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"The World Health Organization has announced that dogs cannot contract Covid-19. Dogs previously held in quarantine can now be released. To be clear, WHO let the dogs out."

This IS my social media and as such I hope we stay on track, remain refreshingly civil, share info and converse without judgement or name calling. BRICKPICKER is sooo much more than it appears on the surface to the members that have navigated several historical moments together. Lets remain the oasis we all require for mature thinking and sanity in these uncertain and stressful times. Look after family and friends and enjoy some hobbies new and old.

I am practicing social media distancing during this virus: staying as far away from social media as I can.

I don't think this is so easy to just brush off. I know one small business owner that just moved into a new, larger space last summer to expand her business. Her service-related business is linked with the school calendar, so when the local school district closed, she had to close. She has struggled with staffing all winter, relying on college-age kids mostly. Now, the local colleges are closed and 1/4 of her staff is not coming back even if she can re-open in 1-2 weeks, and they will be tough to replace with only 6-8 weeks left in her season. Faced with losing 1/4 of her clients (that the missing staff supported) and a build-out loan on her back, she's on the razor's edge financially, and muses about declaring bankruptcy in her darker moments. Hers is a classic case of why having 3-6 months of cash-on-hand to cover basic expenses in an emergency is a good rule to follow. If she had that, she'd be fine. But she doesn't, and doesn't have time now to build it up. How many people are in a similar situation? The common statistic I hear is that 70% have less that $1k saved, and live paycheck to paycheck. My sense is that most folks on this board are risk takers that have an entrepreneurial bent. Building a business is something we can all relate to. Quite a few of us are probably on stronger footing, but maybe some are in similar situations? Although I hope for the best, our local lock-down could mean the death of my friends business. The result truly depends on how long the lock-down lasts. p.s. If you like a local small business, buy a gift card or two to help them weather the storm.

The Rise of Skywalker hit all the digital sites about an hour ago. Disney’s gift for the quarantiners.

New Study Finds That Toilet Paper Is A Better Investment Than Gold

I wanted to create a new thread in order to give progress on my site updates. I want explain a bit on what happened and what I am doing. What happened with the site? Honestly nothing really exciting or dramatic, overall in the end, I did not want to support the host I was with for the past four years after not really offering too much help with managed servers. They would spend 30 seconds looking, say they can ping the server so its up and then just say, "hey not my problem". I was on aging hardware, paying the same amount of money, so I took the opportunity to move to a new host with better/faster hardware and a staff that does help to support you when run into an issue that you can't handle on your own. I have been doing this a long time and pretty good monitoring and handling 99% of what comes my way, but there are issues that you need the next level up to help figure out what to do. I wasn't getting anything like that, but paying for it. Not anymore. What my goal is... I know more than anyone that the site needed some TLC. It's been a while since I have done any drastic updates, the site looked tired and I know the site can be so much better than what it's current state was. LEGO investing has changed since Ed and I launched the site and it's time to remove the dead content and bring more of what people are looking for. Below is the short term list of items planned for updating. I have been working on the nightly, just like the early days and enjoying seeing parts of it coming to life. Fix the login. This has been messed up and quirky for a while. This has been resolved and working well. It's a simple thing overall, but nice that it actually works how it's supposed to Overall price guide site design update. The site was tired and disjointed. I hated it and pained me to look at it. Time to start over. Brickfolio update. All the Brickfolio data is safe. I have close to three million rows of data for Brickfolio entries. Time to bring this thing to 2020. I will probably create another thread at some point to solicit some feedback on some new requests for the brickfolio Fix the data syncing with Brickset. A lot of people used this feature, but it's time to make it work the way it should. Later I will work on the content portions. The news and blogs. I have some good ideas for this, but want to get the price guide and brickfolio to you sooner than later. What I am asking for if possible... If you can, please stop asking where the brickfolio is. Again, the data is safe and I am working as fast as I can to bring it all back to you. It won't be a few days, but more like a few weeks, but it will be worth it. I setup my dev environment to push releases quick and easy. I want to create a true changelog so that you can follow updates to see what was done/fixed/new/removed, you know like what real software companies do. I really do appreciate your patience with this. It wasn't planned, but if there was going to be a time to do it, it was going to be now.

My grandad used to joke( I assume) that in the field military received a single T.P. square, poked finger through, wiped ass with finger ,and then used square to wipe finger off. It's taken some practice but I'm starting to get the hang of it!

I agree, the more time that has passed the more I've soured on the film and the trilogy even more. My kids don't care about Star Wars and no one ever talks about it. Disney was handed this really great opportunity and they fumbled it almost as badly as they could have. They need a complete refresh and new people in charge.

