Coronavirus: Miles away from ordinary.

Florida never stop doing florida things. They've decided that churches are considered essential business now so that they can stay open and keep gathering in large numbers in order to I guess get their kill count up? God doesn't have Zoom or something? My question is, since they're essential businesses, that means they are gonna get taxed like other businesses correct?

 

Nah, if you close the liquor stores then you have alcoholics detoxing and needing medical care. Can't do that to an overburdened system. Nobody gets DTs from missing church.

 

my issue is more the mass gatherings. Think they’re staying 6 feet apart while they sing in the choir or whatever? Are they gonna sanitize all those pews after each sermon? What about the offering plate? Just seems like a great way to spread this under the guise of religious freedom. You can do that stuff at home. Church on tv or live-streamed is a thing. I get that people need support and help emotionally, but what about all those people who now have to see their therapists on the phone, and why are they different than church-goers?

In maybe related news, each of Florida’s seven VA hospitals just ordered one of those refrigerated morgue trailers. Ruh roh!

 

So basically the first Eucharist when the priest starts shoving his fingers in people's mouths and everyone drinks from the same cup.

 

I knew this was a thing, but I hadn't really experienced it completely until recently. Our former CxO-level person brought this guy in as a fairly high-level director - like 60-70 people working for him. He just...never got it. Got a lot of coaching, a lot of help for years, didn't really take. He never did anything super-wrong, but he never did a lot super-right either and his people were always confused as to what they should be doing but they were, individually, good so nothing too bad happened and it was tough to deal with. Anyway, new CxO comes in, makes a concerted effort, gets this guy to step aside and take an individual contributor job one step down from his current position with no real reduction in pay or benefits. Dude is now doing pretty well - like, people are coming to us on projects this guy is on and going "wow, this guy is doing fantastic on this project for us, where have you been hiding him?" The manager we got to replace this guy is fantastic, and so now everybody is way happier.

 

From inside the bubble:
We're looking at 6k mortalities and 245k cases. We added 39,000 cases yesterday, which is not supposed to happen.

There are only 100 labs conducting the testing nationwide. So, while we have been monitoring these numbers hoping to re-model the predictions, there has been no commensurate increase in testing, and at this scale of cases, the testing has a backlog....of at least 160k samples....some of them dating back to 3/13. In simple terms, we lack the capacity to test at a scale of 30-50k per day, so it seems as though the spread is halting.

I don't have answers for this, but I can imagine if you spit in a jar and leave the jar for 2-3 weeks, it's not going to be viable when you open it for testing.

CDC in an exhibition of optimism usually reserved for Care Bears on ecstasy suggested there was a 20% positive test rate, so that 160K backlog would only result in about 33k confirmed cases. We immediately called bullshit, because the 20% rate was pegged weeks ago, when we were below 10,000 cases.

We think the actual number of infected is between 300-400k, conservatively.

If you peg the death rate at 1.5% and work backwards, it's like 380,000 cases. However, we know the death rate is higher, possibly as high as 3%.

Which also calls into question the quality of the death attribution. There could be as many as 10k dead from this, maybe more that are simply not correctly attributed. So, the 245k/6k figures from Hopkins are a lowball guess, and we're going to see the growth get spiky.

 

What do you think of the lancet study that estimated a 0.66% mortality rate? Do you think they're overestimating the unconfirmed cases?

Whatever the case, it seems like it won't be too long before we pass Italy for most deaths.

 

I think it's all about money. Most people in ministry do not have the skills to make the kind of salary they get from churches out in the real world. Without services, they can't remind parishioners of their needs, they can't pass the offering plate. And, less cynically, they can't make visits and do a lot of the actual ministry they do. Third level "pastors" and "praise & worship ministry team leader" (aka the wife of one minister who's getting paid to sing on Sunday morning, early service), suddenly become very extraneous to the slashing budget.

The percentage of people who considered themselves spiritual (75%) or religious (54%) is still in the majority, but the numbers of people who attend churches regularly has been in rapid decline. People were already choosing to stay home on Sunday mornings, and now they are being ordered to stay home. You think movie theatre owners and restaurant owners and specialty small businesses are worried? Their business will come back and their skills will be useful when some normalcy returns, because what they've been trained to do will still have a need. But, there are a lot of very, very nervous men and women that work for churches who have been living off the teat of others for years.

 

I don't partake in sky wizardry and I as I say this, I sincerely hope the intent of the services is that they will maintain social distancing throughout; if it isn't then the churches should be closed during this time.

But I will say this, we are talking about isolating the entire population of this country due to physical health concerns. Everyone must realize there are mental health concerns raised with isolation as well? People obviously cope in different ways.There are a lot of people in this country with mental health conditions, you aren't going to stop giving them their crazy pills, are you? In the best of times, before this virus, what percentage of people who are on meds don't actually have a problem other than being weak mentally? Before you get mad at that statement, I come from a position that medication, in general, is over prescribed. You also look at the number of people that self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.....they aren't closing the dispensaries or the liquor stores, are they? People involved in organized religion are usually there because of social pressure/indoctrination or because they need it from a mental perspective. They don't call it the opiate of the masses for nothing. My point being, so long as people keep their distance, it is probably a good thing for these people to partake in, in order to not have a different problem on our hands.

 

so what you’re saying is, if people realize they can stay at home and still get the same church effect, then physical churches will be out of business?

 

Sure, that may be part of it. But, there are plenty of physical churches that provide or sponsor very important services to homeless populations and other genuine local ministry. As Oden pointed out, there are also important ministry / mental health services that churches provide. There is also a significant percentage of people who have genuine faith, and rely and enjoy the communal fellowship and corporate worship part of church. But, a lot of the current decline in attendance comes from the percentage of people who simply went because their parents went, or they've always gone, or they go to give their children a foundation, and these people have decided they'd rather have their kids play travel ball, or they'd rather play golf, sleep in, go to the lake, join another club, etc. So, they'd been going out of a habit of sorts, and this quarantine time will break that habit. Also, some people go out of guilt - either sinful guilt, or just because they don't want to disappoint someone . . . now this crisis has given them a legitimate "out." Many of them will not return and the ministers are going to be out of work.

 

Churches are one of the few (maybe the only) institutions that still organize members to vote. For local elections, especially those not held in November, crossing a church is simply suicidal.

Many of them are also financially struggling. So, a local politician ordering them to shut down for 4-6 weeks amounts to a death sentence for some of them.

Remember, to form or break a habit, you only need 6 weeks. So, if people avoid church for 6 weeks, a healthy chunk of them never come back.

 

Looks like I, or at least my company, will be joining some of you in the COVID fight. We hold several high capacity contracts with FEMA and USACE, and we’ve been tapped to develop temporary medical facilities.

 

We can only hope and pray that this happens.

 

Thanks for your help.

Do you know where these medical facilities are going to be deployed? Or are they going to be moved around as the need arises?

It sucks that this stuff is extending so long -- experts are saying that society being "back to normal" by early May is optimistic at best -- but by not hitting at once at least the resources are able to be spread out and moved around.

 

What I’ve seen around here, and what we’re dealing with, has been conversion of underused or formerly closed medical facilities for COVID care, to include clean zones, hot zones and transition zones. We’ve also had warehouse space converted to testing and triage centers.

Its been interesting to read the RFP and see what is required for something like this. I’m sure we’ll run into some unforeseen issues. Apparently my company also provided these services during the Ebola outbreak, so we’ve got folks who know what they’re doing.