Recently, a new coronavirus has been causing many illnesses and deaths. The virus first became active in Wuhan, China, but it has already spread to the rest of China. Scattered cases have been identified around the rest of the world as well.
There are two important questions that are already being encountered:
- How much of an attempt should be made to limit the spread of the new virus? For example, should businesses close to prevent the spread of the virus?
- Should this disease be publicized as being far worse than flu viruses that circulate each year and cause many deaths among the elderly and people in poor health? The median age of those dying from the new coronavirus seems to be about 75.
Unfortunately, there aren’t easy answers. We can easily see the likely outcome of under reaction. More people might die of the disease. More people might find themselves out of work for a couple of weeks or more with the illness. We tend to be especially concerned about ourselves and our own relatives.
The thing that is harder to see is that reacting too vigorously can have a hugely detrimental impact on the world economy. The world economy depends on international trade and tourism. China plays a key role in the world economy. Quarantines of whole regions that last for weeks and months can have a very detrimental impact on the wages of people in the area and profits of local companies. Problems with debt can be expected to spike. The greater the reaction to the coronavirus, the more likely the world economy will be pushed toward recession and job loss.
The following are a few of my thoughts regarding possible overreaction:
[1] The Chinese coronavirus seems to be extremely contagious, even before a person who has been exposed shows any symptoms. The only way we can be certain to contain the virus seems to be through quarantines lasting up to 14 days.
China’s National Health Minister, Ma Xiaowei, has provided information that seems quite alarming. With the new virus, a person may become communicable shortly after he/she has been infected, but symptoms may not appear for up to 14 days. This allows the infected person to infect many others without realizing that he/she is a carrier for the disease.
Today, the United States and many other countries screen for the virus by checking passengers arriving on planes from affected areas for fevers. Given the information provided by China’s National Health Minister, this approach seems unlikely to be sufficient to catch all of the people who may eventually come down with the disease. If a country really wants to identify all the potential carriers of the disease, it appears that a 14-day quarantine for all travelers from infected areas may be needed.
Such a quarantine becomes administratively difficult to handle for the huge number of people who are likely to travel from China. Such a quarantine would make it impossible for pilots and other airline workers to make a living, for example. They would be spending too much of their time in quarantine to do the work needed to support themselves and their families.
A related concern is that person-to-person transmission is very easy with the Chinese coronavirus. We don’t know for certain how many people each infected individual infects, but one estimate is that each infected person transmits the disease to an average of 2.5 other people. With this transmission rate, the number of people having the disease can be expected to grow exponentially, perhaps for several months.
Based on these concerns, it seems to me that funds spent on trying to contain the coronavirus are likely to be largely wasted. The new Chinese virus will spread widely, regardless of attempts to contain it. At most, quarantines will slightly slow the transmission of the disease. At the same time, quarantines will be quite disruptive of commerce. They will tend to reduce both total wages and total output of goods and services of the area.
[2] Deaths from pathogens are part of the natural cycle. They help prune back the population of the old and weak.
We know that in ecosystems, one of the functions of naturally occurring fires is to clear out “deadwood,” to allow healthy new growth to occur. In fact, some types of seeds seem to require smoke for germination. When inadequate natural burning takes place, bushfires as seen in Australia and forest fires as seen in California become an increasing problem.
Deaths from pathogens seem to play a similar role in human economies. This is especially the case with pathogens that especially target the weak and old. Most flu viruses have this characteristic. Early reports of deaths from the coronavirus suggest that this same pattern of targeting the old and weak is occurring with this virus as well. As noted above, the median age of those dying from the new coronavirus seems to be about 75 years.
Since the 1940s, modern medicine has been able to develop antibiotics and vaccines to counteract the impact of many pathogens. This, of course, makes citizens happy, but it has the disadvantage of changing the population in a way that leaves the economy with a much higher percentage of elderly people and others in poor health. This higher level of elderly and medically needy people makes it easy for viruses and other pathogens to make their rounds, just as leaving deadwood on the forest floor makes it easier for fires to spread.
With this rising population of people who cannot support themselves, tax rates for the remaining citizens tend to become very high. Young workers may become discouraged because they do not have enough income remaining after paying taxes to raise their own families. In effect, they cannot support both their young families and the many old people.
Viewed from this unusual perspective, the operation of the Chinese coronavirus might even be considered a benefit to society as a whole. The world has overcome the impact of measles, typhoid, polio, and many other diseases. In some sense, it “needs” a new disease added to its portfolio, to replace the ones that have been mostly taken care of by modern medicine. In this way, pensions and other payments targeting the old and weak don’t become too great a burden on the young.
[3] If the Chinese coronavirus were simply allowed to run its course, without publicity that it was in any way unusual, somewhat less than 1% of the world’s population might be expected to die.
To see what would happen if the Chinese coronavirus were to run its course, we might look at what happened with the Spanish Flu, back in 1918. At that time, doctors did not have a way of treating the virus and authorities downplayed concern for the disease. The US Center for Disease Control reports that 500 million people, or one-third of the world’s population, became infected. At least 50 million people (about 10% of those infected) died.
We don’t yet know with accuracy how many of those infected will die from the current virus. A recent estimate is that about 2.3% of those who are infected will die of the disease (based on 107 dying out of 4,600 infected). If we assume that the percentage of the population that will ultimately catch the new virus is 30%, then the share of the world’s population that would be expected to die would be about [(1/3) x 2.3% = 0.76%].
The UN estimates that the world’s population can be expected to grow by about 1.05% in 2020. If this is the case, the effect of the Chinese virus would be to sharply dampen the population increase for the year. Instead of population rising by 1.05%, it would rise by only 0.29% (= 1.05% – 0.76%), assuming all of the deaths associated with the Chinese coronavirus take place within a year. While this would be a change, it would be a fairly small, temporary change.
All of these deaths would be tragic for the families involved but, in a way, they would be less of a problem than the deaths that took place back in 1918. At that time, mortality was high for healthy 20- to 40-year olds, making the flu particularly disruptive for families. The total percentage of the population that died was also much higher, about 3% instead of 0.76%.
[4] A major danger of the virus seems to be one of overreaction.
Today’s world economy is fragile. China, like other countries, has a large amount of debt. Debt defaults related to poor profits of companies closing their operations for a time and workers losing income could easily skyrocket.
Closing down transportation from China would risk pushing the world economy into a very bad recession. In fact, simply having a very large number of people out sick from work would be expected to have an adverse impact on the economy. Spending a large amount of money on hospitalizations and face masks cannot compensate for the loss of productivity of the rest of the economy. Thus, the tendency would be toward recession in China, even if no action toward cutting off travel were taken.
China is a huge supplier of goods to the rest of the world. In fact, in 2016, it used more energy in producing industrial output than the United States, India, Russia and Japan combined.
Figure 1. Chart by the International Energy Agency showing total fuel consumed (TFC) by industry, for the top five fuel consuming nations of the world.
China’s economy has been growing very rapidly since 1990. Figure 2 shows this one way, in GDP comparisons using inflation-adjusted US dollars.
Figure 2. GDP of China and the United States, computed as percentages of World GDP. All amounts in 2010 US dollars, as provided by the World Bank.
Figure 3 is similar to Figure 2, except the growth comparison is made in “2011 Purchasing Power Parity International Dollars.” This adjustment is made because typically the currencies of less developed nations float far below the dollar, in terms of what the local currency will buy. The inflation-adjusted PPP comparison compares output on a basis that is expected to be more consistent with what the local currency will really purchase.
Figure 3. Ratios of the GDP of China and the United States to the World GDP. All amounts in 2011 Purchasing Power Parity International Dollars, as provided by the World Bank.
On this PPP basis, China’s GDP surpassed the US’s GDP in 2014. Figure 3 also shows that the United States has slipped from about 20% of the world’s GDP to about 15% on this basis.
We cannot simply cut off trade with China, regardless of how bad the situation is. China is too big and too important now. The rest of the world desperately needs goods and services produced in China, in spite of what is going wrong from an illness perspective. China plays too key a role in supply chains of many kinds for the country to be left out.
Even cutting off tourism becomes a problem. The share of China’s revenue from tourism amounted to 11% in 2018. While not all of this would drop off, even a dip would lead to lower employment in this part of its economy. Jet fuel use would drop as well.
[5] A particular problem today is low prices for many commodities, including oil and other fossil fuels. These prices are likely to fall further, if China’s economy falters further.
We used to hear that the world would “run out of” oil and that oil prices would rise very high. In fact, if the people who were concerned about the issue had studied history, they would have figured out that a far more likely outcome would be “collapse.” In such a situation, prices of many commodities might fall too low. Revelation 18:11-13 provides a list of a number of commodities, including humans sold as slaves, for which prices dropped very low at the time of the collapse of ancient Babylon.
