Jun 302020
 
 June 30, 2020  Posted by at 10:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Pablo Picasso The dream 1951

 

China’s Military Becomes First To Use Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine (SCMP)
California, Texas See Record COVID-19 surges, Arizona Clamps Down (R.)
Norwegian Air Cancels 97 Boeing MAX And Dreamliners, Claims Compensation (R.)
Europe’s Recovery Fund: An Instrument of Class War (Varoufakis)
We Digitized the Mob, and There’s No Place to Hide (Miele)

 

 

As we approach the end of the first half of 2020, I’m seriously rethinking how to cover COVID19 going forward. The past five months have been intense in that regard, and at a certain point you need to wonder how useful such time-consuming work still is. For a long time I had the hope and belief that “we” would be able to halt the spread of the coronavirus, if only because that was -and is- the only sensible way to deal with a new pathogen about which very little is known, other than that it is potentially deadly.

But despite a huge number of actions, including lockdowns in many countries and societies, the infection numbers only keep rising. And at this point is is entirely unclear how countries like the US and Brazil will ever be able to get rid of the virus.

The consequences will be grave, albeit different in different places. We will see overwhelmed healthcare systems in some countries and states, while others will remain relatively unscathed, at least for a while. Ironically, in a world used to so much travelling it’s even useful to wonder what good it does to do a lockdown well. How long can New Zealand keep its borders closed?

As for healthcare, there was a report that it will take four years for the UK’s NHS to recover from COVID19, and that based on what they have experienced so far, while there is still plenty room for second or third waves, and/or any unforeseeable extra pressure.

Tourism as we’ve known it will never recover, at least not on a timescale that is meaningful to us. That whole industry needs a great reset. That is of course also true for airlines, plane manufacturers et al. As it is for the entire hospitality industry. People will be cautious when going out, the fear of infection rules supreme, as demonstrated again by this report from NBER, Fear, Lockdown, and Diversion, which shows it wasn’t the lockdowns that did the most damage.

This paper examines the drivers of the collapse using cellular phone records data on customer visits to more than 2.25 million individual businesses across 110 different industries. Comparing consumer behavior within the same commuting zones but across boundaries with different policy regimes suggests that legal shutdown orders account for only a modest share of the decline of economic activity (and that having county-level policy data is significantly more accurate than state-level data).


While overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 of that. Individual choices were far more important and seem tied to fears of infection. Traffic started dropping before the legal orders were in place; was highly tied to the number of COVID deaths in the county; and showed a clear shift by consumers away from larger/busier stores toward smaller/less busy ones in the same industry.

But I have to admit, over the past few days, when I was silent, I’ve become ever more worried by the American political and societal situation than by coronavirus. The images of people with guns standing outside of their homes, the stories of police and mob violence, shootings in “police-free” zones, it all starts to smell like a civil war.

While I wasn’t writing, I was reading all the more from both sides of aisle, and whatever they may still have had in common appears to disappear rapidly. The hunt for Trump continues unabated with yet another anonymous and unsourced tale about RussiaRussia, while the right is organizing to counter what they see as lawlessness across the nation.

Frank Miele, in a article below, quotes Bobby Kennedy, speaking after MLK was shot:

“The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one — no matter where he lives or what he does — can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on. Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? … No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. … [A]n uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.”

That sounds like a voice of reason that is sorely needed by the country right now. But does anyone see any of those? Ideally, Trump and Biden would get together on live TV to ask their supporters to please calm down. But I don’t see that happening in the present climate either. It’s become too polarized, fed by media and their business models.

I’m just trying to make sense of it all. Trying to find a way out of the mess, a way forward. But right now I’m mostly just thinking that Independence Day could turn into an incredibly messy affair. Or any other day between now and the election.

 

 

 

 

US has fifth day in a row with over 40,000 new cases

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Key line: “The candidate is yet to start phase three trials, which would confirm whether it could protect recipients from infection.”

China’s Military Becomes First To Use Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine (SCMP)

China has approved military use of an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by the People’s Liberation Army and a Chinese pharmaceutical company, in a first for the armed forces of any country. The vaccine, identified as Ad5-nCoV, was jointly developed by a team at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, led by Major General Chen Wei, and Tianjin-based company CanSino Biologics. It is the first time that a vaccine candidate for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has been authorised for use for the military of any nation. CanSino said on Monday that the candidate had been through two phases of clinical trials, which indicated it was safe and there was “relatively high” immune response to the antigen.

The candidate is yet to start phase three trials, which would confirm whether it could protect recipients from infection. The military has approved its use for a year but it has not been authorised for civilian purposes. Adding Ad5-nCoV to the People’s Liberation Army’s catalogue of special drugs means that it can be deployed in major outbreaks. It is based on an Ebola vaccine that was developed by Chen but did not go into mass production. Scientists are racing to find an answer to the coronavirus that has already infected more than 10 million people and killed over 500,000. New cases continue to surge in the United States and India, with the US confirming more than 40,000 new cases for the third straight day on Monday.

