VietnamVet
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The FT graphs are interesting. How you view them depends on one’s education and world view.
The State of Washington deaths were jagged at the beginning. Likely did to imported infections that were not detected due to the testing debacle by the US federal government that let the pandemic spread undetected throughout the USA. Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted America did nothing until it saw what was happening in Italy and then the Washington DC issued guidelines and left it to the 50 States to do haphazardly lockdowns. This caused the differences in the graphs between Washington, New York and the other states.
The top five nations for new cases were all members of the now defunct Western Empire. A global trade organization instituted to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. They succeeded. Government was drowned in the bathtub. Except unprepared, the Wuhan Coronavirus crashed the global economy totally. The differences in the number of each nation’s deaths are directly due to how well government dealt with the crisis. In the West it is horrific due to western plutocrats who put profit above human lives.
All four nations at the bottom of the graph instituted strict contact tracing and isolation of the infected. Unless national governments are reconstituted in the West and strict testing regime, staffing and safe quarantines of the infected are set up, my prediction is the number of new cases will plateau and trail off very slowly as the herd is culled. A dark age will engulf the West until a treatment is found or democracy, government by and for the people, is restored. Only people working together can overcome the pandemic and reopen the economy.
To me it is self-evident that there was until the first months of 2020 a Western Empire, run to the benefit of the rich to explicitly exploit humans and the environment. This is a nutjob conspiracy theory to the 10% Corporate Democrats beneficiaries. The 33% Trumpeter Deplorables blame liberals and mainstream media.
The truth is that incompetents including 5 Supreme Court Judges forced the Wisconsin primary to proceed today in the middle of a pandemic which will infect a number of poll workers and voters. Some of whom could die. The prudent lost their right to vote.
Robert Redfield traveled through the medical, military and government revolving door to become director of CDC although his work on a HIV vaccine as an Army Colonel failed. His response to the Wuhan epidemic is a debacle. The failure to develop a quick and valid test to track the pandemic and identify asymptomatic and ill virus spreaders is the direct cause of 10,871 American deaths.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly resigned today after earlier telling the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt that their former commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, was either “too naive or too stupid” to be in command by intentionally leaking a memo in which he warned about coronavirus spreading aboard the aircraft carrier and urged action to save his sailors. Placing readiness above the safety of the troops is another sign of the stupid incompetence of the corporate state. When a coronavirus outbreak is let loose on a population with no immunity, 15% to 20% will need hospitalization. That is near the causality rate of a major battle.
The prime directive of the corporate state is profits before human lives. COVID-19 Pandemic terminated this global empire. 2020 is a fork in the road. A humane sustainable society and effective democratic constitutional government must be restored. If not, the West will collapse into a new feudal dark age.
Isolated at home. All I’ve got is the internet. But TAE did see that Wuhan China was a future global pandemic which corporate media glossed over the best they could.
Billionaires have a problem. Either they lose everything, taxed at a 70% rate, or they seize control and throw away the facade of democracy. The professionals, medical doctors and technocrats (who run everything) have turned against globalization and the plutocracy. Life is more important than cheap gadgets.
Navy Capt. Crozier, fired for letter about coronavirus on USS Roosevelt, gets big send-off from sailors
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/03/coronavirus-capt-brett-crozier-gets-send-off-uss-roosevelt/2939098001/Medscape; “US Betrays Healthcare Workers in Coronavirus Disaster”
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927811?nlid=134831_4661&src=WNL_mdplsnews_200403_mscpedit_fmed&uac=27074HJ&spon=34&impID=2334104&faf=1Nothing will be the same again. Either democracy is restored and every American gets a job, healthcare and shelter or there will be civil wars and the West collapses into nuclear armed failed states.
I was around for the 1970s oil crashes and going off the gold standard. The gasoline lines abbreviated both Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter Presidencies. Today is horrific. It is a combination of the Spanish Flu Pandemic and the Great Depression. It guarantees that the next President will not be Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Why? In response to the 1970’s, the Oligarchs seized control of the Western Empire and throughout installed compliant second-rate incompetents to oversee government. Cost cutting, profits and markets ruled. The sentient billionaires must realize their wealth is at risk. One of them will try to be the savior. For sure it will not be Donald J Trump or Elon Musk. Neither is competent enough to be emperor. Donald fired the USS Theodore Roosevelt Captain who tried to save his crew from coronavirus illness. Elon donated thousands of useless CPAPs with the Telsa logo slapped on the boxes to hospitals not ventilators. There may not be enough time left to prevent unrest and restore democracy and to provide jobs, food, medical care and shelter for all. If chaos prevails, North America and Europe will devolve into a patchwork of nuclear armed military autocracies, feudal estates and mostly No Man’s Land in-between.
Italians, Spanish, French and American citizens are being treated as neoliberal lab rats.
Dr. Fauci’s 0.2-0.1% fatality rate comes from Cruise Ships and Nations that successfully contained coronavirus. When the death rate climbs above this figure it is the direct result of government failure to control the spread of the virus. When the healthcare system becomes swamped like NY State, the death rate climbs. In NY State 15% of the infected must be hospitalized. Hospitals are overwhelmed because 1) personal protective equipment stocks and ventilator pandemic stocks were depleted to cut taxes, 2) pandemic planning was dumped and 3) hospitals were downsized in the USA to treat existing illness and injuries to increase profits and maximize patient billing.
