Debt Rattle March 28 2020
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Dorothea Lange White Angel Bread Line, San Francisco 1933 • US Coronavirus Cases Top 100,000, Doubling In Three Days (CNBC) • The UK’s Coronavi
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle March 28 2020]Dorothea Lange White Angel Bread Line, San Francisco 1933
Very poignant photo; the future looking back at us????
Speaking of virality, this seems to be making the rounds. Deservedly so. Uncommonly brilliant and apt:
Dorothea Lange White Angel Bread Line, San Francisco 1933
That’s the man from TAE leaning against the fence.
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NUMBERS EVERYWHERE“But lower-income countries are likely to face a much higher burden than wealthier nations,”
The only number that is important for me is not shown.
It is the number that applies to my changing conditions.
The number of those without the virus.
The # of death for my age group.
If I end up in a long term care home then it will be the # of death for those seniors.
If I get sick and in a hospital then that will be the number of death for the sick in a hospital.The only number that my “leaders” care about is the one that keeps me as an essential, willing, pacified, servant that doesn’t rock the boat because my “leaders” can’t swing with their burden of wealth around their neck.
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• COVID-19 Has Exposed Just How Broken American Economy & Society Are (Ritter)
Not for us at TAE.
Their system is simple. Money gets you what you need/want.
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• Millions Will Struggle To Pay Rent In April, But Few In Congress Care (IC)The rentiers (a person living on income from property or investments.) are terrified to become street people. They are willing to make their tenants street people, eviction, if they don’t pay their rent.
This time its different, there are only few people that can pay the rent demanded by the rentiers.All level of gov. know that they must have income to pay for “everything” that they do.
Once the printed trillions of dollars have been spent, what will they do?
Print more trillions of dollars?
And then …..I think that very few countries will have a recognizable social/economic system in 2021.
Yesterday is gone.I suspect that one of the reasons why US is so incompetent is that some in the administration intentionally delayed the testing. They knew that when things got worse, people will lose jobs and government will have to pass a big stimulus. They also knew that they will be able to get a ridiculously large sum of money for their rich friends and themselves in that stimulus. That was exactly what happened. Trump may be too stupid to plan that, but I wouldn’t be surprised some in his administration did. Weeks after Trump appointed Pence as the lead to be in charge of the coronavirus task force, they still could not provide testing for enough people. Not even close. That is intentional.
Did you check your status?
Are you an essential taking care of non-essentials
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/essential-services-bc-covid-1.5511040
B.C. defines essential services in fight against COVID-19Here’s a breakdown of services deemed essential in B.C.:
( I dare you to look to see if you are part of the essential/needed)@WES,
I am grateful that your wife is improving’ feeling better.
One thing I have been seeing in clinic since last summer, a minor thing, usually brought home by the kids, is a cold that may give a fever for the first 2 days, which are the worst days for feeling achy and bad and so on, but then there is a cough and maybe sniffles for another 5 days. A “regular cold”.The more interesting thing that I saw all last summer, fall and early winter, and might still be out there, but differently interpreted, is “the cold that lasts 3-4 weeks”. My wife is an elementary school librarian. Jenny and I both had it in September/October. I had already been seeing it for several months. People would come in during week 3 of symptoms, which always included rawness deeper down in the central chest, saying, “something’s wrong, I never stay sick this long. I think I need antibiotics or something”.
In late November or early December I had a patient get hospitalized for some-bad-something that affected his lungs, heart, whole body, and got him every test the residents and attending faculty could think of. He was diagnosed with viral pneumonia, caused by coronavirus. That was completely novel, but I remembered it, because I did not get those hospital records until January, and questions were already rolling about in my mind.
Was this the same coronavirus as in China?
Was this a milder, but similar coronavirus, released in the US ahead of the pandemic wave as a vaccination to the population?
I still have those same questions. I’m not “plagued” by them, because I’m ok with having unanswered questions. Wrong answers are preferred by many, but I have always detested that shite (Please excuse my Irish!)
It is now in the discourse, protested mightily by Trump, Pompeo and friends, that this virus (always pretending there is only one version) originated in the US, Ft. Detrick, and got spread to US soldiers, accidentally or purposefully (like Lyme probably did, and the 1975-1976 Swine Flu). You can never tell if Ft Detrick meant to do stuff. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Anyway, they got shut down for “breaches-but-no-harm-done” last July and opened back up for business in November. (Do scroll http://www.johndayblog.com for those stories, if curious).We can’t tell, because nobody is reporting RNA sequences openly for comparison any more, what versions of this viral family popped up when and where. It sure looks military. The viral sequences of L-strain and S-strain described in China show that the attack-sites are the same spike-protein-and-binding-sequence, but “neutral” segments of the genome are as much as 17% different. I likened that to mounting Texas Longhorn regalia on the front of a Ford and a Chevy. They look like the same car after that, but they started different.