According to the World Health Organisation, clinical trials are under way for 17 vaccine candidates, seven of which have been developed in China. One candidate developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca is in phase three studies. Phase one and two studies typically test if a candidate is safe and whether it can generate an immune response from the recipients, but vaccines must complete all three sets of trials to be licensed. CanSino said it completed phase two trials on June 11, but the company has not yet released data from the study. [..] Many Chinese candidates are planning phase three trials in other countries as the spread of the coronavirus in China is too limited to test the efficacy of the vaccine. CanSino reached an agreement with Canadian government to conduct phase three trials there but details of the studies have not been revealed.

Read more …

We’ll see anti-police protests and anti-lockdown protests all at the same time.

California, Texas See Record COVID-19 surges, Arizona Clamps Down (R.)

California and Texas both marked record spikes in new COVID-19 infections on Monday, a Reuters tally showed, as Los Angeles reported an “alarming” one-day surge in America’s second-largest city that put it over 100,000 cases. Los Angeles has become a new epicenter in the pandemic as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surge there despite California Governor Gavin Newsom’s strict orders requiring bars to close and residents to wear masks in nearly all public spaces. “The alarming increases in cases, positivity rates and hospitalizations signals that we, as a community, need to take immediate action to slow the spread of COVID-19,” Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County, said in a statement announcing the sharp rise.


“Otherwise, we are quickly moving toward overwhelming our healthcare system and seeing even more devastating illness and death,” Ferrer said. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a “hard pause” on when movie theaters, theme parks and other entertainment venues can reopen. Los Angeles County is the biggest movie theater market in the United States. Los Angeles County said its beaches will be closed for the Independence Day weekend and fireworks displays will be banned.

 

Read more …

is there a better example of the future of tourism?

Norwegian Air Cancels 97 Boeing MAX And Dreamliners, Claims Compensation (R.)

Norwegian Air has cancelled orders for 97 Boeing aircraft and will claim compensation from the U.S. plane maker for the grounding of the 737 MAX and for 787 engine troubles that hit its bottom line, the Oslo-based carrier said on Monday. The airline cancelled 92 of the 737 MAX jets, five 787 Dreamliners and so-called GoldCare service agreements related to both aircraft, just as Boeing on Monday began a crucial set of flight tests of the 737 MAX in an effort to gain regulatory approval for it to return to the skies.


“Norwegian has in addition filed a legal claim seeking the return of pre-delivery payments related to the aircraft and compensation for the company’s losses related to the grounding of the 737 MAX and engine issues on the 787,” the airline said. Norwegian did not specify the amount it would seek to claim from Boeing, which it had been in talks with about compensation, and was not immediately available for comment. Boeing said it was working with Norwegian on a path forward in a challenging time as it was with other operators but it would not comment on commercial discussions.

Read more …

Nothing has changed in Europe.

Europe’s Recovery Fund: An Instrument of Class War (Varoufakis)

Europe was never the battlefield on which the frugal North clashed with the profligate South. Instead, every European country has been the battlefield where a vicious class war is fought by a transnational oligarchy-without-frontiers training its armour against the weaker residents of every country, every region, every community. COVID-19, and the European Union’s response to it, only magnifies the human costs of this unremitting class war. All talk of a North-South clash is founded on a gigantic lie, that is based on many small truths, conveniently hiding from Europeans’ gaze the class war that diminishes their life prospects.

The crisis of financialisation in 2008 intensified Europe’s class war massively, holding a majority of Northern and Southern Europeans behind and leaving Europe, including its capitalist class, much weakened in relation to the rest of the world — the United States and China in particular. Twelve years on, COVID-19 gives this crisis a new, violent spin. The weak are weakened much, much more while Europe as a whole falls further and further behind the United States and China. While the EU’s leadership and bureaucracy have been quite active in the past three months, producing one impressive-sounding policy announcement after the next, the sum of their actions boost the class war that enfeebled Europe over the past decade and weakened a majority of Europeans everywhere.

[..] Rumours that Covid-19 caused the EU to lift its game are grossly exaggerated. Good people who took heart from the news that, however reluctantly, the EU has embraced common debt in a bid to further the cause of pan-european solidarity, will soon be deeply disappointed. Behind the heroic pronouncements and the triumphant propaganda lurks a sordid truth: The class war against Europe’s weaker people is escalating. And so is Europe’s descent into global irrelevance.

It all began with the quiet death of the Eurobond. Eurobonds, as advocated by DiEM25, would perform a simple task: They would automatically convert any new Italian, Spanish or Greek public debt (due to the impact of the pandemic on public revenues and expenses) into European debt (in the same way that US Treasury Bills absorb the costs of a recession in Missouri and Wisconsin). But, once the Eurobond was killed off by the Eurogroup in early April, it is now a given that the gigantic increase in national budget deficits will be followed by equally sizeable austerity in every country — a euphemism for the intensification of the class war that depletes the already atrophied incomes of the majority in each of our countries.

Read more …

Excellent piece, what ever side you’re on.

We Digitized the Mob, and There’s No Place to Hide (Miele)

The most shocking aspect of the wave of rioting and destruction that has been unleashed on many of our American cities in the wake of George Floyd’s death is not that there is an underlying discontent with the rate of progress in racial equality. That is understandable. What is not is the way that mayors, governors and members of Congress have not just tolerated, but endorsed, mob violence as an acceptable weapon of social change. Growing up in the turbulent 1960s, I was given a very specific warning by my mother: If you ever get caught up in a mob, get out of it as soon as possible because a mob has no brain. It just has emotion — and whether that emotion is anger, hatred or even joyful exuberance, it cannot be controlled.

