D Benton Smith
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Frankly, I just don’t know why people are making such a fuss about running out of money. Looks like in a few more months there won’t be anything to buy with it anyhow.
anticlimactic
It’s tempting to wrap up any analysis of the crisis into a tidy package, with a single conclusion. I feel the temptation, too, every time I look at it,
BUT . . .It’s never so simple. The problem is the pandemic AND the reaction to it AND the causes of it AND the values/mindset that enabled those causes to fester until finally producing a pandemic.
If ever there was a compelling need for just plain old garden variety awareness, this is that time.
The World Health Organization wants to help fight the pandemic, Fine and good. All real help is appreciated. However, they are asking for funds in order to provide this twice-promised twice-betrayed help from their previous position of Authoritative Responsibility. This shall not be. They have betrayed trust and performed badly at a time when implicit trust and selfless performance were vitally necessary.
Yes their help is acceptable, but NO; it shall not be from a position of leadership of any kind.
It will only be accepted in the form of good results produced as tangible contributions by individuals at personal risk and no thought for personal gain.I understand that Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (Director General of the World Health Organization) wants a job . Good. He can scrounge up PPE from where ever he can find it and serve in the Intensive Care unit of a hospital in a hot spot. Somewhere in Ethiopia would be a good choice. I am not joking in the least. If he will serve with his life on the line then I will consider trusting him. Otherwise, no, never.
If the WHO wants to regain the world’s trust trust then it’s individual employees will have to earn it with good works and good faith. No more cash in advance.
In one way or another the big problem, the one we are all definitely running out of patience with, is right there in plain sight. Some people are even talking openly about it.
The problem is the absolutely stunning and incessant stream of crappy information. “Facts” ( and I use the term very very loosely ) coming at us from everywhere. What the hell’s up with that, anyway? Never seen it so bad.
Gawd !!! What I would give for even ONE scrap of trustworthy information. And there’s the problem, see ? We all DEPEND FOR VERY LIVES on the data that other people give us. As individuals we can only see, hear, and touch reality from as far away as our eyes can see, our ears can hear or our hands can touch. Beyond that range we are blind deaf mutes, dependent on others to be our eyes and ears. Ya can’t be everywhere at once, now can ya? We need other people to report what’s going on over there in their neck of the woods.
We all have this little model of the world in our heads. It’s not the REAL world of course (the solid one) it’s our IDEA of the solid one. We all know that. That little model is our best guess of what actually really and truly IS and what is going on around us.
Since most of what we know to be true is based on information that we got from someone else it can be immediately deduced that our model has a fatal weakness : a false datum from someone else could become part of our trusted belief. These beliefs may be our own personal property NOW, but we built them from largely second hand information. So if someone else manages to convince me about a part of my trusted perception of what is even REAL in the first place, then , well, . . . you see where I’m going with this.
Is hypnosis real ? You tell me. We’ve all seen the stage hypnotist make volunteers do dumb stuff at his command, for your entertainment. Was it real? Were the volunteers actually hypnotized? Well, if the hypnotist convinces viewers that the volunteers were indeed really and truly hypnotized then the hypnotists was successful in hypnotizing THE AUDIENCE.
All I’m trying to say here is that YOU and only you, are the final arbiter and decider about what really IS. But that the “model” you are using to make that decision, has one hell of a lot of Second Hand parts in it, so be careful.
The reason there’s not more of my thoughts and commentary posted here is that (like with most of you) there are other serious workings to attend to.
But in that process occasionally small unserious ideas pop into my noggin and it seems the only way to get them out is to inflict them upon you. So, here goes, one more attempt to propose a name for the virus and the disease. Hopefully these go viral and are adopted by the greater world at large, and we can dispense with the current labels which look like the ingredients for some “New & Improved !” brand of toothpaste ( can’t you just hear the bright and smarmy voice-over ? ” Pandentic Toothpaste, NOW with Sars CoV 2 RNA and Covid 19 ! The choice of doctors around the world!! ”
Anyway, here’s the new nomenclature I propose :
” The WuCon virus, gives us WHO flu. ”
If ever an epitaph is carved for the species Homo Sapiens Sapiens it will read:
” Didn’t take the lessons of arithmetic seriously when they had the chance.”