I am hopeful that when the blood testing for antibodies eventually becomes available to me, in Austin, and I seem to be the only one at clinic who has heard of it, that it will show different immunogenic bands, for the 5 endemic coronavirus types in the US, and the important newcomer(s).
Can’t hold my breath…Wow, Fauci has now come into line with Herr Docktor precisely, with 10x more than regular flu, but still under 1%. Seasonal flu probably doesn’t actually have a 0.1% fatality, as literally no one gets tested. It’s 0.1% among those who WERE tested, in a hospital. Since virtually everyone gets the flu each year, it would be more like 0.005% (15k vs 300M)
Since they were both the same scientists (Fauci) with the same experts each time, why would we believe the more panic conclusion instead of the less panic one? Just ‘cause? We have more data now than Jan 1st not, less, but now we’re more stupid and wrong? It’s always time to panic and surrender. Your rights. Your cash. Your family.
So I’m going to record all the names and all the articles for later. Will experts ever be discredited? A: Never. No matter how many thousand years or how many millions dead. We have 1,000 years of history supporting that. Google “Eugenics”
So Taleb’s model is garbage. All his base assumptions are wrong, as is usual with these things. First, Jan 25 is 60 days after the presumed origin, and 100fold more than 2k people already had it, 30k had probably already been killed, and those people had already flown worldwide for New Year’s. He also hadn’t the faintest idea who those people were. Third, the WHO and YOU both said “Don’t you shut those flights down, you racist pig!”
Even so, “shutting down travel” is equivalent to “shutting down the worldwide economy” on which the entire medical system depends for supplies, and will kill multiple thousands more than the flu. In addition, given 40 day hibernation and reinfection, with no antibodies, this would mean shutting down the planet for 40 x 3-odd cycles, or six months, plus re-shutting it every few months forever. That’s not my science, it’s theirs. So: good with shutting down all food, shoes, truck and tractor parts for half a year under a rolling unending totalitarian regime? Ah, Stalinism re-enacted, Socialism at its finest! As requested by schmarty-schmart “experts” worldwide. To save us from…? Sure hiding in your house is super-smart from one narrow perspective, but not for anyone who can see a fraction of the whole picture. It takes a second to see you’ll kill a hundredfold people of the virus by shutting the worldwide economic system and moving it to command-and-control by insiders, virtually forever.
So anyway, China now has no new infections, but is being infected from foreigners. Who do not infect people because there are no infections. Gotcha. WHO and CDC cheer and support this implicitly with all their expert might. CNN reports this without comment and the people believe it without question.
Yes, they didn’t test because they need a crisis to do what they’re doing. But what is it they ARE doing? Resetting the financial system while paying YOU, as the Fed is rolled into the Treasury, and markets are levitated, while businesses still exist for a while. Or not. You can fret that some money was mishandled right now, but there may be bigger things afoot, maybe?
“ 3-18 months in prison..”
So if you’re probably infected, we’re going to throw you into close quarters with a policeman, a judge, and other inmates. Gotcha. Your go-to fascism to lay hands on all resistance doesn’t work so well in the new era, does it? Who’s going to make them? Who’s going to guard them? Since your rules just created 30% more potential prisoners, are you going to build 30% more beds, or just let out the violent offenders instead? Government: made of stupid. Nobody’s going to obey anything except voluntarily, on a normal day, but especially now. You have the power, not them. Stop being a coward and start acting like it.
“After years of outsourcing manufacturing,”
Huh, almost like we should have domestic manufacturing, employment, and functional borders. Who said dat? For four years?
Oddly, his article doesn’t point up how much MORE exposed the Chinese system has become, how much worse they planned, nor that low oil prices are the greatest boon the economy’s seen in 60 years and will make this go better than anything else they could have done. I’d also guess he’s the guy who voted for government “help” in healthcare that made rules forcing healthcare out of it’s functional size and delivery in 1992 and into the hollowed out, devastated state it is now. And as I keep writing every day, it’s not unaffordable. Provided you have no job, or are not a citizen, you can get infinite health care for free. Only if you work or save do you pay.