We saw that in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd while in police custody. People with a brain were outraged by what they saw. They wanted to protest, to speak out, and to demand justice. But when they came together in the streets, they discovered how quickly protest can transform into riot, and how demands for justice can be used to justify injustice. The basic premise of justice, after all, is recompense, making sure that wrongdoers pay a price for their crime. Yet there was no recompense in burning the businesses of innocent bystanders. There was no justice in stealing TVs and PlayStations. This was just brainless mob violence. It was shameful and it should have been easily condemned by the politicians, news media and celebrities who were not part of the mob.

That’s what would have happened in the 1960s. When Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, leading to riots across America in 1968, Bobby Kennedy appealed for peace amidst “this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.” The parallel is exact. A black man is unjustly murdered. The nation is outraged. Riots ensue. The only part that is missing today is a respected grown-up like Kennedy who would condemn the violence and recognize that “[i]t is not the concern of any one race.” As Kennedy said,

“The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one — no matter where he lives or what he does — can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on. Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? … No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. … [A]n uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.”

What a refreshing expression of common sense, and what a contrast it offers to the bleating appeasers from the Democratic Party today who have bent a knee in obeisance to the mob, to the rioters, to the monument defacers, to the statue topplers. But it’s not just the Democrats who have bowed to the “voice of madness.” Most Republicans are right there with them. So too are corporate entities such as Intel and Amazon, and sporting organizations such as the NFL and NASCAR. For their part, news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC are promoting the riots and the cleansing of American history that is being pushed by Black Lives Matter. The question is why?

It is easy to understand why someone surrounded by the mob surrenders to its power, but those corporate boardrooms are far from the fray and well-protected from the torches and Molotov cocktails. So why have they turned their backs on law and order and embraced the mob? What has changed since the 1960s that makes it so much harder for leaders in government, business and culture to condemn violence and lawlessness? The answer will not surprise you, but it should scare you. Somewhere along the way, we digitized the mob. The few dozen people surrounding a statue are not the problem. The few hundred people confronting police are not the problem. The few thousand people looting stores and throwing rocks are not the problem. The mob on the street is not the problem. The mob on the street is the symptom.

The millions of people acting without moral restraint, without reason and without fear of consequences on the Internet are the problem. Indeed, the digital mob is the unintended consequence of the Internet itself. Connecting the world via technology was supposed to encourage communication, understanding and a breaking down of barriers. Instead it has resulted in a world divided into silos, special interests, identity groups. We tend to seek out those we have the most in common with and to block, ban or troll those who are unlike us. We feel safety in numbers, and from that safety is often bred outright contempt for those who think differently.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since their revenue has collapsed, ads no longer pay for all you read, and your support is now an integral part of the interaction.

Thank you.

 

 

I’ll close today with a series of clips of an interview yesterday with Michael Fynn’s attorney Sidney Powell, who’s going to be an important voice in the run-up to November 3, whether you agree with her or not. Stay safe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle June 30 2020

Viewing 37 posts - 1 through 37 (of 37 total)
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  • #60619

    Pablo Picasso The dream 1951   • China’s Military Becomes First To Use Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine (SCMP) • California, Texas See Record COV
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 30 2020]

    #60620
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Pablo Picasso The dream 1951
    Oh, I like it very much; much awaits…

    Ah, the release; the finished product, finally its done; published; now to wait for the responses, if any…
    Nice to see you publishing again…
    Cheers

    #60621
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    So today I went for my annual routine medical checkup. Before I went, I got out the results of my bloodwork over the last five years. I focused on the Vitamin D3 levels:
    2015 = 24
    2016 = 32
    2017 = 30
    2018 = 31
    2019 = 20
    2020 = ???
    Yes, all horrendously low. For way too long. I won’t get the 2020 results for another 2 weeks. I could have received results much sooner, but I opted for snail mail delivery rather than email, because I prefer to receive a printed book rather than an email. I started following John’s advice in January, and I took 10,000 IU per day for a month (or two!) before cutting back to 5,000 IU per day ever since. So where will my Vitamin D come out? Hopefully much higher. I took a conservative approach by taking it orally. Most Koreans prefer to receive the injection to bring it up a lot faster . . .

    #60622

    By no means a finished product

    #60623
    ByronBishop
    Participant

    Something that puzzles me is the extent to which Democratic politicians are encouraging BLM unrest in American cities. I live in rural Nova Scotia and I do not have television so I do not see images of unrest, but is it still going on? Are there still riots in the streets very night? And how exactly do the politicians encourage this?

    JHK is quite emphatic that the Democrats are encouraging civil unrest but I cannot find examples of this in my newspapers (which I rely on, along with the CBC news feed).

    Can anyone comment? Thanks.

    #60624
    Dr. D
    Participant

    http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2020/6/29/on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare

    “On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
    I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
    But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.
    Here are some facts few people know:
    • Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
    • The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
    • Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
    • Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
    • The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
    • The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
    • Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s
    • Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level
    • We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
    • Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
    • Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
    • Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture
    I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.
    …For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”
    But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.
    I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a lifelong progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.
    …It is based on two decades of research and three decades of environmental activism. At 400 pages, with 100 of them endnotes, Apocalypse Never covers climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, species extinction, industrialization, meat, nuclear energy, and renewables.
    Some highlights from the book:
    • Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress
    • The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land
    • The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium
    • 100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5% to 50%
    • We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities
    • Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4%”

    Etc, ad nauseum.