The attitude and intentions of the world’s greater population can be expressed in one simple and easy to understand sentence, which declares one irrefutable fact and directly orders what they insist be done about it. That the order will be enforced under penalty of death is implicit.
Our rulers will either believe the fact and obey the order, or they will perish.
Here’s the sentence :
“This situation has gotten serious, so no more tricky bullshit.”
lastwo
I don’t think that’s what they meant to say with the phrase “My cup runneth over”.
Storage is full. New production keeps flowing in anyway, and there’s no nowhere to put it. What’s the best “cost/benefit/punishment” compromise in this sort of situation ?
Build costly and soon to be useless new storage?
Shut down production, at great expense and consequence, to stem the flow, and lose future income?
Pump it out onto the ground and incur clean-up fees and cash penalties, not to mention horrifying public relations..Pretty scary that they reckon it’s worth paying $37 per barrel just to make it someone else’s problem.
To no one in particular but just a precautionary safety reminder to the already cynically wary :
“Scoundrels are always willing to tell a truth to serve a lie.”
We should be grateful that our lives are being jerked hither and yon by opposing camps vying for earthly dominion.
Imagine what things would be like around here if there were only one of those teams (or the other) running the whole show ? ( with our best interests at heart, of course)
Dr D
The reason your numbers and my numbers wind up at different destinations is that they aren’t leaving from the same station. My calculations are based on a simple premise : SARS CoV 2 virus replicating without intervention from any government influenced voluntary or involuntary mitigation actions. In other words, This virus in this population in this civilization, with no officially mandated counter-measures. Wuhan Fever on the loose !! Reported measurements and rates vary wildly. No way to be certain of any of them in the Fog Of War. So, gonna have to do separate calcs for each combination and permutation of the crazily divergent numbers. The answers come back in the form of a Bell Curve distribution of probable outcomes. In a nutshell these answers are :
Government intervention in mitigation = excellent chance of immediate survival and moderately good chance of long range survival, depending on how well they finesse their moves.
No government intervention in mitigation (NO mitigation at all if governments fall) = Game Over for Homo Sap.I accept without rancor that you respectfully disagree. It’s a good thing. Makes both of us think harder, but I warn you in advance that I cheat. Every time you’re right and I’m wrong I will quickly adopt your idea as if it were my own and then be right all along all over again.
WES
Well there’s gotta be a treasurous pile of them electrons stacking up somewhere, and if I’ve got to off a few pirates to get there then it’s all on them. (figuratively speaking, of course.)
WES
What if those errant electrons are just piling up somewhere in the back of God’s closet ? And we could go find them !
Boogaloo
Kimo
WES
Huskynut
BoscohorowitzSame disappearing act on my posted comments from yesterday. Everything submitted after 11:34 pm just went POOOF ! I had not saved any backup copies of what I had written so consequently 3 hours of fairly careful work went bye-bye with no forwarding address. 4 long eloquently incisive essays of enormously important wisdom are now gone where ever it is that electrons go when they go missing.
I had replied to the above monikered persons, who can never know how much I basically agreed with what they said. Huskynut in particular had come to several insightful conclusions made from excellent observations . Now the thread of conversation is broken and time just keeps rolling along. Not much chance of mending it as the accelerating wave of new information pours in upon us.
My matter. I shall Copy-paste to a scratch pad from now on , as a minimum backup insurance against digital hiccups.
WES
Yup. Engineers answer to Mother Nature, and we all know how she is.
A good friend of mine (and a helluva an engineer) once said to me, “Ya know, I think I could make an engineer out of you !”
So I answered him, “What an awful threat to make to a friend.”
But I will say this, the disciplined fact based thinking required throughout all engineering (enforced by the ruthless judgement of a Physical Universe) tends to instill a very high standard of thinking . Reality just won’t let ’em get away with anything less.
Myself. I’m more of engineering stylist.
An extremely important couple of measurements and at least one major distinction is missing from recent reports out of Santa Clara County and Denmark. The distinction is whether they are testing general population for post-recovery levels of antibodies or simply “any detectable” level of antibodies.
Obviously it’s good news if significantly large swaths of the population have more or less symptomlessly recovered from the virus and will not become ill, spread it nor contract it again. But we don’t know from the published results if that’s the case at all.