“US May Be Headed For Highest Unemployment Ever (RT)”
We’ve had 15% unemployment since 2000, and +20% since 2008. That’s what 10M out of workforce means. As all Socialist systems. Prob over 30-40% for the shut down.
“Yet Another Rant on Coronavirus & Trump (Brad DeLong)”
Another expert who has no numbers but TDS. Okay, what if everyone already has it, Brad? What if it’s sub 1% as the experts now say? What if you kill 100M people via unemployment instead? Thought about that? NOPE! Besides, we are now testing, but since the WHO and China tests were 80% wrong, as predicted, we needed to invent and produce those tests first. He’ll also be first to freak out when the number infected is 15 million, because we bothered to start testing. Here’s some cat food, I’ll pull you out of your basement quaking when it’s all over.
“represents a massive upward transfer of wealth.”
All bailouts and particularly all inflations do this. That’s why each time they “help”, income disparity increases. No one learns, they demand more. “[Three weeks] will be too late for the nearly 3.3 million people” Why will it be too late? Did they die? Will their landlord not cash the check? Will they say, “I never heard of no national pandemic thingy”? No, it’s too late because you made it up in your imagination, wrote it down on paper, and can’t tell the difference.
“international solidarity has played a priceless role in enabling the government to rise to the challenge. China sent coronavirus diagnostic kits that will allow 320,000 Venezuelans to be tested,”
Wow, you’re right. Those totally wrong tests will be very helpful. Ah governments. Who caused this in the first place, then dithered for 4 months. If only we were like them.
“government quickly carried out a plan to contain the spread”
Genius! If only we had been like them! Oh wait, they did this in MARCH, a month after we did, and 2-4 months after the start of worldwide national daily news. Isn’t that like the most irresponsible timeline of any nation so far? And is anybody following it? No one pays attention to the government there for anything else. …Nevermind. Socialism is always good. You know, like in China!
Just like today’s pics, where the doctors who deny its existence have great gear up until they are hauled away and go missing, and where what we REALLY want is a Dow of zero to stick it to those fat cats. …While we therefore by definition make no gloves, ship no masks, sell no food, and shut off the heat to your house. #Winning! No Dow, living in caves, le plus maxium doubleplus good. That’ll larn them!
Zerosum – “Did you check your status?”
I’m just other useless eater, apparently. But these guys…. how will we cope if these guys lock-down!
“26. Land registration services and real estate agent services.”
@ scraplet
Word do not flow out of me like Dr. D.
He is a raging bonfire.
I’m just a flickering candle light in the distance
helping you find your way as you search for understanding.@WES
Good news!
@zerosum
I checked the list yesterday and my vocation/skillset is highest priority.. So why would a major federal healthcare system replace me with an optometrist in this crisis and send me home?Bonus question: How many years of medical school, internship and residency are required to enter optometry; 2, 3, 4 or 7 years?
Warning: no cheating by Googling the innertubesDr D Rich:
Trick question, of course. “None”, because Optometrists are not physicians.
They really do know a lot, but it’s all about the eyes.
Ophthalmologists, Like Syria’s President Assad are physicians, of course, know more about the eyes, and operate on eyes.“• Dr. Fauci: Coronavirus Death Rate Like Very Bad Flu (WND)”
Where have we seen this strategy before, where authorities began back-peddling on the severity of the crisis? That’s right, China. And for the very same reason, get people back to work as quickly as possible to save the economy.
I understand China’s desire to get the world’s workshop back to running at full capacity. They don’t want their customers looking for alternate places to build factories, or god forbid, bring them back home to their domestic economies.
Of course this pandemic is a lose-lose scenario, and that one priority (life vs economy) has to be balanced against the other, and that both are not mutually exclusive. At least China waited to roll out this strategy after their crisis had peaked, and some control of the outbreak had been reestablished. Now when Trump says that he’d like to see people back to work by Easter, knowing full well that the worst is yet to come, it looks foolish, injudicious, and frankly that his priorities are focused not on saving life but Wall Street, the markets, money, the golden calf.
What I find difficult to understand is that with all our spy technology and genius analysts working for all those govt. agencies, we knew at the highest levels what was occurring in Wuhan, China. However, because we’ve had so many false alarms over the years I understand how it would be very risky for a politician to panic the herd prematurely. But couldn’t they have taken steps behind the scenes to prepare? Hell, even I was buying masks and extra food way back in early February, based solely on the evidence arriving through social media leaks out of China. And I’m sure like many of you, I tried to warn friends about the approaching danger, but they were not the least concerned. Why should they be, when every media source they’ve come to depend on was squelching the story?
