Ha ha ha ha That was brilliant.

The $6 trillion “Prop Up the Economy” package seems like it was not very effective. The problems it was meant to prevent all still occurred. That is my layman’s view. My other layman’s view is the $6 trillion was very effective and the severity of the economic crisis is just so unbelievably terrible, this is what $6 trillion buys you.

We have our assistance payment, came right away on the 14th of April. We have not even got our tax refund yet. However, I know many people that have yet to get theirs, pretty strange. I am fortunate to still be able to work, but it is causing a lot of stress for everyone. I am mostly in the office, but when I have to go into the field, I wear PPE. At construction sites, it cracks me up, the older people on the site look at me like am crazy and over reacting, and the younger people cannot get far enough away from each other. The company I work for is super slammed right now, but a lot of the employees look at the unemployment, plus $600.00 a week, and want to go home and have a mini paid vacation. Its tough, I do not see how some small businesses will survive this. The only thing keeping some of the guys from staying home is the issue with unemployment payments in Oregon. Supposedly, our computer system is so old there is no one that knows the code on how to repair it, and it is cracking under the demand. I have friends that have been off for over a month, and have not received a single payment yet! It is so sad. I hope everyone is well, and stay safe!

They were so sloppy with it.. I guess the gov't felt like they needed to push it out so fast? My wife and I are still working at about 80% of normal and we got stimulus checks too? Extremely wealthy colleges, basketball teams? I guess it would have taken too long to look in to every personal situation or company.


Trying to stay healthy while going to work in a hospital 4 days a week... Means I can't see my grandkids or most of my kids, but it's ok to go fishing, play guitar, and ride dirtbikes.

That is old...


I imagine hospitals and hospital workers are of the highest priority. The problem is money is not a direct solution to the problem you are dealing with. I wish it was...

How is everyone doing?
As an American, I can only speak from a perspective of limited scope. The world is experiencing these events in different ways that I can not speak to.

In general, we seem to have a larger and more diverse set of problems now which is unfortunate. At the same time, I have learned what the Federal Reserve is, what it is capable of, and when Jerome Powell (Fed Chairman) talks, people listen.

I’m not going to touch the social problems other than to say we have them, some are obvious, many are not.

And the coronavirus has not changed its ways.

What is your perspective from your vantage point?

Like everybody, sick of the damn thing. That's why the second wave is always hardest. Everybody starts to slack off, people with masks but they're hanging under their chin, hand washing 1/3 as much as used to, social distancing when everybody is out now because they've been couped up for 3 months? Impossible most anywhere. The country has to open or half the country will be homeless, but another 500,000 American will die before this is over.

They keep talking about the vaccine yet, there has never been a vaccine created for a SARS or Corona virus. And they're going to do this in a year? And pass one that may be 12% effective just to get something out there. Like the reports they're not as concerned about catching it off surfaces but are more concerned with airborne. IMO that's a ploy to get people to go out and spend money instead of just give it to Amazon for everything. Just wear your mask and social distance, don't worry about wiping everything down with sanitizer when you get it home.

This is all just a dry run for the big one, when one of the known 1.6 million viruses in the wild, many of which would kill 70-80% of those infected, and when the one gets lose that spreads like 19, we may help solve global warming because we'd reduce emissions by 80%. Silver lining?

This country has had social problems since it became a country. Every country has their own, some of them no better at solving theirs than we are at solving ours. Blue, black, they should have changed the name of the street to ALL LIVES MATTER. But I'm not the mayor feuding with an administration that'll tear gas and beat you to hold a bible upside down.

And I don't know how many times I've heard from southerns about how they're going out for a steak dinner tonight and to the bar, not like us pu*** blue state creatons that are trying to keep the country closed to hurt an election? Or maybe they're just trying to follow official guidelines set by the CDC and not kill as many as possible, while still trying to get things running again. While the cases spike exactly where you expect.

Look, there is no vaccine coming anytime soon. There is no money to pay for everybody to sit on the couch and watch TV for months, of course they just print more but, that's half the problem. Bottom line is the country is going to open, it'l be a new norm with some of the population following protocols and the rest rebelling against them because it's their damn freedom that allows them to walk around without a mask and spread whatever they caught last week. Many more will die. Many many more will carry the scars of it for a lifetime. The lucky will get a cold.

Heard about the 20 year old girl who's lungs were so scarred they did a double lung transplant to save her? Nah, the young don't have to worry, and they act like it.

i just stay at home and keep calm )

100 percent agree with Rich. Lucky to have kept working although the wife has been on unemployment since late March from retail job. I keep wearing masks when out but a LOT of people think it's no big deal. I myself would rather not take the chance. Haven't seen my band in months although they are itching to get out to play now that bars are opening at full capacity on Monday. What do you do? The whole country has gone bat**** crazy!

