Covid-19 Risks, Airbnb Layoffs, Countries Beating Covid-19, Nuclear Bunkers and Pringles

We bring your all about the Covid-19 risks, Airbnb layoffs, which countries are beating Covid-19, blogging from my nuclear bunker while eating Pringles, I advise readers to not buy miles/points again, we travel to London, Peru, Yemen and other places, best photography links again, advise you not to touch your 401(k) if you lost your job if you can, how Warren Buffett loves index funds to get back at former TBB troll Rick, we go back to 2007 to revisit yet another amazing goal in my hometown soccer team’s history and lots more you guys. Stay healthy and strong!

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COVID-19

A must read: The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them. By Erin S. Bromage, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

After reading this, I feel much more informed and ready to face the risk of catching this virus. I highly encourage you to read this, it may save your life. Which has been one of the ulterior motives in keeping my blog alive. Yeah, it sounds strange huh? But it is true. Ok, lets get back on track. Beware, the site may not be up, the post went viral. Oops, that expression is probably not recommended in this new world!

Remember the formulae: Successful Infection = Exposure to Virus x Time

The biggest super-spreading events are:

• Meat packing: In meat processing plants, densely packed workers must communicate to one another amidst the deafening drum of industrial machinery and a cold-room virus-preserving environment. There are now outbreaks in 115 facilities across 23 states, 5000+ workers infected, with 20 dead.
  

• Weddings, funerals, birthdays: 10% of early spreading events

• Business networking: Face-to-face business networking like the Biogen Conference in Boston in March. Or the businessman from Maine who spread the disease to Malaysia while on a business trip.

The reason to highlight these different outbreaks is to show you the commonality of outbreaks of COVID-19. All these infection events were indoors, with people closely-spaced, with lots of talking, singing, or yelling. The main sources for infection are home, workplace, public transport, social gatherings, and restaurants. This accounts for 90% of all transmission events. In contrast, infections while shopping appear to be responsible for 3-5% of infections.

When assessing the risk of infection (via respiration) at the grocery store or mall, you need to consider the volume of the air space (very large), the number of people (restricted), how long people are spending in the store (workers – all day; customers – an hour). Taken together, for a person shopping: the low density, high air volume of the store, along with the restricted time you spend in the store, means that the opportunity to receive an infectious dose is low.

If you are sitting in a well ventilated space, with few people, the risk is low.

This post reveals the national plan to fight Covid-19. Here it is: There Is No Plan. In case you have not noticed.

Why is the U.S. story so exceptional? As with everything in this pandemic, the story is complicated, and given how many levels of American government and leadership stumbled in their response, and how many nations and international institutions failed in the early stages, we should be careful not to overly attribute final outcomes of the disease to any single political decision or leader. But, in this case, what counts as “overly”? As the pandemic wears on, and even those other countries that had been slow to respond to the crisis turn their own corners, it is increasingly hard to hang our failures on anything but the president’s refusal to lead, and the total vacuum that has opened up at the heart of what should have been the country’s disease response. No clear federal clinical guidelines, no comprehensive national strategy of social distancing or shelter in place, no clearinghouse of best practices about how to avoid spreading the disease. No rapid mass production of PPE or other necessary equipment. And above all no use of federal powers to build out testing or contact-tracing capacity.

I have seen this moronic Plandemic loadofmegashit video online. Come on, stop falling for this non sense. The “Plandemic” conspiracy video, explained.

Just goes to show you how different the experiences in treating sick patients is with this new virus: These Michigan doctors treated coronavirus: Here’s what they learned. And maybe ventilators were over rated and we will likely have a glut, go short on ventilators! And some patients take a really long time to get over the virus. A really long time!

Just when you think you understand COVID, it changes. “It’s a very deceptive virus; to keep up with it, it is a challenge,” said Dr. Teena Chopra, corporate medical director for Hospital Epidemiology and Infection Control at Detroit Medical Center and a Wayne State University professor. “And particularly, it is manifesting differently by age, by race, by sex.

This is really good advice on what to do: A Guide to Staying Safe as States Reopen. Can I eat at a restaurant? Can I go shopping? Can I hug my friends again? Experts weigh in.

The graphs are amazing. Yes, we here in the US have a long way to go, sad! Which countries do best in beating covid-19?

When you put it all together with this new virus…we just don’t know because, please sit down, it is so new!

MILES & POINTS

HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: New: The CitiBusiness AAdvantage Platinum now offers 70k AA 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!

I don’t have much here. I am not going to force on you inconsequential posts about gift card promos or Amex offers or whatever. I never did this before and not about to start now that we are living in a new travel reality. We start seeing some amazing cash fares by the way so when you see bloggers go on and on about traveling for free only if you click on their $$$ credit card links you can tell them to, well, whatever you want to tell them, just be nice. Or, even better, walk away and only support blogs that make a positive difference in your life. Especially ones that are independent and only have a few means of support! Like mine#hint.

