[Original concept by Gary Larson; text from Divya Siddarth and E. Glen Weyl, COVID-19 Rapid Response Impact Initiative White Paper 6: “Why We Must Test Millions a Day,” Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, 2020.04.08.]
Related Reading:
- Ann Saphir, “Trump’s Coronavirus Reopening Plan Has Big Holes, Health Experts Say,” Reuters, updated 2020.04.18.
- Dan Mangan, “The US Economy Can’t Reopen Without Widespread Coronavirus Testing. Getting There Will Take a Lot of Work and Money,” CNBC, 2020.04.16.
- Nick Turse, “Trump’s Obsession with Reopening the Economy Ignores Public Health Experts,” The Intercept, 2020.04.16.
- Justine Coleman, “Two-Thirds of Americans Worry States Will Lift Restrictions on Public Activity Too Quickly: Poll,” The Hill, 2020.04.16
- Vivian Salama, Kevin Liptak, Cristina Alesci, and Kaitlan Collins, “Trump Told Testing Is Key to Reopening During Business Panel Call,” CNN, 2020.04.15
- Abby Goodnough, Katie Thomas, and Sheila Kaplan, “Testing Falls Woefully Short as Trump Seeks an End to Stay-at-Home Orders,” New York Times, 2020.04.15
- Lauran Neergaard and Julie Pace, “Fauci: ‘We’re Not There Yet’ on Key Steps to Reopen Economy,” AP, 2020.04.14.
I see mayor ten has backed off.I knew that was going to happen .All show and no go.
Backed off how?
Perhaps Moses refers to Mayor TenHaken’s “pivot” away from a stay-at-home order. Apparently a new scientific model shows that Sioux Falls residents don’t need to stay at home because they’ve done a good job of reducing coronavirus spread… by staying home.
o, has a very good link up on why it may be the best to let the billionaires destroy themselves. Very good link o, I hope you don’t mind me reposting it.
Indeed, let’s see how the hate of “governance focused on worship of the wealthy and disdain for their population play out?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/how-billionaires-short-term-greed-could-upend-america-and-destroy-their-own-wealth/“
Cory what do you think of the spike in South Dakota and see what state with four million people more than S.D has done a better job of containment.Hint it is to the east of us.
Someone needs to check into how Jared scrounged the masks he gave to New York hospitals, etc., and got such praise for, and why he thinks the stockpile is his. It might be a huge, huge scandal, or it might be just rank speculation, but given the level of corruption in the Trump Administration, it bears checking out.
I say this because I might be a victim of Jared’s “taking” and profiteering off our property, but even worse, it may be one reason why hospitals didn’t get their shipment of masks.
Let me start where it begins. My daughter found a reputable supplier of N95 masks in China. She lives in Beijing, and was able to find a pretty good deal, and decided to ship us a bunch. She was not alone. Many Americans in China have been shipping masks back to their family and friends, but many of those shipments have not gotten here.
The masks should have gotten to me in 10-14 days, but my daughter thinks, from what she’s found out, they were intercepted by Customs. The story doesn’t end there. They were diverted, which is fine, I guess, if they are going directly to the docs who need them. But the details are important and this is where the story gets a little murky and speculative, but is a topic of discussion among a group of Americans in China and Americans who have been in China.
Jared, apparently, is invested in some sort of company that serves as a middle man in this scheme. The scheme is that the company that Jared has invested in has the ability to claim this stuff from Customs and then markets it to medical supply companies. In other words my N95 masks becomes this company’s property, and they take a bite of money from the medical suppliers, who then market it to docs and hospitals and state agencies and, of course, the federal government. If the federal government bids up the price, then maybe the company Jared is invested in gets a bigger kickback.
Fine, Jared’s investment may have profited off stealing my measly shipment of masks. He won’t get rich off that, but what if he’s stealing shipments that are supposed to go to, oh, Avera McKennan or Sanford or Monument Health, and profiting on them?
Again, I want to stress, this is a theory of what the Trump Administration is doing and why they claim they won’t use the power of the federal government to interfere in the supply chain through the Defense Production Act.
Is the Trump clan (or is it Klan) making money off coronovirus. Does that explain a lot of their actions? Is that why they support policies to open up, so there is more spread and more opportunity for money grubbing?
