those robberies (most of which won't even be successful for one reason or another) will be a cost of doing business.

and personally while i feel the masks are annoying the first few mins i put one on, i get used to it pretty quickly.

They would have to have armed guards inside of the cages I am guessing, not sure of the legality of guards being armed in particular places.

Maybe you missed your calling ?

" Those neon lights were callin' me and somehow I just had to get Downtown.

I reached into the glove box, another liquor store went down."

..... Johnny Paycheck, "I'm the only hell my Mama ever raiased."

It's not if you actually quote what he said which you didn't. He was saying the opposition blaming him was going to be "their" next hoax. He just finished mentioning the Russian hoax and the Ukraine hoax so logically it follows that he was talking about instances where he was getting the blame (duly or unduly depending on your view). Of course he followed that up with a few statements that show he was not aware of the seriousness of the virus. But you only need to look at the commentary from most politicians and news outlets at that time to realize he wasn't alone.

So you guys are pumped for the WSOP?

In that case it is probably likely that South Korea, Taiwan, NZ, Australia, Canada and about a dozen other countries have lied as well.

ORRRRRR

Maybe the countries that jumped on this relatively early in enforcing lockdowns/shelter in place laws, and the citizens that actually followed them, are getting better results.

America can't get shocked when stories like Pastor Spell hosting a 1300 person congregation for Easter Sunday happen frequently over the past two months (as well as the protests in Michigan) keep happening and then, oh no, we seem to have more cases and deaths of the super contagious disease!!!

At least the WWE is deemed and essential bushiness!!!

China just announced that the death figures for Wuhan were wrong and they’d just found another 1300 dead bodies they’d somehow not counted, increasing the Wuhan count by 50%.

And still probably low bowling the sh*t out of us.

How about when China added a pandemic clause to the 'glorious' trade agreement between the December agreement 'in principal' and the actual signing of the agreement in January. This clause basically releases them from their commitment to purchase US products in the event of a pandemic ...

... How many lawyers do we have working in DC? GL

That was an interesting development to say the least.
The stats from pretty much everywhere are a complete mess. I wonder when the UK government will start including care home and residential deaths alongside the hospital fatality numbers, like France and Belgium have to some degree. I think California plans to add in those numbers too.
Meanwhile Ecuador has only officially recorded 403 Covid deaths (per worldometers), but their statistics office said total fatalities (all causes) were more than 5700 higher than usual in the first two weeks of April. Bodies are literally being dumped in the streets. [BBC source] The under-counting is real.

I had no idea places weren't already doing this, and I can't think of a good reason they wouldn't be - by which I mean good for the public. Ugh.

The gist of my statement was that the number of deaths coming out of China was sketchy. I said nothing about active cases. Not sure why you brought that up. I said nothing about confirmed cases. Not sure why you brought that up. And I said in "nearly 2 months". You can take that to mean whatever you like. But if you look at the number of deaths being reported in China since the middle of Feb... its been suspiciously low.

I didn't say anything about these issues. If you're going to reply to one of my posts, then reply to the post. If you would rather make editorial commentary about something else floating around in your head, then be my guest. But it would make sense to do so in a brand new message instead of in a reply.

Again, I said nothing about the US situation. I said China was lying. I think that's clearly true. I'm certain other countries have been lying as well.

So now that China has revealed 50% more deaths which have appeared magically, you agree with me that certain numbers are sketchy? Perhaps you could have kept your reply to that instead of your soapbox.

And by the way, I don't buy the new figures from China either. I suspect they are under-reporting their figures by at least double and perhaps much more.

thats pretty dope. better than those region locked wsop-type sites. so internationals can actually play.

Canada and the US are not nearly as similar as you claim, particularly in factors that seem to matter with regard to the virus, namely population density. And I am perfectly open to the idea that Canada's response has been "better" than the US. But I don't think that has anything to do with the government or how "serious" leaders took the crisis. Canadian provinces didn't declare states of emergency till mid March. Many US states had declared states of emergency even earlier than that, but all within about the same timeframe.

And when I say "I'm not entirely sure what could have been done differently", I am acting like a realist and a non-partisan. Of course there are some things that an be done better since no response (despite the POTUS claims) is perfect. But you have to be realistic. I think US federal government response (in the way of travel restrictions and guidelines) was actually pretty quick in comparison to what the reality looked like in the US. And those guidelines changed rapidly as the situation worsened.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that the US (and other countries) should have been taking this possibility seriously years ago and had committees/departments/funding dedicated to having plans and resources in place so we could mobilize quicker.

This is something that was well within our control.

You mean, instead of disbanding and defundng the existing structure in place upon taking office in January 2017 ?

I am pretty sure a casino can put an armed guard in their cage if they wanted to. That said having the armed guard outside the cage would seem to work better but that itself may not be needed.

As to the whole facial recognition argument most people would be surprised how little of the face must be exposed as long as the eyes are part of that. This is particularly true if you can tolerate false positives. Additionally, what about a simple check po8nt where you have to take the mask off for fifteen seconds. Once identified on entry, don’t worry the casino can track you even hours later should they need and want to.

And I am still far from believing anything they say.

