LinvilleGorge

70% of the U.S. economy is consumer spending. Unemployment is probably going to hit 30%. You can't snap your fingers out of that either.

Will it? How many of those stores and restaurants could make it through an entire cold/flu season with significantly reduced revenues? Unemployment numbers are going to stay sky high until their can be a full blown return to normalcy. Government stimulus efforts can only keep things artificially afloat for so long. Our current economy is a house of cards built on the widespread expectation of a quick V-shaped recovery. Once that becomes an obvious pipedream this fall I think poo is gonna get U-G-L-Y.

That's the thing. What makes it depression level is the prolonged length of time. Everyone thinks it's just going to bounce right back. It won't. The service industry is going to get massacred by this.

It's amazing how everyone has underestimated everything about the impact of this pandemic. Back in January, oh it won't come here. It did. Back in March, everything will be back open in a couple of weeks as this thing tails off. Two months later and stuff is just now starting to reopen. Now... "Assuming there won't be a second wave..." WTF??? A second wave is inevitable. The second wave WILL be worse and more widespread because it'll start at the beginning of cold/flu season, it'll last the whole season, and it'll be kicked off by an already widespread presence of the disease, not a new introduction. Everything we're seeing about "V-shaped recoveries", "quick bouncebacks", etc. all assume no second wave. It's delusional. It's not an outlook based in reality. All these economic bandaids can only last so long. The second wave will bring the economic reality of the true impact of this pandemic. With that said, I hope I'm absolutely dead wrong but I honestly think it's going to get Great Depression levels bad this fall through next spring, but I also think we can have a have a pretty robust recovery starting next summer because I think we'll likely have multiple vaccines starting to become widely available before we get to next year's cold/flu season but if I think it'll take 2-3 years to get back to pre-pandemic levels.

More and more states are starting to slowly open things back up.

The second wave hasn't hit either. The second wave of the Hong Kong flu was much worse than the first.

If you want to take a lesson from that pandemic, remember that the second wave was a lot worse than the first.

Probably a good time to shed employees since they likely need to anyway after the merger with Sprint. There are going to be a lot of stores close. Plenty of places where there's a T-Mobile store with a Sprint store basically or literally across the street.

Seems legit https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-europe/

Well, this is very significant if true... https://www.neweurope.eu/article/german-intelligence-says-chinas-xi-pressured-who-to-delay-global-warnings-about-covid-19-in-january/

If the mountains were bigger I'd probably move back permanently. The little town has come leaps and bounds since I was growing up there.

I grew up in Morganton. Yeah, Asheville is a different world now than it used to be. Still nothing compared to the Front Range transformation over the past decade.

I've loved Colorado, but the Front Range is just way too damn crowded now. All of the things I moved out here for 13 years ago are just a lot less enjoyable now due to the crowds. I-70 to and from the mountains is a total disaster. When we first moved out here, Charlotte traffic was way worse than Denver traffic. That comparison reversed probably 7-8 years ago. The streams are packed shoulder to shoulder with fishermen. The mountain biking and hiking trails are packed. The Jeep trails are almost as packed as I-70. The breweries are packed. I haven't completely ruled out a return to CO, but if it happens it'll be to the western slope. If it's a reasonable day trip from the Front Range, I don't want any part of it.

Yeah, I was already furloughed and we still expect my wife to be furloughed any day now. The house went under contract today though, so hopefully we'll be sitting on a pile of cash soon. I'd rather be sitting on a pile of cash right now than have a home with a considerable mortgage left on it. I'm still not convinced the housing market isn't going to take a big hit. This will allow us to bounce back to NC temporarily and let me focus all my attention on my business. Then we'll look to bounce back out west next summer. The wife green lit Montana and that's what got me motivated to sell the house here in Colorado.

This is how stimulus is supposed to work. I think a lot of it just went straight into a bank account though. I know mine did.

No desire. My two least favorite school subjects were foreign language and math. Programming is like a combination of both. I'd be miserable. Much thanks on helping hand, but it would just be an awful fit.

I absolutely would, but that's entirely out of my wheelhouse. Now if you need someone to sell something... well, holla!

Well, that backfired... https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/05/11/health-department-closes-castle-rock-opened-dining-room/

Sorry to hear it, man. The longer this goes the more people that are going to end up in this boat. I was furloughed over a month ago. If you haven't applied for unemployment stop whatever you're doing right now and do that right now. The systems are swamped. It might not be a quick process. We're fortunate that my wife hasn't been furloughed... yet. But her workplace has been talking furloughs and layoffs since the beginning of this, so honestly it won't be the least bit surprising if it happens.

Definitely concerning but also a rare complication. 85 total confirmed cases throughout the country.

We're at the point that if we don't start doing something we're going to be staring down the barrel of the Great Depression 2.0. We just need people to not be idiots which is the tough part. Start fining the poo out of people and maybe it'll have the desired effect.

We've flattened the poo out of it vs. projections. Now is the time to start opening back up but fining the poo out of people who aren't following precautions.

They're being sued by the County of Charleston, not the city. I was like, why the hell would the CITY of Charleston be suing over this and based on what grounds? I know Charleston well. My wife went to CofC and we lived down there for awhile. I like it, but you'll never catch me down there between between June and August. Absolutely oppressive heat.

All viruses mutate and evolve. All indications are that COVID mutates significantly more slowly than the flu. That should allow a vaccine to be more effective. Most viruses tend to evolve to become less lethal, not more so. Viruses that are less deadly are a lot more biologically successful. Just look at the common cold and common flu. Not very deadly, super biologically successful. MERS, SARS, Ebola, etc. Very deadly, not very biologically successful.

There's rednecks, people of low education, and just general morons everywhere. I gotta say, in my town there's a real effort to socially distance and mask wearing is close to 100%. But, there's no shortage of pretentious entitled assholes to deal with. You win some you lose some.