Like much of the machination we see in the miracle of our current government, Don Pay’s ruminations are too horrible for me to contemplate. I still do, though.
Import as well as export shipping is off substantially. Tariff’s, trade wars and of course, the virus are putting back to work immediately, into not gonna happen.
“Not surprisingly the coronavirus pandemic delivered a heavy hit to U.S. port volumes in March. The unknown is how long the container drought will continue.
Northwest Seaport Alliance (NWSA) Chief Executive Officer John Wolfe said during a press conference Wednesday he expects second-quarter volumes will be soft as the “unprecedented disruption” to the global supply chain continues and container shipping lines cancel more sailings.
“Total container volumes in March were down approximately 21% as compared to March of 2019,” Wolfe said. “That brings our year-to-date first-quarter decline to 15.4%.”
The NWSA, which operates the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, said it handled 264,133 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in March. Full imports in March declined 28.2%, while full exports decreased 8.6% year-over-year.
Wolfe said container shipping lines canceled 32 sailings during the first quarter, including 19 in March alone.”
Is mayor ten afraid of Kristi Noem in her dealings or what.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/s-dakota-gop-governor-busted-by-harvard-doctor-for-simplistic-plan-to-send-workers-back-to-jobs-as-covid-19-ravages-state/
According to Harvard doc, Noem is ‘
“simplistic.”
High praise for an in over her head tool.
GNOem is simplistic while here daddy trump is a lazy idiot. “The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/28/trump-coronavirus-politics-us-health-disaster
The lazy bum, killed us by the thousands and destroyed the economy of the US…all. Those jobs left and they ain’t coming back, so now we’ll all be healthcare workers…good trade. Working for the government is not so bad…Here in South Dakota, we’ve been doing that for decades.
“Better to be six feet apart than six feet under.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Another one worth reading comes from Yahoo! News. It’s about the dolts in Florida and Texas lifting restrictions. There’s a photo of people crowded onto a Florida beach, no masks in sight. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
is.gd/h7wPgG
“A question we’ve been hearing lately: ‘Is it worth it to shut down the economy to save lives?’ Or ‘Should we let people die to save the economy?’ The only way to answer this question is to figure out what a human life is worth … in dollars. This happens all the time. In fact, U.S. government federal agencies have a very specific answer. They say a human life is worth about $10 million.”
NPR
is.gd/VXm5ER
The Atlantic writer Olga Khazan describes how history shows that pandemics have been good for the working class.
“One study that looked at 15 major pandemics found that they increased wages for three decades afterward. The Plague of Justinian, in 541, led to worker incomes doubling. After the Black Death demolished Europe in the 1300s, textile workers in northern France received three raises in a year.”
is.gd/u20mWq
Amazing Kristi will be all in to bail out farmers.But for no reason would she want to help her constituents that are receiving a pension.Maybe she forgot that she will be eilgible for Govt pensions when sh reaches a certain age.Congress needs sifiveyears to get to a pension while it takes the average guy 35 to 40 years to get social security she can work six years and be eilgible please correct me if I am wrong here.
Axios’ Deep Dive has an entire newsletter focused on COVID-19. It’s relatively brief, but there are numerous links to more information if you want it.
SF Mayor TenHaken is quoted.
is.gd/iwq9h1
Great picture of GNOem after pulling her thumb out of her arse. The only spikes in the virus are from red states like South Dakota. Yes, thumb up indeed https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/17/1938211/-Where-are-the-biggest-spikes-in-coronavirus-cases-this-week-States-without-stay-at-home-orders
Why does it have to be either economy or lives? It seems to me with fewer lives and more uncertainty about the Covid-19 virus transmission, second round to come, no control of the impact on the human body, no vaccine, healthcare workers worn out; no one is going to be enthusiastic about getting involved in normal activity levels. I believe it would be prudent to consider saving lives by increased testing and contact tracing measures prior to ramping up the ‘economy’. This needs to be done with the plan to shut down if cases of coronavirus increase in the process, but what do I know.
Grandchild: what’s the diff between Noem and Trump? Nothing
I just got through watching a “Ted Talk–8 ways the world could suddenly end: Stephen Petranek at TEDxMidwest” March 11, 2014″. His first way the world could end suddenly was about flu. He talked about some of the things we could do to prevent this from happening and then talked about the 1918 pandemic. He said the 1918 pandemic came in 3 waves about 6 months apart. He said the interesting thing was that the second wave killed every person it infected.
