I guess if you define average as on track to having the most infections in the world, then yeah, I'd agree. We will have as many confirmed cases as China in about two weeks, and we'll probably still be growing substantially.

I'm sorry, Steely. Best to you and your family.

Sorry to hear Steely. Very concerning to hear more and more people here on this forum losing their jobs or on the verge of losing them. :(

That sucks, it is at least a temporary layoff and you'll be back in business once things get up and running again?

Very sorry to hear that, man! Don't let it get you down.

Apply for that unemployment, and any other benefits you qualify for. That's what they're for! Use the resources that are available to you.

I wish you and your family the best!

From what I've read online from Time Magazine and other sources, those Asian countries were better prepared because they already went through SARS, and had things in place ready for the next pandemic. Same with some African nations and Ebola.

The thinking goes that by the time the short term supply excess resolves itself (which most people agree it eventually will as firms which can't make money at these prices stop pumping and everybody stops drilling new wells), we will be in a serious demand downslope because of the ramp up in renewable power, electric vehicles and so on.

Yes, exactly. But the bottom line is that this did not need to happen. What is happening in the United States today was absolutely avoidable.

I not only think you may be wrong about that but I disagree that we can be compared to China since we are a very different society. In China, if you disobey the government, they can and might shoot you. When they say stay home, they mean it. People have gotten out reports of fences being erected around their apartment buildings. Nothing like that can happen here. It's not about being prepared. China was NOT except to the degree that an authoritarian society is always better prepared to do what the government demands than a democratic one.

Here's the guidance from Illinois:

I totally agree with you. The US had months to prepare and take this pandemic very seriously from the beginning, instead of downplaying it like the current payasos in power were doing earlier on. They should have already been banning travel to/from Asia way in the beginning when this broke out. But the Prez is a businessman and most everyone in Congress are corporatists, so everything is looked at from the angle of "it'll be good/bad for business."

Cases double roughly every week. We're at 40,000 cases today. China is around 80,000 cases and has substantially slowed the spread to almost nothing. The math is simple.

Sorry to hear that. Scary to think how many places are running with basically no reserves.

How can they possibly not include grocery stores? Is everyone supposed to eat takeout?

Grocery stores are open in CA and NY. I can't imagine any place would order groceries closed.

They should have also been aggressively testing. They completely fumbled the early opportunities to contain the spread here in the U.S. because they didn't want to use the World Health Org's test for some asinine reason. Then they completely screwed up the CDC test, which cost more valuable time. That basically left the states to fend for themselves in figuring out how to diagnose this. The reason why New York is able to test so many people is that they are using their own tests, not the CDCs.

:(

Sorry to hear Steely as well. I wish the best of luck to you and your family. My regards. :(

I can imagine it--they could require them to deliver only and close the stores to walk-ins--but they would almost have to then compensate customers for delivery charges and the stores for hiring more delivery people which they would have to do.

Returned to Toronto from Australia so on Day 3 of self isolation. The wait for food using a delivery company was 4 days so I asked a friend. She dropped off 4 bags of groceries this morning.

In other countries (even Italy) grocery stores have remained open though with guards who only let people in a few at a time.

Outside the people waiting in line have to keep 2 m apart.