Virus Impact on CP

Ever since most of the country has shut down there's been this "Are we there yet mommy" syndrome going on. When can we reopen? How? While these are valid it prevents the public of having the mindset this is gonna take a long time and it's gonna suck. Alot.

Living in Rochester, Niagara Falls is an hour or so away. I decided to make the trip and it was a fantastic walk around the American side for a couple hours. NYS is very strict and yet I can walk out the door and see one of the 7 wonders of the world. But hey I'll bring a hunting rifle to NY's capitol tomorrow and complain my rights are being taken away. Sigh.

The multi-phase opening the administration and the CDC provided seems to make a lot of sense. I hope these are followed.

"Liberate Michigan" "Liberate Virginia" Aren't gonna help the situation Mr. President. The virus is dangerous enough without promoting civil unrest. If there's an issue with specific bans Michigan has imposed then point them out. Articulate why you disagree with them and advise that they should be changed while still standing by the guidelines your own administration has advised.

Rapids 77-78 said:

Secured with what?

Silly & ignorant statement.

Rapids 77-78 said:

BTW, Moody's rates those notes at BA2, which puts them below investment grade, if they can float them. Good that the stock is up, but that may because of the defensive posture (such as stopping the dividend) that CF is taking rather than issuing yet more debt.

Every company is essentially cutting or suspending dividend. It would silly to not to suspend a dividend that you would have to supplement by borrowing. Taking out debt to support a dividend is poor financial management. Companies that do that go bankrupt,ie...SF has done that in the past & even some years since going bankrupt in 2009. By your brilliant logic CF should keep a 7% dividend while having no revenue....Lol

FYI, CF got 1Billion note at 5.5%(CF's previous notes were at 5.375%), that's pretty good rate compared to the 7% SF took got on 725M & some of the other notes priced during Covid financial crisis.

Understood that the Death per Capita rate doesn't change regardless of testing. But I think we can safely agree that the numerator related to this is significantly higher than what is being reported. And for death rates, folks are being listed as a Covid-19 related death if they tested positive for the virus. Yes, there are many more factors that go into it, but for simplicity and the sake of a lengthy e-mail, there is a blurring of deaths caused directly by Covid-19 and those that died with Covid-19.

By no means am I minimizing this virus or the severity of it. It's very clearly a serious issue that should have been handled far better than it was. Again, I'll save the 'how would you have it handled it' debate for folks much smarter than me.

I know it's not Ohio, but in MI, there is debate amongst the medical professionals whether the death rate is higher or lower than what is being reported, but the one thing they do agree on is that the death rate is not accurate.

The lack of consistent leadership and a unified voice for our country has certainly not helped.

Here's a great summary about how bull**** is fed into the public conscience, and why it's dangerous.

And before you get all, "John Oliver is a lefty" nonsense, watch the part about feedback loops that use the president to spread blatantly false information. You'd be hard pressed to find anything he's saying to be false. It's interspersed with jokes, but the facts are facts.

Good video and agreed Jeff. But it's not just tied to Covid-19. The media (generalizing here) has always enjoyed the dramatic, over the top, bling bling big story that gets views and clicks. Take away the pandemic and think of a time when your industry or company or something you are intricately involved with has been featured in the news. How often did they get 'all of the facts' right or reported the entire story in the appropriate context? It's rare, or at least it has been in my profession. Look no further than when Severe Weather is forecast and it's broadcast like the biggest Cat5 Hurricane to ever hit - you can count on it. Especially on the National Evening News.

I am getting way, way off topic but my $.02 is that there are too many people who watch or read just 1 news network (pick any of them, doesn't matter) and that is the basis for how they see 'the facts'. For me personally, I like to get information from multiple sources and then use my critical thinking skills and common sense (subjective, I know) to formulate thoughts and opinions based on the information I have at hand. Doesn't make my method right or wrong, but my opinion is that the news (in a silo) rarely, ever gets all of the facts right and in the appropriate context.

In the case of the Pandemic, there are way too many 'google experts' and 'web MDs' that seem to know what is best and how to move forward. There are many lessons to be learned from this Pandemic. As optimistic as I'd like to be, I doubt our elected officials and leaders have the critical thinking, logical reasoning, and self-reflection/awareness to make the necessary changes in an effort to avoid the disaster this response has been.

*to avoid another disaster like this response has been.*

Sorry for the poor grammar, it's late--

ILS 0523 said:

Look no further than when Severe Weather is forecast and it's broadcast like the biggest Cat5 Hurricane to ever hit - you can count on it.

I prefer this because weather is unpredictable, kind of like a.....nah, too easy. I'd rather think I'm about to go into a bad hurricane and make it out with no scratches than the other way around. Especially since I live in hurricane country.

ILS 0523 said:
While my career field is not infectious diseases or anything related to the medical field, couldn't the increase in positive cases be a result of many factors? Increased testing, clearing of the backlog, and maybe the fact that the criteria for someone being diagnosed as Covid-19 positive has changed? You cannot change the criteria for your data set mid-stream and then say you are comparing apples to apples. What would the numbers have been earlier on had the revised criteria for being Covid-19 positive been in place back then? (...)

