Can someone explain the reason for a Covid surcharge? Or more precisely, calling out a specific charge on a bill beyond the price?

Here's a crazy idea - just raise your effin' prices!

Why piss people off by saying "This service/food costs X, and in addition to tax and tip, you owe us Y more because Covid has hurt our business." Covid has hurt everyone! Just charge what you need to stay in business and if it's more than people want to pay, they will go elsewhere.

This is one of those things where I feel like business owners are going out of their way to chase off customers.

lol That's okay.

As for the map, it should be free access. The Times has a lot of COVID coverage available for free.

I guess we have enough data to conclude the coronavirus is not as infectious (I think) but is much deadlier than the flu.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 vs. the Flu | Johns Hopkins Medicine

But flu leads in infections.

The Fight Club solution to this problem is to subtract the COVID surcharge from your tip so that you accomplish:

1. Making the employee subconsciously hostile toward their employer (or more hostile, depending on how they feel about working through a pandemic in the first place), and
2. If you depress tip income enough, then the employer has to pay actual minimum wage instead of $2 and change per hour, thus negatively impacting their bottom line.

I'm not saying it's a good solution, but Tyler Durden would approve.

My guess is that a Covid surcharge sounds less permanent.

I probably need to learn how to take care of leather (or faux or whatever it is) as I generally just leave it in my car so I never forget it.

That political thread is really not about the coronavirus. Its just to give many in this forum yet another thread to endlessly, repetitively wail among themselves about Trump. Admittedly Trump deserves much of the complaints but another one? So ironically, that thread is misnamed and should be called "yet another Trump bashing thread superficially related to the coronavirus".

This thread is called the Wuhan coronavirus because that's actually what NYT called it (see post #1) when I first created it. I don't think anyone would have called NYT "racist" then. I guess it can be renamed now to be "politically correct" but there's a sense of satisfaction in reminding & placing blame on this world wide calamity where it belongs.

It's hard out there for a pimp.

I don't have good context (maybe someone from UK can help out) but apparently there is mask-wearing issue there too. Don't get the big deal in wearing masks (now that we have plenty of them).

How masks became a fault line in Britain’s culture war - POLITICO

This Sacramento woman was extremely "pissed off" about the mandatory mask requirement in California (pun intended).

Woman Urinates On Floor After Refusing To Leave Verizon Store For Not Wearing Mask

No ;)

Flu "leads in infections" because nobody tries to avoid it and essentially nothing is done to curb it's spread. (Plus summer v winter shaping behaviour and thus spread. As bad as SarsCov2 spread, it would have been much worse had it hit in October). If everybody behaved the same and everything was business as usual SarsCov2 is judged to be much more infectious by every scientist and medical professional you'll ask this question.
It's like saying a bottom feeder team scoring more points against a group of amateurs is better offensively than one scoring less against the sports best defense. Data without context is useless.

If everybody behaved like today during flu season and certain measures stayed in place, there would hardly be a flu season to speak of. And there actually is a seasonal effect and this still accelerates. Winter could be hell, especially if 'stationary' mass events indoors make a comeback and also if Entertainment and socialising moves back largely indoors.

Okay, I get this.

Do you know what is the latest thinking in coronavirus vs flu r0?

There is apparently a lot of people (40,000+) stuck out at sea like cruise, merchant ship crews that were scheduled to be rotated out but now can't (or company won't).

There's obviously a lot that I'm not aware of ...

I get being stuck during the initial 2-3 months of confusion but you would think all crew members now had a chance to be tested, ships decontaminated etc. and, at the very least, crews rotated out for fresh crews that need to make some money.

Captain Stubing & Julie, we forgot about you.

I think if I was young and single I'd still have lots of fun being quarantined on a cruise ship but I feel for the others in less luxurious accommodations, food & limited entertainment.

They are comparing estimated cases to confirmed cases. That's no way to go through life.

Yeah, that as well of course. Same as flu deaths being the total of all excess deaths which in Winter can have more reasons than just flu.

But first and foremost it is just not a fair comparison given the actual playing field.


I don't think R0 as such is a usefull number and can't actually be pinpointed as such. It is thought that actual working R for average influenza virus cocktail (not 1 Virus) in normal 'western' conditions as far as behaviour, living/working situations and climate/weather is roughly between 1.3-1.5 as an average.