I’ve given it months to soak in. But I just can’t behind this trilogy. It’s just bad. Maybe I’m saltier than Crait, but it just doesn’t work for me.

This is the problem with Star Wars & Star Trek in the past 6 years. The technical parts like special effects and sound are absolutely incredible. However, the writings are absolutely atrocious and the movie phasing is sometimes all over the place. Maybe I am just old school, but the sfx can only take the movies so far when the writing and plotting seem like just an afterthought

Image of the blind bag for series 2 of HP figures popped up this morning. Of the characters on the front: Harry (6th year, with Half-Blood Prince potions book), Moaning Myrtle, Bellatrix Lestrange, Kingsley Shacklebolt (finally!), Dumbledore (with Fawkes), Neville (with a monster book of monsters), Professor Sprout, Luna (with Lion headdress, neat book detail as I believe this was not in the movies) and one other character which I cannot identify. I am guessing there will also be a Ron and Hermione, Voldemort, and characters prominent in the later books

I'm very concerned about the economy. Online sales have nosedived the last few weeks. My in house sales are doing better which I find odd. The liquidation side will be good as people will need deals on items they need for their family. The high end sales will be there cause the rich will still be rich but those are always a smaller percentage. The bulk of orders are probably middle class though so a huge chunk will be gone if people are having money issues. Not talking just LEGO as I sell everything as most know. Doing less than 10 orders a day is not fun...

This is a great story thanks for the link. I messaged the guy on FB told him he could easily sell his 17K bottles of hand sanitizer here:

I just registered www.buttpicker.com

https://www.godaddy.com/domainsearch/find?checkAvail=1&tmskey=&domainToCheck=tppicker.com or https://www.godaddy.com/domainsearch/find?checkAvail=1&tmskey=&domainToCheck=tphound.com tper.com is going to cost you $4mill tp.me is $25k your work-free future is waiting for you...

I think oftentimes people are unaware as to how many immunocompromised people there are in the world. All different age groups, we have children with cancer and other chronic illness, or people with COPD from a life of smoking, to those who suffer from asthma. Option B (if we aren’t somewhat on that path already) would actually kill a lot of invisible people that most people are unaware of because they are already severely limited in participation with society as it is.

Can anyone link a credible scientific source that compares the OVERALL OUTCOME (so not just deaths but everything economically, socially, ...) between: A. What the world will look like in 1 year from now with countries and people doing what they are doing now (closing down schools/ shops/ events/ everything else, quarantine, leading (together with other reasons) to a stock market crash, global recession, millions of people losing their jobs, and so forth - all that going on for maybe even up to a year. and B. What the world would have looked like 1 year from now if - together with some small adjustments and very exact information of the public right from the beginning - the pandemic would just have been "allowed to happen" and "go over as quickly as possible" while not limiting the economic and public life in any way? I have never heard anything anywhere about scenario B, which seems odd since we are talking about a virus with a relatively low infectiousness / morbidity / mortality rate.

Are u threatening me?

It’s weird that states with 1-2 cases are shutting down school districts. I live in NY, and everything here is still open. Kids aren’t out of school until spring break next month. We have 40 cases in Nassau County alone. In the grand scheme of things, it’s still a very low number when there are millions living here.

are you trhreatening me? is that how I should read your message? I stand behind my statement and Im obviously not alone who thinks that he acted too late (see your news and experts). And his unwillingness to undergo a test speaks for itself.

The Stand...anyone?

you had me at mature thinking...

actually had one of my daughters friends who's a senior ask that question about lung damage long term if any. Was around a friend of ours that works as a contractor at CDC. Lot of unknowns.

A different view... https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/compared-to-what

just eliminating the non toy stuff and going off the last 2 weeks since March 1st when it progressed news wise down to about 1k a day in toy sales. Previous 2 weeks before that was averaging $1700 a day. 23k to 14k the last part of the rolling 30 is a pretty significant drop. LEGO does seem to be selling decent still but it's always been the consistent one. Overall not as bad but about 20% down from February and 20% down from last year.

Same here...I sell LEGO, as well as Marvel, Transformers, Hot Wheels, and Star Wars items. Business has been very good!

I'm guessing that last character on the bag is a goblin, possibly Griphook.