I am not sure that we have enough testing data that something like this happening is not within the realm of possibility. I unfortunately also feel that this administration is all about making money for themselves and has little interest in what is best for people in general.
You’re right, Francis: coroanvirus doesn’t go away just because Trump shouts, “Open for Business!” Coronavirus doesn’t go away because a couple hundred Trump protestors gather on the Capitol steps to wave flags and guns. Do those things now, and coronavirus comes back stronger. Trump and Trumpists can say whatever they want; I’m not going to Target just to buy some snacks and look around for deals on pants. I’m not going to go sit at Red Rooster or the library. I’m not going to take my family to the Brown County Fair and buy overpriced indigestion just for the fun of it. I’m not going to go to a street dance or anywhere else I’d be shoulder to shoulder with strangers.
As has been cited by commenters in past weeks, the earlier and stronger our social distancing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions to check contagion, the better the economy recovers once the pandemic is really over. So it’s not a choice between lives or the economy; keeping more people healthy keeps the long-term economy healthier.
Wisconsin hit its peak around April 7. That was the day of the primary. Due to the Republican refusal to delay in person voting or go to all mail in voting people who wanted to vote had to go to the polls. We are now experiencing a second peak. Thanks Republicans.
$10 million, say the experts in Debbo’s article?
O.K., let’s test that out. Let’s fine Smithfield $10 million for every Sioux Falls worker who dies from coronavirus.
Let’s require the federal government to pay out $10 million to every family whose son or daughter dies in the line of duty.
Let’s get Tom Steyer or Bill Gates to put up a billion dollars, then walk up to a Trump virus rally and offer MAGA-cap-wearers $10 million for each of their children whom they allow us to shoot.
Jon H, your last line touches on the exact problem with electing a juvenile billionaire to run the country. All his life, Trump has had enough wealth to act without consequences. He shoots his mouth off, takes risk, and doesn’t worry who else gets hurt, as long as he gets to stuff a little more cash in his pocket and walk away. He knows he doesn’t have to serve or please everyone, or even a majority. As made crystal clear by his second-place finish in 2016, he knows, like any good salesman, he only has to bamboozle just enough suckers to make a profit.
This unpaywalled blog post contains a listing of sources documenting the astroturf nature of the anti shutdown protests. Big Business is all about the benjamins.
To the cartoon: “Back to Work”. Note that regional Monument Health laid off and or furloughed 200. Avera Health similarly reduced services from 650. Sanford has yet to make announcements, or I missed those. Due to Sanford’s larger size, any reductions may also be correspondingly larger.
Point being, artificial intelligence (AI) will likely significantly reduce the call-backs to work. Telemedicine is rampaging. Covid-19 accelerated this years-long trend. It first hit medicine in the front office (billing, HR, etc.), then the radiologists (AI reads film better than people are capable of reading film), and now AI will reduce the need for patient-nurse-doctor physical interaction.
Consider the recent experience from a Sanford doctor in far away Fargo. Sanford had 1,600 telemedicine consults in February, up from 50 the prior month. Train the patient. Send the patient home with a monitor(s) (temp, O2, BP, blood, etc.). Download the information. Have a consultation. https://www.barrons.com/articles/coronavirus-has-ushered-in-the-telehealth-revolution-which-stocks-to-play-it-51587169350?mod=hp_LEAD_3
That exponential growth, cost reductions/savings, and general efficiency reduces well-paying jobs — especially in rural America. Rural towns can ill-afford losing dozens, perhaps a hundred will paying jobs. Andrew Yang was right. AI will subsume jobs at a pace and thoroughness for which the current government and business communities cannot comprehend or mitigate. Voters ignored Yang and will regret it.
Barrons’s oped notes 10 things that MUST change in the US economy to stop this nonsense cycle of corporate socialist bailouts. (pay wall): https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-coronavirus-recession-should-be-the-end-of-shareholder-capitalism-51587377316?mod=hp_LATEST
Summary. As written and cited to earlier, these systemic US economic faults emerged in the Raygun era and transcend both political parties.
