That's when I think we will see this "lockdown" ease up, finally. May 15th, give or take a week or two at most, for every state in the US as well as every other country currently afficted with it. This is purely speculative and mostly unresearched, so I'd love to see other opinions.
In the past couple of weeks a few of the blue-er US states have banded together with their emergency response policies as a sort of pushback against whatever Trump decides to call for; because this is somehow all political. Washington, Oregon and California have combined into one of these fledgling nation-states, along with a few of the New England states.
I was listening to (Oregon) Governor Brown's press conference last week - with the clickbait headline of her "Introducing the Framework of Reopening Oregon" (here, with YT comments conveniently turned off):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=894pJVnDpQs
She stated she, Insley and Newsome - the triumvirate rulers of the great nation state of Pacifica (not her words) - would wait another month and then look at the numbers to see if the "curve" is indeed "flattened". If the numbers look good, they would then allow so-called nonessential businesses to start reopening. Notably, their criteria for good numbers would involve not only more comprehensive testing but also "surveillance testing" - which Brown didn't really elaborate upon but what I suspect will involve more of that lovely phone contact tracing that we all feel so good about.
With some people starting to rattle their cages with protests growing, I'm seeing this dialog repeat itself to varying extents across the country and the world. And I'm seeing the same sort of lockstep formation of policy as I saw with the implementaion of the shutdowns a month ago. How can a virus that cannot even be accurately diagnosed be so darn predictable?
The unanimously approved CARES act allows for 260 billion tax dollars to go towards unemployment relief in the form of an *extra* $600/wk starting April 5th - in addition to normal UI benefits - for everyone who has filed for unemployment as a result of Covid19. Another 280 billion or so went toward the $1,200/person one-time payments. I believe this is precisely why most of the protestors we see now are the more belligerent, politically motivated citizens rather than desperate, economically motivated ones who may be more inclined to carry pitchforks than pickets.
Even though most brick-and-mortar small business owners, the self-employed contractors, the homeless, and the undocumented (California notwithstanding) are still getting completely decimated by these lockdowns; they are the vocal minority of the affected, as most are likely still sitting fat and happy with their stimulus checks.
But the Fed was predicting at the end of March that the numbers of unemployed directly attributable to Covid 19 would go as high as 47 million, and I think that they are right on the button with this one: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-job-losses-could-total-47-million-unemployment-rate-of-32percent-fed-says.html
How long is that 260 billion going to carry us? 47 million * 2,400/mo = 112 billion a month. 260/112 comes out to 2.3 months, or about 9 1/2 weeks - the typical lifespan of a superficial relationship. That's when the money will run out, and when the public will finally realize that they were just getting screwed.
Of course TPTB won't let it go that far, because revolutions are messy. So I will call their bluff and predict that this virus - at least this strain of it - will magically disappear by the middle of May.
Sorry for another long post. I have Mars retrograde. In Cancer. Rising. So this is all really driving me nuts 🙂
TL;DR: I think the lockdowns will end by the middle of next month. What do you think?
"How can a virus that cannot even be accurately diagnosed be so darn predictable?"
The whole mess around this very question is now driving my skepticism of germ theory of all things. The days of Building 7 were so much simpler. I'm optimistic about middle of May too. A lot of that is baked into a personal need for our nano business to reopen. I say nano because apparently a business with up to 500 employees is considered small. I'm in Northern CT. Unemployment in the surrounding area is half the national average. Nobody in my circle shares our date projection. Everyone in my circle is either still employed or retired with savings and social security. At this point they can afford to believe in a year to 18 month return to "normalcy". Oh! You mean that timeline that tracks so nicely with a rushed vaccine?
When the lock down first started I saw a clip of Trump telling everyone to enjoy their living rooms until August.
The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic. Lasting from January 1918 to December 1920, it infected 500 million people – about a third of the world's population at the time.[2] The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.
I like your timeline much much better.
Whatever the timeline may actually be, here is some of the tech that will "help" get us to the end of it. It's currently being used for surveillance tracking in Oregon:
https://www.unacast.com/solutions/unacast-turbine
According to its marketing department, it "utilizes 'anonymized' data signals..." that can "determine home and work locations, visitor origins and destinations as well as the waypoints in between"
That's about as anonymous as a twinkie is nutritious. Also it cannot be anonymous in order to do anything useful for the general public (i.e. notify people if they have been in contact with a person who tested positive).
orchid20 wrote: Whatever the timeline may actually be, here is some of the tech that will "help" get us to the end of it. It's currently being used for surveillance tracking in Oregon:
‘Here’s their tracking map that I posted in a different thread started on April 4th.
https://www.unacast.com/covid19/social-distancing-scoreboard
I called it! Well, kind of:
Ops are more predictable than viruses.