“• COVID-19 Has Exposed Just How Broken American Economy & Society Are (Ritter)”
It is already well known that the financial system was buckling even before the pandemic arrived, forcing the FED to restart its liquidity injections way back in September of last year.
“• Millions Will Struggle To Pay Rent In April, But Few In Congress Care (IC)”
See paragraph 3 above. “The business of America is business!” Aka making money.
When the pandemic dust finally settles and people start to reflect on all the missteps and failed policies of their leaders, this strategy of placing profits over people will not sit well. But then we have our American Pravda media to spin everything 180 degrees from what your instincts and senses are telling you. And just like in China, you will come to see that our dutiful and wonderful government saved the day once again.
Humpty Dumpty Is Broken. Yep, Ilargi used something like this once. Good analogy, though.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/03/humpty-dumpty-is-broken.htmlPlanned or not, rich folks sure seem to like this pandemic:
• Dr. Fauci: Coronavirus Death Rate Like Very Bad Flu (WND)
Be careful, this is a misleading headline. In his editorial piece in the NEJM (with the CDC’s Robert Redfield as one of the co-authors), what Fauci wrote is that if one assumes that unreported cases are several times higher than reported cases, then the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%, which suggests that Covid-19 may be more akin to influenza (which has a CFR of 0.1%) rather than a disease like SARS or MERS (which had a CFR of 10% and 36%, respectively).
So, Dr. Fauci’s opinion is that Covid-19’s fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%, and may be closer to 0.1% than 10%. He’s not even saying that he thinks Covid-19’s fatality rate will probably be considerably less than 1%. And he’s not actually claiming that it will be like a severe case of the flu.
In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.
Considering the event line which has the putative more-or-less initial new strain of coronoavirus leaving the country via initial escape from Fort Detrick’s biolab in a narrative involving suspected Chinese agents, I wonder why we tend to think it is the US who deliberately released it (if the release was deliberate). We’ve discussed China as the likely culprit before but it seems that more of us vote the USA as current Most Likely Villain.
We’re horribly unprepared to deal with the thing. China, on the other hand, is. China has more resources for dealing with such a thing, including what appears to be the world’s largest surveillance network and a people conditioned to believe in government and do as told until the cognitive dissonance overwhelms and becomes active dissidence.
Methinks that if anyone started this bug-war — if war it is — it would be China. They need a reset more than we do and stand to benefit more from same since the petrodollar is in inconceivable arrears and the USA’s resource base is so depleted in terms not of natural resources but industrial, human, and infrastructural resources. China is low on domestic fossil fuel but is chummy with and next door to Russia who has lots to sell at reliably reasonable prices plus sane affordable nuclear power tech for sale.
China even has handy empty cities to deal flexibly with everything from natural population growth during the expected population boom to come, to “friendly” quarantine de facto concentration camps that would make Huxley nod sagely while Orwell says, ‘Not bad for a workhouse prison.’
It has growing single-line ground-based energy-efficient ground transport for moving supplies and people under tightly monitored point-to-point control protocols. It has the world’s biggest manufacturing base, iirc. It has a tech sector now on par with other world-leaders and in many ways superior to ours.
It is best buddies with Russia and so has the world’s best nuclear umbrella on its side (literally).
Seeing as how global geopolitics have always been and still are, now more than ever, essentially about war by any means, it is inherently correct to conceive and define things in war terms even if no actual war plans are being implemented specifically regarding this or that crisis or major event. It’s a natural part of the overall game plan concept of 20th<>21st century Terra the Fair.
Whether one nation or another has this event specifically or generally in its martial/economic strategy, the tendency is for the major players to view it as such more so than not; so if US spooks saw early on how likely the virus was to sweep the planet and even our shining city on a hill, it makes sense to imagine them taking counter-measures to keep their bacon dry and their powder out of the fire. (Well, they get everything backwards in the end, right? and in the front too, hence the need to buy an etnire media complex to stay in power for a few more pizzly decades.)
What counter-measures to Euromerican surveillance China may have is a mystery concept, but it is a plausibility that should be considered in any well-honed global coronavirus pandemic conspiracy theory, theory as in set of hypotheses woven together that actually survive close scrutiny and ‘replication of results’ (via historical examples, which is the only method I can think of to address the macro ‘results replication’ aspect of scientific examination and analysis).
