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Yep! Plenty!
It may happen that enough people are exposed to covid19 so that we develop herd immunity. Herd immunity stops most diseases when the immunity rate approaches 70%. So it's not a far fetched hope; it might happen very quickly.
I don't think herd immunity will reach close to 70% due to the number of people who are not going to put themselves in the position of being potentially exposed.
I just hope I find love before I die. My chance to have a worthwhile career is likely gone forever. Best case scenario it would take me until I’m in my 40s to get back to where I was at 22. People don’t start lives and build careers when they are in their 40s. I’ll never own a home. Hopefully social security is still around when our generation reaches retirement age. I’ll be lucky if I don’t have to move back in with my parents.
My life is over.
I'm a little older than you. I finished college, in the Bay Area, right as the Dotcom bubble busted. Then it was 9/11. So basically the Bay Area economy was over. It took me a couple of years to even get a career track job again, and it paid less than the first job out of college. In 2008 I was just starting to catchup. I ended up getting lucky - and made a career pivot that gave me more money. From there I was slowly catching up, steadily getting more and more income. Then things got crappy for my parents, and they needed help. There went my cushion. That went on for a few years.
Now finally, I feel like I am catching up. But unfortunately I still have peers and superiors that are a 5-10 younger than I am. But I am feeling a little more hopeful at this point, and maybe this catching up will stick. My income has doubled since 2008. And that is not something I would have predicted then.
Anyway, you don't know what sort of opportunities will come out of this turn of events. While I haven't caught up to everyone, I am now a high income earner and making progress. And that in itself is something.
I do know that the American situation is different to ours. But we are coming out of eight weeks of shutdowns and I think people are upbeat here. They were discussing permanent changes, for example, in the projected number of people who will work from home. Pre virus was 5% and they are expecting it to rise to 10%. Enough to have an effect but not catastrophically. People will still be spending money on transport, business clothes and queueing for their coffee in the city.
I will put money on almost no increase in this country in home schooling. Last week our Reserve Bank downgraded the projected contraction in the economy from 10% to 8%.
Tourism is a problem everywhere but obviously countries need to encourage their residents to spend their money at home. It is Mother’s Day in Australia today and our daughters were able to visit. Their families will be able to come next weekend, which is pretty exciting for us. Our conversation was about the daughters changing the planned holidays in Japan to a local one, ours from Kenya to perhaps New Zealand.
Obviously there is unemployment, projected to rise from 5% to 10%. But I think economies and people are more resilient than many expect.
Anyway, hope I am right. It is also widely expected here that there will be a vaccine within a year.
Australia is in a much better position than the U.S. because your government's debt to GDP ratio is much lower. But if the U.S. or Japan comes crashing down financially, everyone is going to feel it. Both countries have huge debt levels.
I don't think herd immunity will reach close to 70% due to the number of people who are not going to put themselves in the position of being potentially exposed.
If its achieved, it will be achieved slowly. We are only in day 71, I think. This virus keeps showing us new tricks. You don't want to see the herd rushing off looking for immunity only to run off a cliff of something else unexpected.
Someone on here is crying that his/her life is over at 40. Wtf? You can plan on living to be 100 if nothing kills you first. That means you have 60 long years left. You can do anything you want to do in that amount of time, including pursue a Master's degree in something and still have 50 years left over.
The economy will be fine because it was fine prior to the advent of this virus. Sure, you hear of businesses filing bankruptcy - Chapter 11. It sounds like doom and gloom but they are restructuring and taking advantage of refinancing deals to lower their debt which will increase their profit. That would be why Neiman Marcus and others aren't having 'going out of business' sales. They never had any intention of going out of business.
The consumer is a big part of the problem. You can reopen businesses, but you can't force consumers to eat at restaurants, go to a movie, go to a sporting event, fly on an airplane, take a cruise, etc.. Yes, business will pop back, but it will NOT pop back to pre-virus levels until there is a vaccine, cure, or treatment protocol. Plus the government can only prop up the economy for so long. I wish the economy would pop back quickly (to pre-virus levels), I just don't see it happening.
Agreed.
Even though the scenario playing out in my head is harsher, I think it's unrealistic to think things will pop back to where they were before in a few months or even a year.
You can't make all those small business who went bust come back. That means those people employed at said businesses are not going to have employment.
People are going to find ways to work from home more. That's a good thing for traffic and the environment. But it's not so good in the short run for oil consumption and transportation spending (less driving means less spending on vehicle maintenance).
Most organizations have taken a hit financially. That means they're going to cut jobs even when things come back.
State and local government budgets are getting cut as we speak. They won't be able to hire people or spend as much as they were planning. It usually takes the government about 2 years to recover after a recession is over--slower than in private industry. Government pension plans--which already weren't well funded--are going to take a hit as a result of the bear stock market and ultra low interest rates on safer investments. I wouldn't be surprised if a large city like Chicago ends up declaring bankruptcy. They already had a low bond rating even before the downturn hit.