The West sat on its hands for almost two months and has failed to develop a quick valid virus analysis to test everyone. In Europe and North America, corporate overlords have nixed hiring more government employees to do contact tracing and quarantine the infected (ill and asymptomatic). God forbid governments buying apartments and motels and staff them with healthcare and support workers with hazmat suits to provide safe facilities for those who don’t have a home to shelter in place.
The argument over the numbers never mentions that the difference is due to the mortality rate where part of the population shelters at home but there is no government public health service to trace, monitor and quarantine the infected. The location, degree and extent of the epidemic is unknown in the West. Scofflaws and the homeless are free to infect others. I suspect neoliberal capitalism will kill hundreds of thousands and perhaps a million denizens of the Western Empire. Unless national public health systems are restored, the following waves of infection will be just as deadly or more so if the Wuhan Coronavirus mutates into a more lethal form like the Spanish Flu did.
https://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.
I agree that the high death rate of 6% or higher is associated with the Wuhan Coronavirus getting into the healthcare systems. Wuhan city, Iran, Italy and Spain are all cases of this. Seattle’s nursing home hotspots are a more localized case. The low death rates, China outside of Hubei Province, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Germany are all associated with intensive virus testing and contact tracing. Recent reports indicate that the virus does not mutate frequently.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/the-coronavirus-isnt-mutating-quickly-suggesting-a-vaccine-would-offer-lasting-protection/2020/03/24/406522d6-6dfd-11ea-b148-e4ce3fbd85b5_story.htmlThe USA will be pock marked with hotspots due to the lack of federal direction, foresight and money plus plutocrats intentional flushed the US federal government down the drain leaving public health up to the 50 states. In two weeks or less, the hotspots will explode and the USA will be the center of the global pandemic.
This is a Social Darwinian disease that is proceeding onward to kill millions until Pharma’s jackpot treatment is found. I must keep repeating that the only way for the USA to end the pandemic now is to do what Asia and Germany are doing; restore the national public health system, require universal paid virus testing, quarantine the infected (asymptomatic and ill) and release people from quarantine with two consecutive negative tests. Buy empty apartment buildings and motels to house the infected if they don’t have safe shelter. The healthy will restore the economy.
To me anyway, the future is fairly clear. Unless shelters are built, free healthcare provided, and sufficient food distributed to avoid starvation, sheltering in place (mitigation) will stagger along until something shatters it; unrest or the economy is restarted with a broken healthcare system continuing to kill patients and healthcare workers.
Until there is a vaccine or an effective antiviral treatment, the only alternative to expansion, waves of reinfection and continuous deaths is a public health regime (containment) based on universal paid coronavirus testing, rigorous contact tracing to identify new cases, and enforced quarantine of the infected (ill and asymptomatic). Two negative tests and the quarantine ends. The economy can be restarted with healthy workers who won’t spread the virus. This will not be forever only until there is an effective treatment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/23/mass-testing-is-only-sustainable-solution/Plutocrats will fight spending money to keep the riff-raff alive. Neoliberals will hate the restoration of functioning national governments and the loss of freedom to infect others. A safe functioning economy sooner will cost much less now than later. Also, it will save western civilization.
Public health isn’t rocket science. What works is medieval, keeping healthy and isolated away from the contagion. Finally, in the Victorian Era, the germ theory of disease convinced the aristocracy that not getting sick from the riff raff was in their best interests and money was spent to bring sanitation to city living. When electron microscopes were invented In 1940s, they prove that virus of encased genetic material exist. Note failed states with no government like Somalia are not known for their sanitary infrastructure.
Proof that Western governments have been brought to their knees by the global oligarchy is months after the Coronavirus appear in Wuhan, screening at airports consists of travel restrictions and measuring temperatures. The quarantine period remains at 14 days. The fact is that this virus sheds asymptomatic for reportedly up to 27 days. Current public health measures are failing. That is why the numbers are rising exponentially in Europe and North America. The virus will continue to spread by super spreaders like the NY lawyer from New Rochelle. The only way to contain the Novel Coronavirus and someday allow the uninfected to leave their shelters in place, is universal virus testing (Steve Keen’s pay them to be tested), contact tracing and quarantine of the infected, asymptomatic and ill, until 2 tests show they are virus free. Everything else is Boris Johnson’s let them get sick and gain herd immunity scheme. Unless anti-virals or effective countermeasures and finally a vaccine are developed, human contact within six feet of others is similar to the dangers as unprotected sex since HIV became a global pandemic.
Please keep Automatic Earth up to date on COV-19 pandemic. I’m starting my third week of sheltering in place, without this site I’d stop getting Deja-vu, over and over, again. WaPo finally admitted the likely number of deaths of Americans when the hospital system breaks down is a million or more. Only because the deep state insider, the Imperial College London, said so. Or that private hospitals won’t buy ventilators for critical patient surges that are already hitting in hot spots because it will eat into their profits. Only government can do this.
Owned by Jeff Bezos, the WaPo didn’t ask why the US federal government failed to make crash purchases two months ago of ventilators when it would have made a difference and cut the number of deaths. The people responsible for manslaughter need to be jailed and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission formed if the United States is to come out intact on the other side in the months and years ahead.
Each Western nation closing their border is the death knell for the Empire and the EU.
Thanks for the link to Steve Keens Interview. He is exactly right.
