COVID-19: Chapter 5 - BACK TO SCHOOL

It just occurred to me that we are basically running a giant trial of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. You can go to the bars now and you might have fun, but you might get infected and suffer lifelong consequences or die, ORRRRR if you wait, a year, you will be able to go to the bars all you want, virtually care free!

Rest or the world: patiently waits
USA#1: grabs the marshmallow before the instructor is done talking and gobbles it down

17 Likes

Americans love their instant gratification and freedoms. We’d literally be better off if a random 3 year old was tasked with making the federal response guidelines after being given the two options.

Brainwash Barbie:

„The schools are very important. They are essential and they must reopen.“

Republicans:

„We are also going to cut their funding whenever we can.“

4 Likes

Saw some rando on Facebook say we should defund public schools because why pay for buildings that aren’t being used?

1 Like

That’s definitely not how the individuals understand the game. It’s more like COWER IN FEAR vs. LIVE YOUR LIFE with like a .1% chance of dying, which is less than getting struck by lightning. Plus it’s all old people anyway, so it’s probably LESS than .0000001%.

They don’t understand the rules of the game, as if they had earplugs in and blinders on while the researchers were explaining about the second marshmallow. Too bad they are not also wearing gags.

3 Likes

Great minds think alike?

4 Likes

I posted a while back about my SIL’s vow renewal in Florida coming up in two weeks. The family is now half going and half not. The part going is talking about how they need to go because of the kids looking forward to it and every other excuse in the book. The reason I post is my 11 year old nephew reached out to my BIL(whose family is joining mine in not going) to tell him that he didn’t think going was safe and to talk to his mom about it who is insistent on going(BIL’s sister not the bride).

That’s right an 11 year old is more responsible than half my wife’s adult family. WAAF.

27 Likes

I really don’t understand Kemp’s play at all. It has to be designed to position him for POTUS in 2024, but even if that’s the strategy he really has to believe this is going to all turn out OK.

Ok. Who is missing from UP that fits this profile?

https://news.yahoo.com/california-man-accused-gambling-away-covid-relief-funds-013747667.html

7 Likes

Yeah, that’s outstanding for a Republican. Compare Kemp, Desantis, the governor of South Dakota, etc. Do I think Deval Patrick would have done better? Maybe, but I can’t really point to something obvious like I can with these other governors or Trump.

I guess I would like to see him act quickly to lock things down if the testing and hospitalization rates start to go up again. Otherwise, we could be in trouble right at the beginning of the school year.

The school planning is here: https://www.mass.gov/doc/dese-fall-reopening-guidance/download, so definitely not without precautions.

  • Require districts and schools to prepare a reopening plan that addresses three possible learning models for this fall: in-person learning with new safety requirements, a hybrid of in-person and remote learning, and the continuation of remote learning (to ensure continuity of learning throughout the school year, even if circumstances change). Schools will also need a focused plan for special student populations. Districts and schools will be required to submit a comprehensive reopening plan to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in August that addresses these three models.

It goes on with a pretty detailed set of recommendations. My wife’s district is supposed to have their plan available by August 1, so we’ll see how much wishful thinking it contains.

I am in absolutely no danger of being good enough at paperwork to fraudulently get 9M in COVID relief money. I’d also be very risk averse if I already had 9M.

2 Likes

I could definitely have fraudulently obtained a 7 figure PPP loan, and probably could have fraudulently obtained forgiveness, though that part would be (much) harder.

My guess is that you’re ‘fuck it I’m just going to steal the money and flee’ number is bigger than 9M. When I was younger I used to theorize about people’s ‘fuck it I’ll just take the money and run’ numbers… I didn’t realize at the time that things can get so good as is that you wouldn’t be willing to take any major risk for any major amount of money, and that’s before the morality filter goes on.

You wanna win by 1 point or fucking 30 points?

1 Like

It is an interesting thought exercise. The “I’m moving to a non-extradition country and rolling the dice on life” number. I don’t think that number exists as long as I have minor children.

2 Likes

Of course a guy with an econ background has the perfect joke here. Yes I was thinking about this during my degree in Econ lol.

Untitled

19 Likes

I woulda thought that at least some $ amount Lenders would do a quick check on taxes or something to verify some information. I would love to know the logistics of how this was actually pulled off. Make up a bunch of fraudulent payroll docs and no one confirms anything for $9 million?

If you have a tax ID number you can apply. Cooking up some fraudulent payroll / tax records is pretty easy. Voila!

Have they always been that low or is it that low now because they’ve doubled/tripled or more their death totals recently without a ton of deaths?

1point3acres is just a snapshot so can’t easily tell.

Like today Florida is at 316k cases and 4700 deaths (1.5%) but maybe 2 weeks ago it was 100k cases and 3000 deaths (3%) so it’s just the lag in deaths from cases after a huge case increase rather than hiding deaths. Need to look back to see.