made it a real phucking BAN instead of making it appear like a Swiss cheese type of ban with so many thousands STILL making it to the US.
Perhaps the real reason for the West was to be better phucking prepared!
You all have a good day!
We spend $100s of billions on intelligence. We knew, but our dear leader decided to ignore or hope that it would go away. In contrast senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler took action!
@ABC,
LOL – no doubt.
Here’s the apology that should be said at the next political Kabuki theater disguised as a press conference:
https://blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-observations/index.php/dear-nation-a-series-of-apologies-on-covid-19/2020/04/06/
When solving a disruption you typically go through a set of steps:
1. Detect the problem
2. Identify one or several solutions
3. Implement the solution
4. Evaluate
I’m focusing on number #1 – time to detection – and maybe a bit on #2. You are mostly addressing #3 – the response to the problem and it’s failure.
So to answer your question, how does this relate to why the US was late to respond and ill prepared? – let’s continue the comparison with Taiwan
Taiwan got hit badly by SARS (economy + deaths). They learned the hard way that they simply can’t trust China. And when the going gets tough, don’t expect any help from them either. They created new policies based on what they learned and drew up plans for how to tackle a future outbreak. It became part of their “muscle memory”. Taiwan got burned once and they vowed to never get burned again.
The US on the other hand was not badly hit by SARS, no deaths and only minor economic damage. It didn’t hurt enough to leave a “mark” for the west to learn.
When the new Corona virus started spreading many scientists drew parallels to SARS. Taiwan and the US reacted according to what they learned last time. Taiwan enforced strict controls at the first sign of trouble out of China while the US took a wait and see approach.
Could the US have acted at the same time / in the same was as Taiwan? – I highly doubt it would’ve been possible politically regardless of the party in control. WHO spoke out strongly against flight restrictions – even when the US finally enacted restrictions at the end of January.
I think the US is gradually waking up to the same lesson as Taiwan got with SARS, except this time the pain is 10x worse.
“A smart person learns from his mistakes, but a truly wise person learns from the mistakes of others.”
I know utterly few people I would call consistently wise, even fewer are politicians. The best we can hope for is that they learn something from their mistakes as they go along.
Dear SavoryPea:
It is April 13. You are stuck in January!
We have a mess on our hands. Because this administration did not protect us and…downplayed the threat all along….I mean, we have addressed that numerous times here and you seem to totally ignore it and want to go back to 1 and 2…there is no going back to 1 and 2 on this one…hopefully we get that right with the next virus…based on how this crisis was addressed by this govt…hopefully, we are all alive in November to take revenge on these mfers!
Bill’s link was awesome, everything laid out…So, I wonder how would YOU rate the administration’s handling of the pandemic calamity currently underway huh? 3 out of 10?
Taiwan not trusting China is like saying Stephen Miller is not racist, come on!
Oh, I agree that the response in the US has been particularly bad. I was recently debating with some friends on this exact issue. The question was, “is there any country handling the crisis worse than the US?”.
My friend from Spain: Spain, Brazil and Mexico. My friend from Mexico thought that Mexico is handling it way worse. Myself: I think Brazil might be the one country handling this worse than the US.. Are we more critical of our origin countries?
I think we’re all in agreement here that the response has been really bad, not just in the US, but all of the West. For the future it’s important to look at what lessons we can learn from this – regardless if it’s #1 or #3.
>>>>>>Oh, I agree that the response in the US has been particularly bad.
Rate it. 3 out of 10?
I agree with your friend from Spain.
All of the West? I can think of one right off the bat…Greece!
For the future, sure I agree we can start at #1…That is not helping now
I don’t think any reaction in regard to China would have done much… https://nationalpost.com/news/covid-19-u-s-coronavirus-outbreak-came-from-europe-flights-not-china-say-researchers
From KGB playbook: Keep insisting a false narrative until people believe it…
Hillary’s emails/Benghazi/HunterBiden/Russian hoax/FakeNewsMedia….and on and on and on.