The two missing measurements are therefore 1) number of days since exposure and 2) Type and Levels of the antibodies being tested for.
If antibody type and level does not show that the disease is fully behind them then it might just be showing that the disease symptoms are still ahead of them in the very near future. In other words, are they recovered or are they still in the sometimes quite lengthy incubation period?
We need to keep a weather eye on antibody testing because it could be either great news, or just more loose numbers irresponsibly tossed around to grab eyeballs and sell newspapers. We gotta know which. Solid studies good. Incomplete & Anecdotal bad.
HuskyNut
The doubling rate automatically factors in a time consuming process of transmission . . . even if you can’t be sure how much time that transmission takes, or how transmission occurs. In the final analysis it doesn’t matter much. The things one needs to know are not that hard to identify or calculate. How fast is it doubling? How many people will eventually become infected? What percentage of of that number will die? How long will the process take? My numbers pencil out within specs, and I will keep my old job (even though I have retired first) because being right all the time is not just an annoying pastime , it’s lucrative.
By the way, the math error you’re making is very common because it’s so non-intuitive to non numberphiles. It’s described in formulas called Baye’s Theorem and boils down to this : in sequential calculations it is imperative that your operations begin with the true first statement in the series. In other words, make sure you’re starting at the real beginning with the correct values, which are frequently not at all obvious or intuitive.
All calculations done after the start of mitigation efforts must take the numerical effects of that mitigation into account (and remove those effects) before proceeding with the remaining series of calculations in order.
Humankind just felt the cold breath of extinction on its neck, so folks can be forgiven if they now choose to whistle past the open graveyard still awaiting them if they fuck up now. Your calculations, doubtlessly, are not factoring in how mitigation has changed, and will go on changing, all of the pertinent numbers. Therefore your algorithm returns to you garbage answers based on what did or might happen with some sort of mitigation already baked into the cake. My calculation reveals what happens if they don’t.
In conclusion : This virus is still perfectly capable of wiping us out should we fail to understand the fact that , with no mitigating actions against it , this virus simply DOES double every 4 to 5 days (mitigation slows it down, obviously) . And it kills a fuzzily estimated percentage of everyone it infects. What percentage is that ? Well, without state of the art medical treatment that death rate easily changes from a Chinese 2.3 % to an Italian 7.2% . No one has the guts to estimate what the % becomes with ZERO medical treatment. 10% ? More? I sure don’t want to find out.
In any case , even the silly optimist ONE percent comes to between 50 million and 500 million during a single 3-4 week long period starting 2 to 3 weeks after the last 2 doublings . Based on a world population of 7.5 billion relatively healthy souls, the final doubling would end in late April or early May, infecting 3 or 4 Billion people. A percentage of those billions all die in the same 2 week period 2 or 3 week later. No complex system survives such an event. It breaks. And that breakage has it’s own ‘knock-on’ domino sorts of lethal consequence like typhoid, cholera and nuclear pile meltdown from inadequately attended atomic fission reactors.
Show me a math geek who isn’t sweating bullets and I’ll show you a drug user.
I do not respond well to snark and non-logical strategies for “winning” arguments. No one wins arguments.
Right , Bos(s)
He’s already on my short list of who’s worth listening to in fizzix. Here’s my rule : if they’re way smarter than me I’ll listen, if they are also right I will learn from them, and if . . . on top of all that . . . they ALSO poke the ‘closed club academy’ in the eye then they are worth listening to.
Dear similarly afflicted,
When the math gets tough the tough get calculators.
I am forced to concede that Computer modeling has it’s place ( might I suggest a septic tank ?). Seriously, computer modeling is too easily manipulated to suit one’s wants and cannot be trusted when the stakes are this high ( too many conflicting wants).
Arithmetic, on the other hand, has stood the test of time and won’t try to change your mind about anything, only inform it.
So I ran the numbers the old fashioned way, using the murky (understatement) “Fog Of War” numbers being thrown hither and yon by indistinguishable saints and sinners since 6 weeks ago and now.
High ball, low ball, no balls at all. Run ’em all says I. (why not? all I’ve got is time these days)
Here is what the numbers said (ice blooded little sociopaths ):
Within all ranges of presently hypothesized numbers describing infection rate, lethality rate, doubling rate, proportion of non symptomatic carriers and effects of mitigation, the bottom line(s) was conclusive and stark.
