COVID-19 Megathread 4: Grandma Got Run Over by the Dow Jones

[Virginiá]

New megathread started.

Old thread: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=365781.0

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Newsweek just released an article titled FDR, REAGAN AND OBAMA WON RE-ELECTION WITH MORE THAN 7% UNEMPLOYMENT. AMID CORONAVIRUS, COULD TRUMP?



but what they forgot to point out is that every one of those presidents entered office when things were already going bad but by time the election came around the economy improved enough for all 3 of them to be reelected

Trump on the other hand entered office when things were going good but now the economy has fallen off a cliff and many have now died because of his lackluster response to the virus at the start

So good luck trying to sell a record like that to voters in November because at the rate things are currently going Trump is going to need all the luck he can get lol  

A couple of stray observations:

1. Trump's entire selling point was bringing jobs back. 15% unemployment kind of undermines that, regardless of its cause. Very bad for Trump.

2. The complete binary ideological sorting of our country means Trump voters are predisposed to crediting him for positive economic numbers and blaming forces outside his control for negative economic numbers. Good for Trump.

3. When you're out of work, you don't really care why. You're mad and you want change. Bad for Trump.

4. How you view the state of the economy when Trump took office is also determined by how you've been sorted. Trump voters thought Obama made a mess of things in his second term, while Hillary voters thought things were great. Good for Trump.

I think the sum total still comes out very poorly for Trump's re-election prospects, but so many things could happen in the next seven months. Trump gets constant, non-stop press coverage, Biden can't even hold rallies. And the halt to the primary season completely knocks Biden out of the 24-hour news cycle. That alone gives Trump a huge edge.

FWIW, studies done on voting behavior and the economy do show time and again that voters really only base their decisions on the economy as it exists during election year. How good or bad it was before that is not all that relevant. Of course, this only matters to the extent that they factor the economy in at all. There are a lot of partisans that simply won't change their vote, no matter what. That is how even Hoover gets 39.7%.

[Virginiá]

Isn't it the perception of where economy is going (near election) day that matters?

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Maybe, although one of the studies mentioned Q2 as being the most important. Can't find a link to it right now. Either way, how much of a rebound are we talking? Will the GDP recovery still be notably less than where it started? The drops we are seeing are so incredible that perhaps it overshadows the fact that plunging two dozen points and then surging about 70% of the way back is still a large drop overall. You're still going to have a lot of people whose livelihoods have been hurt, or maybe are still even out of a job, or have gotten a new job that pays less and/or has less benefits. And this is all assuming we have some sort of instant recovery. What if this stretches out into the summer? It's pretty easy to see America walking into election day with high unemployment and a very muted recovery - if it's even ongoing at that point.

Your guess is as good as mine, but there are enough studies to show that unless this country quickly makes the biggest and fastest recovery possibly ever, that the GOP is in for a world of hurt.

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The most important question is, who does the public blame? The real answer "Trump partially, but China more" is probably much too complicated for the public to digest. And if Trump does fail at pinning it on China, then his best bet is saying Ds would have handled it worse (judging from Biden calling the ban on travel to China racist and other stuff). Will the nation accept that? It's much too early to tell.

The cause of it doesn't matter.

It’s unlikely to matter, either, that the president bears little responsibility for a global economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus. Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels’s theory of “blind retrospection” suggests voters will reward or punish presidents for short-term changes in the election-year economy regardless of why they happened.

Mitch McConnell understands this. He didn't care that organizing the GOP against the stimulus under Obama would be unpopular, because by the time the next election came around, voters would be focused on Obama and the general state of the economy. If the stimulus helped, Obama would get credit for a better economy. If it didn't, or if there was no stimulus, they would still blame Obama. Yeah, maybe partisan Democrats remember what the GOP did, but they were never going to vote for the GOP anyway.

TL;DR elections are determined for dumber reasons than people think

[Virginiá]

Said no sane person ever.

I won't obey it for 2 months.

The problem here is that if everyone had that same thought, and there was no lock down, the virus would spread like wildfire, completely overwhelm the healthcare system, and we'd be looking at worst-case scenarios in terms of deaths. The fact that even Trump is moving the goalposts to 100,000 - 200,000 deaths is bad enough, but do you really want million(s) dead? It's a pretty simple question here: Without a vaccine immediately available, how many people do you want to die (or get terribly ill and possibly suffer long-term lung damage) so life can go on as normal for the rest?