We have easily accessible birth control ,we don't need to pump out tons of kids like people did back in the old days and more and more people are realizing how archaic and foolish marriage is. There are many reasons for lower birthrates and frankly lower birthrates are a good thing.
Unfortunately, for the last 2 generations, the smarter people figured this out, but the dumber half of the population has been resistant to consistently using birth control. The result is the dumber people have been outbreeding the smarter people. And worse, they've been mostly having kids out of wedlock, which numerous studies (even ones by liberal researchers) have proven to be bad for children. So now the smart people will double down and not have kids while the dumb and the reckless will continue as they always have. We'll have an even bigger underclass than before.
My kids in their thirties have had a very tough couple of months. But when I think what their great-grandmother went through, a child in WW1, having four kids growing up during the Depression, having her husband go to war in WW2, what is happening now is nothing comparable.
People are complaining they cannot get a visa to go to see a partner overseas. In the wars people here did not see their loved ones for literally years. They are complaining now that they cannot go overseas to attend a funeral. Almost none of the armed forces killed in WW1 was even brought back to Australia for burial. Their remains are scattered in cemeteries all over Europe.
I actually think some people would benefit from studying a bit more history.
I completely agree with the bolded. I don't know how it is in Australia, but the teaching of history in American schools and universities has often been junked in favor of social justice warrior bs. Many people have no concept of the trials people went through in relatively recent periods of history, let alone 200 or 500 years ago. They think we could never go back to that level of hardship, but I think that is just the hubris and arrogance of the modern people who are ripe for a fall.
Even though the scenario playing out in my head is harsher, I think it's unrealistic to think things will pop back to where they were before in a few months or even a year.
You can't make all those small business who went bust come back. That means those people employed at said businesses are not going to have employment.
People are going to find ways to work from home more. That's a good thing for traffic and the environment. But it's not so good in the short run for oil consumption and transportation spending (less driving means less spending on vehicle maintenance).
Most organizations have taken a hit financially. That means they're going to cut jobs even when things come back.
State and local government budgets are getting cut as we speak. They won't be able to hire people or spend as much as they were planning. It usually takes the government about 2 years to recover after a recession is over--slower than in private industry. Government pension plans--which already weren't well funded--are going to take a hit as a result of the bear stock market and ultra low interest rates on safer investments. I wouldn't be surprised if a large city like Chicago ends up declaring bankruptcy. They already had a low bond rating even before the downturn hit.
I'm a little older than you. I finished college, in the Bay Area, right as the Dotcom bubble busted. Then it was 9/11. So basically the Bay Area economy was over. It took me a couple of years to even get a career track job again, and it paid less than the first job out of college. In 2008 I was just starting to catchup. I ended up getting lucky - and made a career pivot that gave me more money. From there I was slowly catching up, steadily getting more and more income. Then things got crappy for my parents, and they needed help. There went my cushion. That went on for a few years.
Now finally, I feel like I am catching up. But unfortunately I still have peers and superiors that are a 5-10 younger than I am. But I am feeling a little more hopeful at this point, and maybe this catching up will stick. My income has doubled since 2008. And that is not something I would have predicted then.
Anyway, you don't know what sort of opportunities will come out of this turn of events. While I haven't caught up to everyone, I am now a high income earner and making progress. And that in itself is something.
I think the whole idea of "catching up" is a trap. It implies that things will go back to the way they were before, with perhaps a few minor adjustments. I don't think it's going to be anything like that.
I think it's time for most of us to radically re-evaluate everything we've built our lives on. We've built our lives on a set of assumptions--many that we're not even aware of--that are just not going to carry forward into the future. Unfortunately, most people do not want to hear that, so they'll just always be in reactionary "catch up" mode.
I think the whole idea of "catching up" is a trap. It implies that things will go back to the way they were before, with perhaps a few minor adjustments. I don't think it's going to be anything like that.
I think it's time for most of us to radically re-evaluate everything we've built our lives on. We've built our lives on a set of assumptions--many that we're not even aware of--that are just not going to carry forward into the future. Unfortunately, most people do not want to hear that, so they'll just always be in reactionary "catch up" mode.
I'm not sure that we'll go back to how exactly things were. With that said, a lot of people seem to be discounting human nature. A common refrain is that all the bars will go bankrupt. Sure, a lot of current bars will probably fold. Drinking preferences may have to adjust to a new income reality. We might be drinking $1 PBRs or Rolling Rock instead of 10 oz. $7 pours of the latest bourbon barrel aged stout.
With that said, people want to drink with other people. There have been pandemics, world wars, civil wars, major natural disasters, etc., and the concept of the bar remains. It's not going anywhere.
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