    Just like Greenpeace founder Pat Moore and the recent documentary on renewable energy “Planet of the Humans.” But don’t worry: facts, logic, they have no traction here, there are only da feelz in the Land of the Lost. Truth, #Logos, is the one true enemy. #Resistance. #Insurrection. Against #Reality.

    If people got a shovel and started some permaculture, they would all know this. What was possible or not. When you read online, they are just ideas, and all ideas: vampires, talking polar bears, are all possible and equal inside the mind. Work is the equalizer, the grounding rod to #Reality.

    #60625
    redshift
    Participant

    Miele could have mentioned that George Floyd is no MLK either, that would have strengthened his case.

    Connecting the world via technology was supposed to encourage communication, understanding and a breaking down of barriers. Instead it has resulted in a world divided into silos, special interests, identity groups.

    It’s not instead, both have happened.

    #60626
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    “Wokester Central has already established the story-line that the USA was a criminal enterprise from the start and that it must be smashed to set free the genius energies of Wakanda — currently misdirected in the suicidal gunplay seen in Chicago and other places of concentrated urban poverty.”

    This line from JHK yesterday, made me crack up.

    Alas the outlook, is somber. The many warnings of a prelude to a civil war from Kunstler to Ilargi and others, are looking less and less paranoid. This amidst the pandemic/plandemic/scamdemic which ever it is that is keeping many of us from visiting loved ones, for an undetermined amount of time.

    While the piece above about the digitalized mob has a point, I think it’s more sinister than that and there are dark forces behind the curtain organizing the mayhem like any other color revolution.
    Some are even mask-less in plain sight: the lie stream media and politicians like Schummer and Nadler characterizing the looters as peaceful protesters and “…we have listened to you, we’re gonna change the laws”.

    “Ground Control to Major Tom/ take your pills and put your helmet on…”

    #60627
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Dr D. I don’t wanna get nit-picky but using the word – facts – like it means something has more weight if it surrounded by words inferring common sense. Which in your case is quite often – this time not so much.
    Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction” is just a sentence.

    Before I was born, Europeans removed the largest subtropical rainforest on planet earth from the east coast of Australia to plant sugar cane. One plant replaced the many. So as I read this mans words I smiled internally with the humble word “bullshit” bubbling up in my mind. Certainly I feel that there is a lot of hysteria about climate change and things can turn around very quickly indeed in natural systems. But as a permaculture business owner and practitioner of 30 years I know that digging in this soil takes work with slow results (Hardwood climax trees take so long to grow) and has caused an sc joint rupture and a right shoulder reconstruction. I farm like I mean it and my body, not yet 50 is a vessel of pain.
    I don’t need opinions so I won’t defend much longer against them but I have a 28 year old intern/student coming on friday and I will not be throwing around assumptions like those you posted. Just sayin’.
    The author says “Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels”. I would love to know how that is. I mean it may be true but I want to know the #facts because it sounds alot like lies and #AntiLogos and #Against Reality.
    It. Literally. Makes. No. Sense. But hey I’m a regular dumb shit that just works with his body and I am not being sarcastic when I ask for facts and information around this – the rest well – I kinda agree with most of it.

    #60628
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Also Raul, I have regrettably suspended my Patreon payments till my injuries heal up a bit and I can work again.
    Apologies.

    #60629
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Also – I’m a bit peeved over intellectuals, academics and book writers generally right this second. I have planted thousands of trees over the last few years because I wasn’t on a computer arguing about the environment and climate change. I think these computer things are making people dumb and crazy. Then people come along and say that the environment is all fine and we can just keep chopping trees down coz it’s all cool out there.
    It is not.
    But if you hate forest and love dust then it’s fine. Maybe north Africa is your jams. Or Western Queensland – cotton farms are just brimming with options for community. Oh and the views. Views to die for. Nah it’s all fine. Trust me.

    #60630
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Riots every night unceasing. A shooting every night in the CHAZ, another black man killed in another Leftist area, Leftist “helping.” Protected in full by every blue leader. DNC Congressman beaten in WI for filming them pull down statue of another Abolitionist. The Lincoln statue they wanted removed was put in by Frederick Douglass, possibly America’s most famous slave, and paid for by freed slaves. Now the 70% white BLM crowd says the statue, and therefore Frederick Douglass, are racist white nationalists. Irony is of course dead. From a point of view this is all great, since the nation can see who they Left/BLM/Antifa are, and they are only destroying Blue cities and states, with Blue mayors, and black city businesses, leaving all Red states alone. So…thinking the vote may not be real strong in those areas where now they only grocery, only pharmacy, only liquor store, the only employer in a black neighborhood is burned and gone. Burned by 70% white people. Who are rioting on behalf of black people. You’d think they’d notice. Irony is dead.

