Coronavirus

[bkp_duke]

It was a joke!
I'm also against the SALT deduction, though I would certainly take it if offered.

Ah, didn't get it was a joke, my bad.

Sure, I take every tax deduction offered as well. Just if I look at them fairly, the SALT has not been fair for the majority of those out there.

 

[bkp_duke]

I can see your position regarding the unemployed, but how soon will people be back to commuting to work en masse? Would rather have that "debt" be utilized on more direct needs right now.

I'm hoping that big corps see the light and commuting is greatly reduced in the future. There is no need for the bulk of white collar jobs to get up, get dressed, drive to work . . . only to sit in front of a computer all day.

Other jobs, that of course would never work.

 

[jerry33]

I was wondering about the payroll tax cut that Trump is desperate for. People who are working are generally doing well. After years of having a depressed housing market here in the Poconos houses are now selling like proverbial hotcakes as New Yorkers are escaping NYC and able to work at home. It is the unemployed that need the continuing assistance since a lot of their jobs are still not back. PA Governor just cut back restaurant indoor dining to 25% and restaurants were barely viable at 50% occupancy.

Correct, but the payroll tax cut is wanted to give them an excuse to defund Social Security.

 

[bkp_duke]

Correct, but the payroll tax cut is wanted to give them an excuse to defund Social Security.

The loss of small business jobs is going to defund SS well enough without any help.

 

[jerry33]

I'm hoping that big corps see the light and commuting is greatly reduced in the future. There is no need for the bulk of white collar jobs to get up, get dressed, drive to work . . . only to sit in front of a computer all day.

Most managers and executives think working from home is not working. Years ago I had thought that the majority of office jobs would be work from home once the older executives and managers retired as it makes a lot of sense. But the "not warming the office chair equals not working" mentality hasn't change one iota. The large company I worked for got rid of all the work from home jobs except for absolute emergencies (before CV-19).

 

[bkp_duke]

Most managers and executives think working from home is not working. Years ago I had thought that the majority of office jobs would be work from home once the older executives and managers retired as it makes a lot of sense. But the "not warming the office chair equals not working" mentality hasn't change one iota. The large company I worked for got rid of all the work from home jobs except for absolute emergencies (before CV-19).

I believe there has been a paradigm shift with COVID-19. From what I read, most companies are planning on significant work-from-home for white-collar jobs even after the pandemic is past.

 

[TespaceX]

I believe there has been a paradigm shift with COVID-19. From what I read, most companies are planning on significant work-from-home for white-collar jobs even after the pandemic is past.

Twitter obviously adopted the idea of permanent WFH. Facebook confirmed they are looking at more permanent WFH. Google employees can WFH until end of the year as of now.
And not just tech. The entire insurance industry can work from home as well IMO. My brother who works for the large CA HMO in corporate says they are told they will be WFH until Spring next year as of now.

Added: My friend in Wells Fargo corporate (in SF) is also WFH for the foreseeable future.

 

[jerry33]

I believe there has been a paradigm shift with COVID-19. From what I read, most companies are planning on significant work-from-home for white-collar jobs even after the pandemic is past.

That would be nice. Knowing the company that I worked for, I imagine they won't be included in the most.

 

[dgatwood]

Our local numbers track with that

2515 cases, 21 deaths, 0.83%

It still surprises me every time I look to see that we have a local gap of no deaths between 65-74 years old. I guess 21 cases just isn't enough to fill out a random distribution.

Folks in that age range are smart enough to stay inside and not get it. Above that, and you have a higher number because of nursing home staff passing it around. Below that, and people are working. So that gap makes perfect sense to me.

BTW, the Tennessee average is about 1.6%. Knox County is doing unusually well. That difference could be racial in nature; COVID-19 seems to have much higher fatality rates in African Americans, and Knox County has only about half as many African Americans as the state average.

 

[dgatwood]

I agree...and I live in NYS with very high property taxes and very high income taxes. Plus the SALT deductions really only benefit the highest earners. The standard deduction is $24,000+ for a married couple...you would need a very high income to exceed the standard deduction.

For single people, it matters a lot. It's easy to pay over $12,200 in taxes, at least in California. When a low-end starter home in the Bay Area starts at a million dollars, you pay almost that much in property tax alone, before you even factor in your wages.

 

[Dr. J]

The standard deduction is $24,000+ for a married couple...you would need a very high income to exceed the standard deduction.

Income and deductions, while correlated, are largely independent of each other. For example, due to the CARES Act*, a taxpayer may deduct qualifying charitable contributions up to 100% of adjusted gross income. So if one followed This Guy's advice, you'd only need just over $24,800 in AGI to exceed the married filing jointly standard deduction ($24,800 in 2020). And that's without a SALT or any other deduction.

* Ordinarily, charitable deductions are limited to 50% or 60% of a taxpayer's AGI.

 

[Dr. J]

It was a joke!
I'm also against the SALT deduction, though I would certainly take it if offered.

The rationale for the SALT deduction is that without it, the taxpayer is doubly (or triply with SAL) taxed on the same income. Even without SALT deduction limitations, the high tax states would still tend to send a higher percentage of personal income taxes to the federal government than the low tax states.