The only analogy close to what the USA is facing today is if the Great Stock Market crash of 1929 occurred later in March 1932 due to the reappearance of the Spanish flu. FDR hadn’t had two years to make a name for himself fighting unemployment. The Herbert Hoover second term at least would have acknowledged the suffering even though he did nothing. Donald J. Trump doesn’t care who dies nor know how to save the USA from the consequences of a pandemic and depression at the same time. My governor, Larry Hogan, is trying the best he can but he will not be sworn in as President in 2021.
Capitalism is dead. Only governments can close borders, fight the pandemic, and save lives. Only government can give money to out of work, broke Americans. Department of Defense can manage and man their logistic system to feed families isolated at home where private delivery companies have collapsed. Only government shelters the homeless and ill; keep internet providers, electricity and water utilities working.
Ending contact tracing, lack of universal lab tests, and no forced quarantine of the infected (especially the asymptomatic) assure that Italy’s plague of death will engulf NYC, LA and Seattle in the coming weeks; crashing the healthcare system. A million or more Americans will die. As of yesterday, West Virginia was the last State with no confirmed cases of Novel Coronavirus. If Mountaineers isolate themselves and tell sick city slickers to keep driving out of state, they may avoid the coming chaos. Except, the 43 Walmart retail units in state are dependent on in time logistics just like the rest of the nation. The real question is how fast can Walmart restock? Can it?
With the sacking of scientists, the ideologues running the US Federal Government are incapable of projecting the consequences of the pandemic and the economic depression four months from now and doing what is needed now to protect its citizens. The Defense Department has not opened its mobile hospitals in hot spots. Communities are not hiring thousands of social aides to monitor, feed and assist the homebound in need. No quarantine faculties are opening for the homeless. There are thousands of things that are needed but won’t be done because it doesn’t make money for connected billionaires.
The Wuhan Coronavirus has turned the world upside down. Except no one has called it by its rightful name the Global Billionaire Plague. Jet setters are shedding the virus. The WaPo and no one in my trusted blogs have looked at all the red dots on John Hopkin’s COVID-19 Global Cases map and pointed out the obvious, there is one red dot in the Russian Federation. No it is not the climate. Russia has a functioning government and it closed its borders. Western government is so corrupt and incompetent, it wasted the month that the Chinese lockdown gave them. Every illness above 59, the number of cases in Russia is on the sociopath corporate executives and their bought toadies for not closing national borders, screwing up testing and case tracking, and not quarantining hot spots.
Shock Capitalists will milk the pandemic for the last remaining wealth in the West.
My solution to compensate for the deaths and illness and to rebuild the USA is not let any billionaire back into the USA from their hideouts unless they turn over 70% of their wealth to the US government and the people for the rest of the 21st century. We then could to use the resources and labor to survive the existential threat of climate change.
The truth is that TAE is not alarmist. It has been most rational of the handful of my trusted sites reporting on the pandemic. It is clear that the COVID-19 is airborne and has asymptomatic transmission. Half of the population, conservatively, are projected to be infected. In China it took a month to infect Wuhan city. The Washington DC capital region is at the end of the first week of the epidemic. The for-profit hospitals in the USA will not be overrun. They will turn away the uninsured when their beds are full. They will ignore any law saying their ER has to treat the ill. There are no backup public health facilities. From Boeing to the endless wars, in the Western Empire, profit trumps lives.
Besides Tom Hanks, the wife of Justin Trudeau and the Mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, are infected. This virus is so contagious, their families are infected too. President Donald Trump has been close enough to infected people from both the New Rochelle NY and Brazil clusters to have had airborne exposure. Can heads of state telecommute?
Only a miracle cure will allow an election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in November. Louisiana has already postponed their primary. The only candidate to have the charisma and intelligence to be the next American leader is Major Tulsi Gabbard. But she’s in the Hawaiian Nation Guard not the Praetorian Guard.
Change is coming. Amazon Prime Pantry is mostly sold out. I’ve sheltered in place for 10 days. We cannot make it four months without restocking. I don’t think Americans will peacefully die at home or in homeless hooches while the rich survive in their bolt-holes. Grocery stores are open and President Xi visited Wuhan after a seven week quarantine. Without a similar national effort, the pandemic will kill millions of uninsured/under-insured and the economic depression will splinter the United States apart. This is not a hoax or fake, it is people’s lives.
Joe Rogan’s hour and half interview with Michael Osterholm. A technocrat insider that no one listen to. The highlight is his pointing out that everyone is preparing like this is the first day of a DC blizzard but actually it is the start of a Coronavirus Winter. It is worth the time to watch.
It isn’t like no one was aware. Simply put, there is no in money in it for Wall Street to stock pile personnel protective equipment, medicine and ventilator equipped ICU beds for a pandemic. They make their money from military protection rackets, financial scams and offshoring jobs.
A contagion is very much the interplay between the pathogen and its host over time. Genetics defines the infectiveness and lethality. The environment mitigates or enhances both. Humans are unique in that they have science to understand disease transmission. This is how seven billion of one species can live on a single planet in the middle of nowhere. The other reason is humans live in societies and culture that are adaptive and cooperative.
On the Diamond Princess in a population of 3700 there were 696 confirmed cases, 410 were patients with no symptoms, and 7 deaths so far. This is an 18% infection rate in an attempted quarantine and a 0.19% death rate. What is unusual is 59% infected who had no symptoms, went undetected, and passed the virus throughout the ship. This plus the lethality to the elderly, explain why cruise ships and nursing homes are hit particularly hard. The difference between Italy and South Korea could be explained by the different lethality of the strains of the virus. On the other hand, when healthcare in the West is overwhelmed it is just as bad as Iran which is a theocracy and under sanctions.