    Still trying to make a United States of Europe in the bond market, as Armstrong has said since they consulted him before the Euro was formed. They said the people wouldn’t go for it, so they would shove it down their throats by force and try to make the bond market after. That did not go well, and it’s not going well now. But the Varoufakis article shows the latest attempt. Now it’s crystal clear it would be all massive transfer payments south and vice-versa with all Germany utterly destroying the EuroSouth and controlling all Europe by dictat, even France. Anybody want to sign up? Savage more Greeks, sell more assets to China.

    More tests = more cases. More cases = nothing. We know that people had it when we didn’t know but they had it anyway before. Now we know! But that’s bad! Because, Science! Data is bad! Also as we see in the Diamond Princess some people cannot seem to get it. 40%?? Then we have a certain number getting it now. 20%?? Add them together and we’re at herd immunity right now? Aaaaand why would this not be true as regardless of misbehavior, number of people in the streets, NY’s number will no longer rise? The chart is exactly the curve as if we did nothing: flat, sudden rise, plateaus on herd immunity, then falls. Same chart, same curve, predicted day 1. Like this:
    TMT
    https://i0.wp.com/inbusinessphx.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/5-4_Plateau_Picture2.jpg?resize=768%2C389&ssl=1

    AllDeath
    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallery=8188

    http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=239590

    Cases are still low compared to the 5 blue states who killed 20k with LTC facilities, and Houston had to come out and uncharacteristically debunk they were not having ICU problems. Because the media said it, it was therefore fake. Don’t worry, 20 years after WMD and ties to Al-Qaeda, we still believe them 100%. Just like experts Mueller and Powell, we believe now Fauci and Birx. ‘Cause we’re the smart guys.

    Half a million dead = 500k ÷ 8B = 0.0000625. Be still my heart. We’z all gonna die. Is that below sharks? 10x less common than dog attacks. Meanwhile the death rate keeps dropping, 90% down, back to April levels, as the original curve predicted. Report it? Not on your life. We’re still mailing fake ballots nationwide, with 20% fake in Paterson NJ, reported by NAACP, more in Illinois, and we’re still killing all business, shifting all profit and power to Amazon and WalMart, and the 6 billionaires who own all media, increasing income disparity, and shutting down 4th of July picnics while demanding and defending rioters in the streets (e.g. D.C. Mayor)

    Meh. Pretty expected. Lies, hypocrisy, murder, extortion, grift, graft, turn long-planned race war up to 12 (already failed at “11”), blah blah. So CIA handbook says — as per Ukraine – get the people out, then have a shooting in the National Guard, Bloody Sunday, whatever works, with Serbian snipers on the roof (they were interviewed later on Italian TV news). This causes the tinder you’ve carefully bought and arranged to burst into flames. So: no NG. Let the governors, mayors take the heat they created and richly deserve. Let the people choose if they love mobs, lies, arson, and extortion, or due process and rule of order. But it’s no fun, of course.
    I don’t think anyone fully appreciates what actual unrest or an actual civil war would look like in America, but we could kill 100,000 in 4 hours, easy. For months. So basically, this little dust-up is a joke, simply to illustrate where things can go and how lucky you are right now.

    Although it doesn’t look it, people are paying attention. Twitter, CNN, is not reality, hasn’t been since they started. That’s why it’s critical not to overreact. And they haven’t, so it looks like they’re doing nothing. What would you want done? Arrest people before they commit a crime? Once you commit a crime, we can arrest and pursue, as they are. Slow, boring, normal law enforcement, like any other day: you traveled across state lines to commit a felony, and are financed by international NGOs who therefore become international terrorist organizations. Continuing their unbroken run since Christchurch, Antifa/BLM was the mass shooter in KY not the “white nationalists” which is apparently anyone in America, including Candice Owens and Daryl Davis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis Nope, another Progressive/Leftist. Another time not reported. The only attacks are the Left, as always. The only enemy is truth.

    So will Americans stand with the law and Constitution, free speech, self-defense? Or will they cry “Save me Daddy government, I don’t want no freedoms no more”? Well, policemen aren’t coming.
    Tee
    https://vangogh.teespring.com/v3/image/d_bLrJevhylKHG7z_iz6jO0SZB8/480/560.jpg
    Looks like, annoying as it is, the majority still want the same as ever: equal justice, equal law, free speech, due process. They will die for it, but they will not kill for it. So doesn’t that put them in the right? Doesn’t that mean they will win? 30 years in a row, the media is mad a h—l, they demand the stupid rednecks be stupid and stupidly attack with their stupid guns. They demand they be racists. Invent it on the door of NASCAR garage or the streets of Chicago if they have to. But they’re not. They both live closer and are more racially integrated than The Karens. So they lose again this time too it seems. Stand Fast.

    #60631
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Also – I’m a bit peeved over intellectuals, academics and book writers generally right this second. I have planted thousands of trees over the last few years because I wasn’t on a computer arguing about the environment and climate change.”

    My Hero for the Day.