Anyway, if you can fly round trip to Brazil for $200 why are you not just using a 2% cash back card for all your spending? And why even buy miles/points at this pandemic stage we are in, huh? I do like Dan’s disclaimer on top of the post about this deal, here it is:

Disclaimer: The health of DansDeals readers is this website’s paramount concern. For your sake and the sake of those around you, the best way for society to make it through COVID-19 with the lowest mortality rate is by staying at home. That being said, some people still need to travel home, others need to travel for essential or emergency purposes, and people can try to book for after they think COVID-19 will no longer be a threat. Remember to travel responsibly and take precautions as suggested by your local authorities to avoid spreading the virus.

Go back and read the first article in this post. Because I DO care about you and your health. Which should always come first, always!

TRAVEL

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.

Allen Iverson with one of the best tweets of all time! If you don’t get it and laugh…what can I say?

A noticeable quote from a conference I attended last week…online. “Scammers follow the headlines”.

The cat is sick of your shit!

Look, I have never been a fan of buying miles/points when these travel companies sell them. It is recommended in EXTREMELY rare circumstances, as in, saving cash (true miles/points hobbyists always have some in the bank for true emergency trips!) AND booking right away (assuming cash fare did not go up…if it is even still there). This stance is not new. Don’t get me started that doing this only leads to eventual devaluations faster (LifeMiles anyone?). What is also not new is me stating the fact that bloggers make a lot of money by promoting this practice while pushing their affiliate links to their unsuspecting readers. This has nothing to do with having a blog niche by the way. Actually, I mean, look at this post. I dedicate one paragraph to this episode (Update: Added another one and an amazing photo below). So I made my long held stance public because I like to educate of course. I never thought of this blogger who apparently got really touchy about it and wished me I go back to my nuclear bunker (I wish I had one!) and eat my Pringles (I have been thinking about them ever since, I used to be a huge fan back in college lol). All I can say is things are really tough out there in travel land, I mean, they are all going through an existential crisis right now. But it is a new reality folks. And be kind to new parents, some of us have been there!

Breaking: Avianca, the airline behind LifeMiles, just filed for bankruptcy.

Speaking about businessmen…these two posts showed up almost at the same time. Do you think they both came up with 9 and 6 reasons to sell yet another travel rewards credit card? Or is it because… Sometimes I wonder if I did the same type of pumping/selling credit cards my conversion ratio would not be so abysmal huh? Yes, this card is available with my links, you can be first, shock me!

Wanna guess which side I belong?

Miles & points is a crazy HOBBY. U have to be mentally wired in a certain way, to put it mildly lol. Sadly, over the years it has become a big BUSINESS selling u a certain lifestyle. All TRAVEL related business right now are facing an existential crisis. Hobbyists are just bored.

Lets do another soccer story again. You all know I am a life long fan of AEL, the soccer team in my Greek hometown Larisa. We have a long history with our team. Back in the late 70s for a decade it was the Golden era that concluded with one of the epic feats of all sports, winning the Greek league championship in 1988. I wrote about it in this post with THE goal that meant everything on May 1, 1988. During that decade the team won another title (the Greek Cup) in 1985 and also made it to the final of the Greek Cup in 1982 and 1984 but lost both times. I remember going to Athens in 1982 with my dad to watch that Cup Final and remember so vividly how early in the game we almost scored first…how we all started celebrating as the ball was slowly and clearly was going into the net and how the ball bounced awkwardly on the awful pitch just inches from the goal line and changed direction only to hit the post and go out of bounds…If that had gone in, we would be all celebrating on the bus instead of bitching of yet another awful officiating performance favorable (again) to the rich team from Athens. Amazingly, the referee in the 1982 Greek Cup Final was the father of the referee who officiated the Cup Final in 2007 and it was the same two opponents again!

Ok, lets get back into it. I was in the US with commitments and I just could not travel back to Greece. The location of each Cup Final is picked before the season starts and that year we were lucky that the game was assigned to be played in nearby Volos, less than an hour away! So, the stadium was full of our fans so thirsty for the renaissance of our team back where it belonged! Huge underdogs again. I was in Chicago attending a conference that day. The game was at 8.30 am Chicago time and of course I left with my team jersey and scarf and walked to Greektown desperately looking for any local establishment showing the game on TV. I found one restaurant and everyone was a fan of the opposing team lol. We started superbly with a header in the 2nd minute to go ahead but the other team tied with a penalty kick just before halftime. And then in the 81st minute this magic happened, this player from Gabon on loan to our team from a Spanish club broke away and BANG, another goal that will remain in the history of the club!

Oh man…I wish I was there, this is what happened in the stands! And some other pics from that day. And something really weird happened that day. As I was watching the game in that restaurant in the Chicago Greektown a young man came in. The owner told me the kid is also from Larisa, he was new in the States and he was working there as a waiter. He introduced him to me and I found out he was from my neighborhood and as we talked I learned he also knew my cousin who had passed away in 1999 way too young. Talk about small world, wow.

With two credit card conversions in April and one in May…the momentum may be weakening for my blog to take over The Points Guy Inc., so sad! If these links are taken away I will join Mile Nerd to post once a month and move on, it is almost time after almost 8 years here. Then I will turn this to a true hobby 🙂

Enjoy the week. Stay healthy and strong and…be patient.

And I leave you with this…

TBB
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