If lock-downs (such as they were) had not been done, and the Wuhan virus ranged free, there would have resulted a minimum of one hundred million virtually simultaneous human deaths around the middle of May. Way more probably half a billion. Silent Spring indeed. There’s nothing to compare that to in human history. I’m unable to construct any scenario in which technological civilization continued. Anywhere.
Nuclear power plants and weapons require skilled maintenance ( i.e. a functional civilization) to avoid cataclysmic failure. There are 450 nuke plants and 4,000 bombs. How many failures equals an extinction level event ?
So, yeah, I’ld have to say that was a quite a bullet we just ducked.
Please keep these facts in mind when ragging on the totally weird combination of good guys/bad guys/whothehellknows guys who just prevented our extinction.
Nor the folks who nearly caused it in the first place.
Dear Bos(s),
Aw, shucks. And thank you again. I am genuinely happy to accept your appreciation but I hope that doesn’t deter you from holding my feet to the fire when I need it, which is pretty much always.Hi Figmund,
In response to the question “Are We All In This Together ?” we must first appreciate that it’s actually two questions : 1) are we all in this? and, 2) are we all together ?
Here are my answers:
Yes to #1, and apparently not to #2 (but it sure does have folks talking it over, don’t it ? . . . which is a good thing.)
Everybody seems to be yearning for a return to normal (whatever that means) and I just can’t help but want to look them up close in the eye and ask, “Are you really SURE?”
Easiest way to make people gratefully accept miserable conditions is to give them a taste of worse.
They must care very much about what we think because they’re churning out so may versions of what that is, or what it should be, what it would be if Trump wasn’t such a meany , or if well known liars hadn’t fibbed. Confusing. But at least they show they care.
What worries me more is the deeply disappointing quality of the propaganda itself. It’s so slapdash and hasty. Almost perfunctory. Why if I didn’t know better (and I definitely don’t) I might suspect that their primal survival instincts are starting to fuck with their merely mercenary instinct for who to lie for.
But not to worry. It’s when they stop even bothering to lie at all that I will duck and cover.
boscohorowitz
Thank you, and wow. Not only do I appreciate the complement but I’m deeply impressed by how squarely you smacked a whole row of nails right on their heads. The cadence and bounce are what I strive for when editing the initial prose. In other words, it’s not an accident, but will quickly add that it’s not vanity or show boating either. I’ve found that discomforting truths are best said (if time allows) with as much style, grace, music and humor as possible. Otherwise they just hurt so much that most people will simply reject the entire communication out of hand.
For example, “… like, the perfect point spread on the probability range of various interpretations of events.” That’s perfect. It’s literally beautiful and made me aware of something I have indeed been trying to do in my thinking and writing all along, , but without fully comprehending just what that was myself.
I’ve heard that jazz musicians consider their main audience to be other jazz musicians. I get that a little better now. My word play is partly for fun, mostly for necessity, and completely as truthful as I can make it.In my humble (well, to be honest, I’m not really all that humble) opinion the baddies made their play, it was evil enough but not big enough, and now they are going to pay. China has noticeably dialed back it’s universally rejected bullshit. Trump is about to repatriate a big chunk of the money they stole (reparations for the viral war crime) while Xi is a deer in the headlights (cross-hairs?) of a vengeful world. Globalist Fortress Europe tells Apple and Google to take their transparently NWO “contact tracing” software off the shelves, and the northern Hemisphere (at least) has traversed the peak of the first wave of the Wuhan virus.
All in all a pretty good week compared to what it looked like it was going to be (and nearly was ! )
Now for Act II, in which a world pushed to ( or past ?? ) the brink of economic collapse will teeter on that brink for a while as we watch in fascinated horror. Which way is this sucker is gonna fall? Into the abyss or back onto it’s butt ? I sure as hell don’t know.
Maybe it will teeter indefinitely in the perpetual cliff hanger that we’ve all gotten incredulously used to. Guess we’ll have to wait for the next exciting episode.I long wondered why apocalyptic predictions never come to pass (evidence : here we are despite uncountable numbers of dire predictions made in the past. Not extinct. Apocalypse pending, I guess. Knock on wood.)
Then I gave it some brain searing concentrated cogitation and came up with what I think is big part of the answer.