I’ve stopped examining Corvid-19 minutiae as much as I did when we were first sizing its basic aspects, so there are probably elements to this storyline that I’ve missed, but it seems likely to me that it could’ve started with the Most Likely Suspect, a candidate towering above even above greed: NSI aka negligence/stupidity/incompetence. That in turn could open a door for Chinese agents if we wish to place that gizmo in the predictive model Rube Goldberg machine we communally belabor here.
Said Chinese agents could, in fact, have provided initial early alert to an otherwise probably clueless US administration, spooks or no spooks, by being caught. Or, assuming greater competence on our part than is normal, we could’ve started this whole Milton-Bradley’s Mouse Trap on purpose with cheese cunningly laid out via an “accident” for said agents to steal (an idea I believe someone suggested here awhile back). Or… or…
All that said, it astounds me to accept, as is at least likely as any other “or”… that the Euromerican global elites are really dumb enough to start ANY kind of war with the Sino-Soviet gang. I know they are. I defined my entire view of the last prez election on my conviction that the neo-con/libs are determined to have it out with two colossal empires at once.
So, it’s not that I have difficulty believing the USA would initiate such a thing. I just find it pert nigh impossible to believe they’d do it even remotely competently. My relative lack of alarm at obviously looming totalitarian power grabs by our reptilian shape-shifting Satanic Annunaki overlords* is not just my previously expressed a) fatalism and b) preference for biological war over the more conventional means (nukes are conventional, alas: they’ve been used and stockpiled awaiting further use).
*( I say that not to demean conspiray theory itself but because I can’t think right now of a sufficiently nasty original epithet to call the creeps in charge)
It’s because I doubt they could make a go of it after an initial period of submissive compliance. Remember, these guys suck even worse than the USSR or today’s Chinese communist capitalists at doing anything but intimidating midget nations and printing money everyone knows is worthless.
Call me crazy, cuz I fuckin R, but I’m old-school American Naive enough to say, ‘Come and get me coppers!’, not just out of orneriness (which I have ample supply) but because I believe the gubmint is no match for a buncha crazy cultural narcissists with guns and short attention spans, easily irritated into irrational behavior, broke, bored, unhappy, and scared into the active anger level. Freakin out, y’know.
I read somewhere that every war simulation the gubmint does of gubmint vs. populace, the gubmint wins. I didn’t vet the claim, it coming from what I remember as a reliable source, because I totally believe it to be true.
@John Day
Indeed!
Goodness, that was a long read.
Has anyone dug any of those dead vapers and tested them yet?
The description of their lung damage was spot-on. I think someone even used the “ground glass opacity” metaphor. (Naveed Saleh, for example, in a sept 27th, 2019 article for medlinx.)“USA’s resource base is so depleted in terms not of natural resources but industrial, human, and infrastructural resources.”
‘not JUst in terms of…’
“In radiology, ground glass opacity (GGO) is a nonspecific finding on computed tomography (CT) scans that indicates a partial filling of air spaces in the lungs by exudate or transudate, as well as interstitial thickening or partial collapse of lung alveoli.”
“I read somewhere that every war simulation the gubmint does of gubmint vs. populace, the gubmint wins.”
I mean de gubmint loses. I really need to get new glasses. Anyone know a good optometrist? 😉
A possible solution to this pandemic.
This Virus is killing people almost exclusively by compromising their lungs.
It is also strongly suspected that the severity of the illness is directly related to the “Virus Load” that the patient has been exposed to.
It is further suspected that a majority of lung infections have happened by patients inhaling their own aerosol generated in their nasal-pharyngeal passageway where the Virus has taken up residence. Older people are more prone to apnea or snoring incidence that could exacerbate the droplet formation and inhalation.
If you were able to get inoculated with a small amount of Virus, in say your GI tract, such that your immune system would follow it’s growth without being overwhelmed, you could become immune before you contracted it in your lung tissue. It may be far better to have a few days of diarrhea than life threatening pneumonia.A pill that contained a small clinically appropriate amount of the Virus that dissolved after the stomach might do the trick. Worth a thought.
Concerning numbers
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/meanwhile-india
Meanwhile, In India
Delhi bus stationhttps://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181224.html
What you see depends on your viewpoint. From the moon the earth is a blue globe. Look out the patio door, the world appears flat.Quants are all the same. They make models to make money for others and earn a paycheck. That is all that matters. They don’t see the big picture. The US economy thanks to the Trump trade wars and Russia/Saudi oil conflict was going into a recession. Corruption, offshoring and just in time logistics leeched out any resiliency in the economic system. The only ones making more money are oligarchs. The 2020 pandemic was inevitable. Nation states had receded into secondary incompetence to global corporate states. Contingency planning and medical stockpiles were dumped to cut the taxes on the wealthy. The Novel Coronavirus was the pin the burst the bubble.