The incompetence and lack of response in the USA is due to a society that has been commoditized. Wealth of the rich won’t be used to keep the old and unproductive alive. Preparing thousands more ICU beds and ventilators cuts into quarterly bonuses. Profit is all that matters.
This pandemic is a “Killer Cold” aided and abetted by greed and corruption.
There are 520 Filipino crew members aboard the Grand Princess off of California. This is a real “Voyage of the Damned”. The Trump Administration could care less what happens to them. It will be a replay of the Diamond Princess. The quarantine will break. The passengers and crew dispersed to infect others unless the State of California prevents it.
Charles Hugh Smith is correct. This is a binary situation.
charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-gathering-storm-could-covid-19.htmlEither there is a miracle (Donald J Trump is connected to higher powers) or science is correct. Covid-19 will overwhelm the USA in the months ahead. Unlike China, Singapore and South Korea, America is incapable and didn’t even try to dampen down and extend the epidemic. Inequality, offshoring and greed fatally weakened Western government. The hotspots from this and that cruise ship (NY. MD & CA), other overseas travelers and airport screeners will merge. The USA will literally crash into a pandemic depression until a safe and effective vaccine is available. Millions will die. The for-profit healthcare system overwhelmed. The survivors will be young, healthy, isolated, preppers and damn lucky. For the duration of the epidemic there will be no supply and no demand except those taking a risk to supply and get life’s essentials.
Seattle WA is becoming a Ghost Town:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/coronavirus-is-turning-seattle-into-a-ghost-townYesterday was the second anniversary of the Salisbury England poisonings. One fatality and two gone missing. One, Yulia Skripal, a Russian citizen. But no judicial hearings. The COVID-19 outbreak is just as weird.
China for the first month hid the outbreak and then suddenly quarantined Wuhan and extended the Lunar Holiday completely shutting down its industries and transport. Singapore and South Korea also enforced similar draconian measures. No government does this unless facing an existential threat. Italy, a developed country, is unlikely to inflate its 3.5% death rate. If anything it is higher.
The American government is insanely lackadaisical. From the start its response has been a series of horrific SNAFUs. Due to failed tests and no surveillance, the USA has absolutely no idea of the location and extent of the epidemic in the USA. Donald Trump said today people infected with the novel coronavirus will get better “by sitting around and even going to work.”
All reports indicate from infected areas indicate that 15% to 20% of the ill will need hospital care. The virus is so contagious it is estimated 50% or more Americans will be infected. That is 22 million Americans. Three coronavirus cases were just confirmed in my State. This will crash the healthcare system. Not to mention the death of millions of old farts like me. Likely before the November election.
What does Donald Trump know that I don’t?
Either we are victims of a evil conspiracy to eliminate the unproductive and there is an existing vaccine for the connected or the rot is so deep from wealth extraction that society is collapsing upon itself which the Establishment cannot acknowledge.
Yesterday Anthony Fauci to calm nerves and to walk besides Donald Trump told NBC News that 80% of the coronavirus infections will be mild. Today the flip side was pointed out. The 20% needing hospital care will swamp the American for-profit healthcare system just like Wuhan or Iran were. Heat, an effective public health system and perhaps the milder mutant are why Singapore outbreak hasn’t exploded yet. A less lethal more contagious coronavirus variant may explain South Korea’s results. Yesterday, Dr. John Campbell said the UK expects an 80% infection rate and that the government must do everything possible to lower and extend the outbreak so the hospitals can be cleared out of seasonal flu patients – opening beds this summer for coronavirus patients.
What happens next on the American West Coast and Westchester NY in the next two weeks will tell if the US federal and state governments can dampen the outbreaks or not. We will see if the 8.3-billion-dollar legislation is intended to aid the Rich in getting through the looming economic depression like in 2008 or to save American lives. Do the Elite realize the danger they are in or is it everybody for themselves? No hazmat suits for First Responders, Utility Workers and Healthcare providers, no infection tracing, thousand-dollar bills for a virus testing, and no sheltering in place in hot spots will all mean that American society is on the path to disintegration.
The varying impact of the coronavirus charts are interesting. Early indications are the Wuhan coronavirus does not mutate rapidly like the flu. The differences are due the response of the various nations to the outbreaks in their countries and their reporting.
South Korea is the gold standard; 0.6% mortality rate but only 0.7% recovered. The green recoveries vary hugely. Likely this is due to different standards of healthcare, coverage and fudging the numbers to avoid panic in the population.
Iran is a theocracy that is under sanctions and is still a developing country. The 5.5% fatality rate is near the highest range for the Spanish flu that killed up to 50 million when the world’s population was 1.9 billion. Today there 4.4 billion people living in the developing nations. Around a 100 million will die from the pandemic in lesser developed countries due to lack of medical care, malnutrition and bad government.
Projecting the future of the outbreaks in the USA, I expect that epidemic will be similar to Italy and Japan. A 2% mortality rate will kill millions in the USA. Public Health Departments are run by 50 states and funded by state budgets. Care will vary wildly. The Federal government has proven itself to be completely incompetent. In poor areas of America the mortality rate will reach Iran’s levels and will overwhelm the healthcare system. The spread of the pandemic across the USA is guaranteed due to the lack of effective quarantines and infection tracking, plus the uninsured and under-insured will avoid medical care and tests because they can’t afford it until it is too late.
