Coronavirus:

[Rufus T. Firefly]

We are a country that responds to nothing until it's nearly an epic disaster. We refuse to take proactive steps on anything in deference to the almighty dollar (with the possible exception of defense spending). Until that changes, we are doomed to a continuation of the cycle.

We are unable to look any further ahead than the business numbers of the next quarter or the next election. In between, we do nothing, refuse to plan, etc. while the rest of the world passes us by.........

When I first got into corporate finance/accounting, we routinely prepared five, ten, fifteen year plans. I retired five years ago, and it had probably been at least fifteen years since the last five year plan had been prepared. Part of that was due to the acceleration in the development of telecommunications technology...you couldn't plan ten years out for market changes you couldn't envision. Hats off to Alvin Toffler, as much of what he wrote has come to pass.

Problem is that we make a 5 year plan and then wait 5 years to review it again, so we're so far behind we cannot catch up.

I was supposed to make a 4-5 year plan for my research yet our budget was effectively an unknown that would be available at unknown times....

[Neil]

Bureaucrats love strategic planning and sitting around imagining that they can predict the future. Scientists, boots on the ground staff and Yogi Berra know that is almost total bullshit and an exercise in futility. Better to buy an ouija board or examine goat entrails as they did in ancient Greece .

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Bureaucrats love strategic planning and sitting around imagining that they can predict the future. Scientists, boots on the ground staff and Yogi Berra know that is almost total bullshit and an exercise in futility. Better to buy an ouija board or examine goat entrails as they did in ancient Greece .

Well................mostly. But asking "what if..." fairly frequently and being nimble to course correct can work, but it's not a Gov't capability.

OTOH, I did manage to set up a supply line 3-4 years into the future for one of my critical items; took bending some of the procurement regs a bit through a Klein bottle, but it worked despite many very authoritatively telling me it wouldn't and I couldn't.....

[Neil]

Trying to plan for the future or insure supply lines makes sense, and that sort of thinking isn't strategic planning in the managerial sense I was referring to. In 42 years in institutional life I have yet to see strategic planning efforts of the global sort yield anything of much use, but I've seen it lead to all sorts of unintended unfortunate consequences when people become convinced they know what will be needed or best overall and in detail 5 years from now. Reality refuses to cooperate. Asking what if is very different from letting people with inflated sense of self-worth and ego telling everyone where we must go.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Trying to plan for the future or insure supply lines makes sense, and that sort of thinking isn't strategic planning in the managerial sense I was referring to.

Yes, sort of....trying to work with yearly funding that must be spent within the fiscal year you got it but spending it 3 years into the future was....."interesting"......

Managerial - depends on what level. Strategic, well it kept my program running through the sequester years when everyone else was running out of funding after 5 months,

In 42 years in institutional life I have yet to see strategic planning efforts of the global sort yield anything of much use, but I've seen it lead to all sorts of unintended unfortunate consequences when people become convinced they know what will be needed or best overall and in detail 5 years from now. Reality refuses to cooperate. Asking what if is very different from letting people with inflated sense of self-worth and ego telling everyone where we must go.

Global, nah. Certainly not in the majority of the Western world.......and when the majority are flailing about it only exasperates the chaotic nature of making such an attempt. Something akin to the uncertainty principle.

That's why it can't be engraved in stone; better in dust, sand, with mirrors as circumstances change. I used to do some predictive production projections for the DOE......I found 15 years plus box of paper on that stuff about 6 months ago and showed a young investigator how I did this the 1st time.....not quite on the back of a stack of envelopes, but a 5x7 notepad with a few binder clips holding it together...."and this is how the nation's supply line was determined..."

[MurphOnMillerAve]

What are the actual first symptoms a person gets when the virus first starts to manifest itself in a person? One by one. If there has been discovered/traced a certain typical order, I really like to know.

[Neil]

Murph, it’s entirely variable. No such list. Some combination of sniffles, sore throat, cough, muscle soreness, etc. occasionally other stuff. fever is common.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Went to the grocery store bright and early today.......

[up148]

Just got back from the gas station/convenience store and they have signs on the doors stating it's now a county requirement to where a mask to enter. Waahoooo! Best news I've heard in awhile. General public is too lame to do it on their own, so rules help.

[up148]

Sorry, its amazing how one letter completely changes the statement.

It was Jackson County not country.

[HONDO74]

An interesting article from the BBC especially the timeline of events.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/ewsu2g ... hina-wuhan

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Yes, so? Nothing new there.

[Roy]

Why is the U.S. still struggling to test everyone who needs it? Runs about six minutes.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-is-the-u-s-still-struggling-to-test-everyone-who-needs-it

[chuck]

Why is the U.S. still struggling to test everyone who needs it?

Because we have watched too much Star Trek/Star Wars/favorite SciFi or Crime show/movie here. People really, really, really have no idea how this works. The person collecting the samples has to know how to do it properly. The sample has to be handled properly. It has to be turned over to a lab to run the test to identify the virus. The test results have to be passed back to the subject/public health officials. All of this takes time. Even if you were the only person being tested and the lab was on site and had nothing else to do it would take about an hour per test/person. When you factor in that there would need to be several hundred million tests ... time is a big factor. Plus you need the swabs, lab equipment, reagents for several hundred million tests and the PPE for the people conducting them.

There are a lot of research labs working on a Star Trek like testing where a sample is collected and placed in/on a device and in a very short period of time (minutes, hopefully seconds) we get a green or red light. The problems are finding something that will react only to COVID 19 and do so in an immediate fashion. You then need to be able to mass produce these labs on a chip and they can't be too expensive or take too long to manufacture and they have to be easily and safely disposed of once used. Ideally a piece of paper (test strip) treated with the detection chemicals and a simple reagent followed by a direct optical read out or possibly an electrical current (some type of electrophoresis process) which indicates a positive or negative response. Our senior design classes found these to be popular devices to work on, trying to expand on glucose testing. Hard part is finding the chemical signatures to be used on/in the chip.

It would be nice if this was as quick and easy as testing the water in a swimming pool. It would have been nice if we had started working on this back in early January. It would have been nicer if we hadn't tried to open up too soon. It would be really nice if people had a) social distanced, b) wore masks, c) washed their hands, d) avoided unnecessary contact so we wouldn't NEED several hundred million test kits. But we didn't do any of those things. cest le vie.

[healey36]

Bureaucrats love strategic planning and sitting around imagining that they can predict the future. Scientists, boots on the ground staff and Yogi Berra know that is almost total bullshit and an exercise in futility. Better to buy an ouija board or examine goat entrails as they did in ancient Greece .

No one builds a plan or a budget thinking they have all the answers, or know the future, but you need to have a framework in place so you can make decisions regarding the lines of business the company should pursue, allocation of resources, and appropriately sizing the business. Planning is a constant process...you don’t wait five years to update your five-year plan.