Coronavirus in Massachusetts (credit, hotel, refrigerator)

[timberline742]

Unless you're retired, or right about there, you should be hoping for more of this "collapse" (aka minor blips). I'd much rather be dollar cost averaging in a lower market. In any case, its been decades since the stock market reflects the health of an economy so I have no idea what it has to do with anything re covid.

[redplum33]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

The Dow was 29,400 in February 2020 before the COVID-19 plunge. It’s 34,900 now after a small market correction. Anyone in the market has done quite well in the COVID-19 era. We’ve had 13 or 14 years of endless stimulus with big deficits and artificially low interest rates. We could very well have a market collapse and I’m the world’s worst at predicting it but I think it’s unlikely that COVID-19 will be the root cause.

I'm not making any predictions for the future. Just pointing out that there's currently panic about the new variant, and the stock market clearly reflected that today.

[redplum33]

U.S. will begin new travel restrictions amid concerns over a new coronavirus variant


"The U.S. will implement new travel restrictions in response to the new variant of the coronavirus, senior officials with the Biden administration said.


The policy will begin Monday, and it affects travel from:

• Botswana
• Eswatini
• Lesotho
• Malawi
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• South Africa
• Zimbabwe

U.S. citizens and permanent residents will not be affected by the restrictions, the officials said.
The World Health Organization also announced Friday that it is calling the new variant omicron, labeling it a "variant of concern."

This is a breaking news story. As often happens in situations like these, some information reported earlier may turn out to be inaccurate. We'll move quickly to correct the record, and we'll only point to the best information we have at the time."

[redplum33]

It got awful quiet here. I'll bet porterhouse is frantically ordering up all the toilet paper he can find.

[htfdcolt]

Originally Posted by rach5

According to Biontech, they will have information about vaccine effectiveness against the new variant in two weeks (!!) at the latest. By the time we know if a travel ban is an "informed decision", as Fauci calls it, it will already be far too late for any such measures (and surely the variant is already here in the US anyway). My point is the EU and many other countries have already reacted. The US...crickets. If it turns out the vaccines work - a travel ban or hotel quarantine or testing requirements can be reversed (in some other countries, everybody who has arrived from that part of the world within the past 10 days is told to get a PCR test and stay at home with their household members until cleared!).
I personally don't even think a travel ban in and of itself will do much - all it does it buys some time. And the US has shown over and over and over again that our pandemic response sucks and we ignore what happens in the rest of the world.

Fauci (and Biden) acted quickly. No repeat of Feb 2020, hopefully.

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/...frica-11-26-21

[porterhouse]

Originally Posted by redplum33

It got awful quiet here. I'll bet porterhouse is frantically ordering up all the toilet paper he can find.

I'll send it right over as you've clearly demonstrated that you have sh*t for brains. You're officially the 2nd person I've had to put on ignore here. Keep screaming into the wind though.

[rach5]

Originally Posted by htfdcolt

Fauci (and Biden) acted quickly. No repeat of Feb 2020, hopefully.

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/...frica-11-26-21

Well - it s effective Monday. The UK's was effective today...Also, yet again, "U.S. citizens and permanent residents will not be affected by the restrictions" - no hotel (or at least home) quarantine, no mandatory PCR testing etc like other countries are doing? Of course not.

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by rach5

Well - it s effective Monday. The UK's was effective today...Also, yet again, "U.S. citizens and permanent residents will not be affected by the restrictions" - no hotel (or at least home) quarantine, no mandatory PCR testing etc like other countries are doing? Of course not.

They'll still need to test negative to come home like all international travelers. You really can't keep citizens from returning.

[yesmaybe]

Gotta say work has gotten pretty quiet about RTO...

[rach5]

Originally Posted by timberline742

They'll still need to test negative to come home like all international travelers. You really can't keep citizens from returning.

Citizens are allowed to return elsewhere as well. For instance, the UK requires hotel quarantine plus two PCR tests during the quarantine. That's how Hong Kong picked up their Omicron case. But implementing something like that would actually require a real government and advance planning - something too much to ask almost 2 years into this.
A test before the trip is ... better than nothing I guess.
What we SHOULD do is severely restrict movement (work from home, distance learning) for a couple of weeks after this holiday weekend to give scientists an idea of how big a threat is and if and how well the vaccine appear to work BEFORE this has the time to spread all over the US, so that we can make informed decisions. As a bonus point, if it turned out that Omicron is less of a threat than feared, that lockdown would reduce delta cases.
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/...65c0c064e08c92 : ""The recently described Omicron variant includes mutations seen in the Delta variant that are believed to increase transmissibility and mutations seen in the Beta and Delta variants that are believed to promote immune escape," Moderna said Friday in a news release.
"The combination of mutations represents a significant potential risk to accelerate the waning of natural and vaccine-induced immunity," the company said."