I got my SARS information from the very well sourced Wikipedia entry on SARS. It details, albeit in nicer words, China’s lies and misinformation, with rock solid sources.
What part of the narrative is false?
Do you think a reaction to China would have helped Europe?
It’s not up for debate where the virus came from. 1. Start screening against that area first. 2. start screening against countries/areas that fail to do step 1. etc.
The US, Europe and some other countries in Asia failed at step 1. Then again at Step 2..
US is number 1 right? Putting America First and all that crap. So how come we totally phucked it up how we responded here? That has been my issue when everyone is trying to defect blame…it was not supposed to happen here in the richest country in the world…having doctors wear garbage bags to protect themselves!
Regarding #1, blame is on scientists and the CDC. we decided to reinvent the wheel and develop a “NEW” test that failed miserably and resulted in a much delay shut down and the DEATH of tens of thousands of innocent Americans.
Meanwhile most countries used the WHO approved test developed in Germany.
Definitely contributed, no doubt! But you know the buck stops you know where…
I agree.
I am simple shocked that the CDC would be this incompetent. 3 years into this, I am not surprised Trump failed us. I just didn’t think science would.
Been getting some weird new additions into the affiliate program of my cc affiliate vendor. Today’s “partner” is the most weird….Excited to announce the addition of the latest partner, please sit down:
South Beach Diet
Just stab me, LOL!
If Trump had been the captain of the Titanic
1. There is no iceberg
2. We won’t hit the iceberg
3. We barely touched the iceberg
4. Nobody could’ve seen the iceberg
5. These deaths mean my plan worked
6. I’m the best captain ever
7. The iceberg was left by the Obama administration
I agree.
I am simple shocked that the CDC would be this incompetent. 3 years into this, I am not surprised Trump failed us. I just didn’t think science would.
What can you expect after the 3 years of budget cuts, positions remaining unfilled and firing those that participated in the pandemic response briefing that didn’t pledge undying loyalty? The CDC in its current state is the proverbially one-legged man in an ass kicking contest
What Bill said 🙂
All you had to do was to follow an already established WHO approved protocol. This isn’t rocket science. Instead, CDC decided to reinvent the wheel and failed. They were not resource limited at the assay development stage. Biggest modern scientific error in the US.
Give it a rest, ABC
Sure, let’s screw facts.
Amazon at all time high. Who said this pandemic was bad for the richest person (and ex-wife) in the world??
Talk about luck, within two months the entire brick and mortar competition has been eliminated.
The bull market recovered quickly from the Chinese flu.
Their next purchase? The USPS.
Looks like Dan is back with another Op-Ed in the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/
At this point we can only speculate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. It is very troubling that China is suppressing efforts to investigate and publish information about its potential origin. It will be hard to address future threats if don’t have a reasonable handle on this one.
Can I get a test please?
With one conversion this month…lets stick a fork in this, see you Friday.
Give it up man…join Mile Nerd and move on!
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-rates-for-affiliate-program.html
Lovely intro by AMZN
“ Hello Associate,
We hope you are staying well during this time. We are writing to inform you …..”
That your earnings will be reduced and you will have no way to pay your mortgage this months
Have a wonderful day. You are amazing!
——-
Do you need any more evidence that AMZN is a monopoly?
No…
Blogs everywhere are hurting big time…
I need to fire the intern asap!
Good thing she is imaginary lol
Yea, but when will things get back to something more normal? No later than June we will need to get the economy going. Sorry, but we won’t have all the technology to follow SK’s example. People will just have to use common sense. At least hospitals won’t be overwhelmed.
After Friday’s post you may reassess this “getting back to normal” thingie… #hint
Now that Amazon is cutting back on affiliate commissions, it’ll be safe to read Dan’s Deals again.
(Also, sorry for your loss, TBB)
Great summary on challenges and prospects for COVID19 vaccine development
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects
Mr. Panos – Your sense of humor, perhaps?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvl9N9GdraQ
Mr. Panos – Your sense of humor, perhaps?
search on youtube mr panos financial crisis