Unless liveing in a guarded compound and have concierge medical care, I expect for most the coming contagion will be very similar to the Spanish flu a century ago.
It is certain that change is coming. A consumer economy with nothing to sell is dead. Manufacturing in China and South Korea has stopped; at best, for months. 51 million South Koreans are sheltering in place. The Wuhan coronavirus is here in the USA. There is community transmission on the West Coast and one death. Unless there is a divine miracle, the pandemic will sweep across North America which will also be in an economic depression.
Three seventy years old white males are the top contenders for President. The present President is too incompetent and stupid to address this extraordinary black swan event. The other two old white males will try to ignore it. Joe Biden is senile and will blame Russia. He is the last of the ancient regime that restarted the Cold War.
Most Americans will survive the epidemic. Rich areas will hardly notice it. They will telecommute from home, stock up with supplies and have Concierge Medical Care. But around 50% of the Middle Class infected with the virus will not be able to pay the bills or co-payments even if they still have jobs and insurance. But most will lose their jobs. It costs thousands of dollars for a COV-19 test and the CDC requires at least one to detect the virus and two to prove the virus is gone. A day in the ICU costs on average $10,794. The last wealth remaining in the USA will be extracted by bill collectors for the rich.
In China about 15% of the infected need hospitalization. Around 5% (8 million Americans) will need respiratory ventilation. That is twice the number of ICU visits in the USA in a whole year. In poor areas the infected will die at home or on the floors of overwhelmed hospitals. If 1% of the infected die (the projected mortality rate for the Wuhan coronavirus) that will be one and half million Americans. Care the poor in hot spots will revert to medieval levels and the mortality rate will be much higher.
The only way the USA can survive the twin disasters is if government by and for the people is restored. A new government will need to tackle the pandemic, unemployment and inequality. If not, the States will splinter. No matter what happens Globalization is dead for a generation. The post WWII Western Empire is over.
The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic is a go for the USA. There is community transmission and one death in the three West Coast states. This is the tip of the iceberg. Testing coming online will find thousands more cases in March. It is nearing the tipping point for my family to hunker down in place.
The decision for Anthony Fauci to stay in the spotlight is fascinating. He was also point-man when the Reagan White House failed in its response to the start of the AIDS epidemic that still kills 770,000 and infects 1.7 million people every year, today.
Relevant to the photo above, the WaPo published an interesting article on the Spanish flu epidemic at the end of WWI and how the American government’s propaganda and media self-censor made the outbreak worse. A parade for returning soldiers was held in Philadelphia though doctors warned against it. Shorty afterwards the flu hit the city. Over 12,500 died and were buried in mass graves.
Donald Trump now has a snowball’s chance in hell for re-election. No matter how the White House PR paints it, he will have a Depression and Pandemic going on at the same time. This is a multi-magnitude FUBAR worse than Jim Carter’s Iranian desert helicopter crash or Herbert Hoover’s 1932 economy. He needs to stay in the White House to avoid a New York Indictment. This will get messy.
The first confirmed case of the COVID-19 transmission in the USA, a woman, is now under treatment at UC Davis Medical Center.
I attended a training junket at the University of California at Davis and visited my late Aunt in Napa and Sausalito. I have a feeling of familiarity with the area. But it sure appears that things have gone sour there. The North Bay region is in the bullseye for climate change wildfires, electrical power shut offs, homelessness and now the first Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak in the USA.
I am also familiar with Anthony Fauci who has appeared on NewsHour since the HIV epidemic. He is a face of American science. Now he has to clear all his public statements through the VP Mike Pence, a Christian Dominionist. On the podium announcing the VP’s appointment as the Virus Czar, the scientists stood off to the side with a visible gap between them and the President.
The Princess Diamond evacuation was a gigantic SNAFU. Known infected passengers were flown on the same plane with the persons already tested as negative to Travis AFB which is halfway between Davis CA and the Bay Delta separated only by plastic and duct tape. HHS personnel sent there to guide and settle the evacuees did not have the required PPE or training to use it. The US government has been flushed down the toilet. The White House is staffed with know-nothings who don’t understand science only how to con money for themselves. I am certain that the Federal government brought the virus to the USA and infected its own citizens starting the first outbreak here.
Anthony Fauci is a tragedy in the Twilight of the American Gods. He cannot say the truth without resigning. If he does, Trumpsters will crucify him as the judas goat who brought the Killer Cold to America.
The hatred between Donald Trump and Barack Obama isn’t about race. Instead it is about being so much alike. Being the most powerful man on earth brings wealth. Both are Masters at Public Relations. For Barack Obama, all of our problems can be solved by good PR. Donald Trump is a Reality TV Star. Neither have a science based ideology but are greed based instead. Both have bought mansions on the Atlantic Ocean that will be flooded within two generations.
Barrack Obama was lucky. His Ebola pathogen outbreak was so deadly it never got a foothold in the USA except for nurses who were infected because of inadequate Personnel Protective Equipment (PPE). Donald Trump will not be so lucky. As Richard Engel of NBC News said last night from an empty Hong Kong International Airport, the Wuhan Coronavirus is a “Killer Cold”. A super virus spreader could be in the USA right now but this is unknown without surveillance testing. Only an outbreak of viral pneumonia cases and positive lab tests of the patients will show that the virus has established itself in the USA. At that time there is only two options; do nothing and let the healthcare system be overwhelmed and the contagion run wild killing millions of Americans. Or, establish a quarantine around the infected city that may stop the spread of the coronavirus and perhaps save the for-profit hospitals to treat those who can pay for it.
