It all comes down to whether you think you can exploit an imbalance of power in the contractual relationship.
I think the present situation was never contemplated by anyone in a powerful position, and our economy/law system can not operate in its usual fashion, without disaster. There is a Scottish saying that: “You cannot take the pants of a naked bottom”. (Translation)
I found the “five eyes” stuff propaganda. The Chinese are humans, and appear to me to have done reasonably in the initial handling of the virus.
In relation to not paying rent due, this is why I’m not unhappy to have a vacant rental at the moment. Periodic vacancy is normal anyway and having it at this time gives me the opportunity to consider my future risk in tenant selection based on previously unforeseen factors. There is of course the risk of not finding a tenant for a while, and thereby not funding my own retirement accounts responsibly, but I prefer that over having a tenant that does not pay what they owe and is potentially sheltered by incoming government anti-eviction policy that prefers to increase my risk without recourse and eliminate theirs.
Re businesses not paying what they owe, there’s a valid point of view that businesses should be tested occasionally. I was discussing this with one of the neighbors at the above mentioned rental, who is a dentist. His view is that once he puts his staff on Unemployment his monthly costs are down to $10K a month. He can carry that level of expense for quite a long time, expects other businesses to do the same, and thinks it’s insane to expect the taxpayer to give him cash directly. It’s plenty enough in his view that his employees are covered under normal procedure. He told me he’s taking the cash only because if he doesn’t he loses a competitive advantage – he’ll use the money remodel his office during the downtime. In essence he’s being forced to take money from the taxpayer, and via government debt on which future generations will be paying interest forever.
Graham wrote:
The attitude towards the landlord is basically “what are you going to do about it?”
It would take a brave landlord, but once the contract payment terms are broken, go in change the locks take the property back and put notice on the contents.
Business rates are obscene already, although much has been talked about doing something about them nothing ever seems to come of it.
Locally, it looks like we almost “defeated” the virus. The number of patients in our ICUs dropped to the lowest since early March, fo just two (highest was 14), and miraculously not a single staff member in our hospital (1600 beds, 9000 staff!) has been infected at any time at all. Disinfectant is plentiful and PPE sufficient.
Does Germany have a high % of health workers from the “black asian and minority ethnic (BAME)” communities?
The UK NHS does and they are vastly more likely to get seriously ill and die of this. Yesterday there were some numbers out and it was between 2x and 3x more likely than whites.
They do have a lot more comorbidities and lifestyle factors, and surprisingly this appears to be statistically true even for the high paid staff. The big Q is whether this fully accounts for the size of it. It’s a hot topic, for obvious reasons.
As for hospital activity, the numbers are way down here too. Well, in most places. What is worrying is how many stay in hospital for weeks more afterwards, off ICU, with utter exhaustion and often organ damage. There are no numbers being published for this but it’s a lot.
Peter wrote:
Does Germany have a high % of health workers from the “black asian and minority ethnic (BAME)” communities?
Not really a high percentage. Most nurses are ethnic Germans, with the largest non-German minorities being Polish or Russian. Recent recruitment drives have also added some nurses from East Asia, e.g. Philippines or Thailand, but these form a small minority in the overall numbers.
Among the doctors, about 25% are of non-German descent, with again Eastern European making up the bulk of them, followed by Austrians, Greek and Arabic doctors. Black or Asian doctors are again a minority, I know a few but they are all born in Germany and otherwise young, health and fit.
Peter wrote:
They do have a lot more comorbidities and lifestyle factors, and surprisingly this appears to be statistically true even for the high paid staff. The big Q is whether this fully accounts for the size of it. It’s a hot topic, for obvious reasons.
Yeah I have read this for the UK as well. It is surprising. In Germany I’d say that immigrant staff generally are slightly healthier than locals. Most overweight people in healthcare are ethnic Germans here.
Peter wrote:
As for hospital activity, the numbers are way down here too. Well, in most places. What is worrying is how many stay in hospital for weeks more afterwards, off ICU, with utter exhaustion and often organ damage. There are no numbers being published for this but it’s a lot.
This does indeed sound worrying. I could not yet personally follow up on the medical history of our Covid-19 patients, mostly because of privacy laws (if I haven’t treated them personally, I’m not allowed to access their files, and illegal access is closely monitored by our IT), but judging by their appearance and disappearance on ward lists, most were discharged after two to three weeks. I know of one 82 year old lady who died a day after being admitted (in already severe respiratory distress). I don’t know the overall mortality rate of our hospital’s Covid patients, but most of the patient names from the ICU later appeared on the normal ward, so I don’t think the mortality rate was very high.
Just heard on the box that a lot of survivors have kidney failure and need support.
As usual the brain-dead media don’t give numbers with which a person with any edukkation could inform themselves but the number I saw was 10% of those who died. Since roughly 1/3 of ICU patients die, that suggests about 7% of ICU survivors have this. It apparently isn’t the long term damage for which one needs dialysis. Those who need that were getting worried that the hospital facilities would no longer be available, but they are ok as it is a different type of machine.
But it’s hard to get any numbers since ex ICU people are in hospital for a very long time.
This thing can be a real bugger for a pilot who has the “average health profile”. Getting the medical back might be difficult.
kwlf wrote:
You could look at this US study showing mortality of 28% in the Hydroxychloroquine group, 23% in the Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin group and 11% in the no-Hydroxychloroquine group.As I mentioned it is not a randomised controlled trial and so may be subject to various biases.
Are you kidding me? That could not even be considered a study a Jr Hight school student could produce and pass.
Sorry but to put that out there is akin to malpractice or the worst form of propaganda. I have heard people saying how dangerous HCQ is and it always goes back to that quack report. What it does it causes patients and Drs. (who are too busy to read it other than the headlines) to dismiss it as dangerous and unproven. Most Drs depend on detail men (Pharma Rep sales people) to provide then with the information concerning drug treatment for patients.
Do you want to go over why that is a quack political report? Lets take it apart step by step.
The second link is another off the wall report. If you take enough of any drug of course it can be detrimental. Do you know what the dosage guidelines are that the CDC put out for HCQ use in the treatment of CV?
The HCQ medication is not as deadly as it is portrayed by the press but apparently for HCQ to work on humans (in-vivo) with same effectiveness as it does in lab trials (in-vitro) for COVID19 the dose has to be huge and almost deadly (according to my Mrs who test & sell these things)
In New York the “Epicenter” of the virus in the US The NY Gov Cuomo, ordered all CV patients back from the hospitals to the Nursing homes even while infectious. In the link below it is exposed why he did it then he lied about it. You just cant make this stuff up. Someone said 25% of all CV deaths occurred in nursing facilities. Now compare that to a State like Florida where the senior citizen population is extremely high in the winter. They call them snow birds. What did that Gov in Florida do that knuckle head in NY did not do?
By the way the numbers are coming in <0.1% deaths in California where there was a large enough sampling made of infected to deaths.
So is the continued lockdown necessary at this point or is it just to save political face?