    Have some pretentious early progressive rock on me:

    Tall Trees

    #60632
    zerosum
    Participant

    Comments, Following the conversation
    Pablo Picasso The dream 1951 – The American Dream

    how to cover COVID19 going forward.
    Two chart – “Daily new cases world wide” and “Daily new cases USA”.
    People with more interest can go to
    https://covid19.who.int/
    and look at the dashbord of their country, or listen to their local reports.
    ———
    “the fear of infection rules supreme,”
    Will it affect the sales of birth controls?
    ——-
    “As for healthcare,”
    No money, no health care is being reported everywhere. Sorry, but now you know if you are rifraf
    ——
    “as demonstrated again by this report from NBER, Fear, Lockdown, and Diversion,”
    (Research done for the decision makers by the cream of the educated elites who want to perpetuate the present system.)
    https://www.nber.org/
    12 New Studies of Economic Impact
    of COVID-19 and Policy Responses

    All NBER papers related to COVID-19 are open-access and have been collected for easy reference. View them in reverse chronological order or by topic area.

    ——–
    “Independence Day could turn into an incredibly messy affair.”
    let me count the ways
    ——
    • China’s Military Becomes First To Use Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine (SCMP)
    Every lab around the world are rushing to be the first billionaire from the convide cure
    ” phase three trials in other countries ”
    And the recognized winner will be the USA mfg for the USA
    ——-
    • California, Texas See Record COVID-19 surges, Arizona Clamps Down (R.)
    Hurry …. build the wall …. Travel restrictions from and to USA will continue, in Canada, until 21 July
    ———
    Pen stronger than demonstrations
    https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/28/business/facebook-ad-boycott-list/index.html
    Facebook boycott: View the list of companies pulling ads
    By Allen Kim and Brian Fung, CNN Business

    Updated 11:42 PM ET, Mon June 29, 2020

    #60633
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    ““Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels”.”

    Depends on infrastructure and application. Using wood to run a power grid is probably mighty bad (but probably no worse than coal), but to keep a home warm and have some hot water for a bath 2-3 times a week, wood in the right combustion chambers/heat sink/release infrastructure, and process harvest/cook food regime, is far better than massive power plants, a zillion cars, and the insane production/distribution system we’ve come to rely on.

    Even if we had fusion power too clean to meter, the essentials of entropy/waste would be daunting to keep reasonably balanced with 7.7 billion people living amid chronic politically psychopathic insanity in a culture based on narcissistic pandering to greed and ego.

    ***

    Hey, Raul, ‘splain yourself, pls. I’m all for jokes at my expense… if I get the rationale. As it is, I just feel insulted. Either I’m dense or you need to hire a new joke writer.

    #60634
    Lily
    Participant

    Rioters and looters made up an extremely small percentage of the number of protesters who have been out in the streets, most of whom have been completely peaceful. The article makes it sound like all of them were doing bad things and that is completely untrue. And often the violence that there was was done by the police, not then protesters.

    #60635
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    @Dr D:

    • Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003

    …because most of the forest that could burn has already burned. And ‘…since 2003…’ is useless. There have been huge fires about every 2 years in the southern Sierra Nevada since before 2000. The Angeles National Forest is almost 30% burned, wasn’t that way in 1990. Just this past decade, the ‘normal’ fires in the hills northwest of Los Angeles have become ‘marching armies of flame’ that strip huge swaths of scrub as they are wind-driven west toward the coast.

    So…are you distracting today, or are you just being your contrarian self?

    #60636
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I dyslexicated. I fix a sentence from above:

    “but to keep a home warm and have some hot water for a bath 2-3 times a week and process harvest/cook food regime, wood in the right combustion chambers/heat sink/release infrastructure is far better than massive power plants…”

    #60637
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    While it is true that our No Forest Fires Tolerated policy of most of the mid-29th century is part of the process, so is the fact that we took down all the old growth and replaced it with a ‘just big enough to be worth harvesting’ culture, and gobs of little trees burn faster and wilder than not so many massive old trees.

    It is not so easy to set an adult redwood on fire. That said, this guy said this. Bur his blog has ‘green’ in its title s of course he must be lying or at least misinformed, right?

    #60638
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #60639
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    ‘the mid-29th century’

    I was there. Where were you?

    #60640
    Arttua
    Participant

    “A century later, naturalists suspected that the landscape they crossed had been formed by fire. John Muir commented on the parklike quality of the sierra woodlands. ….it is clear that the singular spacing of the trees is a result of the annual firing of the country.”
    “The indians were skillful fire managers. Not only did they consider wind, temperature, and time of year, but they were also good at turning the fire in the direction they wanted, by piling brush along the desired path.
    Early visitors to the Indian territories often noted the smoke and the burning.
    Indian burn every year just the same, so keep all ground clean, no bark, no dead leaf.”
    “For more than a half century, the Mono, the Chukchansi, and all the other surviving tribes have not been allowed to burn. …. The land began to change. In the Indian view, it began to die.”

    This is from “Sprout Lands, Tending the endless gift of trees.” -William Bryant Logan

    #60641
    John Day
    Participant

    @Boogaloo, I predict your vitamin-D level will be 45 if you don’t get a lot of sun. The more sun you get, the higher it will be, up to around 80. Normal range is 30-100.
    Let’s see how I do!

    @Oxymoron
    , Hat’s off to you, sir. That’s a lot of tree planting! I have also been increasingly frustrated recently. I see the urgent need for direct human labor into the path of adaptation to less energy and more direct intervention in ecosystems that feed us. I get intellectualization-as-defense-mechanism-against-cognitive-dissonance.

