Walsh Hall

I'm not wearing a mask. If I feel at all ill I'm not going out. While out I practice social distancing and take all precautions to be courteous. It's funny how I don't recall people wearing masks before from October to April each year. Have you ever been to a nursing home before Old Fella? If you have, and you weren't wearing a mask, you are completely irresponsible and you may have given someone the flu and killed them.

I understand that there's basically a 100% chance that my kids will get it (if they haven't already). Isn't that a given? If the goal is to stop any child from getting any virus at all cost we are truly screwed.

Isn't New York's situation much more "special" than North Dakota's? What area with a population density and demographic profile similar to ND has been disproportionately hard hit? With the positive cases to date, and the medical results of those positive folks, what leads you to believe ND will turn into NY? All the testing in the world is not going to eliminate the virus. We're still likely to get it at some point in the next 8 months. In ND we haven't flattened the curve, we've crushed it. Any North Dakotan that gets the virus will get the best medical care we can provide. Nobody is going to be shipped to the Fargodome. Protect the vulnerable, be smart and let's get back to work

Hard to say. NYC is obviously a very different situation that almost anyway else in the world. My back of the napkin math indicates a fatality rate of around .5% if the percentages above are accurate. That's around 3 times higher than the typical flu. No doubt a very nasty bug. Still seems to indicate to me that the folks who are vulnerable should be sheltered in place, other folks carry on while exercising caution and with reasonable precautions.

He found the number of tests conducted disappointing, not the results of the tests. He wants a larger sample size.

Cuomo says that 13.9% of New Yorkers have had it based on antibody study. That's statewide. Logic would indicate that NYC would be significantly higher.

I suspect more "getting confirmation" than "learning".

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/she-got-a-paycheck-protection-loan-her-employees-hate-her-for-it.html More "unintended consequences" that was completely foreseeable to anyone with common sense...

I have gotten the impression that Burgum is not just looking at the positive cases and the %. He specifically indicated that some states will be meeting the downward criteria for opening up, but will still be having significantly more positive tests and a high percentage of positive tests than ND. I suspect we'll be learning much more about the actual spread of COVID in the next couple weeks. Maybe that will spur a systematic reopening.

I realize that the studies should be subject to scrutiny, but it's estimated that between 30K-50K death occur annually as a result of EACH percent increase in unemployment. It's a difficult metric to quantify, but something to consider.

The May contracts were (40.32) We could fill the strategic reserves and pay for the CARES Act all in one swoop!

Those are just the May contracts. Crazy situation. Oil on tankers and nobody really wanting to take it. The contracts settle tomorrow. June contracts are still in the 20's.

There can be a very fine line between malice, ignorance, and stupidity. It seems, and seemed, completely incomprehensible that the denominator is/was only the folks who have tested positive. Basing the fatality rate and models on the confirmed cases, or low multiples thereof, could very well be slanted more toward malice than ignorance. I find it hard to believe that the architects of the models are stupid, and they should be well aware of what they don't know. Let's hope the denominator is consist with the study posted above.

Sounds like some drug from Gilead is showing serious effectiveness. That would be phenomenal. DOW futures up over 700 on the news... Cross your fingers.

If that is the goal, and we abandon the "flatten the curve" strategy, we are screwed. Batten down the hatches for the next 18 months while we wait for a vaccine I guess.

Do you agree with the "experts" that the vast majority of folks will get the virus at some point? If so, it's a good time for not-at-risk folks to get it when there is plenty of medical capacity to get any treatment they may need. Are you opposed to the strategy of flattening the curve? That seems to be the universal goal, not having no curve (which isn't at all realistic)

If Spirko stayed for (4) years we would have had to win a natty one of the next (2) years. He was a sophomore in the lineup above.

That's good news. It seems the state has done a great job of preventing a spread through the nursing house/assisted living communities so far. Those situations in Fargo could have been a huge mess. Hopefully they won't be.

So, the point of social distancing is to "flatten the curve", correct? The whole point of "flattening the curve" is to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system, correct? But I am hearing stories that in most places, and certainly in ND, the healthcare system is by no means overwhelmed. In other words, people are not being hospitalized in the vast numbers predicted. So why flatten the curve if it is just prolonging the pain, so to say? Why not ease the restrictions a bit?I have always understood a certain (debatable) percentage of the people WILL contract Covid-19. Why prolong the pain if the healthcare system is capable of treating more cases than are being presented? Open up the economy for those whose risk factor is pretty low and get on with it. Our economy cannot tolerate too much more of this before we have a total collapse. That is not beneficial to anybody.

There is a legitimate debate as to the best way to mitigate the cumulative damage of COVID, everywhere from shutting everything down indefinitely, to doing absolutely nothing. That can be respectfully debated and the arguments can be supported by statistics. That's much different than bloviating about safety at a job you nothing about (I know not you personally...), when you don't know what happened, and just think that your "common sense" is smarter than people with actual knowledge. The "common sense" may very well not be possible and may cause far great danger to the employees.

Based on your first statement you should have enough common sense to not write the second.

It's wonderful that we have a processing plant expert in our midst that can educate us on the proper meat packing sanitation methods which can be utilized when dealing with pandemics, including the supply chain and health ramifications... I, admittedly, have no real clue on how to properly run a meat processing plant, and what steps can reasonable be taken to safeguard the employees. I'd be completely leaving my lane to question the day-to-day operations of such an operation. It's wonderful that you are an expert and can educate us... or just maybe you have absolutely no clue on how to operate a meat processing plant and you are pulling stuff out of your butt.

6 South Dakota deaths, all with preexisting conditions. Reading your posts you'd think that 1/2 the population has been killed.

Everyone cares. I care about everyone's physical health, mental health, and financial health. Seems that there are a thousand answers as to how we balance those. I'm not a paranoid guy, but I'm starting to have some concerns about civil unrest if this drags on months longer. This whole situation is causing a great deal of mental anguish that hopefully doesn't reach critical mass. Us northern folks have spring fever anyway. If law enforcement starts breaking up the kids playing hockey in the street or swinging at the park...

To a degree, and that's why the market absolutely, and historically, tanked. If you are buying stock in Walmart, you are more concerned with what Walmart's earning will be in 2021 and 2022 than the second quarter of 2020. If you are looking at the DOW as an indicator, you are only looking at large cap companies. That's a very poor indicator of the current state of the actual economy at the micro level. At the micro level things are no doubt horrible for way to many people. Not from the virus, but from the shut down.