This is where Ohio did a smart thing. On their daily update they are now presenting two numbers for the total case count and for the death count: one is determined in the same way as all of the data since they started recording it back in March; the other represents the new criteria with probable cases indicated.

Because I am trying to track the daily trend, my charting uses the "classic Ohio" numbers as that keeps the data set consistent. On Monday 4/20, for instance, Ohio reported 12.516 "confirmed cases" and 491 "confirmed deaths" using the same criteria as they have since March 9; they also report 12,919 "total cases" and 509 "total deaths" using the new CDC criteria.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The media != the press. Also, scapegoating "the media" is pretty lazy, because they're just serving what people want, which is to be spoon-fed things that don't challenge them in any way. We elect people the same way.

Hi 99er - fair point. I probably didn't convey my thought well enough. I 100% agree on erring on the side of caution when it comes to weather. A couple of the weather sites I like to use are weather.gov and aviationweather.gov. And I certainly appreciate them being overly cautious than not cautious enough. I guess my frustration comes when I do channel flick and run across the National News. It's the background dramatic music, the "And tonight, just in", etc. kind of rhetoric without any substantial data provided other than a simple check of the potential T-Storm/Tornado Watch/Warning Coverage areas and then panning to someone for a quick 30 second soundbite where they repeat what was just said a lot of the time.

RideMan - that is good to know. Thanks for the those details. I haven't been tracking it at the level you are, but your explanation and Ohio's reasoning make perfect sense to me.

Jeff - not sure if your comments were in response to me or not, but I'm not scapegoating the media/press. Some folks want to be spoon-fed things, others don't. How each person obtains their news is up to them. My preference is to not consume mine via the main cable channels and the quick soundbites. It wasn't my intention to start a debate over the media/press and the preferences folks use to stay updated on the latest and greatest news stories. It works for a lot of people and their business models are obviously successful so who I am to argue.

An article in the Register today spoke about Cedar Point making a plea to be allowed to reopen sooner rather than later because small businesses depend on the park to be open. Further and perhaps most interesting was the fact they need 4-6 weeks to open, so the sooner they get the go ahead the better. (As applies to Cedar Point and Kings Island)

Despite what some have predicted, I think Cedar Fair is determined to have as much of a season as possible.

Well of course they are, and everyone wants to get back to normal life. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily possible.

Businesses exist to make money. And they want to get back open as soon as they can. I have no doubts that everyone at corporate is busy coming up with a plan and new guidelines that will follow within the state's guidelines to allow them to reopen. I'm sure even IT is working on some new systems possibly to have a reservation system to minimize lines and crowding. It will be interesting to see what they can come up with. In no way will it be normal like we are used to. It looks like the park has purchased some PPE and plexiglass.

And here is that article mentioned above: https://sanduskyregister.com/news/230646/cedar-points-parent-compan...l-economy/

Models of course are always changing as new data comes in, but this article sure doesn't paint a pretty picture if we shut down social distancing too soon. Not to be a pessimist, but I just don't see how large gatherings (i.e. Cedar Point) are possible anytime soon unless our leaders have a change of thinking and are OK with the models of projected deaths associated with doing so.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/21/839456638/what...s-projecti

I did see the mention about masks and plexiglass, and maybe Dave could help out here, but I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around how the workers, specifically ride operators would maintain social distancing, which, regardless if they open in June, July or August will be required. Also, forgive me for sounding stupid, but where exactly does all of the plexiglass play a role?

Can they still put on indoor performances? What about the Celebrate 150 parade and nighttime show?

I don’t envy anyone who is in charge of coming up with the plans to handle all of that. Which makes the idea of Cedar Point operating at normal capacity seem like an impossibility, at least for this summer.

It’s pretty clear to me from looking at a map of infections in North America that the virus hates two things.

1: Warm temps

2: low population density

The former explain the extraordinarily low infection rate in AZ (where most of my family lives, and they all tell me that they’ve observed most ignoring all shelter in place orders). The latter explains the low infection rates in countries like Canada and Russia.

I think the upcoming warm temps are going to at least keep the virus at low levels through the summer but then we will see a big reemergence in the fall. These are just my thoughts and observations.

So almost to a fault, I think the warm weather will make it seem as though the worst is behind us and our mitigation efforts are what saved us. But if you know a bunch of folks in AZ like I do, you’d know better. They don’t give two ****s about it there and yet it’s still not spreading to the degree it is in colder climates.

If you really want more evidence, look at mexico, where it’s hot as balls and in their big cities they are stacked on top each other with very poor sanitation. They’ve barely been affected (and yes I’m looking at deaths, not necessarily just cases)

As for ride attendants doing social distancing, I would think they would do touch free methods like go to each row and ask riders to buckle their seat belts and pull down their own restraints, that way they see you do it and know you're fastened in correctly. I can see there being little to no live entertainment, except maybe outdoor entertainment. Theaters, not likely or only filled to a greatly reduced capacity.

Jeff said:

The media != the press.

I’d like to understand what you mean by this, particularly if you are distinguishing certain news outlets as media and others as press. I’m not saying you are doing that, just trying to understand.