    @Boscohorowitz
    , Do you remember Andy Roony’s eyebrows?! Also, burning deadwood for small fires oxidizes wood that largely gets-oxidized-anyway in nature, so it is way different from clearcutting commercial forests, which does not sequester carbon or provide ecological niches for complex living systems. Collecting deadwood is a small and local thing, not a big solution. Just using less than we are used to is the adaptive path into the future.
    Caitlin Johnstone says real revolutionaries expand their consciousness. https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/06/30/real-revolution-means-expanding-consciousness-both-outwardly-and-inwardly/

    #60642
    John Day
    Participant

    Here is something I read with great interest, a 1905 Soil Survey of Lavaca County, Texas, which describes the soil types and the modes of farming and livestock production, both working livestock and herds and pigs for sale and laughter, as well as the amount of land needed to feed each head of stock (cow/bull/hog/horse) 4 acres of the good black dirt I’ve got, or 8 acres of the sandy soil.
    That’s kind of staggering in terms of cost of animal labor. Fossil-fuel world really gives us a huge advantage, and a different perspective on how-much-land- we need. This also looks at share-cropping, devastation of boll weevils, poorer negro and bohemian farmers, and how they made do as share-croppers, lots of humanistic stuff.
    Lavaca county never had a slave economy.
    https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MANUSCRIPTS/texas/lavacaTX1905/lavacaTX1905.pdf

    #60643
    John Day
    Participant

    “laughter” should be “slaughter” That’s just how they keypad did it, unintentional…

    #60644
    John Day
    Participant

    Texas Governor Abbot ordered bars (therefore strip-clubs, too) to close last Friday, due to rapidly increasing COVID cases. 30 bars/strip-clubs are suing him for that harm to their honest and necessary businesses. This may be interesting. I think he knew this would happen, so I think a little better of him at the moment. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MANUSCRIPTS/texas/lavacaTX1905/lavacaTX1905.pdf

    #60645
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “I get intellectualization-as-defense-mechanism-against-cognitive-dissonance.”

    To borrow a very old Woody Allen punchline: “Now you’re messing with my hobby.”

    ” Just using less than we are used to is the adaptive path into the future.”

    That’s the recipe for everything, period. The Era of Astronomically Excessive Gluttony is over. Monoculture — food crops, trees, dental floss plantations — is over. We CAN harvest wood in large amounts from forests, but not so… “efficiently” aka maximum massive rapid production/harvest. I wasn’t limiting my thoughts on firewood to gathering squawwood, although I foresee that being a major activity in not too many years.

    “Texas Governor Abbot ordered bars (therefore strip-clubs, too) to close last Friday, due to rapidly increasing COVID cases.”

    Strippers wearing face masks just cracks me up.

    Y’all know this one. Sing along time!

    Montana

    #60646
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “The Strategies of Dementia Politics”

    A headline I just saw. It resonates on so many levels.

    #60647
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Yo, oxy: if you email [email protected] (hello snoopbots) and give me a mailing address, I’d love to send you some scratch. Not much cuz we’re not so flush anymore, but we’re far from hurting.

    Don’t be shy. There’s a time to give and a time to receive.

    “yes, but how does the dough rise?”

    Lester Young invented the expression, “dough”, as I understand it.

    #60648
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    That sounds like a voice of reason that is sorely needed by the country right now. But does anyone see any of those? Ideally, Trump and Biden would get together on live TV to ask their supporters to please calm down. But I don’t see that happening in the present climate either. It’s become too polarized, fed by media and their business models.

    I’m just trying to make sense of it all. Trying to find a way out of the mess, a way forward. But right now I’m mostly just thinking that Independence Day could turn into an incredibly messy affair. Or any other day between now and the election.

    Me too. Even the unrest of the 60’s didn’t descend into this collective insanity.
    Many of the foreign media are openly stating that they see an obvious decline of the U.S. across the board; with the subsequent loss of influence in the world’s direction and actions (a very good thing, IMO).
    From my pov; the U.S. is fractured, losing all control of society. This further weakens any possibility of an orderly society any time soon. This chaos is unprecedented, to say the least…
    My greatest fear is the historic U.S. go-to solution; war…

    #60649
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    “I don’t think anyone fully appreciates what actual unrest or an actual civil war would look like in America, but we could kill 100,000 in 4 hours, easy. For months. So basically, this little dust-up is a joke, simply to illustrate where things can go and how lucky you are right now.”

    It only takes a look back at the Rwandan genocide, a million dead give or take in about 3 months, machetes did all the handy work. All it took was the relentless prodding from the radio stations to go and dispose of the reviled Tutsis and the mob went insane. We’re not much different under the patina of civilization and the prodding of much more sophisticated media is regularly adding fuel to the fire.
    Money and political cover helps a big deal too for the organizing and set up of street revolt, destruction and burning. Hey, it’s all for the birthing of Wakanda and the end of ‘systemic racism’.

    Yes, in Second Amendment America, there won’t be a lack of deadly tools to upstage the 600k body count of the War of Northern Aggression.

    I just don’t want to believe it yet.

    #60650
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    This Apocalypse Never is a book I’ll never read. What a relief, so little time and so much to read.