I’ve pointed out here before that the mortality rate for Wuhan coronavirus on cruise ships, in China outside Hubei province, Singapore, Honk Kong, and Taiwan is around 0.2%. This is where there are functional public health systems and the hospitals weren’t overrun. Around 20% of the infected need hospitalization. Iran, Italy and Spain the death rate is above 6% because the governments are ineffectual and couldn’t control the outbreak. Too many became infected.
Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx are quants. They are paid to be incompetent. They dare not see the truth. The collapse of the US federal government started 40 years ago. NY State in weeks will have death rates similar to Sprain and Italy. Without universal virus testing to identify and isolate the infected (asymptomatic and ill) from the uninfected, a million or more Americans will die in the coming months due to inevitable collapse of the for-profit healthcare system.
The rebuilding of the U.S. Public Health Service to monitor, test, trace and quarantine all of the infected cannot be done overnight. Only when it is up and running will the mortality rate be lowered to 0.2% in the United States.
Didn’t see much written about this:
Negative rates come to the US: 1-month and 3-month Treasury bill yields are now below zero
CNBC, March25, 2020Apocalypse Now: U.S. Treasury Bond Yields Now Have Negative Rates
“Investors just issued a terrifyingly bleak vote of no confidence in the American economy by crowding Treasury bond yields to negative rates. Consider what that means for the future of the American economy. Rather than buy equities at a steep discount, they’re piling into Treasury bonds with negative rates. That means they think they’ll get their money back, or even make a profit selling it to the next investor.”
“That means financial markets just issued a terrifyingly bleak vote of no confidence in the U.S. economy. We’re facing a recession ahead unlike any living American has seen in their life time.”
https://www.ccn.com/apocalypse-now-u-s-treasury-bond-yields-now-have-negative-rates/
Late yesterday, I posted a few notes about making face masks and ventilators, from my Detroit based engineering brother who works for GM. we
GM & Ford will soon be making face masks. They have everything they need except for the face mask fabric. Their biggest obstacle was finding a non-Chinese supplier of face mask fabric. Well they found one!
An auto supplier of sound deadening material in South Carolina! This supplier is tweaking their machinery this weekend to reduce the sound deadening material down from 75% to the 25% required for face mask fabric. They will produce 1 million square yards of spun polypropylene face mask fabric by this coming Friday. That means both GM & Ford will soon be producing face masks in volume!
GM production engineers, in the last 2 to 3 weeks, have sourced all of the over 700 parts needed to produce ventilators. Production will start this week and ramp up to 1,000 ventilators per day, in Kokomo, Indiana.
So some good news in the fight against the virus for Americans!
However up here in Ontario, the government is only now reducing restrictions placed on private companies to help in the fight. This is because the public health officials have resisted this every step of the way! This is our truf and everybody else keep off! Tests can only be done at government labs not private labs. This is still the case despite a huge backlog of tests to be preformed! (Private labs have to be certified by the government!)
I know Americans love to bitch and complain about how incompetent their government officials are! No matter how well American politicians perform, it is never good enought! We could have done better! Everything is hung out on the clothes line for everybody to see!
I have worked with Americans all over the world. The one thing that has always stuck me is how flexible they are! Saying NO to an American is asking for big trouble because they won’t accept NO for an answer especially when they think there is a way!
When I compare responses between Ontario and the US, I see some big differences!
In socialist Ontario, the public health (union) officials are resisting the privatization of any public services even in this emergency! They want to retain 100% control of everything even if many Ontarians die because of it. They don’t want to risk the public finding out how incompetent they really are by letting the private sector help out and show them up! And there is nothing we the people of Ontario can do about it since the socialist control everything!
Then I watch what is happening in the US. Every state’s response is different especially those states run by Democrats. Several Democrat run states have banned doctors from proscribing medications discussed here on TAE! I wonder why and for who’s benefit they are doing this? Certainly not the peoples. I watch the speaker of the house! Stalin would be really proud of her!
Yes, for political purposes, everybody cut the CDC’s budget even if they didn’t, maybe it was a blessing that the CDC were proven incompetent so early on! I don’t see anybody waiting for the CDC! Seems more like the hell with them! Remember CDC’s restrictions on early testing? FUBAR!