Now with SarsCov2 there is a super short window of it even 'meeting' normal behaviour, a few weeks in china and maybe a few more in Italy/Spain/New York etc. And even then behaviour had already subtly altered. And during that brief window, no one kept track or had Surveilance up (as we do for flu via a variety of sampling techniques and data from doctors visits etc). So it is near impossible to pinpoint, but best guess remains 3 or higher (germany estimated at 3 at it's highest and behaviour was already altered then) with the absolute R0 in Wuhan (before anybody knew it existed, so zero change in behaviour from anybody) estimated as high as 5.7.

What we do know is that Flu season in some countries ended super sudden (Germany routinely has it in season until the end of march, this year went from still 50% of peak to almost zero in a week) and in the southern hemisphere it has not taken hold early on. Again the peaks differ between countries (f.e. around Years End for the US, likely due to significant early travel from south to north hemisphere) but South Africa or Australia have had it almost nonexistant in the first stage:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6999217/c...n-flu-rsv/amp/


(Confirmed cases is a snapshot, there is hardly any flu testing compared to what is done with Covid19. But testing is done representatively, so comparable year to year)

And again, i am no expert at all. Only interested in it, stumbling on lots at work (have to regularly check a ton of websites in scientific fields) and know a few people that have to stay in the loop due to their vocations.

And one worry on everybodys mind is what happens if regulations are relaxed to the point when flu becomes a factor:

What happens when flu meets Covid-19? | Society | The Guardian

Oh great, another term to learn "co-infection"

I do need to say this; I was dead, stinking, no-holds-barred, 100% wrong on how much risk people would be willing to take pre-vaccine. Restaurants are booming even at 50% capacity. Ones that were seeing stagnant/declining business pre-virus scare are now seeing 20% growth consistently year-over-year.

I thought people would be a lot more skittish. I was way off the mark.

TBH, whenever I've gone to pickup the restaurants don't look that busy and don't see that many eating in (not even close 50%).

I was skittish but I've been told the risk to catch it via food is low.

So the boy and I went flying this morning. A very big deal. It's his first flight since he got his private pilot's license, and the very first time that the two of us flew together, just him and I. We went up to Urbana, Ohio, they have a little airport cafe, the good ol' $100 Hamburger, except in this case, it's the $350 breakfast and pie.

Pulled up, parked the plane, kind of busy outside, but it's hot, head in. I swear to god, that it was business as usual in there. There was a sign outside that said, sit 6ft apart outside, but inside it was basically full. No masks anywhere on workers. No tables blocked off. Every table used. Even more surprising, most of the people in there were older, or elderly. It was like a Sunday morning, post church crowd, and nobody really seemed to mind. Things in Cincy at least look like places are trying to make an effort, and restaurants here are all doing the same thing, some better than others, but this was otherworldly.

It's not catching it via food that is the issue, it's being indoors with other people for a prolonged period of time, some of it (necessarily) without your mask on.

This is a similar misunderstanding about masks - you're not wearing it to save yourself. That's a lesser, secondary benefit.

I've been somewhat surprised by what looks to be semi-full parking lots, but the only time I've gone in is if they require it for carry-out (as opposed to curbside). Eating in a restaurant just isn't that important for me to chance it. Carry-out works just fine. If things get better and in a few months when temps are in the 60s/70s, I'll likely be good to sit outside at a restaurant.Otherwise, I'm staying away.

Yeah, I get this but it wasn't that long ago that we were wondering if you can catch it from restaurant food. The consensus now is relatively low risk.

Congrats on your son's milestone.

Do you own a prop (I assume) or just rent one?

Rented. Plane ownership is not in the budget at all.

I’m just wrapping up a 12 day Disney trip. I know I’m weird, but we had this one planned for awhile. It was our twentieth anniversary. I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised at how Disney has done it. Masks everywhere. Sanitizer everywhere. Cleaning workers are all over. Wiping rides, hand rails etc. no tables open within 6 feet of each other. Plexiglass shields in ride lines, buses, boats. Today they implemented you can’t eat and walk (for like food stands) So if you move, you mask.


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Were lines really short?

Where did you stay? How full was it? Did you have to move from your originally booked hotel?

How did they do the parades?

Hey, we just drove through Urbana about an hour ago.

Also, I still don’t understand people who don’t know how to wear masks. We were at a church function where they were mandatory; at least three people had them down under their nose. One was one of those round masks like you wear if you are sanding something. It had to be more uncomfortable to wear that under your nose. I just don’t get it.

(Damned mouth-breathers.)

COVID-19 - Wuhan Coronavirus (a non-political thread, see pg. 36 #1778)
 

We split stayed. Contemporary, Kidani, and Copper Creek.