    I’m with oxymoron on this one. There’s so much BS in just the presented excerpts of the book that it would take me time I don’t have to unpack it and it doesn’t have to do with the Climate Change debate.
    It has to do with embracing all the life killing features of mega capitalism, like industrial farming or nuke power that we’re supposed to accept because this guy is a credentialed dissenter or a road to Damascus convert from the environmental cult and thus more credible?

    Richard Manning laid out the insanity of industrial agriculture, even agriculture, period, in his books “Against the Grain” and Grassland and in the documentary “What a Way to Go”. He can say it better than me anyway.

    #60651
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Ostensibly, the crisis in the U.S. is about racism.
    I find it interesting that the historic racism has always been marked by extreme violence, up to this very day.
    What I find interesting, is that here in S.E. Asia (always noted for its racism), the racism is subtle and not violent at all.
    Pattaya and Phuket may be exceptions because of the type of foreigner’s they attract.
    Pattaya is especially disgusting; but then, the U.S. military (Vietnam war) was wholly responsible for that…

    #60652
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I can handle nuclear energy. It can be done properly, and our energy diet will require aid to prevent too fast a drawdown and the attendant violence, including the prospect of nuclear war, but yes, Shellberger smacks of selloutism all around. For allI know they’re making offers you can’t refuse these days.

    #60653
    Huskynut
    Participant

    There’s a bunch of interesting graphs up on this blog today around Covid: https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2020/6/28/secondwave
    I liked the illustration of two points especially:
    1. there is negligible correlation between case rate and death rate (the latter rate being the crucial one, whereas the former tracks testing rates)
    2. the media line that “rate of decline is declining” is an inversion (but undoubdtedly more sensational) of reporting the crucial fact which is that death rates are heading out into their long tails..

    #60654
    Huskynut
    Participant

    For a long time I had the hope and belief that “we” would be able to halt the spread of the coronavirus, if only because that was -and is- the only sensible way to deal with a new pathogen about which very little is known, other than that it is potentially deadly.
    I get that (though I’ve often expressed my reaction more intemperately than was perhaps necessary). But halting spread has always seemed a guaranteed losing strategy to me – the world is too interconnected, the costs of containment/elimination too high, and most importantly – from common colds through influenza through to HIV – as far as i’m aware, we’ve never achieved that with a coronavirus before. So I’ve never seen it as possible that “we” could achieve this Sisyphean task given the background of barely-functional politics, economic hyper-fragility and vast media disinformation that pervades.

    While overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 of that. Individual choices were far more important and seem tied to fears of infection.
    Even accepting the stats as true at face value (I have no alternates to offer), this statement is misleading. The lockdowns were the extreme (marginally-legal) actions on a continuum underpinned by misinformation and emotive mania. People restrained their movements because they’d been led to believe they were in grave mortal danger. And yes, much was unknown in the early days, but the salient point is that taking decisions with massive consequences driven by an abundance of fear leads to poor-quality decision-making.
    A key component of the entire unholy edifice is the seeming inability of the traditional media to set aside shirt-term profits for a short while to play the grand role of “fourth estate” that they love to pose and preen for. I’d argue it is near impossible to build and maintain functional civil society in an atmosphere of constant hysteria.

    So to the riots, where I share the concerns of many as to how far the situation could degenerate, and how quickly. One of the key idiocies being repeated in the context of BLM is that if they defund it, or burn it down, or whatever that some magical new civilisation will spring up to replace it. Though I feel for the families of the victims, I’m glad to see the CHOP experiment degenerate so rapidly and publicly.. it’s making it much harder for the fantasists to claim that urban civilisations will remain civil at all without any ability to resort to force.

    #60667
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “he Seattle Times, however, found “little sign of an imminent exodus” from the park, adding that “many campers appear to have come less for the protest than for the offer of regular meals and a place to pitch a tent””

    from the wiki on CHOP, the temporary autonomy zone protestors set up in Seattle.

    The homeless are a critical element in all this.

    If you’re from Portland/Seattle, you know that the downtowns of both were already de facto occupied by homeless people camping in tents on the sidewalk. Lots and lots of them. The very numbers point to the constabulary/city admin being poverwhelmed by the homeless problem, much of it migrants from other cities that are nastier to the disenfranchised than around these parts.

    These downtown campers represent only a small part of the entire homeless population, most of it forced to camp on the no man’s land between the freeways and the streets.

    While we ridicule/applaud the proclaimed reasons for these spontaneous gatherings (and they’re spontaneous whether or not they coordinate/are misinformed-inflamed via media), the underlying reason is simple: the rent’s too goddam high, the jobs are increasingly totalitarian shit-cropping “gigs”, and, well, the system’s crashing, period.

    A system that is crashing under its own degenerate weight should expect to get some “help” in its destruction by those whose lives have already been destroyed by said system.

    As for the cellphone study that says people voluntarily chose to exert various degrees of self-quarantine: chose is not a misleading word. The fact that our media offer misleading tripe in place of honest accurate reportage does not remove the element of choice in these people’s actions. They were not legally or otherwise coerced. They did indeed make their own choices, however misinformedly or otherwise… (beginning with a comedic run to stock up on toilet paper).

    If we can’t even maintain the distinction between coercion and self-choice, we might as well give up discussing world affairs and instead, become a philosophy forum in which 15-yr old girls throw names like Kant and Wittgenstein around.

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