The problem is a different squeeze than a high-price squeeze. It is more of a growing wage disparity problem, with fewer and fewer of the world’s workers being able to afford the goods and services made by the world economy. This problem feeds back to commodity prices that fall too low for producers of many types. The problem is an affordability issue, rather than one of running out. I have written about this issue many times.
Prices of fossil fuels have been low for a very long time–essentially since late 2014. OPEC has cut back its oil production because of low oil prices. Several US natural gas producers have taken big write offs on natural gas investments. China’s coal production has remained below its 2013 level, because of low prices.
Figure 1. China energy production by fuel, based on 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy data. “Other Ren” stands for “Renewables other than hydroelectric.” This category includes wind, solar, and other miscellaneous types, such as sawdust burned for electricity.
If China finds it necessary to cut back on production of goods and services for any reason (excessive sickness within China, visitors aren’t traveling to China, tariffs, customers around the world aren’t buying cars), this reduction in output would be likely to further lower the prices of commodities. More producers would go bankrupt. Countries exporting products as diverse as oil, iron ore, copper and lithium might have economic difficulties.
Lower fossil fuel prices may lead to a cutback in their output, but it is doubtful that this cutback would be offset by an increase in the production of renewables. Falling fossil fuel prices would make the price comparison of renewables to fossil fuels look even worse than it does today. China has cut back on its subsidies for solar panels, and this has led to decreasing Chinese solar installations in both 2018 and 2019.
[6] The best approach might just be to let the Chinese coronavirus run its course. Authorities might also discourage stories about how awful the illness is.
Today, we seem to think that we can fix all problems. Unfortunately, this medical problem doesn’t seem to be fixable in the near-term. We should probably do as governments through the ages have done, which is not very much. We should not publicize the disease as being a whole lot worse than flu viruses in general, for example.
We should certainly look for inexpensive treatments for the disease. For example, there seems to be an effort to examine the possibility of using existing antiviral drugs as a treatment. It seems like an effort could be made to look into ways of treating the disease at home, perhaps using supplemental oxygen for a period. In time, perhaps a vaccine can be developed.
Individuals around the world should be encouraged to get themselves in as good health as possible, so that their own immune systems can fight off pathogens of all types, not just this particular virus. Common sense should be used in washing hands and in avoiding being with sick people. I doubt that it makes sense to encourage the use of masks, goggles and other protective devices.
We, as individuals, cannot live forever on this earth. We also cannot spend an unlimited percentage of GDP on health care: It becomes too high-cost for most citizens. At some point, we need to call a halt to the expectation that we can fix all problems. We live in a world with limited resources. We need to start lowering our expectations, if we don’t want to make our problems worse.
Is it not interesting that as the coronavirus threatens to end the world, we finally get a nod for Brexit.
Coincidence? Or is it the shit show is ending so what harm is there in granting the people what they voted for how many years ago?
“Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept, first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl Jung, which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related.”(Wikipedia)
no cause and effect, but both are major world events for January 2020…
it seems more like coincidence than synchronicity…
David, you can find an overview here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity_(book).
And yes, I recommend it highly, not least because it eerily anticipated some of the modern experiments in quantum mechanics.
It seems like we are getting many indirect impacts of the limits we are reaching. These indirect impacts look different in different parts of the world. They are more than co-incidences, but they are not really exactly directly related. Brexit and the coronavirus and our worries related to recession, with no way to fight it, are all related. So are the unusual elected people we are now seeing, as well as the riots we seem to be seeing around the world. They contribute to what looks like Synchronicity.
Brexit had a moving date. There was uncertainty all the way to the end. The new corona virus outbreak in Wuhan started before Brexitday, but later than other expected dates for Brexit, and earlier than some still other suggested Brexit dates. Anybody deliberately setting the two together would need to have a very muddled internal calendar.
Okay, something else to chew on, secondary health effects not related to the coronavirus.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-coronavirus-is-a-threat-to-the-global-drug-supply/
A quote from the above referenced article. “All it takes is one plant to shut down to cause a global shortage. That’s because there’s such concentration of global production in China,” says Rosemary Gibson, author of China Rx and a strong advocate for rebuilding domestic capabilities.”
Seems to me this is Liebeg’s minimum. While everyone is worrying about computer chips, maybe a critical drug goes missing, we have talked about the health care system and those dependent on some of the advanced, modern medicine. I assume pharmaceuticals would fall under this definition.
Looking at this in scenario form, the important scenario’s to me are those that directly affect me and my grandchildren; I would guess this is true of most everyone.
Does anyone ever wonder how the number of grandchildren a person has affects their views of the world? More liberal, more conservative? It is often called skin in the game, seems both metaphorical and literal.
Off and on over the years I have read Wired, sort of interesting, reminds me of reading Byte in my youth, nostalgia for a simpler time.
Dennis L.
“Looking at this in scenario form, the important scenario’s to me are those that directly affect me and my grandchildren; I would guess this is true of most everyone.”
I guess I’m a cynic on this issue, but sadly, I see the world being populated by people who say (i.e. “virtue signal”) they care about their children and grandchildren, but then do little to nothing to help provide them with anything short of a nightmare future of pain, suffering and want. In other words, a world (mostly) full of hypocrites.
Then there’s the difficult question of what really constitutes “help” for future generations. If I do something to “help” (i.e. subsidize) a future generation, am I inadvertently hurting them by giving them an unnatural advantage that life may one day do away with, leaving them unprepared and vulnerable? Some might even go so far as to suggest forcing conflict and difficulties on an individual strengthens / tempers them for future challenges, and there may be some truth to that point of view.
Anyway, if you truly care about and do take steps to actively help (whatever that may entail) your descendants, well, good on you Dennis! I hope more will follow in your footsteps.
Cheers,
-GBV
Drugs, especially generics, seem to come from China or India. I can easily imagine shortages arising, if this goes on very long.
A lot of the world’s aspirin is made in China, paracetamol in China and India.
Another update by Chris Martenson over at Peak Prosperity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8SQzIMAXnQ&feature=emb_title
I think it touches on a lot of the issues that are currently being brought up in the comment section of OFW.
Cheers,
-GBV
I had a chat with a UK doctor this evening and he does not understand what all the fuss is about.
He says this is just another flu with death rates similar to other flu viruses and mostly affecting the elderly and sick.
He has no idea why the global economy is effectively shutting down over this.
There is a bigger picture here but I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe this is a means to get people to return to their families so that they can all die together when the global economy collapses?
Very obviously the past 6 months have not been looking very good with PMIs cratering, car sales falling and stimulus unable to right the ship. Then we have concerns about the shale patch peaking.
Something big is coming. I can feel it in my bones.
Yep, the “something big” has been pictured nicely on Gail’s previous article few weeks ago. Namely the plateauing and falling aggregate lines for the US and China since ~2018. Now, it’s about tug of war who fill get the relatively worse profile on the way down.
As the Orange Jesus recently boasted (on speed tablets) “..I took the (Syrian) oil!..” and or his former adviser Bannon spilled the beans on “managed decline” their faction opposes..
The world is very likely falling into pronounced de-growth and eventually some sort of full scale or punctuated crash pattern.
One must make allowances, though, for the special conditions in China.
Quite simply, we cannot rely on any of the figures in circulation at the moment, and it would wise to assume that the problem may be far worse than is being reported by the Chinese government, and the WHO – a highly political body itself.
This in itself would explain the city quarantines which look like over-kill given the small number of reported deaths and infection /complications rate.
It is a culture permeated with lies, corruption and murder (and consequent fear) at levels a British doctor wouldn’t even begin to comprehend.
The WHO are also cynical people: at the top level they are very well-paid careerists who look after themselves first.
I used to know the head of the private office of the Director General (or whatever the exact title is) and she told me some simply awful stories. Ironically, too, a very racist place….
Yep, all these various “UN” bodies/agencies allow for spectacular living for the paper pushing cadre (and their families) be it located in NY, Switzerland, Austria etc..
Now, suddenly this is endangered by a pesky virus..
Yea….when all you have is a hammer everything is a nail !!! Not that I don’t think we are getting closer just this is not it …..by May no one will be talking about coronavirus or even remember the name of it! The real fear is debt…debt and debt..
and again, the reason debt is now such a problem is because the economy is not growing sufficiently enough to enable an easier management of debt, and the economy is not growing because net (surplus) energy is not growing…
the coronavirus fits into the middle of that picture… enough illness and fatalities would put more downward pressure on economic activity… and government reaction(s) could add significantly to that downward pressure…
thus debt could become even more unmanageable in the coming months…
or not…
it’s quite elegant in theory that the coronavirus and worldwide debt are interrelated…
On related note, was a bit surprised how the Gulfies msm outlets stepped up their anti China gov reporting-propaganda as of lately. If you digest it fully that means (level of confidence) that China is on the path to be dethroned from the sought after super status in all global metrics (incl. finances). Simply, Gulfies revealed how they are positioned at least for the mid term.