Unless there is a miracle, Donald Trump shortly will have to make decisions that he cannot understand with inadequate information from a government that is divided against itself. Even if, amazingly, the virus doesn’t cross either the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans from Asia, Europe or the Middle East, the US economy will take a secondary killer hit with nothing to sell except for goods made totally within NAFTA. Ready or not, Donald Trump is facing a Black Swan event.
I never experienced anything like today. I went grocery shopping. Everything is completely normal, just another Tuesday in DC’s Suburbs. News radio mentioned the coronavirus, regurgitated corporate talking points, so I listened to music while driving around. After unpacking, I read this post and ordered more Vitamin D3 from Amazon. My Cognitive Dissidence is running wild.
The closest parallel I’ve come up with is the eight month “Phony War”. It started in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and ended in 1940 when Erwin Rommel’s tanks skirted the Maginot Line and conquered France. I am waiting for the axe to fall.
I was a Federal Biologist. The only thing that will stop the Wuhan coronavirus now that it is a global pandemic is local air-tight quarantines that allow the virus to burn out or an effective safe vaccine. The Western economy will collapse when the just in time logistic system runs out of Chinese and South Korean merchandise. A quarantine of the Greater DC Capital Area must include Baltimore since it is all suburbs in between. It will take thousands of troops to cut all the roads in a 70 mile circle around DC in Virginia and Maryland. If the US government does nothing after an outbreak, the healthcare system for millions of people will collapse. The ill will die untreated. The contagion will continue its expansion.
Other than a miracle occurring, Donald Trump is in a worse situation than Jimmy Carter or Herbert Hoover. The November 2020 election is up in the air. Before the end of 2021, both globalism and the Western Empire will die. The survival of civilization is at stake.
Thousands of American Left Coaster are in voluntary quarantine. So far, a super spreader cluster has not appeared there unlike South Korea, Iran or Northern Italy. Why is unknown.
The incompetence and the avoiding of planning for the future must be due to the fear of looking into the abyss. Also, the ruling class has to tamp down panic to avoid unrest.
China won’t be able to restart the economy while the epidemic is still ongoing, and workers are in fear for the lives. The Coronavirus will taint Chinese goods and travelers well after this is all over. The United States will be extremely lucky to avoid a full-blown quarantine of a West Coast city and the overwhelming of the local healthcare system. A depression will start as soon as just in time shipping runs out of stock.
Globalism is dead. The neo-Western Empire cannot withstand a global pandemic, endless wars and an economic depression all at the same time. A divided, failed federal government will result in the splintering of the USA. Goodbye California!
It is the nature of for-profit hospitals. Medical Management will not spend the money that would adversely affect their bonuses to prepare for a pandemic when the last equivalent one engulfed the world over a century ago. The management bonus system is the same reason why Boeing is unable to design and produce a safe passenger jet.
The USA is not ready. Wherever the Wuhan Coronavirus gets established in a population, the healthcare system will be overwhelmed. A quarantine only works if the infected are isolated and are not released until they are free of the virus. From the President on down, the consequences of a pandemic are so dire from being thrown out of office to losing their rice bowls that professional managers dare not even acknowledge that the quarantine period should be extended from 14 to 21 days.
No one in power will admit that the Western Empire is in its death throes. The global economy is now dead for months if not for generations. The military shortly will hole up on their bases to remain intact like in South Korea. Shortages and being forced to work and possibly dying from the flu are sure to breed unrest. Russia seizing the White House will be the corporate media’s justification for the civil war that breaks out if the November election is postponed and the Trump Administration stays in power and continues its dismantling of the intelligence community.
The closest parallel that I experienced was the Anthrax Letters attack. It along with the Beltway Sniper were frightening but they did not shut down Washington DC. Instead they both powered the rush for the war of profit against Islam that is finally running out of steam.
The collapse of the Diamond Princess quarantine pretty much says it all. The WaPo last night reported that the CDC didn’t sign off on flying the 14 positive patients on the same flight to the US with those who tested negative due to the risk of infecting them. In confined crowds coronavirus super spreaders will start hot spots of contagion.
The Federal US Government is out of its depth. The White House is filled with science deniers. No future planning or mass purchasing of PPE has been reported. Yet, planning based on sound science is the only way society will survive the coming epidemic. If Donald Trump loses the November election he will be indicted in New York. He has every reason to downplay the threat, hide the number and areas infected. I doubt he can make rational but economically harmful decisions that will keep Americans alive and society intact. Democrats aren’t any better. They will blame the Russians. It is everybody for themselves.
Anthony Fauci was on PBS NewsHour last night.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/some-people-may-be-catching-novel-coronavirus-without-symptoms-that-would-be-a-problemThis reminded me of his earlier appearances there during the HIV outbreak. No one in corporate media is connecting the dots. No doubt to prevent panic and a Wall Street crash. He talks about the death rate being less than 2% because the denominator of unreported cases is actually larger. If my math is right, a 50% larger denominator lowers the mortality rate down to 1%. This is a cold virus that kills people. It will infect whole populations except for those who can isolate themselves long enough for the epidemic to burn itself out. That is 3.3 million elderly and susceptible Americans, 5.1 million Europeans or 13.6 million East Indians. Without a vaccine there are two options; avoid contact with the virus or survive the infection. This won’t wipe out towns like the black plague which is described really well in the SiFi novel “The Doomsday Book”. Hospitals will be overwhelmed. But no national quarantines like China. In the neo-aristocratic West vital employees will have report for work despite having no PPE to protect themselves. The elderly and the unlucky will be incinerated. Gone.