No parades. Or fireworks. Every now and then a float with princesses or the characters will appear and drive down one of the streets.

Very very few people in the parks. You have to have a reservation to GET in the parks too. No fast passes. One park a day. But I think outside of the new Minnie/Mickey train ride in holllywood nothing was over 20 minutes.

Rise if the resistance was still a virtual que.


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Why in God's name would ANYONE be in Urbana, let alone two FOFC forum members? Urbana sucks

We really just went there for the pie.

They actually had some good restaurants there, small mom and pop places, but good. I used to have to drive that way for work.

Ok, technically drove by on I-70 on our way back from Purdue.

Oxford Phase 1/2 results are in and look very promising.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/oxford...ry?id=71875583

https://marlin-prod.literatumonline....3620316044.pdf

Yeah but AstraZeneca is down 4%. Weird.

Georgia’s largest school district won’t have in-person start

I think that vaccine news has been so promising that the market has already priced in good news for the major players.

Plus they're starting to bet on a vaccine "winner" (who will be first, and who will be most profitable), rather than just one being found. Everyone but the winner is probably a little over-priced.

The University where I work is doing the same, including any faculty or staff going on campus.

You know, if we just stop trying to test, everyone will have chlamydia and soon we'll have herd immunity and we can go on about our business.

SLU and Washington U in St Louis looking for 3000 people to test a vaccine. They are looking for higher risk people.

I may volunteer. Going to call tomorrow and see how I can get involved.

My son's school is testing everyone as the come to campus, and will keep them in quarantine for 48 hours till the tests come back. If they test positive, they will be put in special housing to quarantine.

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We might do that, but if the testing isn't continuous it's more for show than anything else. A campus can't be locked down like the NBA bubble.

Yeah, they are testing weekly. They are using the Harvard-MIT test.

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This is pretty much the behavior that is keeping me away from church. In CA masks are required in public, but it wasn't enforced at church. A lot of folks take them off once they sit down. Many more kept them under their noses. I showed up one Sunday as a volunteer, but won't be back until this is over.

It just isn't worth the risk, nor the aggravation I feel.

And if they really were mouth breathers, they wouldn't need to pop their noses out.

Shit, Kroger supposedly has a mask policy, but they are just fine with employees wearing then wrong. Gonna say something like 40% of all mask wearers had them on wrong. It's really hard in Kentucky apparently.

The Kroger & Publix employees have been great with masks. Its the fast food ones that are suspect IMO.

Yeah, I haven't seen much of a problem at my KY Kroger. And since the mask mandate, I'm hardly seeing anyone without a mask in any stores. Now, they aren't always wearing them right, but I've seen very few people without one on in some form. Just more proof that a mask mandate can work to push people who wouldn't ordinarily wear one to do it because when push come to shove, they really aren't invested enough in the anti-mask thing to challenge the policy.

Good news & some forward looking planning. And supposedly free.

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/...17e1cd7c736cfa

So it won't go to the Northeast or West Coast.

Honestly, did anyone think that it wouldn't be given out freely, or that it wouldn't be the government's job to obtain and disseminate it? That was certainly my expectation.

And maybe a week or two before Election Day?

SI

You mean like PPE production and distribu...

SI

I always thought it should, but I also know the Republicans fought hard to make sure the companies could charge for them even after the government gave them huge grants to create them.

There was a time early on when I wasn't sure if testing or hospital/ventilators were going to be 100% paid or had to do the co-pay or meet the max deductible etc.

I guess it makes sense now as it would be political suicide otherwise.

Yes, quite a few people think that. I've never assumed it would be free; likely subsidized at some level so that most people can afford it, but not necessarily free. I think it's a complex situation with the kind of critical cooperation between researchers, producers, and government, and the outcome isn't self-evident to me.

If it's not free then you're placing a dividing line between who is rich enough to be insulated from a virus that doesn't care about SES, and those who aren't GOOD enough to get it.

I saw that they were going to federally hand out the vaccine. Any other administration I wouldn’t have thought twice. But these thugs in charge will definitely choke out certain areas because they are motherfuckers.

I don't know what SES is, and I think anything more I would say here would be overly political for this thread.

I believe he was meaning the virus doesn’t care about SocioEconomical Status SES so a virus to prevent it shouldn’t take that into consideration either in its distribution or it will fail to do its job completely


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It's going to be a clusterfuck. I've heard, free or at an affordable cost, and the admin is relying on insurance companies to pay for most Americans. That will work fine, but it means uninsured people are going to have to go through some sort of screening process.