1. Rescues require conditions.
2. Firms will have to rethink their reliance on long supply chains.
3. The just-in-time inventory approach will have to change.
4. Central banks will have to reroute their arteries of emergency lending.
5. The amount of U.S. public and private sector debt will now start to matter.
6. CEOs should make less money.
7. Activist investing will need to change.
8. Private equity bubbles must deflate.
9. Big tech will get bigger and, consequently, will attract more scrutiny.
10. For all the talk to the contrary, the U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status won’t be challenged, barring major policy gaffes.
—
Correction to my 20:57 above. Avera furloughed 650 and reduced hours on 1,500 employees. Thus the potential economic reach of AI, telemedicine, etc., is likely greater than first thought.
AI will assuredly make jobs as well as taking them. The need for public health workers need to skyrocket. These thousands of healthcare workers that have been furloughed because of the lack of the money making elective surgery’s can be put back on the payroll as government employees in public health. They would then be able to have a good job with a good pension so they would have a future..
No Jerry, AI does not assuredly make jobs – not in the near term. The disruption of careers, families, businesses is traumatic. Recall the buggy whip manufacturers? The blacksmiths? The farmers in the great plains who abandoned farms for the promised land in Washington, Oregon, California? More modernly, remember gas station attendants, the 4.5 million manufacturing jobs in the swing states that went to China, Mexico, etc.? Have you noticed McDonalds dropped thousands of front line employees using AI for ordering? Have you used a self-service grocery checkout? Where’s the back-fill hiring? Even the floor mopping is done using AI. The biggest business cost is personnel. There is a HUGE economic incentive to reduce employees. Companies are testing driverless trucks across the nation as you read this. What job will the average truck driver go to – digging graves for COVID-19 victims? (The success of government job training programs is under 10%.) Certainly modernization marches on – eventually, usually benefiting mankind. But in the interim this dislocation, and the rate of this dislocation – leaves family breadwinners in the dust. Too many turn to suicide, permanent disability, etc., – fewer than 45% ever return to work. Please go tell the SD Newspaper Association how AI created new job opportunities for them – hint, you can start in Aberdeen, De Smet, and Lake Preston.
Read up on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PCbITvaRgg&list=PLxSX6ZK-E_wXGluo48dGxKN0ZvQi2qWS1&index=2&t=0s
https://www.amazon.com/Raising-Floor-Universal-Economy-American/dp/1610396251
Another future assessment from center-right, non-union, non-politicians. https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/understanding-job-loss-predictions-from-artificial-intelligence/
Oil is now negative. Got that? May 2020 NYMEX WTI is priced at NEGATIVE $35.11 PER BARREL. Want to take bets on seeing EXXON and the rest of the crooks line up for a bailout? The Bakken is fried! Time to go with renewable greens to put folks back to work doing something that makes sense.
John, as you note, AI is already in play and has, as you say, taken jobs at McDonald’s. The buggy whip guys got replaced by the auto’s. The blacksmiths are still around are just as busy now as they were then. Look into these small towns in South Dakota, you will find them fabricating parts for farmers and building crossings for ranchers. Still here, some use Iron Works from Philip, South Dakota, but they still perform much the same without the bellows and burning coal.
If the best we can do to employ people is to have them push a button at McDonald’s then we really ought to take a look at the back of the house there. That is still done by hand, putting the pre-made order into the pan and pushing the heat button, so they all taste the same from one state to another.
Maybe we should have a society that pays you more so you can spend time with your family. Maybe actually pay teachers and care givers a salary that makes sense to give them an honest pension for their old days.
The average truck driver can and should do the short hauls that could come in from the ports to regional centers that would then sort them for delivery on short hauls to local destinations. AI would do the long dangerous hauls and average truck drivers would get paid better with benefits and a pension. Provide family leave for those great folks and honest sick leave.
I can go on, but to say that AI is a detriment to regular life is not accurate, it will make it for the better. Bring on the 5G to develop better form of energy and cures for our dangerous diseases for all of mankind.
