[bayview6]

Originally Posted by 08grad

Boomers had access to jobs and salaries that no other generation will have access to. Whenever a Boomer with a lucrative position retires, companies will either (A) add the Boomer's responsibilities to someone else and not fill the position, or (B) fill the position with an immigrant who will work for cheaper.

There's not really an end to this. Corporations control all aspects of government/society now, and their only goal is to get richer. They want you to be in debt so that you have to work for them. They don't want you to have any skills that would allow you to be self sufficient. By every metric they are succeeding. The Boomer hate comes because they embrace this corporate-greed mentality.

I don't agree with your generalizations about Boomers, but almost everyone is an employee these days.

People don't have to be in debt if they practice paying for things in cash. The only debt to obtain is for real estate. Eventually you will have so much cash that you will even pay cash for real estate,

Boomers are just like any other generation except they are now on top of the food chain. They will all eventually retire and then the next generation can be in control.

[bayview6]

Originally Posted by 08grad

Chart format

for the chart to make any sense it should show per capita wealth per generation.

[equid0x]

Originally Posted by bayview6

I don't agree with your generalizations about Boomers, but almost everyone is an employee these days.

People don't have to be in debt if they practice paying for things in cash. The only debt to obtain is for real estate. Eventually you will have so much cash that you will even pay cash for real estate,

Boomers are just like any other generation except they are now on top of the food chain. They will all eventually retire and then the next generation can be in control.

It takes money to make money. Millennials and the majority of Xers don't make enough to save anything.

We've got people working into their 80s now. Many Boomers should have retired 15 years ago but are still in the workforce.

Gen X should already be in control. Millennials should be just starting to enter politics and we do see that a bit.

[Willy702]

Originally Posted by equid0x

Doesn't that contradict what you just said? If masks work in Asia, why are they bringing the disease back here with them?

I doubt masks are the real difference. There are many socio-political elements at play in Asian countries that factor into this. For example, "saving face" mentality, and group-think. Also, those countries operate as quasi-dictatorships where they are locking/welding/boarding people into their homes who test positive or arresting them and hauling them off. That stuff isn't going to fly here.

I'm mean, we could take the Philippines approach to society and just have the police start murdering anyone who doesn't follow the edict of the day. Will that work for you?

There is no contradiction. Masks aren't 100% effective, but they greatly stop its spread. As for the people coming from over there, they came before the word got out. The flights from China ended end of January. It only took some infected people to come before that and then the community spread began.

In Hong Kong once word got out about a disease in the mainland, there was a mad rush to buy any mask out there. People wore them pretty much 100% of the time while out in public almost immediately due to past experiences. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong knows the idea of staying 2m apart from other people is impossible there. What restrictions they did implement were use of masks, screening at borders of incoming people, and contact tracing where it was available. They didn't even lock things down as they could have, instead they temporarily closed places where social distancing would be a problem but then they reopened them shortly after allowing for owners to reduce capacity and space things out more.

Tens of thousands of people from Wuhan enter Hong Kong monthly. It should have been a carnage like nothing else, but a place with 7 million residents got 1,000 cases and 4 total deaths. Compare that to NYC.

Masks work.

[lvmensch]

Originally Posted by Willy702

There is no contradiction. Masks aren't 100% effective, but they greatly stop its spread. As for the people coming from over there, they came before the word got out. The flights from China ended end of January. It only took some infected people to come before that and then the community spread began.

In Hong Kong once word got out about a disease in the mainland, there was a mad rush to buy any mask out there. People wore them pretty much 100% of the time while out in public almost immediately due to past experiences. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong knows the idea of staying 2m apart from other people is impossible there. What restrictions they did implement were use of masks, screening at borders of incoming people, and contact tracing where it was available. They didn't even lock things down as they could have, instead they temporarily closed places where social distancing would be a problem but then they reopened them shortly after allowing for owners to reduce capacity and space things out more.

Tens of thousands of people from Wuhan enter Hong Kong monthly. It should have been a carnage like nothing else, but a place with 7 million residents got 1,000 cases and 4 total deaths. Compare that to NYC.