Our own experiences are the only model of “normal” that we have to go on. It is literally all we have ever known and the only things we have ever done. This reality may not exactly be heaven on earth but at least it is a hell on earth that have have more or less learned how to cope with. The model is probably tinted with aspirations for a better normal, but the fact is that at least we have acquired the skills and illusions about “how things work around here” to have survived up through the present moment.
When an apocalyptic “series of unfortunate events” like wars, imperial collapses and world wide pandemics just rip the living shit out of everything, then what happens next?
Well there are only two possibilities. In the event that we go extinct then that’s that. The piles of dead will neither complain nor worry, and scavengers of all sizes and description will have a long field day.
In the alternative scenario ( in which we don’t go the way of the dinosaurs, and is the one I’m personally rooting for) then the survivors will work like never before, like obsessed maniacs, like bankers at a bailout . . . . . to put it all back to as close to the old “normal” as closely as the can, and as quickly as they can. After all, the “doings” of the old normal is the only thing they ever knew how to do. It is their ONLY model, and so that is the one they will build toward.
If the “new normal” is a bit skewed from the old one I don’t think very many people will even notice. Those that do will be regarded by everyone else as quaint old nostalgic geezers yearning for “the good old days.”
So do make plans but don’t over-worry it . Predict and prepare to the degree you think you should and then just get on with living, until further notice.I am particularly grateful to WES for his “slice of daily life” observations on what is going on in his immediate environment. He’s in Toronto. I’m a couple hours from St. Louis, and know something about the “normal” conditions and relationships twixt the two places. So, from his report I can (with ‘fuzzy logic’) quickly infer a Scientific Wild Assed Guess (SWAG) about how the machinery of civilization is running in our general ‘north central sector’ of the North American Branch of the Great Western Empire. Conclusion : VERY creaky but not yet dire (mostly). Rationed Meds are due to 80 % of our meds being manufactured In China. If war comes that rationing will tighten and then stop altogether. Advice: cut dosage (with your doctors permission and advice), stockpile the remainder & start practicing a better healthstyle. Grocery Store failure to restock certain items is a quite alarming. The initial “panic buying” phase is long over with . Indeed, foot traffic and sales are down, not up, so if supply chains were normal then those shelves would have been restocked weeks ago. Trucking hasn’t stopped, so what’s going on? My best guess is that staple foodstuffs like wheat, milk, eggs, processed meats and vegetable based proteins are becoming scarcer and scarcer. The U.S. has no Strategic Grain Reserves (as in none, zero, nada, all-gone-now). That would include various grain based animal feed. That’s not insurmountable. We are all too fat anyway, and besides harvest is just 5 or 6 months away, unless something seriously disrupts planting and harvest. Like a pandemic for example.
My best nightmare is that China knows it must either move now, or put off its dreams of hegemonic world domination for at least another generation. How crazy is Xi ? Fairly rational, actually, too bad he’s not the one calling the shots. That would be our old friends who counterfeit all of our money, own practically everything and tell us what is and what ain’t in the effluvium called “The Media”. Here’s the CCP’s basic calculation : freak now or forever hold their peace. To go toe to toe with the U.S. China requires food, fuel and cannon fodder (of those, fuel is of course the weak link). To prevail in such a conflict the West ( the U.S., basically) needs food money and beachheads.
Crash the economy and spoil the North American harvest and the Commies could actually pull it off.
I don’t think they should try it, and I do think they will fail, but I didn’t predict they would preemptively strike with a world spanning bio warfare crime either. “Fool me once … blah blah blah”
The unthinkable is only unthinkable to those who can’t think (or are in denial.)
China’s formidable propaganda “machine” far far far exceeds mere weasel words in the fully suborned mainstream media. It penetrates every level of commerce, academia, politics and even Intelligence Services. And the entire focus and thrust of that giant machine has now ONE singular purpose : keep the world (and particularly the United States) in “Denial” for as long as possible.Hullo gang,
I’m not actually back (having never actually gone away) , but have been lurking faithfully Lo these many years. Thought it might be a good time to start talking again, however, as there seems to be a nontrivial chance that what we humorously call a civilization is on a defective Chinese ventilator. Hopefully we can have keep ourselves occupied talking about what the hell is going on while there’s still something going on to talk about.
