Here in Vegas, the Coronavirus is positively hammering the casinos – MGM and Wynn have already announced various closures and lay offs. It’ll probably get worse over the next two weeks. It is all temporary, but sucks for those affected – and I hope President Trump jumps in to help out the workers who are going to be hurt here. As locals, we don’t go to the Strip, of course, but we did head out to a locals casino tonight – I was curious about how it would be going. I did win $100, so that’s good. The place was thin crowd for a Saturday night – but, still quite a few people there. I asked one of the workers there how its going: no word about layoffs at the moment but the buffet isn’t getting a lot of business these days so their feeling is that it might shut down for a while.
In my particular work world – a slight slowdown from normal; maybe a 10% dropoff. Contingency plans are ready for us to work from home. Hope it doesn’t come to that – but the panic is pretty deep now, and no one wants to be the guy who kept things rolling and a bunch come down sick.
Our economy is fundamentally strong but this is going to be a hit, no doubt about it. But probably not as much as feared: the panic buying is stuffing retailer and supplier pockets with money…and in my particular line of work, I can assure you that “non-critical” retail stuff is still going on a brisk pace. We’ll come roaring back once this is over…and as we now have real incentive to decouple from China, the long term benefits to our country will be good.
President Trump, in my view, did just fine in his first statement – others thought otherwise, and that’s, I guess, why he did the second one…which went over much better. You could tell because the MSMers were taking pot-shots at trivia rather than hitting the President on substance. President Trump has really stood the test of time, hasn’t he? The guy gets it at the most fundamental level: that it is we, the regular folks, who do all the work and who need to be cared for, first. I’ve never actually been more confident of his re-election.
Ultimately, this is the price of both globalism and the welfare State – the tearing down of borders and the placing people in a position where they depend on government is what got this disease really cracking through the world. People have to use more sense – but I think a lot were waiting for government to take care of it…meanwhile the “come one, come all” attitude about travel around the world made sure that once the virus caught hold, there was zero chance it was going to stop. Strict border controls at all times: that is the way it has to be. And, yes,we should check foreign arrivals for disease…there is technology which can swiftly reveal if someone coming in should be more closely checked.
I hope you all are safe – and have all the toilet paper you need!
Blogs For Victory 
Gamblers on the whole are likely a particularly panicky and superstitious demographic.
So are Democrats
So the latest now is 60 people dead in the United States from this PANDEMIC. Let me say that again … 60. There are 2,932 active cases and of those 10 are in serious condition. Let me say that again … 10.
So 60 elderly people have died and there are 10 people in serious condition in a country of 310 million people and this evidently is cause for 24/7 news coverage and wide spread panic. Did you know that there are just 240 active cases in Canada and 37 cases in Mexico, so in the western northern hemisphere there are less than 3,400 cases out of a population of approx. 450 million. And worldwide, the incident rate is just 21 cases per 1 million people and again, it’s the flu. Evidence shows that if you are under 50 and in reasonable good health, your chance of dying is nearly 0% so again, WHAT IN THE HELL AM I MISSING?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
More than a quarter of those deaths are from one nursing home in Washington state. Two thirds of the total from Washington state.
So the latest now is 60 people dead in the United States from this PANDEMIC. Let me say that again … 60.
On average 150 people a year in the U.S. die from peanut allergies. Just sayin’.
Once this is over the economy and the stock market will come roaring back, but the money lost will be incalculable.
A guest on Guttfeld’s show last night made the same observation I did, and she is a business writer—that the market was due for a correction anyway, and while this is dramatic and more than just a correction, when it comes back it should be more realistic.
Personally, selfishly, I am glad it is happening now where it can be blamed on the virus and not on Trump. Well, Trump designed the virus and spread it, of course, and then napped and played golf while it ravaged the world, so he’ll be blamed anyway.
The only social media I indulge in is Neighborhood.com, and the other day some hysterical ninny was freaking out because Trump had called the virus a hoax and she can’t believe a word he says and Pence admitted they had dropped the ball when it came to tests and she is just melting down because the government is just LETTING PEOPLE DIE!! (She is probably the same woman who was heard quizzing a (male) supermarket employee the other day about which feminine hygiene products could be flushed, if they had to be used instead of toilet paper. In much of South America the systems can’t handle paper so paper is disposed of not flushed in the toilet but in a separate container. Only a truly stupid person would be convinced that anything she used after The Great Toilet Paper Famine of 2020 left her without her Charmin would also have to be flushed.)
It is cruel for the media to callously throw ignorant and gullible people into panic and hysteria, just in hopes of gaining a few points politically. But it is what they do, yanking the strings on their mindless little marionettes and making them dance, uncaring of the pain they are causing. The woman who posted that silly rant was truly suffering, convinced that she had been left adrift by her uncaring government. She was absolutely frantic.
This does tell me, though, that I am correct in planning to set up my Wyoming property as a hideout in case of a Zombie Apocalypse—my shorthand for anything that disrupts our society so much that people start freaking out and getting seriously irrational. Time to hook up the freeze dryer and start setting up a bunker, I guess. If this is the reaction to a virus I can imagine what it would be like after an EMP attack (or natural EMP event) or true biological attack.
AAAANNNNDDDD here’s the headline on Drudge this morning
PANDEMIC PANIC
WORLD IN LOCKDOWN
AGAIN, 7 billion people on this planet and there are less than 81,000 cases and less than 3,700 in serious condition and this is reason for a world in lockdown????????
At this point, if the experts are wrong, there needs to be A LOT of people held accountable for creating this panic.