Here in Ontario everybody seems to be waiting on everybody else! That is what I saw in Russia in 1983!
Then I too also noticed how American private enterprises are rising to the challenge! Like what my brother is telling me. I see almost nothing like that here in Ontario, the so called industrial heartland of Canada! There is a small brewery, 2 guys, making hand sanitizer, bottled in beer bottles? That’s the big story up here!
I have to wonder when this is all over just who rises to the challenge better, the government or the private sector.
I think American private sector flexibility will prove to be the big difference maker in the long run.
Meanwhile Americans, keep putting your dirty laundry out on the clothes line!
It offends the human ego that nature is indifferent to us…Calvin & Hobbes
Indeed. But no longer; nature is fighting back; with a vengeance…
I fully ascribe to the Gaia Hypothesis by Lovelock and Margulis, that the earth is a sentient being.
We’re fast finding out that “nature” is anything but indifferent.
I further posit that house cleaning may be underway via the CV-19.
We humans will fight this tooth and nail; but in the completely wrong way…
Our manufactured ignorance will win in the end; and we will be a very unhappy (to put it mildly) species, when the results are in plain view.
The observations coming in from around the planet are quite telling; pollution is abaiting in many areas, and quite rapidly, to this ones surprise…“In socialist Ontario, the public health (union) officials are resisting the privatization of any public services even in this emergency! They want to retain 100% control of everything even if many Ontarians die because of it. They don’t want to risk the public finding out how incompetent they really are by letting the private sector help out and show them up! And there is nothing we the people of Ontario can do about it since the socialist control everything!”
The will to power principle works the same in any -ism, but the flexibility factor you cite is imo, indeed capitalism’s great strength. Capitalism fully embraces the truth that money, not morals nor political systems, rule humanity. The communists in China have remained in charge for a few more decades because they embraced the power of raw money. Capitalism also adds the allure of gambling, which is a very powerful and often compulsive motivator for humanity which rarely meets a get-rich-quick scheme it doesn’t embrace.
Capitalism always collapses because it relies on money/gambling which supersede the initial industries that capitalism is so good at creating almost overnight. And since the socioeconomics are entirely money-based, the government soon collapses too unless it’s a dictatorship committed to sound money practices, which practices are hardly even mentioned in economics textbooks and all but one book on the history of money.
Works like this: take accurate census of people, property, resources, and the average prevailing production created by interaction between the three. Mint enough money to pay for all these things according to agreed upon values: a cow, say, is worth $100 ding-dongs, a goat is worth ten, a sheep 20, etc. Print a modest amount more than is needed, say 10%, for inflation. Continue taking censuses. Every five years, ten years, something like that, depending on growth. Print more money according to successive censuses as needed to balance the money supply. Rinse and repeat. Never… never… never “back” your currency with anything: gold, Moon Pies, reefer joints. (Huh. Just realized “reefer” is probably a pun on ‘reefing sails’, which action resembles rolling a joint.)
Specie currency, specie standard money, and fiat money are all doomed to bust, although fiat seems to blow the biggest bubbles since it is entirely based on imaginary notions while driven by ever-present greed.
Communism would probably have worked if they’d stuck to this plan. Emotionally, it’s a very satisfying and socially cohesive system that has failed not just because of Stalins having their way but because it never had a sound money policy, relying instead on production quotas and such. Most people can be greedy but they also like to be members of a group and like everyone to be reasonably happy.
Capitalism wouldn’t have the booms and busts it has always shown, which oscillations disturb things so much we never get to tame the beast that, left to itself, always eats everything in sight and then starves. We never get to create sustainability and stability.
For now, though, solvent economies like Russia, and its key allies who peg their fate to Russia’s, are wise to use gold-backed currencies. In the short run, it will work pretty swell but after that, the money will inevitably detach its nominal value from the actual physical wealth it represents, and will eventually create far far more paper wealth than there is physical wealth.
Capitalist societies ‘come together’ during times of war alone. The USA had an opportunity to go on a serious war footing against this virus, but choose to play games instead. Now they’re trying to corner us into a totalitarian corral without giving us a good enough reason. That is to say that they’re not coming together in concert to deal on local levels with a national problem pouring in from all parts of the globe into us et vice-versa.
I have some hopes for this virus being the ‘fight the common enemy’ consolidator that would also provide cohesion through the inevitable currency collapse, but that hope fades when I see how ineffectually we’re dealing with this problem. While capitalism allows rapid robust responses to major system shocks like WES describes, it is also as good or better at preventing the kind of early consolidated across-the-nation group coordinated response needed to effectively keep the virus down to a dull roar.
