Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[EricHiggin]

SvennoJ said:

John2290 said:

This might seem contrarian but I just have to and sorry in advance...Contagion was a damn horror film until they turned the classic Hollywood, easy out slide into the ending. Outbreak was a popcorn film and even in these times it gave some good old cinema relief, although it might be childhood nostalgia for me. Terry Gilliam at his best? Fear and Loathing? Brazil?...C'mon. 

Now Children of men, I do agree sir that is one of the top five, if not the best film ever to be created. It is was so far ahead in cinematography that watching it, i'm sure, in 2020 it is still ahead of the game plus the groundedness of it really got it spot on. I rewatched it last Xmas or the Xmas before with family I was legit finding it hard to hide tears.

And yeah, man, there is no point in being scared all of the time but fear has to be there for a reason and the same can be said about complacency which could well be worse in this case as it leads to that which we, or at least, I am fearing. I guess we have to find a balance but hiding from fear isn't the answer right now cause it is a survival mechanism. Scared is also the wrong word to describe it, it's more alertness heightening from thirty years of baseline peacefulness. Don't get me wrong i'm getting in plenty of downtime, but when there is a storm coming, it's hard not to switch to the weather channel a few times to check the projections.

How are you folks doing in Canada? If all goes sideways do you have infrastructure to support your population with supplies, within the nation... besides cranberries and maple syrup. You have a lot of bog and crude oil, so you won't go cold and that's one area for economic growth. How fairs your assessment of the outlook for Canada should we return to a pre globalised world? Ireland has it pretty fucking good, counting the beans, myself.

Aye Fear and Loathing and Brazil are great as well. 12 Monkeys is my favorite though as most rewatchable to me. I like all his movies, Tideland is just so strangely awful while the Zero Theorem is silly comedy. I have all his movies on blu-ray, one of my favorite directors together with Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Wes Anderson and of course Hayao Miyazaki.

I do check what's going on daily and do my own analysis of how things are progressing. I don't have much fear about running out of food here, there's nothing but farm land and farms around here. And yep, oil sands, plenty trees and we're living in the second largest country in the world after Russia, with 'only' 38 million people.

So far I don't notice any big changes here apart from stuff being closed. Shopping is a bit of a hassle I've heard, however I haven't gone shopping in the past 3 weeks, no need. I don't have a phone either so good luck tracking me. My wife baked bread for the first time. She said you won't want to go back to store bought bread after this, she's right.

Canada also exports some electricity to the states as well as garbage (literally), trucking it from Toronto to Detroit... The biggest import is vehicles, we would have to make our own which would be good news to many. Top export is indeed oil. It's a bit odd though, we seem to export the same stuff we import, vehicles, machinery etc.

Imports

1. Vehicles: US$74.4 billion (16.4% of total imports)
2. Machinery including computers: $69.2 billion (15.3%)
3. Electrical machinery, equipment: $44.2 billion (9.7%)
4. Mineral fuels including oil: $33.2 billion (7.3%)
5. Plastics, plastic articles: $16.4 billion (3.6%)
6. Pharmaceuticals: $13.9 billion (3.1%)
7. Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $12.6 billion (2.8%)
8. Gems, precious metals: $10.3 billion (2.3%)
9. Articles of iron or steel: $10.3 billion (2.3%)
10. Furniture, bedding, lighting , signs, prefab buildings: $9.2 billion (2%)

Exports

1. Mineral fuels including oil: US$98.4 billion (22% of total exports)
2. Vehicles: $61.4 billion (13.8%)
3. Machinery including computers: $34.8 billion (7.8%)
4. Gems, precious metals: $21.3 billion (4.8%)
5. Electrical machinery, equipment: $13.5 billion (3%)
6. Plastics, plastic articles: $12.7 billion (2.8%)
7. Wood: $11.7 billion (2.6%)
8. Aircraft, spacecraft: $11.3 billion (2.5%)
9. Ores, slag, ash: $8.9 billion (2%)
10. Pharmaceuticals: $8.4 billion (1.9%)

We're closely tied to the US, Top 3 trade partners:

1	United States	508,175
-	European Union	94,115
2	China	63,952

So the US better keep their shit together :) Or I guess we can do with a little less variety since a lot is just exchanging goods it seems.

Farmers here would be delighted to have less competition from cheap produce from Mexico and California. And we can always go back to working on the fields instead of importing Mexicans to do it for us. We have become spoiled and lazy. I chop up big trees in my backyard with an axe to get tired! This is me last year. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T54ieGHKTWM
It took a couple months but I turned that thing into small enough pieces to move around while creating a giant pile of wood chips, with that little axe. Sitting in an office bleh.

I only ever use the axe to split wood on occasion anymore. Chainsaws and a splitter go a long way when you're felling a lot of tree's. You certainly had some serious dedication chopping that entire tree up with an axe. Easy way to keep yourself in shape though.

Canada would be fine for the most part if there was more national separation, mind you, we are known for our immigrants and diversity, so how much we would actually separate would be questionable.

As for the farmers, it's not as simple as it may seem unfortunately. While the Gov has allowed offshore labor to come into the country, they have laid strict rules due to the pandemic, and they are harsh enough that it seems about 50% of the fruit and veg farmers in our area aren't going to bother farming anything that requires that labor. On top of that, those farmers were quite worried that their on site fresh market stand sales would be useless due to the illness, which for many brings in a reasonable amount of money. Most of those are smaller farms that will take the biggest hit as well.

For farmers like my parents, it's going to lead to some more work, as those other farmers are hiring custom farming operations like my parents for corn or soy. It may end up hurting everyone in the end though, as those grain markets may end up over saturated come harvest, depending on yields, which will mean low grain prices. What the extra income the custom farmers make by doing more work may very well get offset by poor prices for their own grain crops later on.

It'll have to get a lot worse than it is now for people to come work hard on a farm for the money they will get paid. I'm sure there's a few out there, but the amount of people the local farms go through is unbelievable. It's why most use offshore.