That’s all very good news for the US and the gang, the “frivolous opulent life” will continue for a while.. on the shoulders of the RoW unfortunates as always.
Hint:
You are dealing with a 2019-nCoV (2B CoV), a very complex double stranded positive RNA virus.
We haven’t developed a vaccine for SARS or MERS even though SARS came to our attention in 2003.
The ability to engineer this is highly improbable.
But the discussion does bring a smile to my face.
If you say so, Duncan.
I have no idea whether such a bug could be engineered or tweaked or created through divine intervention. I don’t even know if this little monster is anywhere near as novel or as dangerous as is being claimed.
In fact, to be honest, I wouldn’t know a 2019-nCoV (2B CoV) from a common or garden bog-standard double stranded positive RNA virus if it hit me in the face, went up both nostrils and started me sneezing. And I breath in hundreds of strains of RNA virus every day including doggie ones, catty ones and human ones.
That’s why I’m not speculating but I am self quarantining for the next month while I check out whether this virus causes a full-scale global pandemic or just starts off slow and then peters out completely like a Santana song.
I was intrigued by “vitamin expert” Bill Sardi’s take on the situation:
Well, there is no vaccine, which is the real reason for this contrived pandemic, brought to you by the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control, and a committee that planned the whole event in order to gain public funding for a vaccine and to prime the global masses with fear for the first attempt of a worldwide vaccination campaign. Keep the multitudes on edge. Get them clamoring for a cure. Provoke panic. The World Bank is providing funds to financially weather this planned pandemic. A major airline has already cancelled flights to China for a month. Anticipate mandated vaccination in order to fly internationally once a vaccine is approved and available. Maybe vaccination records will become part of a passport.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/02/bill-sardi/the-2020-coronavirus-scare-better-than-any-horror-movie/
The WTI broke down the support line of the ” Mother of all Triangles of Doom”
It has started.
Let’s get the PARTY STARTED!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rblt2EtFfC4
Come now, we ALL been waiting for this to happen for some time now!😜
Remember back it the day when it was all fun and games and we were young and happy!
Time to party, but I am no fan of the entity formerly known as Prince. Instead, I’ll be watching the wonderful 1964 movie starring Vincent Price, “The Masque of the Red Death”.
Prince is one of the lucky ones … He’s already pushing up daisies about partying flat out till he dropped….
Prince was a tightwad cheapskate at some time and very generous at other times.
Been watching his lifelong friend, Morris Day, reflecting on that aspect of Prince.
One thing for sure, the Wells Fargo Armoured Truck ain’t gonna be following you to the cemetery at your burial resting place.
Here is a video of Morris, very good
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a2m9KMAYfyg
Morris is promoting his book On Time, A Princely life of Funk
https://www.amazon.com/Time-Princely-Life-Funk/dp/0306922215/ref=asc_df_0306922215/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=385655114864&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1416386879251026343&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011860&hvtargid=aud-801738734305:pla-676838847481&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=78303888906&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=385655114864&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1416386879251026343&hvqmt=&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011860&hvtargid=aud-801738734305:pla-676838847481
Like him or not…the man was one great cultural icon entertainer!
What a talent, played ALL his instruments (to save $$$), up to 100!
Workaholic focused on music
Doesn’t sound good!
Oil price drop might just be fear of the virus rather than economic metrics. The situation with this virus is still expanding as far as cases are concerned, but deaths are not rising that high – so it might end up being a tempest in a Chinese teapot. Once the stats level off and it seems contained, oil price will rebound along with the Dow. If deaths had exceeded 1,000 by now that would be a different matter, but it’s still in the 200’s. That’s presuming the official numbers are accurate.
I think the leveling off is quite a ways away.
“It has started.”
yes, WTI down from 61 to 51 in one month… perhaps it will be fortunate if it bottoms out in the 40s and not lower…
the coronavirus has placed itself very nicely into a Q1 event… those in power could choose to report 4Q 2019 as a positive GDP growth number, and then a (possibly deeply) negative number in Q1 would have the potential to be followed by a positive Q2 number, thus avoiding the technical definition of recession as being 2 consecutive negative quarters… and oil prices would rebound…
all well and good if the spread of the virus and the fatalities and the economic reactions all lessen in the next few months…
a polar opposite intensification could bring many quarters of recession and oil prices would surely reflect that… 30s, 20s, time will tell…
Great minds tend to think alike, lol.
I was about to write something along your lines.
That implies oil shorting could fly on the Wuhan wings way down to $30-40 level, i.e. few hundred% gains, or instead prices to be stabilized (for now) by the quarterly GDP shenanigans.
great minds, yes, quite right… 😉
Lets get back on track….until the corona virus kills as many as the flu…no big deal…..
The big deal is the U.S debt and the FED Reaction to said debt….Europe economic collapse….China Economic collapse and how there money printing mechanisms wreck havoc on what we perceive as up and down….I think we are getting to the end and the corona virus is just an excuse or distraction much like Trump has been….funny how the debt was a big deal when he was not president but now it is not….wonder if he will mention it in his state of the Union Speech…I bet all my money that he does not but instead talks about how great the U.S economy is and if you ask the average person on the street they think it is great! But when you ask them about the deficit and over spending the head gets heavy and they have no idea what you are talking about….fools!!!
The reaction of the world to the virus badly affects markets, however. The early reaction of Hubei Province set the tone for everyone else. Regardless of how small the immediate effect, the fact that we don’t have a good way of stopping the virus is of concern.
If the world economy was not already on tenterhooks then this virus would not be a big thing economically speaking. With many economists forecasting a global downturn this event may well the the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
This is my concern. If the world economy were growing well, it would be less of an issue.
Talking about going viral, I wonder how long it will take for this
http://web.archive.org/web/20200131195339/https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full.pdf
which I picked up on a post by “Stuxnet” on Brandon Smith’s http://www.alt-market.com and then a few hours later after mentioning it on Zerohedge, they came out with this.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/coronavirus-contains-hiv-insertions-stoking-fears-over-artificially-created-bioweapon
Basically, I would like the statistical probabilities of these four HIV-1 insertion/deletions/modifications on the virus receptors happening by chance.
My other question is why would China work on modifying a SARS virus, with the objective of weaponizing it and therefore focusing on the ability to make it easily transmissible when HIV is not “easily transmissible” not in terms like the people-to-people contact through aerosolized particles. Lethality may only be a secondary concern, after all, it cost far more to take care of a wounded soldier than a dead one.
In other words, if I were trying to develop a weapon that is effective through being easily transmissible but not devastatingly lethal like Marburg or Ebola with 50% kill ratios, I would have focused on modifying SARS with a highly contagious virus like the Hong Kong Flu. But then there is the issue of the ability to develop a vaccine. To be effective the weapon also has to be resistant to a vaccine and this is where HIV “shines,” or at least might explain why HIV was selected.
Finally, I suspect based on what little information I have, that this may be a random Frankenstein of China’s assorted weapons-grade viruses that “escaped” from their lab, and that they have already tried many different genetic modifications on a host of virus and bacteria, one that we don’t know about. The only clue I have in my cynical view of things is to search out which virus and /or bacterial genomes have been patented (Gates), and if this is kile a climate change scam, requiring vaccines (instead of C02 taxation and carbon fuel use restriction and requirement for green energy) which only certain governments or corporations will be “authorized” to administer- for great profits and control.
Errr, not HK flu. Make that Spanish Flu 1918.
tin hat time, i see. can you think of a better way to F-up your country and the global economy? real James Bond 007 stuff.
Some here have expressed a certain reticence regarding ZeroHedge, I use them as a summary source and try and put together their ideas and a few others. OFW is wonderful in that we can explore ideas without fear of being ridiculed, some will turn out helpful, some will be only noise. So I present this with the personal thought that Martenson may have a reasonable solution in limiting contact so the disease cannot spread. China is reportedly using drones with speakers to seek out individuals who are not wearing a mask while in public and literally “shout” at them from the drone. Additionally, some application or whatever monitors people’s locations, if they become sick a car is reported to arrive and take them for treatment – this is a summary by me but close enough.
China seems to be taking proactive measures on a large scale to deal with this issue in a way consistent with isolating the population to prevent spread, they appear to be aggressively responding to the issue; how it will work will only be understood in retrospect.
Read the following if you wish, make comments please; I learn greatly from all of you, it is an incredible audience from all over the world and thus with true strength in diversity of view. I personally seek to be well informed without being an alarmist, let’s say a realist with a positive view that tomorrow will come and it will be as it should.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/second-chinese-city-bars-residents-leaving-their-homes-hong-kong-workers-demand-city
Dennis L.
Word of advice, Dennis – don’t go looking for affirmation on the Internet, even here at OFW.