Jerry, read the books, above. AI will “improve” society in 10-30 years. In the meantime, in the world in which we live, the world in which people dedicated their educations, careers, and families will be turned upside down with no safety net. No back stop. During ag industrialization hundreds of thousands of farmers went bankrupt, abandoned or sold farms at pennies on the dollar and left. That did not create more jobs. Rather agriculture is one of the nation’s lowest employers, when prior to industrialization it was one of the highest employers. Today AI allows John Deere to lock out competing shops and even farmers from repairing their own equipment. This over-zealous AI exploiting patent-protection led to the back-lash of ‘right-to-repair’. This is the same AI-based mental gymnastics used attempting to prevent farmers from saving seed from a crop to plant the next years crop. That workplace transformation is occurring at an exponential pace via AI across dozens of industries throwing people out of work at a frightening rate.
When Amazon & WalMart close 30% of South Dakota’s retail stores — where will the largely female retail clerks go for a job — today, not 10-25 years from now. Tell the 30 former workers at the Aberdeen American News, DeSmet, and Lake Preston newspapers how AI improved their lives – today. When call centers in SD towns completely automate because of AI — what jobs will support those former workers and their families? Look at your autos. Detroit once had a population of 1.85 million largely supporting the auto industry. Largely due to early AI & outsourcing Detroit’s population is barely 675,000. Certainly now we have better cars — but review the human cost and tragedy of a collapsed industry and city.
Truck driving is the most common job in 29 states, employing millions. When self-driving trucks hit the roads this decade, the jobs at diners, motels, truck stops – millions of support jobs – will dry up. Most truck drivers, diners, motels, and truck stops are small businesses. Certainly there will be fewer highway accidents. Certainly the costs of the shipment of goods will decrease. But the former truck drivers, diner, motel, and truck stop workers won’t be able to afford those cheaper goods because they won’t have a job.
AI is crushing working class jobs. AI’s focus is turning to white collar jobs: accountants, healthcare workers, human resources, routine attorney work, administrative judges, engineers, plant operators, therapists, software coders, etc. Soon electric vehicles will displace most dealerships and auto repair shops. Electric vehicles have fewer moving parts, require fewer repairs, etc. The goals of AI are reducing costs and improving efficiency – restated – to get error-prone and expensive humans out of the workforce.
Saying that AI will create MORE human jobs defeats the purpose of AI to get error-prone, expensive humans out of the jobs.
Yes, in the long run all this AI will be great for society. But society lives in the here and now. People need a bridge to the future, not a gang plank.
“People need a bridge to the future, not a gang plank.”
BOOM!
AI is that gang plank. All of these proprietary company products should be against the law. Any mechanic (human) should be able to fix those on the farm rather than pay them to come to the farm and haul them to Winner or wherever, to fix and then take them back to that farm. That ain’t AI’s fault. That is those companies greed and price fixing to put money in the pockets of the CEO’s and the investor class that must see a profit each quarter.
Truckers that haul those long hauls do dangerous duty. Put autonomous truck convoy’s https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/348290/self-driving-truck-convoys-hitting-the-road.html on the long hauls or build rail systems that would bring life to those small towns you speak of, that were destroyed by the trucking industry in the first place.
Truckers would love them some short hauls from regional areas to there final destinations and then go home to the bride and work on making more. Short hauls make more money just like short rail lines make more money with less rail time than the long haulers. BTW, most of these long haul truckers are not South Dakota home boys either. They track out of centers in Moldavia and other Eastern Bloc countries. Many are from the Ukraine and Mother Russia along with Romania and others. Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy knowing that they are, right now, gear jamming down the interstate by your place with who knows what cargo.
AI is already doing automobile work but there is still a need for workers (human) in these plants.
We need millions of workers right now and in the future for public health. We need millions of workers in the service industry of nursing homes and assisted living that need to be trained and to get compensation along with a future with a real pension and not this 401 crap that has been jammed down workers throats. We will need millions of trained qualified people that will work to make an infrastructure and then to keep it maintained
No, AI is the gangplank to the future of reliable workplaces that will bring an economic boom. A socially viable economy that will be the lifeblood of all communities regardless of race or locations. AI is that gangplank and 5G is the platform. Thanks for the word gangplank.
Excellent, John. Sooo, what do people who loose their job to AI buy??? Something is going to have to give. A very generous UBI if those folks that adapt all the AI want someone to sell something to.
For right now I have a plan. Get that pipeline built ASAP so that we can ship the oil BACK and put it down in the ground where it came from!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggNpWKr948w