Few people enjoy the isolation and anxiety that comes with shutting down society. I'm going stir-crazy myself, even though FL's policy and the response to it is so lax I could technically just go about my business (minus a job) - except that this virus could easily be fatal for my mom if I were to pass it to her.

[Virginiá]

https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0

There’s another, entirely logical explanation for why stores have run out of toilet paper — one that has gone oddly overlooked in the vast majority of media coverage. It has nothing to do with psychology and everything to do with supply chains. It helps to explain why stores are still having trouble keeping it in stock, weeks after they started limiting how many a customer could purchase.

In short, the toilet paper industry is split into two, largely separate markets: commercial and consumer. The pandemic has shifted the lion’s share of demand to the latter. People actually do need to buy significantly more toilet paper during the pandemic — not because they’re making more trips to the bathroom, but because they’re making more of them at home. With some 75% of the U.S. population under stay-at-home orders, Americans are no longer using the restrooms at their workplace, in schools, at restaurants, at hotels, or in airports.

Georgia-Pacific, a leading toilet paper manufacturer based in Atlanta, estimates that the average household will use 40% more toilet paper than usual if all of its members are staying home around the clock. That’s a huge leap in demand for a product whose supply chain is predicated on the assumption that demand is essentially constant. It’s one that won’t fully subside even when people stop hoarding or panic-buying.

Pretty good points here!

[Virginiá]

This week, the trash bags were restocked. There were about three lonely packs of toilet paper on one end of the vast shelf (50 feet?), down by the trash bags. I really had to think about grabbing a pack, even though I only buy toilet paper every few months.

I imagine part of the reason is that it's so easy to deplete a store's stock of paper products because they take up a lot of space - the multi-roll packs, anyway.

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https://twitter.com/alexkotch/status/1246797807094239239

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The question for everybody here is why do y'all pay attention to what limo liberal or Russian Bear have to say

Hard to believe it's been almost 2 years since he was banned from Congressional board and yet he's still pushing his low-effort troll act.

For gods sakes Limo, let it go. It's not funny.

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Temporary Burials to Begin for COVID-19 Victims, Possibly in Trenches in NYC Parks: Levine

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/nyc-to-start-temporary-burials-for-covid-19-victims-likely-in-trenches-in-nyc-parks-levine/2361777/

New York City will soon need to face the "gruesome reality" of temporary burials, and they could take place in trenches dug in city parks, NYC Council Health Committee chair Mark Levine said in a tweet Monday morning.

Due to the number of dead bodies increasing on a daily basis due to COVID-19, the freezers at OCME facilities in Manhattan and Brooklyn will soon be full, Levine said.

This means that the city will probably have to turn to temporary internment in city parks, Levine said. "Trenches will be dug for 10 caskets in a line. It will be done in a dignified, orderly -- and temporary -- manner. But it will be tough for NYers to take," he wrote.

Soon after -- as the tweet gained attention -- the chair added that trenches in parks were only a contingency the city was preparing for. "But if the death rate drops enough it will not be necessary." The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner told NBC 4 it was a scenario in the OCME disaster plan, but not something currently being considered or planned for.

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https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1246481679910404096

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https://twitter.com/JMcGuireMLB/status/1247301151948759046

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https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/08/trump-evangelicals-coronavirus-china-174197

President Donald Trump’s evangelical boosters want China to pay a price for its handling of the coronavirus — preferably before voters deliver their verdict on Trump at ballot boxes this fall.

While Trump has vacillated between lauding China’s “transparency” and labeling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus,” some senior officials in his administration have lobbed their own criticisms at Beijing for its ongoing response to the coronavirus outbreak, which is widely believed to have originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. In mid-March, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien claimed China “cost the world community two months” of preparation by concealing the extent of the outbreak in Wuhan.

So does America also get reparations for the damage caused by Trump downplaying the threat of COVID-19, encouraging his supporters and Fox News to treat it as a new hoax, and generally wasting valuable time pretending it wasn't a problem while it spread throughout the country?

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I'm literally f__king CRYING of laughter. This guy is funnier than any comedian ever has been or ever could be.

https://youtu.be/zi_qX50zv7k

Who ever said evangelical Republicans were good for nothing?

Looks like he can barely container his own laughter

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Dude looks so bad ass. He will beat covid to a pulp.

Breaking news: Coronavirus tests positive with Neal Dunn.

Breaking News: Grassr00ts tests positive with Florida Man crush

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"Increase standard weekly unemployment benefits by $600 for the next four months."