If you believe you are a rational, intelligent individual who is just being cautious/realistic in the views you hold and assertions you make, then you likely are. Those who would ridicule you or suggest you are an “alarmist” are simply projecting on you because they cannot or will not come to terms with the information you are providing. Or perhaps the convictions they hold onto so tightly cannot be made to logically work when faced with the information you present.
Either way, most people don’t change their point of view until they receive a kick in their fat bottom; when a military boot crashes their balls, then they will understand (myself included!). Which reminds me of great little interview with Yuri Bezmenov:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA
Has nothing to do with nCoV I suppose, but an interesting and arguably prescient warning all the same.
Cheers,
-GBV
I see both in the zerohedge article and the WSJ that there has been a recurrence of H5N1 avian influenza in chickens in central China, giving the Hunan Province yet another problem. And of course the African swine flu in pigs hasn’t gone away.
Yes, I saw that as well. One has to wonder if perhaps they have stressed their environment too much. Also, I don’t think we are ready for bioengineering; that process has been going on for billions of years, tinkering with a nuclear weapon might be mild compared to what even an innocent error from a bio lab could unleash. While at Madison I spent some time in a research lab, bacterial DNA, not viral; but when one project was complete in a virus lab it was not uncommon for the lab director to get a new grant and have a completely new lab built with nothing being transferred to the new lab, they never could be sure they had cleaned the old viruses being experimented on in the first lab. In the lab I was in I think we cleaned our pipettes with a mixture of sulfuric and nitric acid, life forms are very tough. Maybe it has changed now.
As an aside, we did radioactive labeling and scintillation counting, the residuals were put in the sink, kind of makes one look back in retrospect and wonder who cleaned the trap under the sink. Could be something similar with a bio lab in China, one small oversight. Standards change over time and with experience which as they say comes from bad judgment, etc., Marie Curie comes to mind.
Dennis L.
The new town near here, being built by Cambridge University, (a monstrosity) has been built on a site habitually used by the scientists to dump their waste over many decades. Out of sight, out of mind…
New reports say that the virus can be spread through human stools in addition to through breathing the vapor in the air. If the wastewater treatment plants aren’t working 100% effectively, that could be a path of transmission–for example, not 100% of water treated when there has been an unusual downpour of rain. I think, though, that the Chinese people are quite aware of this issue and always boil their water.
I am not sure that India will do as well. Indian people are known for washing and wading in river water.
Bioengineered. See Youtube Dr. Paul Cottrell HIV and Coronavirus. Harvard University.
This one comment I ran across related to this issue:
There seem to be multiple opinions. I would also point out that the origin of the current virus really doesn’t matter. The problems we have today are the same, regardless.
You might want to do a Google search.
Dennis L.
The new coronavirus has been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization.
“The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.”
Mistakes have been made. At the beginning of the outbreak, the Chinese authorities said the virus was not spreading between people. We now know that is not the case.
Each infected person seems to be passing the virus on to between 1.4 and 2.5 people.
This figure is called the basic reproduction number. Anything higher than 1 means it’s self-sustaining.
It seems that this is not a virus that will burn out on its own and disappear and the decisions being made in China – including shutting down cities – are crucial to prevent it from spreading.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/01/article/is-china-at-its-most-vulnerable-now/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-declared-global-emergency/5702427
So, having read all this, the big question now seems to me to be not what happens in China, but what happens in other countries where governments are weaker or are slower to act.
It looks like China is trying to attack this problem as much as it can. From the first article:
There is a real question in my mind whether all of this effort is counter productive. For one thing, it will push everyone else in the world into thinking this is a huge menace and there is a need for great effort to keep the virus from spreading.
Also, if China is doing these things, it can’t do other things, like assembling smart phones, to the same extent. Businesses are likely to lose money and default on their debts. I wonder how the economy can afford the cost of all of this effort.
The second article is about what is happening in Beijing. There is a one week self-quarantine for everyone coming back from traveling over New Years. I wonder how all of these people will be paid for this week. If they aren’t paid, people will have a hard time with bills; if they are paid, businesses will discover that they have less revenue and close to the same amount of expenses, at least with respect to wages.
Checking temperatures at the office may be helpful, but again, it is not clear that these people have “sick days” to take. There is still a need to make businesses sufficiently profitable as well as giving individuals enough income.
Oh, the horror.
Trying to help sick people is counter productive,
Assembly of smart phones could be affected!
Businesses may lose money, wow!
And default on debt, – totally unacceptable. Money much more important than dying consumers.
Obviously should let these sick people just die in their apartment.
Maybe a few left when this is over to start consuming and money making again.
I’m so disappointed Gail.
Things don’t necessarily work the way we expect.
Pedro, please do not shoot the messenger. Gail’s point, with which I agree, is that a drastic response to the virus could well cause far more deaths than just sitting it out. That is very bad news, but it is a direct consequence of the extreme globalisation that has left many communities, perhaps even the majority, unable to provide themselves with the basic necessities of life, which now must be imported over long distances.
If those supply lines are broken, the death toll will be immense, and could indeed bring about the collapse of our fragile world. Many previous civilisations have experienced epidemics, with death rates of 25% to 50%, and have picked up the pieces and moved on. The fact that we now feel we are facing an existential threat is entirely the result of our own greed and folly. But that is the hand we have dealt ourselves, and that is the hand we must play.
“An interconnected global economy is feeling the strain of China’s viral outbreak — and the potential $160 billion hit in lost growth that may be on the way.
“In New Zealand, a bath furnishings seller told a customer that the German-designed shower head he ordered is unavailable — because the factory in Shanghai is closed. Out in California executives of REC Group organized a supply chain war room to plan around an anticipated trucking shortage and port logjam in China. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is rallying support for an emergency OPEC meeting on concern oil demand will falter.
“Since China’s last health crisis, the SARS outbreak of 2003, its share of global economic output has quadrupled to about 17%. It’s now the biggest market for new cars and semiconductors, the largest spender on international tourism, the leading exporter of clothing and textiles, and the land where many PCs and virtually all iPhones are made. The global hit from this new outbreak could be three to four times larger than the $40 billion blow from SARS, estimates Warwick McKibbin, a professor of economics at Australian National University.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/the-global-economy-is-getting-infected-by-the-virus
“There is a supply shock to global manufacturing as many factories in the world’s supply chain will be shuttered for longer, which shifts the global supply curve left, increasing-price and production pressures. Ergo component shortages, higher prices, and lower production.
“The 2 percent decline in the U.S. stock market and collapse in bond yields are signaling a potential global aggregate demand shock that offsets the supply shock.”
https://global-macro-monitor.com/2020/01/31/the-global-supply-demand-shock-of-the-coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR2ZddtIbSaYa9aia0coRHzKYvwNce2g4ZEKn3tHpM8vflO8CVTghCryrmE
No kidding!
Apple is a country with a lot of China exposure. According to Bloomberg:
Here’s a map of Foxconn (i.e. Apple manufacturing centers) locations in China, and how they’ve been affected by the nCoV outbreak:
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/Foxconn-Locations-2020-01-28_8-40-32.jpg?itok=KEFNOdmZ
Pulled it from a Peak Prosperity article I found on Zerohedge:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/calm-storm-how-will-coronavirus-really-impact-markets
Gail, here are some excerpts from the article re: economic impacts of nCoV I’m sure you’ll love…
“But in addition to presenting a major public health risk, the coronavirus is already doing serious economic damage. China, the world’s second-largest economy, is essentially “closed for business” right now.
The disruption to global trade the coronavirus is likely to cause is going to be material, perhaps severe. And that will have serious negative consequences for the financial markets, which have been (and is still!) trading at the highest valuations in history.
The coronavirus has all the hallmarks of a true Black Swan event.”
“Remember: it’s not the fall that harms you, it’s how fast you stop.
For years now, the global economy has been debt-strangled and limping along, kept alive by constant central bank interventions and money printing. Like any weakened victim, the last thing it needs is any kind of serious shock.
The coronavirus has all the features of the proverbial Black Swan event we’ve long been worried about. Nobody saw it coming, it hit hard and fast, and is spreading far faster than government bureaucracies and the markets can adjust.
It’s the equivalent of slipping an iron bar into the front spokes of a moving bicycle.”
“And I’ll give you my sense: This is already a massive shock to the Chinese economy. Which in this hyper-connected world, will quickly translate into a shock to the entire global economy.
That hasn’t fully registered yet for most people, and therefore, the markets. But that’s coming. Soon.”
“This is how silly and stupid things have become. The Fed and the Plunge Protection team (PPT) are now on a daily mission to keep stocks from selling off.
This is wrong, perhaps even evil. As it keeps people from appreciating the gravity of the situation. Falling markets would signal that maybe, possibly, something is wrong. That investors should start adopting more caution.”