Interesting to log back onto Jemsite after a while and see this thread. It's certainly been an interesting run over here the past few months. My two daughters will be 4 and 1 in August and the last day they were at daycare was March 16th. We struggled through that thinking it would be temporary but then somehow two months got away like that. Every day was just an absolute marathon. I've always worked remotely and while initially I feel like people at work were very sensitive to people with young children at home, it didn't take long for everyone who wasn't in this situation to just start acting like people should be available all the time just like in normal times. My wife and I both tend to have things which come up quickly and need attention, so it was extremely difficult to even try to plan staggered work tasks.

Since March I've basically been the only person who has left the house for more than to go for walks in the neighborhood. I think at one point my wife wasn't even in car for more than 7 weeks. I work in the biomedical research industry, so thankfully I actually had some PPE on hand that I've gotten as samples and have spent time in labs and know how their decon and infectious agent handling procedures work. I felt I was being as safe as I could be and limiting my exposure, but lately things have started going out the window. Most importantly, we've now directly hired one of the daycare people to come to our house every day to take care of our children. My wife and I had reaching the breaking point and had to do something. The woman who is coming lives with her parents and says that she's been very careful because of that, but who knows? It became a risk vs sanity thing.

Then I went to northern Wisconsin a couple weeks ago. Wow. That was like going to a different planet compared with DC. After driving instead of flying to limit risk to my parents, taking an extra long rural route and totally avoiding people the whole way (including taking a crap in a paint can so I didn't have to go into a public restroom), I quickly ended up eating in a restaurant, where people were sitting close to each other and nobody was wearing a mask. It was a really unsettling experience. That is a rural area with single digit case counts and I've been fine as has everyone I was in contact with, so I'm guessing that was all fine.

I think things are going to get interesting in the next couple months. Places like DC seem to be on the right path and are being cautious, but I still worry about my parents, who are in their 70's. When people like the Governor of Florida say that they will not go back under lockdown, I pretty much believe that. Even at say a million dead, there would still be a good chance that a critical mass of people would not personally know someone who died. I still don't, although I know people who have had family members die. A friend of mine in DC lost both of his parents in quick succession early on in this. They lived in norther New Jersey.

Strange times indeed... I ended up getting furloughed 25%, so the 4 of us in my department (Biomedical Eng) each gave up 10 hours a week so one of us didn't get furloughed 100%. Hospitals have been very slow though, business not picking back up at the speed that they thought. 600 surgeries backlogged locally, but open the doors back up and the patients are just trickling in. Some of the people waiting for their elective surgeries found themselves out of a job or no insurance? Who knows... but they ended up eliminating one of our positions, my buddy the radiology engineer, smartest guy I know. A real bummer and morale killer. He's fine and had another job the same day, but it sucks to know the company that you worked at for 18 years suddenly "could do fine without you"... knowing that it will cost them more in the long run to call for OEM service, but that comes out of the operating budget so it doesn't look as bad? Erg... modern corporate healthcare industry shell and pea game.


So now they want me back to 40 hours starting next week and I have become accustomed to this 30 hour work week... lol!! Dangit!


People around here are hit and miss, probably 50% wearing masks in the grocery store. Our family has been getting together with a few other people for the entire outbreak, so a relatively small circle of people to minimize risk but still enjoy life to some degree. The thing that has suffered the most has been my guitar playing... With all this extra time I have been so busy that I can't seem to find much time for playing!!


I won't touch the social issues other than to say rioting and looting to end racism is about the most ridiculous thing I have experienced in my 50 years on this planet.

In regards to a vaccine, I don’t know how they are developed. I am under the impression all barriers that can be removed have been, and all resources that might be needed are available. Under these circumstances, I would think the probability of the development of an effective vaccine is higher than under normal circumstances. Perhaps not significantly higher, but higher. It would be strange if no progress were made on a treatment of some sort.

So, have we learned anything new about the coronavirus itself? It may only be useful information to the doctors directly working with the virus but the flow of information seems to have ceased reaching the common man through the news media. Wearing a mask, social distancing, and washing our hands is the advice we have been given. As much as that advice is appreciated, I feel like people can handle more information. I know I won’t fully understand most of it, but knowing there is information to understand makes following the advice we have been given easier. When there is a vacuum of information, something else will fill it, and so far, most of it isn’t necessarily good.

Haven't you watched the news? It's bad for you, try not to catch it. If you do try not to give it to me.

We may never be rid of this one. Fauchi just said the flu virus was only 45% effective, that he'd love one that was 75% effective, but there are so many flat earther anti vaccine types today not enough people will get it so we will never reach immunity anyway, just like the flu. I'll up my previous 500K guess to a million of us will bite it before it slows down considerably. And from then on, we'll look like China, half of us always wearing masks, half of us flouting our rights not to.

I know it’s a respiratory infection, it’s highly contagious, and death is usually caused by pneumonia. What traits does this virus have that make it so effective at being a virus? What makes it special? Perhaps I do not need to know, but it would be nice to know that other people do know. Also, knowing what it “isn’t” has value too.

On the other hand, I would be hesitant to be entirely open with society about unsettling information at the moment...