Masks work.

You might also note that much of the US corona virus was spread from NYC. And the virus in NYC generally came from Europe. So the use of masks in Asia has little bearing on the spread in the US.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/u...-outbreak.html

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by lvmensch

You might also note that much of the US corona virus was spread from NYC. And the virus in NYC generally came from Europe. So the use of masks in Asia has little bearing on the spread in the US.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/u...-outbreak.html

Good link, thanks. The way I view the Hong Kong situation is that those people made very extensive use of masks and have, by comparison to us, only a trivial amount of cases and deaths, especially given their population density. Those people have no problem complying with guidelines and orders while here in the USA we have a lot of people who only want to thumb their noses at authority, not sure how we got that way but IMO a lot of it is our divide and conquer style of politics where the other side is demonized and obstructed. But no matter where the virus in Hong Kong originated, their extremely low rate of infection and deaths is a huge success. Props to them. I'd also posit that the rate of obesity in Asians is also trivial compared to us.

Then there's the interesting case of the virus variants between the Asian (Washington) and New York (European) versions. The study of those two variants, how they vary, what caused them to vary, etc, will be interesting when they get the time to complete them, but right now we're only in the second or third inning of this thing.

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by equid0x

There is really no question that seatbelts save lives though.

The data really isn't there for masks. N95 masks were designed as sanding particulate filters for carpentry. They're not designed for medical use.

They are, but they are called respirators. From the FDA


An N95 respirator is a respiratory protective device designed to achieve a very close facial fit and very efficient filtration of airborne particles. Note that the edges of the respirator are designed to form a seal around the nose and mouth. Surgical N95 Respirators are commonly used in healthcare settings and are a subset of N95 Filtering Facepiece Respirators (FFRs), often referred to as N95s.

[equid0x]

Originally Posted by Willy702

There is no contradiction. Masks aren't 100% effective, but they greatly stop its spread. As for the people coming from over there, they came before the word got out. The flights from China ended end of January. It only took some infected people to come before that and then the community spread began.

In Hong Kong once word got out about a disease in the mainland, there was a mad rush to buy any mask out there. People wore them pretty much 100% of the time while out in public almost immediately due to past experiences. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong knows the idea of staying 2m apart from other people is impossible there. What restrictions they did implement were use of masks, screening at borders of incoming people, and contact tracing where it was available. They didn't even lock things down as they could have, instead they temporarily closed places where social distancing would be a problem but then they reopened them shortly after allowing for owners to reduce capacity and space things out more.

Tens of thousands of people from Wuhan enter Hong Kong monthly. It should have been a carnage like nothing else, but a place with 7 million residents got 1,000 cases and 4 total deaths. Compare that to NYC.

Masks work.

Hong Kong closed their borders pretty early on...

[equid0x]

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

They are, but they are called respirators. From the FDA


An N95 respirator is a respiratory protective device designed to achieve a very close facial fit and very efficient filtration of airborne particles. Note that the edges of the respirator are designed to form a seal around the nose and mouth. Surgical N95 Respirators are commonly used in healthcare settings and are a subset of N95 Filtering Facepiece Respirators (FFRs), often referred to as N95s.

Yeah, uhh... those aren't the ones you buy at Home Depot.

The N95 respirators used for medical are similar to the high end painters masks with canisters on them. Not only are they $300/pc, the canisters cost a lot and are single use and only good for an hour or two once opened.

The N95 masks people can get their hands on that strap around the ears don't do squat.

[equid0x]

Here is another perfect example why masks are useless:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXn2b0yv6pQ

A lady bystander exits the store and steps in to "assist" the security guard in yelling at the man who is not allowed the enter the store. What does she do as soon as she stops yelling? Touches her mask 3 or 4 times.

The second she touched the mask with unwashed hands from the grocery store the mask needed to be immediately removed and decontaminated or disposed of. Otherwise, she's now directly breathing in whatever it is she touched in the store. The cart, handles, scales, plastic bag dispensers, credit card machines, self checkouts, etc.