Cheers,
-GBV
I wonder what happens to currency relatives. I also wonder what happens in the derivatives market. Do these markets fail, and need bailing out?
Our system is terribly brittle.
“Our system is terribly brittle.”
On this we completely agree.
As a possible idea for a future article, Gail, I’d love to see you do something contrarian to your own view point / stance on how to address our systemic economic / energy / growth issues. To be more specific, I’d like to know your “line in the sand”, if such a thing exists, past which you believe continuing to prop up the system with ever-growing debt and ever-depleting resources would cost humanity more than the cost of allowing it to collapse.
Cheers,
-GBV
Impossible to calculate, surely; and, in any case, it probably over-estimates ‘our ‘power of agency and choice in keeping the system going. ‘Choice’ is probably delusional, although it flatters our collective vanity.
There is no plug to be pulled, no way off the highway, in so complex a construction as a globalised industrial civilisation.
There is no ‘we’ to make the decision to cut losses.
But the accumulated, ever better-documented, ecological damage is so great, resources are so depleted and degraded, that Mother Earth will make the decision, and clearly inform us of that fact.
Xabier,
You may be correct that it is impossible to calculate with any degree of real accuracy. But if one cannot make a rough estimate of the “cost” (whatever that loaded word entails), how can one propose to tell another person whether they should / shouldn’t continue to support the system as it exists today?
How can one maintain any semblance of intellectual / moral integrity in warning about the dangers of actions which may jeopardize the current system if they cannot quantify any outcomes?
Perhaps OFW is becoming a place of dogmas and religious faith rather than a place where data, analysis and estimation of the future are the primary focus? Where the outcomes are already set in stone and all of our choices have no meaning whatsoever?
If your choices have no meaning, then by all means, allow me to make them for you! I’d start by suggesting you send me all your resources, financial or otherwise 🙂
Cheers,
-GBV
GBV.
You seem to be determined to define OFW as ‘a place of dogmas and religious faith’, or ‘sycophancy’ to our host Gail.
That is clearly not the case: it exists only in your head.
The last time I checked, Gail had not set up a personality cult (although I do savour her occasional dry one-liners).
One can estimate an outcome, but not be able to quantify it,and the estimation is not invalidated: and one can find meaning in life, and have integrity, while understanding that one is really quite powerless in most respects – and I would suggest collectively powerless also.
As we have sown, we shall reap: that seems to be ever clearer…..
An elderly nation is detaching from the EU workforce that saved it from collapse:
It reminds me the situation in 1993, when Slovakia detached from Czechoslovakia. The smaller nation of Slovaks had problems when it left a bigger market that Czechoslovakia represented.
Despite the bearaucracy of the Brussels, there are things that can be done more efficiently in larger states like USA or EU than in a small country.
Yes, the world is changing: The ageing populations of Eastern Europe are already providing incentives for return of their workforce from Britain.
Not everything is about money, but also about security.
https://dailynewshungary.com/growing-number-of-german-families-moving-to-hungary-due-to-security/
If essentials can be made locally, that would definitely be a plus. There seem to be such long supply lines for almost everything today (especially high-tech things) that these can easily be broken.
But can we talk about the local production, when the local production is dependent on the foreign workforce?
“Not everything is about money, but also about security.”
True. And something the anti Brexit crowd, and their infamous Project Fear, completely overlooked. The heart of the debate had nothing to do with money, or jobs, or the value of the pound; it had to do with sovereignty. The ordinary people were fed up with a self obsessed, self perpetuating elite clique who regarded the country as their imperial province, and everyone else as their serfs. And the self appointed and self perpetuating technocratic elite in Brussels treated the common people with total contempt, and had rigged the system so that there was no check on or oversight of their actions.
And their present response? Like the Bourbons, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing; for which reason, they are on the wrong side of history,
In many ways it could be rather tragic.
I’ve found Eastern Europeans (and Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, etc) in England to be excellent to, deal with, and none of that standing around chatting and ignoring customers in shops which was so British!
I think every delivery van driver I meet when I buy on the internet comes from E. Europe: Roumania, Poland, Bulgaria. People who just want to work, polite and often very articulate.
Britain may get left with the worst, and most useless, global non-EU immigrants, who are a drain not an asset, weighing down public services and with very high unemployment rates. Except in the drugs trade that is…..
Perhaps leaving the EU and crashing the British economy has an ulterior motive of motivating the most useless, global non-EU migrants to go find some other country to become a drain on? Could this be the British public playing 4D chess?
The UK seems to think it is a step forward. Perhaps it is just too expensive to keep following the EU dictates.
A sub-text of Brexit may well be de-regulating as much as possible.
And it’s possible this may be beneficial in some sectors.
We see an unpleasant and depressing aspect of this foreshadowed in the housing industry, which pretty much wrote its own legislation and guidelines and is now building huge and disfunctional estates over what is left of the nicer parts of Britain.
The major construction companies promise higher GDP, jobs, etc, and the politicians just love it. A triumph for lobbying.
Brexit and the ageing population: how Britain has changed since 2004
https://www.npi.org.uk/blog/economic-policy/brexit-and-ageing-population-how-britain-has-changed-2004/
https://www.npi.org.uk/blog/economic-policy/behind-brexit-2-how-well-has-britain-coped-its-population-boom-2004/
“Covering a large area and open to anyone without an appointment, A&E is somewhere we meet our district, town or city almost unfiltered. For waiting times to have so deteriorated over the past five years (to the point where the government has in effect abandoned the target), can only strengthen the sense that the country has become over-crowded. Large class sizes at primary school may convey the same message.
Having embarked on a path of rapid population growth after 2004, trains, homes, schools and hospitals show that the institutions that run Britain failed to make the necessary provision to accommodate that growth. That failure is part of the background to Brexit and it must be addressed.”
If this is correct, they certainly are not being passive, they are being active. All journalism is slanted through the eyes of the presenter, it seems human to have an agenda.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177737.shtml
I do not know what the globaltimes is, whether or not it is correct in its reporting. It is consistent with a can do attitude, a group attitude. The Chinese diaspora is well known for maintaining contact with the homeland and in part the return to the mainland for the New Year reflects that. We do so much better in groups than alone, I read Martenson off and on, mostly I browse here more than I should.
Thanks for all the comments, I am back to my usual cheery attitude that tomorrow will be better than today. No sarcasm, we need groups that have diverse opinions and we need to respect those opinions even when the are at odds with what we ourselves know to be “The Truth.”
Dennis L.
In a British winter, the belief that tomorrow may be better than today is the only thing that preserves sanity…..
https://www.wpri.com/health/coronavirus/china-reports-259-people-have-died-of-new-virus-11800-sick/
China reports 259 people have died of new virus; 11,800 sick.
No comment pro or con, just providing a link with latest official stats.
pretty constant 2.2% mortality rate, so far.
While at least two medical papers say ~6% overall and >10% for the hospitalized subgroup..
You’re just dividing 259 deaths by 11,800 sick, aren’t you?
My understanding is that you have to divide the deaths by the number of confirmed sick approximately 7 days ago, when those (future) death cases became asymptomatic.
WHO numbers on January 25th: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200125-sitrep-5-2019-ncov.pdf?sfvrsn=429b143d_4
Calculation:
259 deaths (today) / 1320 confirmed cases globally (7 days ago) = 19.62% mortality rate
I’m sure those numbers aren’t correct either, but don’t kid yourself that it’s only a 2.2% mortality rate…
Cheers,
-GBV
You also have to add in the large number of people who were never sick enough with the virus to go to the hospital.
Fair enough. To your point, here is an informative article that summarizes the difficulty in calculating the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) for seasonal influenza:
http://www.virology.ws/2009/06/16/how-many-people-die-from-influenza/
It seems like a pretty important piece of the puzzle is how a medical practitioner determines and documents cause of death. Applying that to our nCoV problem, if large numbers of people were to die from infection indirectly (i.e. sickness causing disruptions in food supply, medical services, lack of access to necessities, etc.), would they be attributed to the nCoV CFR or would their deaths be attributed to “natural causes”?
I think the takeaway from all of this is that calculating CFR by dividing the current number of deaths by the current number of confirmed cases is wrong any which way you slice it, and that there isn’t enough data (and what data coming out of China may be suspect) yet to suggest that nCoV can be dismissed as being less of a threat than seasonal influenza, SARS, etc.
Cheers,
-GBV
January ends with oil prices at their lowest of 2020:
WTI 51
Brent 56
the “support line” for WTI was supposed to have been 52, so I guess that support was weakened by the coronavirus…
the year began at 61, so this month has seen a severe fall…
and this decrease is a sign of an actual ongoing global recession, just not “officially” announced yet…
a recession likely to have occurred even without the Wuhan Black Swan…
the virus will give cover to those who would say that the 2020 economy would have been just fine and dandy if not for the virus…
In 2018, 800,000 Americans were hospitalized with a virus that has symptoms similar to that of the coronavirus.