New member here, long time rec poker player, and I've been following this thread for a long time and finally decided to join and post. This thread has has taken many twists and turns over the past month or so. While it's doubtful that the 2020 WSOP will occur as scheduled, there is a bit of positive news that just came out via this link: https://news.yahoo.com/sunlight-dest...200745675.html

Maybe the guy who suggested the WSOP be played outdoors was a visionary! LOL Just kidding, but maybe there is hope that Vegas could reopen sooner than previously thought as we head toward summer. As far as a practical WSOP application goes, instead of hundreds of people running for the bathrooms on a tournamant break, they'll be running for the exits to stand in the sun for 10 minutes!

OK, I'm going to try to reply to this without taking us down a political rabbit hole.

Yes, I overstated things when I said "extremely similar". But, I think Canada is more similar to the US for the purposes of studying the virus spread, than any other country. Similar culture (again, relative to other countries - there are many significant differences), similar geography, same part of the world, etc. I would agree on population density - NYC, as one example, is a huge outlier that has a big impact on numbers.

Keep in mind, when you say "around the same time", a few days can make a huge difference. I believe that's why you see a couple of the first states to get hit hard, WA and CA, seem to have gotten it under control early - they responded quickly. Quicker than their forced head start would account for, IMO.

I think that when this is all over, we'll find that in North America, regions with clear messaging and a high degree of unity will have the better results. Both Canada and the US have provinces/states that have a large degree of autonomy when it comes to most pandemic-related matters, which can make it challenging to have everyone on the same page. Canadian provinces have taken very similar lines, and have worked well among themselves and with the federal government when it comes to equipment; US states have had very different approaches, and there has been the unfortunate situation where they're bidding against one another and the federal government, and lots of finger pointing over who's in charge of what. BUT, it should be noted that in Canada, we're only talking about 4 out of 10 provinces that have populations significantly over 1 million, so that simplifies things a great deal.

Travel restrictions and guidelines, the US was far quicker on than Canada, by something like 6 weeks in the case of China. However, I think that is a much, much smaller factor than some are making it out to be, as I've said before in this thread. And I really hope that when the results of the pandemic are studied afterward, this is found to be the case, and conclusively. Not because I want to be right or Canada to be right, but because it's going to suck if the first move made with any future pandemic scare is to close down the borders. If that's where the evidence takes us, then so be it, but I really hope it doesn't.

What I think could have been done differently there would be much clearer messaging from the federal government, and finding a way to better coordinate efforts between the states and the federal government. As I said, I don't want to take us into a political derail; I had a lot more typed out, but I think it would take us off-topic, so I'll leave it at that.

And this:

In both our countries, and others.

defunding?

I don't think there is evidence for this other than 20/20 hindsight. Whenever something "catches" people by surprise, others act (and speak) like they shouldn't have been surprised. And that outlook (and speech) almost always fall along ideological lines.

Governments cannot be absolutely prepared for every possible thing that can happen. And there are people and advocacy groups out there for every singe potential crisis. So after the fact, there are always people to point to and say... "hey, they warned us". But that doesn't matter. The fact that this is the reality is certainly no basis for governance.

The job of governments is to balance risk. They are not perfect at it, but those governments that endure certainly do a better job of it than most.

After this event, you can be certain the whole world will be better prepared for viruses going forward. And you can be equally certain we will be even less prepared, due to the attention being paid to viruses, for some other type of crisis. And when it occurs, people will say "we were warned". And they will be right. and their admonition will be equally useless.

So you're suggesting that an international virus was unforeseeable and far-fetched prior to this? So far-fetched that it's simply an "ideological" pipe-dream to suggest our government should have had some sort of committee preparing for this sort of thing?

If this isn't a realistic thing that governments coulda/shoulda been prepared for, then what do you propose are most realistic things we should be planning for?

Governments are prepared for pandemics since they occur fairly often. There are lots of committees and thinktanks and advocacy groups working on this and all sorts of other potential calamities.

Governments just weren't perfectly prepared for something like this. I don't know how close this is to a worst-case scenario, but its certainly closer than anything seen on this planet in a century. It really can be looked at as a "hundred year flood" sort of situation. Nobody spends a lot of time and/or resources trying to prevent something that occurs every hundred years. What people do spend time and resources on is trying to be generally prepared for as wide a range of potential crises as possible. And they do spend a lot of time and resources trying to plan for "mitigations" and "aftermath" of rare events. In that regard, I think the US has done a really great job. Considering the sheer size and diversity of the country, and the degree the virus has evolved here, the death toll is remarkably low. I'm not going to rank the US #1 in its response, like some might. But it is certainly near the top. I'm pretty glad I am here instead of many other places.

As for what the US or any government "should" be more prepared for, that is a difficult question and certainly one I am happy I am not responsible for. I will say that, if preventing death is the goal, then infectious disease is not high on the priority list in the US. And unless novel coronaviruses capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people start becoming more common, I'm not sure it will or should be. But clearly, there will be extra attention paid to this in the US and everywhere else going forward. That's a good thing. But again, resources are always limited. We are definitely going to have a large stockpile of ventilators and PPE going forward. But maybe we won't have enough of whatever the next thing becomes necessary. You can't be prepared for everything.