 

[HG Wells]

It was a joke!
I'm also against the SALT deduction, though I would certainly take it if offered.

GEE, is that a SALT 1 or a SALT 2 deduction?
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

 

[HG Wells]

As to work from home.
When I worked for a fortune 5 company we caught a double dipper.
He was working for two divisions that had separate payroll processing.
Did it for 14 years. Worked in sales. Was on the road 80-90 % of the time.

When they centralised payroll they discovered his great time management skills.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Looks to me like we've likely reached close to the peak of daily cases for this surge. Depends on whether California actually flattens out this week or not, I suppose. Also depends on if suddenly testing capacity increases (it's plateaued at around 800k or so). That could lead to an apparent case increase, even if infections are declining nationwide (hopefully this is what happens).

There are definitely a few states still surging (some in the South, etc.), but they're not likely large enough to compensate for the drops which will be coming from AZ, TX, and FL (assuming things continue to trend the way they are, of course). However, that will mean continued surging from various places over the coming weeks.

Nothing surprising about this, of course. Masks and telling people there's a real problem actually helps a lot! We'll see how quickly the cases drop off.

I figure deaths will end up around 1500 a day in a couple weeks. Probably that'll be about the max for this particular surge. Depends on how things go - a long sustained plateau of 60-70k cases a day will increase the peak value since the long tails really start to add up at that point.

The danger remains that we'll just shift the outbreak somewhere else that has had it easy so far. That's where the increasing testing and tracing etc. (and continued compliance by the population!) will hopefully rectify things and put an end to this disaster.

Of course, the denialists are claiming the reason for the dropoff in cases is because we've reached herd immunity. Lol. That'll end well. People are so silly. Too bad it gets people killed.

Obviously, schools won't be opening in a lot of places on time. Quite a few states that are currently heading the wrong direction, so for sure those ones will be out of the question. A few states got control early and may have a path to at least a partial school reopening in some areas to "test the waters." This is something that will need to be figured out at a local level - some regions really do have low levels of disease and maybe able to accomplish it - if they have adequate precautions and adequate support from public health authorities.

 

[N5329K]

Obviously, schools won't be opening in a lot of places on time.

Schools (I’m thinking colleges and universities here) can open but I don’t think they will stay open unless they get serious about testing for all staff and all students. That means weekly tests (at minimum) for schools in the burbs, and twice-weekly tests in cities. No exceptions, otherwise, you risk discovering you’re in an outbreak way too late to do anything about it except shut the school down again. Which is what I believe is most likely to happen because testing and labs are not remotely set up for this, not anywhere, and hope is not a plan.
Robin

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Schools (I’m thinking colleges and universities here) can open but I don’t think they will stay open unless they get serious about testing for all staff and all students. That means weekly tests (at minimum) for schools in the burbs, and twice-weekly tests in cities. No exceptions, otherwise, you risk discovering you’re in an outbreak way too late to do anything about it except shut the school down again. Which is what I believe is most likely to happen because testing and labs are not remotely set up for this, not anywhere, and hope is not a plan.

Agreed. I don't think any of the infrastructure is ready for that. They can do pooled testing of course; hopefully they'll actually try to get that going in the next month. But schools will need to take responsibility for this task on their own.

It's absolutely possible to open up everything 100% (with masks and prudent infection control) in most places if the infrastructure of public health is super robust, and disease levels start off fairly low. But that doesn't describe our current situation.

 

[Dr. J]

As to work from home.
When I worked for a fortune 5 company we caught a double dipper.
He was working for two divisions that had separate payroll processing.
Did it for 14 years. Worked in sales. Was on the road 80-90 % of the time.

When they centralised payroll they discovered his great time management skills.

They fixed the glitch.

 

[Dr. J]

Dr. David Ho was interviewed on TRMS this evening (final guest). I have no idea how to interpret this, but you medical types may. It sounds promising.

Dr. Ho said it was reminiscent of his earlier work on HIV.

Neutralizing Antibodies Isolated from COVID-19 Patients May Suppress Virus

Researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center have isolated antibodies from several COVID-19 patients that, to date, are among the most potent in neutralizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

These antibodies could be produced in large quantities by pharmaceutical companies to treat patients, especially early in the course of infection, and to prevent infection, particularly in the elderly.

 

[dfwatt]

I'm surprised no country has tried to rollout these home tests. I had heard that the sensitivity of these antigen tests was low but I had no idea it was so correlated with viral load. They make a very convincing argument.
The current testing system makes no sense. We should not allow a backlog of tests to form. It would be far better to get some people results in 24 hours and throw out every sample that can't be completed within 24 hours.

Agreed. The antigen tests have been unfairly labeled as not sensitive enough when they look to be optimally sensitive-not reacting to the very earliest couple days of infection and also not reacting to viral fragments after people have beaten the infection. There's no way we're going to get out of our testing gravity well where we're always behind unless we roll out the antigen testing. It would make it possible to test tens of millions of people everyday. And they're cheap to like one to two bucks. Do not understand why the CDC is not recommending this.