61,000 Americans died .
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/there-s-another-virus-stalking-the-u-s-and-it-s-called-the-flu?in_source=postr_story_0
I don’t recall America being locked down and major airlines cancelling all flights.
Was their panic buying of masks?
So far this winter, 19 MILLION Americans have caught the flu and 10,000 have died.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-30/china-deaths-rise-to-212-who-declares-emergency-virus-update?srnd=premium-asia
Magus,
Rumors are flying, facts are few and far between but already with masks absent from shelves, people are starting to be concerned.
The first link has strong suggestions that HIV RNA was incorporated into this virus, that is not natural and some one was busy. We evolved to fight natural viruses, we maybe did not evolve to fight multiple viruses in the same package at once. If the HIV story is correct, this virus most likely was not designed to be benign.
My opinions are worthless, all I can do is make some personal guesses and the limit of my preparation is a few cans of chicken breasts, they keep. Hopefully the worst of it will be my eating what I expect is some tough chicken when all this blows over. Heck, maybe at my age I am part of the solution, I leave a bit early and make room for someone else.
As always, I read this site because we are very mature, mostly analytical and respect one another. It is nice to get the opinions of others and often helpful.
Dennis L.
Let me know when the total deaths approach 200,000.
Because with the population difference, that’s what we would need to see happen to put this on par with the flu pandemic in America in 2018.
If you read the Bloomberg article the US scientists STATE that this virus is no different from the many types of flu viruses that strike every year. In fact they say the only difference is that you catch this one by going to China (or having contact with someone who has been there).
Something is wrong with this picture.
What is really going on here?
Is the mainland economy cooked (ghost towns as an economic model has its limits) and is this somehow related to that?
Perhaps they panicked because they know the modus operandi of “color revolutions” and foreign meddling in general is basically always the same/similar trick of piggybacking nefarious activity onto ongoing process. So this could mean in this setting for example delayed and mutating much higher mortality spread coming in following wave etc.
As the old saying goes, “Seek viruses, even in China”. Or maybe I misremember. Time for another reading of “Silk Roads and Shadows”.
‘Seek Wisdom, even as far as China’; a Sufi saying. (Sometimes attributed to the Caliph Ali).
‘China’ is code in Sufi literature for ‘deep contemplation’; but of course it also indicates that one may have to travel a great deal before getting a clue….
‘Deep contemplation’ is itself sometimes known as ‘travelling in one’s own land’, which is the Soul.
Now I’m off to contemplate, and absorb, a glass of wine…..
Thank you, Xabier, that was exactly my allusion. And yes, wisdom is found in unlikely places. (Job xxviii:12)
“Let me know when the total deaths approach 200,000”
No offense, but let yourself know. Or, better yet, support this community by taking the initiative to do some research on what nCoV actually is (and may become) before outright dismissing it?
I’m seeing more and more comments of this type here on OFW (or maybe they’ve always been here and I just haven’t been paying attention for the last 6+ years I’ve been coming here?) where people are seemingly dismissive of the comments of other posters, putting the onus on others to “spoon-feed” them information about something that doesn’t align with their point of view.
I just posted it in a comment above to Gail, but Chris Martenson over at Peak Prosperity has been putting out a lot of information as to why nCoV is a far greater threat (unless properly contained) than the common flu. The man has a PhD in pathogenic biology, so it’s probably worth your time to take a look at what he’s got to say.
Dennis L. said it nicely in his above comment: “As always, I read this site because we are very mature, mostly analytical and respect one another. It is nice to get the opinions of others and often helpful.” I’d add/expand on that and say that another benefit of this site is that there are several individuals here who will actually look into information in an intelligent manner and allow that information to drive the conversation, rather than just posting dogmatic mantras or passive-aggressive snipes (to be fair, I’ve probably posted a few of those passive-aggressive snipes of my own in the past… really trying to clamp down on that impulse though). I hope that trend of active thoughtfulness will continue here…
Cheers,
-GBV
I’ve done plenty of research, and what I am finding confirms what the representative of the CDC said in that Bloomberg article, it’s just another virus that causes flu-like symptoms.
And don’t point me to Peak Prosperity. He’s been writing doom porn and renewable energy garbage for years and is hardly ‘and expert’ on viruses just because decades ago he studied virology.
The vast majority of people who die from the coronavirus are those who are weak or sick already (diabetes, high blood pressure etc). Those are the same people who die from the flu.
The only issue in question from what I can see was the mortality rate. Researchers do not not what that is for corona because they have not go enough data to make that determination.
The FACTS are – in 2018 61,000 Americans died from the flu. 800,000 Americans caught the flu.
Did America get locked down? Nope. Did airlines stop flying to America. Nope.
Either this flu is being exploited for ulterior motives (related to the end of civilization) or we are not being given the full story on this virus.
Take your pick.
‘HIV’ Sends shivers down everyone’s spine! Imagine dying like Freddie.
They should get Bush out of his wheelchair and he can repeat his speech on ‘Saddam has weapons of mass destruction’ — ‘the coronavirus has HIV embedded in it!’ complete with his best Edgar Allen Poe voice
That would send the masses racing to the chemist for masks! And beating each other to advance to the front of the queue. Or better still, losing all civility and crashing into the shops and stealing the masks.
Adopting my best Edgar Allan Poe voice:
“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
Refer to link above inside Dennis’ post, simply that Martenson guy cites Chinese study, which claims ~6% deadly rate, and ~4:1 higher infection contagion risk vs ordinary flu..
Hence the hockey stick profiles of such two pandemics are simply way different as that “4x factor” is further multiplied through each contagion step/transmission. Now, the infection spreading could fizzle out somewhere early in the chain reaction of people infecting other people or it could happen much later, i.e. taking more iterations, more quadruplication..
Is it going pan that out, who knows..
It’s possible to get too far out ahead of this by reading too much into internet posts. For instance, this is a link to the paper referenced in the Zerohedge post. The doctor’s abstract is at this link. If you read the eight or so comments below the abstract, you see that these sequenced proteins that indicate HIV also appear in hundreds of other life forms in the exact same sequence. So, it appears that more study is needed before conclusions of HIV are warranted.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1
regards
Thanks for the info but I was not writing about the ZH/HIV stuff..
But focused more (summary of Dennis/Martenson’s finds) on the possible reasoning why China and others finally started pushing for harder quarantine, halting flights etc.. because “supposedly” according to the study the contagion statistics provided for govs turned for the worse. That being anti thesis to Gail’s argument of mere over reaction so far. Lets wait & see how this evolves further..
Not really.
The point is that the entire world is dependent on China. It is terrible policy to cut China off from the rest of the world (or even cut the area around Wuhan off) because it will push the entire world economy toward collapse. This is true, pretty much whatever the contagion statistics are, unless the mortality statistics are far higher than they seem to be. Even if the mortality rate is 10% or 15%, I don’t think it makes sense to cut any major area off. We need to muddle along, as people did in the past.
Without China, we don’t have computers, and probably not many cell phones. Many automobile components are likely to be missing, especially for EVs. Parts of wind turbines will not be available. Many solar panels will not be available. Supply chains for practically anything we can think of will start breaking. We will go to an airport in the US, and the airplanes will not take off for US destinations because something necessary is missing, such as a computer piece. We will find ourselves with power outages, because we are dependent on China. We will have internet outages. New car sales will drop precipitously.
China and the rest of the world will start having a terrible time with debt. Closed factories can’t repay their debt with interest. People who are laid off from work cannot make their mortgage payments or their automobile payments. Our system is dependent on all major parts of the system functioning. Even if China is having a huge problem with illness, it needs to keep going the best it can. The illness is already spreading all over, and there is not much we can do to stop the problem.
We need to try to find inexpensive ways to keep as many people alive as possible. We cannot devote all of our resources to this problem, or we cannot keep the whole system operating. The limits we are now reaching do not give us enough resources to fight epidemics in the way we would expect, back when we were a world with more resources per capita. It is not very intuitive, but speed of transmission is not terribly important. We don’t really have a way of fixing the problem, no matter how many resources we try to throw at it.
Another problem is specialization. The complex system we now have is vulnerable. The Black Death killed 30%. But everyone had the same knowledge set so there was little impact on survivors. Now we have a highly complex integrated system even a 3% mortality rate could collapse the global economy.
“… even a 3% mortality rate could collapse the global economy.”
depends… if the spread of infections is a high exponential rate and overruns the entire world in this calendar year, then yes, collapse is possible…
that would be like every business with 1,000 employees has 30 deaths… every town with 10,000 has 300 deaths… every city of one million has 30,000 deaths… in a single year, those are overwhelming numbers…
but, if the virus takes a few years or more to overrun the world, then the deaths are much more manageable in an economic sense…
all in all, only an absolute worst case scenario would cause collapse…
though…
if billions of irrational humans start to panic, all bets are off…
“It is terrible policy to cut China off from the rest of the world (or even cut the area around Wuhan off) because it will push the entire world economy toward collapse.”