We seem dumb enough to play games with our troops abroad and at home even as our (hyperbole alert) pert near everything crashes. This is liable to create more contagion havoc down the road, rather like how the Spanish flu hammered worst when they brought the troops home from Europe. As counterbalance, at least we’ll have gobs more ventilators by then, and other resources as well, since we know what causes this illness and should have good therapies, maybe even an effective vaccine, by then.
If the creeps in charge are seriously looking to put boots on new foreign ground anytime soon (like to try and steal Venezuelan oil), we might find ourselves hammered twice (see quotes below). Unless a flu vaccine has been devised and administered to a large majority of citizens, even just a repeat of the current version will require more shutdown of the economy, although not as bad since we’ll have learned protocols, will have tests, and know how to run group production functions without getting people sick without our knowing it.
“As U.S. troops deployed en masse for the war effort in Europe, they carried the Spanish flu with them. Throughout April and May of 1918, the virus spread like wildfire through England, France, Spain and Italy. An estimated three-quarters of the French military was infected in the spring of 1918 and as many as half of British troops. Luckily, the first wave of the virus wasn’t particularly deadly, with symptoms like high fever and malaise usually lasting only three days, and mortality rates were similar to seasonal flu.” ….
…”As U.S. troops deployed en masse for the war effort in Europe, they carried the Spanish flu with them. Throughout April and May of 1918, the virus spread like wildfire through England, France, Spain and Italy. An estimated three-quarters of the French military was infected in the spring of 1918 and as many as half of British troops. Luckily, the first wave of the virus wasn’t particularly deadly, with symptoms like high fever and malaise usually lasting only three days, and mortality rates were similar to seasonal flu.
“Reported cases of Spanish flu dropped off over the summer of 1918, and there was hope at the beginning of August that the virus had run its course. In retrospect, it was only the calm before the storm. Somewhere in Europe, a mutated strain of the Spanish flu virus had emerged that had the power to kill a perfectly healthy young man or woman within 24 hours of showing the first signs of infection.
“In late August 1918, military ships departed the English port city of Plymouth carrying troops unknowingly infected with this new, far deadlier strain of Spanish flu. As these ships arrived in cities like Brest in France, Boston in the United States and Freetown in west Africa, the second wave of the global pandemic began.”
“The rapid movement of soldiers around the globe was a major spreader of the disease,” says James Harris, a historian at Ohio State University who studies both infectious disease and World War I. “The entire military industrial complex of moving lots of men and material in crowded conditions was certainly a huge contributing factor in the ways the pandemic spread.”
@John Day, V Arnold, et al.
Are you familiar with Rupert Sheldrake’s “The New Science of Life”.
This may be a disturbance in “The Morphogenetic Field”,
not to be viewed as a discrete materialistic manifestation of “virus”,
more a quantum physics field / probabilistic phenomena.John Hopkins just put the logarithmic graph back up.
Now that we are really testing infection rates look a whole lot worse.
Spread is rapid, doubling every 2.5 days as a global average.Note:
From what we have measured so far;
Mortality is approx (30 * 100) / (30 + 140) % = 17 %
I was expecting this number to come down towards a 1% asymptote.
Better detection should have reduced mortality rate, it has not budged for months!“Up shit creek without a paddle” was a phrase my father used back in the day.
I have applied to do an 8 week Dzochen online meditation retreat;
watch the guru give instructions online,
meditate all day in my closet,
email questions to guru,
rinse and repeat for 56 days.Turn lock-down into a positive step in my life.
Are you familiar with Rupert Sheldrake’s “The New Science of Life”.
This may be a disturbance in “The Morphogenetic Field”,
not to be viewed as a discrete materialistic manifestation of “virus”,
more a quantum physics field / probabilistic phenomena.No actually, I’m not familiar with Rupert Sheldrake. But I looked him up; sounds very interesting, in the vein of Lovelock.
Since 1981, he has continued research on developmental and cell biology. He has also investigated unexplained aspects of animal behaviour, including how pigeons find their way home, the telepathic abilities of dogs, cats and other animals, and the apparent abilities of animals to anticipate earthquakes and tsunamis. He subsequently studied similar phenomena in people, including the sense of being stared at, telepathy between mothers and babies, telepathy in connection with telephone calls, and premonitions.
I’m fascinated by these aspects of existence. Many native cultures are especially prescient in their traditional wisdoms…
Thanks for that heads up…
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