And you can be certain they'll fuck things up with regards to undocumented folks.

bingo

I thought everyone was required to have insurance now?

Trump and the GOP ended the mandate. Certainly most people have insurance, but I've seen anywhere from 25-35 million people without insurance. That's just those under Medicare eligible age, too.

I am going to guess that the vast majority of the ~20MM unemployed are uninsured (I sure am, yay!). UI benefits are too much to qualify for Medicaid (even without the bonus) and cobra rollover costs average $600/mth for an individual and $1500/mth for a family, which is a high price to most unemployed people.

Checking worldometers, we are now above 1K+ in deaths and 70K+ new cases. I believe it was way under 1K in past 2-3 weeks and so the deaths has finally caught up with increased infections.

The stats are bad but hopeful the deaths won't get as bad as before when it hit 2K+. Rooting for Pfizer, Oxford, Moderna etc.

While NY, NJ and Connecticut seem to have things under control for the time being, NY has issued a 14 day quarantine for anyone coming from 31 of the other 49 states.

Its almost impossible to enforce, but the fact that 31 states are in such a clusterfuck that ours needs to set a quarantine for them and their visitors is kinda frightening.

Yeah, Trump has saved me several years worth of fines.

Is that a good thing?

Well I don't like paying fines, so yes.

Hope you never need an appendectomy.

Good point. The 25-35 million number was from before the pandemic.

I have no doubt that a different admin could distribute a vaccine and it would go pretty smoothly. There will always be some problems, but vaccine distribution isn't a new problem.

This admin, though, I can almost guarantee won't do the proper planning and preparation, and will use distribution as a way to reward allies and punish opposition. It's going to be a clusterfuck.

Probably distribute it on November 3rd outside voting booths to those wearing MAGA hats.

I do not know if it is still in effect, but Massachusetts has the same from anywhere not Like five states or so. As you say though entirely unenforceable and ends up being a “pretty please” that everyone ignores because heaven forbid anyone be inconvenienced.

Nah, they'll give it to everyone. Those not in the chosen group will just be the "control group" getting the placebo. And who says that the administration doesn't believe in science?!?

SI

It's almost as if those of us worried a couple of weeks ago that "the deaths are coming" are (once again) not chicken littles but looking at previous trends and making realistic case guesses.

SI

I honestly don't get the concern over what will happen under the vaccine with the current administration, since the only way that's likely to happen is if they win reelection. First half of 2021 is still the optimistic vaccine timeline unless I've missed a massive development somewhere.

Timetable is all over the place.

Note that even though the vaccine isn't "proven" yet, there's been enough positives where company/countries willing to take a bet and start producing now/soon.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/04/astr...s-vaccine.html

Given a new admin doesn’t start until mid-January means Trump is going to play a big role in the early distribution.

I'm watching the local school board meeting at length for the very first time. Not gonna lie, not really impressed with the group as a whole.

EDIT:Specified the type of board.

Could you imagine if he withholds it to Blue states out of spite? I could see it.

With the AP report that came out showing he gave minuscule amounts of Ppe to the hardest hit states comparatively due to them being blue states, I am actually surprised that people aren’t considering we will have a repeat. It is a huge concern of mine right now since my wife is high risk.


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This is not meant as a political post, more of a "who the hell can we trust for information?" rant. I posted an article in the political thread about Kemp's backdating tests to show GA was in a decline to support reopening the state. Other states have done some similar monkeying with the numbers, most notably Florida. But on the flipside, the reporting of numbers is hardly as smooth as they are presented on TV or in articles, which is understandable. There are a lot of moving pieces and coordinating all of this information is not an easy job, I'm sure.

All of which is to say, I found this article below about the way deaths are being reported and am once again trying to figure out how the hell to parse any of this with just an objective truth about what's going on. It turns out that deaths reported each day are not just new deaths since the day before. That makes sense given lag time and periodic review of information, etc., but that bit of context is completely missing from any reports I read. The article points out instances where articles are touting the single largest one-day number of "new deaths in a 24-hour period" in states like AZ and FL, only to see that dozens of those deaths (or in some cases almost all of them) did not occur in the previous 24 hours, but days or weeks earlier and have only now been reported due to review of death certificates.