Gail, I’m wondering if it’s possible once those in power realize these desperate measures to halt the spread of this Corona virus are reducing commerce to the point of causing a recession, if, and this is a big IF, politicians will come to the conclusion that we just need to go back to BAU and forget about trying to stop it from spreading.
A victory that is offset by staggering losses, as in The campaign was so divisive that even though he won the election it was a Pyrrhic victory. The term is often also used for the winning side of wars. So the question must be asked; If we win this war against the corona virus, will it be a Pyrrhic victory?
So if the hamster can’t constantly increase its pace running on the wheel it will fall into the abyss.
Right!
Sigh. Once again, the same lesson: you can have an efficient economy, or you can have a resilient economy. Choose one. And, of course, we made the wrong choice some 200 years ago, and there seems no way back short of collapse. Perhaps we should carve our history on stone tablets buried in giant pyramids, to warn future civilisations not to make the same mistake. But would they listen? After all, “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind”. Edward Gibbon, of course.
Seem to remember the past few years here have been forecasting the demise of the current economic system.
Now, because the end appears very close because of the virus, we should kick the can down the road a bit further, even if it wipes out us oldies, ( which I am not all that enthusiastic about).
Worked for fifty years and paid taxes to support my grandparents and parents in their old age and now I’m a burden on society and can be ‘let go’ in the cause of ‘the economy’.
Well selfishly I would prefer the economy to collapse now if it’s going to anyway
and lets have some creative thinking and implementation of a better lifestyle
(not another ‘economy’).
We need food, water, shelter and a society which considers ‘living’, not money making.
We can live without computers and iPhones (we all did in the early part of my life) and made the things we needed, and didn’t rely on China.
Oh, the debt problem. Well is it? Just people promising to other people.
No pity for ‘investors’ even if they are retired. If you have some wealth from your endeavours just spend it as you need to rather than expecting more.
(Remember something called ‘usury’ from somewhere or is that non PC these days).
Final thought, if American went to war with China, would the economic situation be any different than the feared virus effects?
Managed in all the previous wars.
“It is terrible policy to cut China off from the rest of the world (or even cut the area around Wuhan off) because it will push the entire world economy toward collapse.”
Are you inferring that anything which would lead to collapse should be avoided? The implications there are staggering – anyone defaulting on a debt should be bailed out by that logic. If you really believe that, Gail, would you mind lending me $50,000? 🙂
“Even if the mortality rate is 10% or 15%, I don’t think it makes sense to cut any major area off. We need to muddle along, as people did in the past.”
Based on what? Perhaps I’ve missed it, but have you published a cost-benefit or break-even analysis, even at a high level, that quantifies which impact would be worse – the impact of quarantine vs. the impact of economic slowdown from quarantine (I don’t think I’ve seen a cost estimate, even just in dollars and ignoring the emotional cost of human life, for either)?
“Without China, we don’t have computers, and probably not many cell phones. Many automobile components are likely to be missing, especially for EVs. Parts of wind turbines will not be available. Many solar panels will not be available.”
Okay, and what do North American inventories currently look like? What spares and/or fallback solutions do we have waiting in the wings? I constantly see people putting up their older iPhones for sale here on Kijiji… if someone’s fancy new iPhone goes kaput, would it be world-ending for them to use an older model for a few weeks / months?
Without the pain of living “without China”, how does North America ever “feel the pain” and wake up to the fact that they are so dependent on China and try to mitigate that problem, at least to some degree? Perhaps a short period sans China to enlighten all of us to our dependence on them would be just what the doctor ordered?
Also, have you found or published any studies / timelines of how quickly supply lines would start collapsing without China? What if an nCoV response only requires a month of restricted trade/travel, but supply lines and local-based workarounds can sustain us for 2-3 months? In that case, wouldn’t your response on this issue be a bit alarmist in nature?
“China and the rest of the world will start having a terrible time with debt.”
Again, how does one ever learn the dangers of debt if one is never subject to the pain that debt can cause? Also, how does the system ever clear out malinvestment if debts are never allowed to go bad and default?
“Even if China is having a huge problem with illness, it needs to keep going the best it can. The illness is already spreading all over, and there is not much we can do to stop the problem.”
Not sure why you continue to cling to this point of view?. There’s plenty that can be done, and the numbers suggest that – if done early enough – those responses can be highly effective. And China clearly disagrees with you, given the fact they’ve elected to go the route of lockdown in dealing with nCoV.
“We need to try to find inexpensive ways to keep as many people alive as possible.”
Perhaps we should avoid discussions on how the world should control population. There are so many arguments that could be made for either side of the isle on topics such as our terrible diets / lifestyles; the moral hazard of universal health care (up here in Canada, anyway); the immorality / idiocy of keeping people on life support; subsidizing nations that have huge birth and death rates with foreign aid; and so on and so forth.
Perhaps a better way – a more humane way – of looking at things is how can we find inexpensive ways to make as many people’s lives as comfortable, dignified and fulfilling as possible. Were that our objective, I think we would argue in favour of helping people avoid unnecessarily becoming ill / dying / losing loved ones over maintaining a soulless BAU system that chews us up and spits us out…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZpaWOLjWx0
Cheers,
-GBV (not Moloch)
Thank you, I did read the comments and they are reassuring, All sites such as Zerohedge have as one of their primary goals selling advertising, panic sells. Martenson is in the worry business.
In the US we are being spun so very many ways it is difficult to find sources of information that are close to reality.
Bureaucracies by their nature don’t like change, they don’t want to appear on the evening news or in the papers. We in the US experienced this as portrayed in the movie, “And the Band Played On.” Money was more important than the health of blood product recipients.
Wratfink, you seem knowledgeable in this area; if I read the article correctly these amino acid sequences are not found in the wild variety of this virus which preliminary reports suggested came from eating bats. Any ideas?
Dennis L.
Yes, Martenson is known instant doom prophet merchant in a world where TSLA made ~3000% passive mode per decade+ ..that’s one great irony in itself. However, his reporting seemed relatively balanced and informative on this topic so far. He could be right(closer) for once after all.
Martenson is being very reasonable and measured, as far as I can see.
He’s probably right that preparing for a possible – sudden – lock-down in one’s city can do no harm; and that one should do so now.
I’m stocking my elderly mother up with some food, although she says that she is ‘ready to go’, due to the disgusting nature of the world and the decline of Britain, which she feels has lapsed into ‘senile incompetence’! Still hitting hard at 83!
I hope she might try some of the Spanish brandy I make sure is in the store cupboard, it might cheer her up a bit…..
A review of this would be appreciated,
https://www.peakprosperity.com/new-coronavirus-ro-of-4-1-massive-contagion-risk/
The financial markets are closed until Monday, will they reopen ?
Dennis L.
I don’t see a problem with the financial markets on Monday.
Chris is looking at, “See how quick illness spreads.” I agree with Chris that it is unstoppable. So waisting resources on trying to stop it isn’t going to help.
Back before fossil fuels, epidemics happened frequently. People geared their lives around them. Women had lots of children, so that if some died, there still would be others left. Women couldn’t work outside of the home because of their many children and the lack of labor saving devices. Having fossil fuels allowed this situation to change. Now we are in a position where this is starting to be taken away from us. The question is how fast does it get taken away from us, and in what way. If China gets cut off from the rest of the world, the whole world will need to make a huge descent.
Chris is concerned with taking care of himself. He is 57 years old, and he is concerned that he is old enough to be vulnerable. He is also in the business of selling stuff to try to work around collapse. Publicity is good for him. But he doesn’t look at what alarmism does for the world economy.
And once again, Gail, you are the voice of reality. Yes, the virus is unstoppable: it has the three sufficient ingredients. (1) human to human transmission; no bats or hedgehogs necessary. (2) carriers are infectious for at least 10 days while asymptomatic; testing people arriving from anywhere by anything simply won’t work. And (3) a giant global air transport network, which nobody dare simply shut down, and whose partial shutdowns will be bypassed by the virus.
Add the next truth: all other lines of defence are ineffective: no antidote, insufficient health care resources and facilities, and no good way of protecting the medical professionals themselves.
Which leaves us as we were 100,000 years ago, reliant on our immune systems to save us. Is this Gaia’s revenge, or just another turn of the Wheel? And the lesson to learn: Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. (“You may drive Nature out with a broom, but she will always come back”)
A lesson I believe most appropriate for “Homo colossus”. I hope we finally begin to learn it.