By 2040 The Great Coronavirus Crash will be ignored as humans migrate to higher ground.
WaPo reflects its owner, Jeff Bezos. It blames Donald Trump for everything. But then it reports facts like the Wuhan coronavirus is likely to persist since three Pharmaceutical Corporations are partnering with the National Institute of Health and will spend billions to develop vaccines for the virus. But it omits the consequential fortune fact busters like Amazon won’t have anything from China to sell shortly and no one will accept packages at home if they are not sanitized.
With five media owners, only peripheral news reports make it on to vital aggregators like Automatic Earth to tell the internet what is really happening. KOMO-TV reported that Washington State is supervising 746 people due to coronavirus outbreak or KATU-TV in the comment above tells about the comedian who escaped the Cambodian quarantine to return to Eugene Oregon. The failure of the Princess Diamond quarantine shows the Wuhan coronavirus is highly contagious. Apparently the healthy and young have mild colds and spread the virus even without symptoms. In China about 18% of the elderly die.
Unless China gets back into the supply chain within months there will be a global depression. The virus will infect the West. Only a draconian quarantine will slow the advance. Old fogies will die off. Together with the poor and susceptible they will clog up for-profit hospitals. There are no public hospitals left in the USA. The consumer economy will die. Donald Trump will be blamed. There will be no election night. If voting by smart phones, Silicon Valley moguls definitely will not choose either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.
China did about all a government can do. Industry is restarting after the lunar holiday extension. It is too soon to tell if Chinese manufacturing will recover. But the failed Diamond Princess quarantine shows that face masks and keeping your distance from others won’t succeed in the workplace. The real question is how long will It take to reconstitute factory floors with trained survivors.
Elsewhere, only extreme measures will prevent the spread of the contagion. Throughout the world there will be pockets where the virus gets loose in the population. The remnants of the Public Health System will be overwhelmed by the poor, elderly and ill dying. The Post Office and Amazon should be required to sanitize all mail and packages. Utility, transport and food preparation and delivery workers must be provided with adequate Personnel Protective Equipment.
As soon as deplorable Westerners recognize that their neo-aristocratic governments aren’t going to spend any money to keep their families alive; society will disintegrate. If 50% of the population becomes infected and 2% die, the death of 3.3 million Americans due to the greed of the oligarchs will not go unnoticed.
Strange how the Diamond Princess has been ignored as the Petri-dish that it is. Everyone is partitioned off in the own rooms. Keeping their distance from other guests while on deck for fresh air. The Wuhan coronavirus like other cold viruses is highly contagious. My guess is that the virus spreaders are the crew that prepare and distribute the food and clean the ship but who do not have the required PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). The problem is the infected 1 to 3% who die of complications from viral pneumonia. I’d get off the ship. I trade two weeks in a military base’s officer quarters to avoid a minute in an intensive care unit.
Hubris prevails. Donald and Melania spun around the Daytona 500.
Like red septic ulcers, where spreaders land and join an uninfected population, medical centers will be overwhelmed within a month just like Wuhan. Infected cities and trade will shut down until the pandemic fades away to return with the next wave of deaths until the virus becomes a common cold or a vaccine is developed.
Roughly, without a Quarantine, the Wuhan coronavirus took a little over a month to overwhelming Hubei Province’s existing healthcare system. The CCP in Beijing, always in control, took over. Its draconian measures – shutting down China – sending in the PLA – gave the rest of the world time. So far only 15 confirmed cases in the USA weeks later.
Like the time of the Spanish Flu or the Black Plague before, the modern Western Empire is collapsing. It is unable to care for its subjects. Based on a transactional faith based system that only counts pieces of gold as defining one’s worth, the Imperialists are pathologically unable to provide the safety or a purpose in life that humans need to survive. Westerners are literally in limbo. None of the governments are planning, purchasing and storing the personnel protective equipment, health supplies, or intensive care beds needed to treat the pandemic. That costs lots of real money. Unless the virus mutates its corona to be less deadly, the West will shut down like China but without any of their organization. Until a vaccine is developed and distributed, millions will die. Survivors’ lives will be chaotic with the after-effects of illness, debt and grief.
WaPo; “NASA finds ‘fundamental’ software problems in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft”.
NASA/Boeing found a second software bug after launch and its failure to get to the correct orbit. They had to update the spacecraft to get it back to earth. More problems were found later. NASA admits to inadequate oversight.
This isn’t a bug. It is deregulation. Also, China is the sole source of most of America’s generic pharmaceuticals. The “just in time supply chain” is a means for the wealthy to get a bigger cut of the economic system. At the core of the problem is the Meritocracy’s accommodation to elite corruption to get their own cut of the pie. The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic shows how fragile the system really is. If the President and Congress don’t get off their asses, there will be no ventilators, intensive care beds or protective gear to treat the millions of old farts that will die at their hands. Too bad we will be too sick and frail to take on the Establishment one last time.