New LEGO RAFFLE PRIZE: Case of toilet paper and Purell!!!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-purell-wipes-amazon-sellers.amp.html That’s a lot of hand Sanitizer.

to start, the 'relatively' low infectious rate/mortality rate is low because of the drastic measures that were taken in Asian. Most Countries went on complete lock down after only finding a few cases because they learned from the millions of deaths caused by SARS. Research the death rate in Wuhan before they started lock down measures. I believe it was around 35% of those that contracted the virus early on. Also after age 50 the mortality rate drastically increases.you are talking averages when you insinuate low rates.however, This means Parents and grandparents are the highest risk(other than indv/prex condition) I would say US is slowly catching on with all of the closures. We as a nation are basically a larger version/model of what occurred in Europe(open borders along states). You should be asking the question, what state has the highest chance to be similar to Italy? What can we all do to avoid this?! A year of lock down? Dude, anecdotally you should be able to conclude most everything would be turned upside down. But we are talking 2 weeks to a month!! Think what I can do NOW to help. I get this is an investor site, but Crazy how people are still concerned with the economy. Folks, its going to recover, but will your parents?! Keep them safe, you stay safe and try to keep at home for a few weeks. Work on those lego projects!

Once again since page 1 of this thread I have been saying overwhelming our healthcare system and supply chain disruptions will be the bigger issue and finally the administration is getting the message out just now:

I have to disagree now is the time for the smartest people in their respective fields to advise the leaders. NOT the most loyal yes-men this current administration has surrounded themselves with. This current adminstration is quick with blame and has harbored a culture of fear of disloyalty... WE NEED TRUTH DAmmit and smart folks to be able to speak it without fear of reprisal

Perhaps the Macks have abandoned the Brickfolio and are instead building a TP Tracker. 😛

Really though. Why is the TP isle empty, but the dry goods isle full?

umm I think it's moved onto baby yoda videos and I'm still watching those too. On another note Contagion is trending pretty high right now

20% off, Walmart matching: https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-6212644-Hogwarts-75954-Building/dp/B07BKPKT2X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=75954+lego&qid=1584139604&s=toys-and-games&sr=1-1

I’m not looking to get into the middle of any debates. The truth is, this is gonna get worse before it gets better. I’ll share this video. A couple weeks ago, It had less than 500k views. At least now more people are paying attention to what is happening around us, instead of watching cat videos.

TFW you realize the MOC you've been planning would look best with ~50 pieces in a long-out-of-production color, which is currently trending at $2/ea on bricklink. 😞

The current situation is bad (to what extent exactly is uncertain, but unquestionably bad). Up until this, an honest view would be that things have been pretty great in this country the last 3 years (other than the media, and half the country simply hating everything/anything the president does). And yet every single day since his election has been portrayed as a national crisis/disaster (which it hasn't been). So now that something truly bad has happened - look out. I don't believe that anyone else would have left us with fewer cases of the virus (and nothing anyone else would have done can compare to the benefits of the early shutdown of travel from China). Yes, he says absolutely awful things (if we let them off the boat our numbers will go up), but it is that drive (even if it is selfish) that benefits our nation. He might not care about anyone, but he wants to succeed, and although his motivations are likely far from pure and wholesome - that doesn't really matter.

Honestly, this was one of the worst interviews I have seen. The host and "doctor" were all about fear mongering. Three months of food? For what? Is martial law coming? This sort of hype needs to stop. It's serious for sure, but let's not get carried away. Social distancing and just simple sanitizing steps will slow this SOB. Back in 2009 , the H1N1 did a lot of damage but nobody acted like this. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that swine flu infected nearly 61 million people in the United States and caused 12,469 deaths. Worldwide, up to 575,400 people died from pandemic swine flu. That was some serious crap, but people were not acting like this. Maybe it was better leadership or maybe it was the lack of media attacking the leadership to make them look bad. The truth is somewhere in between. You are helping as well Mr. Sunshine.

Some y'all need to relax about things that aren't in your control. Here is a meme to cheer everyone up.

I'm mostly afraid of the side effects of the panic. I think those are very real. Sorry to hear about the people getting laid off. In the Netherlands the stores are getting emptier and social gatherings are canceled. I worry for the elderly that are at the least socially isolated and at worst not recovering. Sad stuff. Blaming politicians for this is easy right now, but I will wait for the research afterwards to have a verdict.

Postal Aviary by Flounder's Bricks

This looks lame as hell

Yeah, kids who can afford all these sets can just play Mario Odyssey. I hope it does well but I would have preferred the minecraft approach with detailed "scenes" borrowed from the games.

Dont let this first few steps downward fool you. The economy will be going down to the ground. We now are at the beginning of a worldwide recession if not a depression. Only strong economies will turn out alright in 3-4 years. This **** is hitting us a lot harder thann 2001/2008....