These deaths happened, of course - although I suppose here is where some will interject the whole "hoax" or "overblown" thing about which deaths should actually count as Covid-related. But what I'm getting at is the narrative of things getting worse, that there's some pattern to trace to state reopenings, or protests, or Memorial Day, or July 4th celebrations... if you look at the Florida chart in this article, actual deaths in mid-July went down despite the "reported deaths" number skyrocketing. That context deserves to be known.

So where the hell are we supposed to get objective information without having to parse the raw data ourselves? I'm also expecting someone to explain how this article is misleading because, well, it's from the media so apparently it has to be biased/shoddy/false as they all are. Just freaking frustrated by it all...

The Big Surge In Coronavirus Deaths Is A Media-Fed Myth

Tired of the "hoax" shit because of the claim deaths are being reported as covid that weren't. That is inevitable going to happen, but even if half the deaths are incorrectly reported thats 70K dead which is unacceptable.

I figured it was a bullshit article once I saw the other articles of it's "agenda" (i.e. complaining about cancel culture, railing about Portland, and how to get rid of BLM murals).

Look at the note on the bottom of their chart.

The argument is that death counts aren't accurate because there's a lag between deaths and the reporting of those deaths. If that's true, you can't then also say that recent death numbers are accurate and proof of a declining number of deaths. What will those death numbers look like in a couple of weeks when all the reporting is in?

Kinda amazing how badly the US Administration has been played.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/23/ameri...ntl/index.html

Simple way for the US to play it, do you want to accept Chinese help the way they helped the nations of Africa?

To minimize this as non-political. I'm sure the "leaders" of those nations have no problem taking the money while the people of those nations are exploited. The difference is that China's influence and controlling of resources will either force the US to put money into Latin America or face a lot of undue China influence on those who cross into our border.

I think it's the people of the Latin America that are getting played here.

No I think you're missing the point. It's not that the total death numbers aren't accurate, it's the timing of when they occurred and how the media is using recently categorized Covid deaths to show that the trend in deaths is rising on a daily basis when that's not accurate. The fact is that in some cases, 100 of 150 "new deaths reported in a 24 hour period" are actually not new deaths from the past day. Which, if reported with the proper context, kinda puts a dent in the overall narrative about certain states.

I believe the numbers are overall accurate (or if anything, undercooked), and I believe certain states are a problem, but the death numbers that seem to demonstrate a linear progression and cause-and-effect between actions and supporting case/hospitalization numbers doesn't support the narrative. Yet, anyway. But that's not how it's being portrayed

Death count as portrayed as being a new deaths in the past day. I didn't take from this that they were arguing against particular deaths being attributed to Covid, although that's certainly out there as an argument from certain people. This is about timing of deaths as supporting the media narrative that deaths are at their highest per-day numbers since this began. Which is clearly how it's being reported - "X state has smashed it's 1-day record for deaths 4 times in the past week," etc. That's not true - or, at best, the numbers are far less than being reported.

Regardless of motives (and we know its tied to thinking long-term economic opportunities & political ties), it is the humanitarian thing to do so kudos to China.

LATAM is getting played but it's a win-win (albeit probably not equal win-win) as LATAM gets to save more lives, re-open earlier than they would have been able to etc.

We we are talking about trillions for our stimulus bill what's another $2-4B. It would be smart for US to offer or coordinate something similar for the friendly/neutral countries in LATAM, Africa and most importantly in Asia (including India).

Most countries in Asia see China as a threat. The US should be leveraging that mis-trust and (re)build and (re)strengthen relations for the friend & neutral countries.

Very interested in who Biden will pick for Secretary of State.

Of course literally 2.5 weeks ago, Issue Insights was using declining daily confirmed COVID 19 deaths as a reason for why COVID 19 was coming to an end.

Is The Pandemic Coming To An End At Last? – Issues & Insights

Never heard of I&I before I ran across this article, but that's why I said this wasn't intended as a political post. I'm looking for information and no one is providing anything honest or objective.

No, we don't yet know the number of deaths, say, for yesterday, but that doesn't mean they are far less than being reported. There's a discussion, perhaps, on how daily death reports are actually an accumulation of days due to a lag in receiving the information, but that doesn't mean that death counts are actually far lower than is being reported.

What I expect happens, just based on timelines we've seen previously, is that death counts will first be undercounted, then be roughly equal for a while, then be overcounted as the deaths subside, but reporting still lags. In a practical sense it's hard to see how it could work perfectly given the realities of having to record and report.

I commented on this a while back. Here is where the distrust of “the news”, “science”, and “facts” come back to bite us.