Doc Robinson,
Yes, a Wuhan coronavirus epidemic in the USA could kill a little more than the 2.8 million Americans who died in 2017. There are approximately 4 million ICU admissions a year in the USA. That too would double. There isn’t a public health system any more that can treat millions of ill Americans for free. If the intensive care beds are not available or if for profit hospitals refuse to treat the uninsured, all those who don’t get medical aid will either recover on their own or suffocate to death with viral pneumonia. The lower 90% who go to the hospital and survive, even with insurance, will be deeper in debt by the end of the pandemic.The current John Hopkins data has a global mortality rate of 2.47% (Deaths divided by confirmed cases). The actual Wuhan coronavirus morality rate is lower due to limited number of test kits available and the recovered who never entered the medical data system in the first place. But like SARS, there appears to be super-spreaders; one-person infected patients in Switzerland, France and UK. Another person infected a company in Germany. 135 with coronavirus were confirmed to be aboard the Princess Diamond docked in Yokohama. But no deaths in these cases.
An analogy is a cold virus that kills a percentage of the patients. Transactional oligarchs are loath to spend money on an effective quarantine that shuts down businesses and deep-sixes the economy if everyone is going to catch the disease anyway. The unproductive are worthless. Some corporation or institution will develop a vaccine in 18 months. The question is statistics. How many will die in the next two years. At a 1% mortality rate and a failed quarantine, around 3.3 million Americans will die.
The Princess Diamond is the petri-dish of our near-term future. Will testing be provided to all and will medical care be given to those who are infected? Will workers who cook and deliver the food to the staterooms be provided with protective gear to safely do their jobs?
Survivors will be selected by their genes and health. The alternative to rolling the dice is to stay at home for months and have food delivered or if you must work have employers who provide protective gear or telecommuting.
Compassion and fairness are built into humans. Corporate media moguls must hide the hellish survival of the fittest in the neoliberal West less they lose everything on the nearest lamppost.
Except in fictional stories, the closest pandemic to the Wuhan Coronavirus is the Spanish Flu. It killed my Great Grandfather in a hotel room in St. Joseph, Mo. We’ve had a century of “progress” to game the future. But corporate media is strangely silent. I think it is because to have an effective quarantine it must follow China’s example. The West can’t. Government has been flushed down the toilet. President Donald Trump says heat in April will kill the virus. That is hope not planning.
Face masks, sheltering in place, avoiding human contact and washing hands constantly is all a person can do, just like in 1918, until a corporation develops its jackpot billion-dollar vaccine. Until then, Deplorables will have work to make money for supplies and rent until quarantined at home. At a 3% death rate, and with everyone on their own; 9,930,000 Americans will die. A hospital visit even with insurance will cost thousands. The poor and homeless will suffocate to death alone or with their families without medical care. Going shopping for food risks death. If the pandemic lasts longer than a couple of months and becomes more deadly, the economy will collapse without workers. The professional class will hold up in gated communities without guards or deliveries. Managing hell by telecommuting as long as the electricity stays on.
I made the weekly grocery run today. News on DC radio is tornadoes in February in the middle of winter; but no panic buying or face masks. The Cruise Ships make a perfect petri dish. It is hard to hide how contagious and deadly the Wuhan Coronavirus is to the thousands of people stuck aboard the three cruise ships. Thank god I am not trapped in a high-rise apartment. I am good as long as the credit union stays open, gasoline/groceries are for sale, and the electricity stays on.
I feel stuck in the beginning of a Sharknado movie. As highlighted here, it is remarkable how disingenuous the reporting is. If any country can control the outbreak it is China. They were successful nearly 20 years ago with SARS. The USA is run by self-absorbed managerial class who are either crazy or incompetent who gave the world AIDS and the forever wars and profited from both. There will be no quarantine in the West. It will cut into their financial gains. The problem comes when nobody gets paid and pensions stop. Gated communities will lose their guards and Amazon deliveries.
Wuhan Coronavirus is an epidemic in China now. Like all human institutions, the Chinese government didn’t see the deadly infection until it was impossible to ignore. The party then quarantined 55 million people – roughly equivalent to isolating all of America’s Mid-West Rust Belt States. This is a draconian measure that is sure to cause a global recession. The ultimate question is will it work. If not, an economic depression and hundreds of millions of lives will be lost. The USA is rapidly devolving in a third world nation. The new Western Empire is done for. The money that used to go to public health and education now goes into the pockets of the rich. There is not the infrastructure in the West or the will to do what is needed to save deplorable lives.
The future will be insane conflicts between the surviving connected factions at “The Edge of Doom”. Impeaching Donald Trump was the tip of the iceberg. The investigations ignored the intentional corruption of Imperial Democrats who restarted the Cold War with Russia in Ukraine for its profit.
The Elite will never do what is necessary for human beings to survive. We need air, water, food, education, healthcare, shelter and a purpose in life. That requires their money.
The 2020 election is doubt. But not from corporate (Imperialist) Democrats. In almost four years they have been a incompetent stumbling crazy bunch who could only shot themselves in both feet.
Although the USA is about as isolated from China as a nation can be today, one patient zero can start a city wide epidemic. Especially if the Wuhan Coronavirus stays contagious with no symptoms. If the virus is as fatal as the Spanish Flu, it will kill hundreds of millions of people. A Quarantine is guaranteed to generate cabin fever, fear and Chinese scapegoats.
China has been taken out of the global economy for at least a year. This is the economic equivalent of the shut off of oil from the Middle East.
Although Donald Trump has turned his cheek twice, he is building two new bases on Iran’s border and refuses to end the occupations of Syria and Iraq.
The ongoing mini-World War III with Iran and the Coronavirus Pandemic both at the same time. Oligarchs in their stocked Boltholes will terminate the kabuki elections among deplorable survivors in November.