That is if you can actually get on unemployment benefits to begin with. I can tell you for a fact that Florida's system, which was designed by Rick Scott to be barely usable (both technically and in terms of rules/regulations, for political reasons), and has been trashed in local media for weeks because of a website that barely functions and crashes seemingly every day, phone numbers that are constantly busy (iirc, by the department's own statistics, only a mere fraction of the million+ calls were answered), and few benefits are actually being paid out. As far as I know, it's like this in some other states, to a lesser degree. Then you also have to know that even in a well-functioning system, not everyone qualifies, even if they were employed at the time of this pandemic.

Depending on what state you live in, the unemployment boost from the stimulus is easily next to useless because you can't collect any benefits whatsoever anyway.

[Virginiá]

So they will have to fix it. Most people will get their money. Likely later than sooner, because US system wasn't designed for that.

Not only R struggles. Not only because of R.

In Florida's case, the issue has been severely compounded because of 'R struggles.' Few states could be capable of handling the immense flood of benefit applications in a timely fashion, but it works better when you don't design the system to fail so businesses can pay less unemployment taxes because less people are able to collect.

Kind reminder:
Pr. Hillary would never get such a good Populist Stimulus through Congress because Evil Republicans wouldn't let her.
Pr. Cruz would never get such a good Populist Stimulus through Congress because he is evil and wouldn't want to 

Right, Trump is able to get it done because he loves nothing more than spending other people's money, and can force the GOP to do whatever he wants.

Thank you for making the case Democrats have been making for years - that Republicans would, and indeed have already sabotaged the economy to try and win elections - unless a Republican is already in the White House.

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https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1248374630399672321
Mass graves... just one more day in Donald Trump's Great Republican America.

Keep America Great™

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My business lost 75% of its business 4 weeks before we had the stay at home order it was like night and day. Even if we reopen the economy theres a good chance most people still wont go out

Ditto. We rapidly dried up in the weeks before the official order. I don't even work in an actual store but there wasn't enough reason to keep me in the office.

I'm not expecting it to be viable to remain open until at least June. And that is putting aside health-related concerns...

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https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1248754364388384768

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The issue with President Clinton handling this crisis is that she would likely handle the actual pandemic much better, but the economic aid would be extremely lacking, as Republicans would likely hold both chambers of Congress and would give her some variation of the Obama treatment - No to basically everything, and extreme austerity is the only solution. If they wouldn't agree to Obama's relatively modest 800 billion dollar stimulus, why would they agree to something several times that from Clinton? And in an election year? Dear lord, we'd be so screwed it's not even funny.

On a side note, everyone who actually cares about the economic recovery should be thinking ahead to what happens if Biden wins the presidency, but perhaps fails to carry a Democratic senate majority with him (or perhaps a very slim one). Republicans are going to go from generous stimulus mode to severe austerity mode again, since they no longer control the White House and want to win more elections in the future by crippling the economy and blaming it on Democrats.

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I'd love nothing more than for the lockdown to end, but I don't want a situation where we open society back up, infections/deaths start soaring again, and we end up having to close it down again anyway. That would be even more damaging to the economy and people's trust in how the crisis is being managed down to the local level.

You also have to consider that for the service sector of the economy, just because you officially "open" society doesn't mean people will start shopping / eating out again... This is doubly true if people resume getting sick at an exponential rate. Everyone will just continue staying away from non-essential places, and the economy will still be seriously damaged.

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https://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshh1Y36nhxWCE8C054k

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And this is making them richer?  Their situation is more analogous to the airlines after 9/11.  They're getting this money simply to keep their heads above water.

Really can't blame some for feeling negative about this since so many corporations have focused on enriching investors and executives instead of keeping any sort of rainy day fund, or in some cases, even keeping their business solvent when even the tiniest of unfavorable conditions creep up (not to say this isn't massively unfavorable, but point still stands). It's the kind of catastrophe that brings the worst excesses of corporations (from a left perspective anyway) to the forefront. And mind you, even with all of this in mind, Republicans still slammed Democrats as "obstructionists" for having the gall to demand a modicum of oversight over a massive amount of money flowing to these companies - oversight that is now being cast aside by a government oddly hell-bent on disbursing all this money with no accountability. Can't help but find this deeply ironic coming from the party that marches around calling themselves the "fiscally responsible" ones.

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Confederate Flags <-- ? --> Michigan

On vacation, I used to see confederate battle flags in Maine of all places. It's probably from people who used to live in the south, or had family from there. I also think that flag has in some quarters shifted from a southern symbol to a conservative symbol.