Gail,
You seem to be putting words in the mouths of others. Chris doesn’t say nCoV is unstoppable – that is your assertion. I hate that I feel like I actually have to write this all out here, as I’ve never felt that you’ve misrepresented your data sources in the past Gail, but from this most recent video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmrm0mk5928&feature=emb_title
11:43 – “…so that’s why it’s really important to catch these things early, catch them often, don’t let them get started. That’s why proactive is way better than reactive. The WHO has come out and said we’re going to be reactive and, uh, that’s no good”
12:56 – “There’s some good news in this study though, and this again speaks to being proactive rather than reactive because their study suggests that by reducing the average infectious period to <2.3 days, the resulting R will decrease to a value of less than 1, meaning the epidemic can be effectively controlled.
13:32 – “…so no bus drivers in an asymptomatic, or worse, a symptomatic phase out there shedding viruses into the world – you can’t do that. You’ve got to stop people from interacting with each other, which means that if you can bring the mean or average infectious period to under 2.3 days, this can be controlled. This explains the empty streets we’re seeing in Wuhan, Shanghai, Beijing, all the other places that China has gone into complete lockdown because they have this information and they know that the only way to prevent this from spreading, the only way you can get this pandemic under control is that you gotta go into a lockdown, you gotta prevent people from having social contact.
At some point your assertion that it would be a waste of resources to try to contain nCoV will of course be correct, but I doubt either of us knows exactly at what point that is. In the meantime, you and the governments, international health organizations, and the newmedia – who are more concerned with maintaining BAU – are pushing us closer to the point where containment is impossible thanks to misinformation and false assertions (e.g. “the common flu is worse than nCoV”; “people worrying about nCoV are panicking / overreacting”; “responding to nCoV will have too great an economic cost”), rather than taking the proactive approach Chris (again, as an individual with a PhD in pathogenic biology) is recommending and has been recommending since nCoV cropped up on our radar.
“If China gets cut off from the rest of the world, the whole world will need to make a huge descent.”
It may be as little as 1-2 weeks that China (though that time frame likely increases the longer complete lockdowns are avoided) needs to go into shutdown to effectively contain nCoV. Do you have any data or analysis that suggests the entire world is going to collapse in that period of time?
I understand the world and it’s economy is fragile, but if we’ve really progressed to the point that we can’t survive without China for 2 weeks then perhaps it’s time to just let go and be done with BAU (i.e. the inverse of your argument that it is a waste of resources to try to contain nCoV is that we’re approaching a period when it is a waste of resources to continue to prop up BAU rather than allowing it to fail and use whatever little resources we have left over to try to build something new for those who survive the crash / reset)?
I’d also suggest that rather than proposing what thoughts are going through Chris’s head (something you couldn’t possibly know, and is a bit arrogant to assume), perhaps you should stick to telling us what is going through yours, Gail. How do you benefit from nCoV being ignored to the point it can’t be contained? What do you lose if measures such as complete shut down occur for a short period of time and the world doesn’t collapse as per your constant warnings that it might? Chris obviously makes money off Peak Prosperity, but not all gains are monetary in nature – sometimes people look for rewards that reaffirm the convictions and beliefs they hold so strongly.
Finally, don’t be a hypocrite Gail. You suggest Chris is an “alarmist” for sharing the scientific, math-based logarithmic growth figures for nCoV based on the data we currently have available, while simultaneously publishing your work here at OFW, which I’d sum up as an ongoing look at current financial & energy data to illustrate the terrible growth/constraint predicament modern society faces. I’d even argue that your message is “darker” or more “alarmist” than Chris’s, as it seems your point of view is that if we do anything to compromise BAU then it’s curtains for most of us (as opposed to a “cascading collapse” theory that John Michael Greer, aka. The Archdruid, used to espouse; I recall a podcast from about 7 years ago entitled “The Lightning Bolt Awaits” where Nicole Foss also suggested a similar decline of starts and stops).
Full Disclosure: I am not anyway affiliated with Peak Prosperity or Chris Martenson. I stumbled across his Crash Course about 7 years ago and enjoyed it, and I’ve visited the Peak Prosperity website mostly to keep an eye out on his podcast interviews, more so for the guests he brings on than Martenson himself. Some of my biggest criticisms of Martenson in the past were that I felt he wasn’t paying enough attention to some of the things covered here at OFW (though I think he’s changed for the better over the last 5 years), as well as being subtly dismissive of a deflationary-style collapse that Nicole Foss used to write about (don’t think he’s made many gains there, and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him pushing gold on me in some of his podcasts from even just a few months ago).
In all honesty, I visit OFW way more often and get much more utility from this site than Chris’s. But it’s my view that the main reason OFW is so great is the open discourse that takes place in the comment section… and to maintain that, sometimes I guess I feel like your point of view needs a serious challenge / counterpoint, Gail, rather than a bunch of back-patting, sycophantic approvals. Apologies if any of my thoughts were too harsh or impolite – I do appreciate all the work you do here at OFW, even if I don’t always see things the way you do.
Cheers,
-GBV
Whoops, screwed up some of my bolding in the comment above… sorry! 🙁
-GBV
What Chris is saying is that it is possible to perhaps slow down the transmission of the virus a bit, if precautions of many kinds are taken. This is not a contradiction to what I have said.
A separate part of the story is the hope that eventually, a vaccine will be created that can stop the virus. In fact, it needs to be created and widely distributed. At that point, the virus can indeed by stopped. I don’t think anyone thinks that this can happen within a year, especially the “widely distributed” part. I remember someone suggesting 20 years, but I think that is far too long.
A better guess might be, say, that it will take 3 years for an effective vaccine to become widely available. By that point, the virus might have done pretty much all of its damage, with or without cutting back on transmission. Usually, viruses seem to come in waves of a year or two. Once enough people have been infected, they slow down and stop on their own. With fast transmission, they might finish their circuit through the population in, say, 12 months, but with slower transmission, it might take them 15 or 18 months. You might end up with exactly the same number of people dead, but over a little longer period, with slower transmission.
The only way you can really come out ahead is by quickly figuring out a “cure,” (in addition to slowing transmission). One way to come out ahead would be to find an effective vaccine very quickly, and get it distributed very quickly. Another approach would be to find an effective antiviral drug, and distribute it very quickly. I doubt that we can do of these things quickly enough to make a major difference. But I could be wrong.
The “stop the world’s commerce to slow down transmission” approach is certain to lead to a lot of disruption of the world’s economy. This economic disruption will quite likely also lead to deaths, but of different kinds. Prices of commodities will be far too low, leading to civil unrest and wars, for example. There may be huge problems with the financial system, and with supply chains in making things like cars and cell phones. I don’t think that we come out ahead by greatly upsetting commerce to slow the transmission of the virus.
“With fast transmission, they might finish their circuit through the population in, say, 12 months, but with slower transmission, it might take them 15 or 18 months. You might end up with exactly the same number of people dead, but over a little longer period, with slower transmission.”
This sounds like it completely ignores the idea that a massive influx of severe cases will overwhelm our capacity for medical attention / care. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that we’d have the same number of people dead if we attempted to spread severe cases out so that more individuals could have the benefits of medical attention – in fact, it would stand to reason that the outcome in that case would be less people dead.
“This economic disruption will quite likely also lead to deaths, but of different kinds.”
You’re probably correct, but if you can’t quantify this to any degree, then you are the alarmist that you accuse Chris of being. Are we expected to take it on faith that the number of people who would suffer/die by doing nothing will be less than the number who will suffer/die due to the economic repercussions of trying to contain a pandemic?
“I don’t think that we come out ahead by greatly upsetting commerce to slow the transmission of the virus.”
I’m open-minded to the notion of this, and I recognize it could quite possibly be true. But you’ll have to show me something in terms of data or a model to make me a believer. To be even more blunt, I think there is a degree of responsibility in presenting some sort of quantifiable argument if you’re going to publicly state such a case.
I don’t know if it’s a fair comparison, but when the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull took place in Iceland, wasn’t air traffic shut down then for a few days? What were the economic and mortality impacts of that event? Perhaps you could extrapolate that data (or data from a better example – the Iceland volcanic eruptions were just the first things that occurred to me) into something to reflect a 2-4 week outbreak containment strategy?
At least then you’d give me something to compare to the potential outcome Chris is offering should nCoV be left unchecked.
Cheers,
-GBV
I have jury duty on Monday.
Gail,
I am not an alarmist, but
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/coronavirus-contains-hiv-insertions-stoking-fears-over-artificially-created-bioweapon
You will understand better the rate of transmission but it appears to be incredible. This if true is irresponsible, the red line seems frightening.
Dennis L.
Dude! If you believe everything you read on zero hedge….I have some stuff to sell you!!! Great Price for you!!!
Um, if you say you’re not an alarmist and then stick a BUT, you’re effectively saying you are. With respect I suggest you research what frequent worry and anxiety do to one’s health (hint: it ain’t pretty).
the combination of the worldwide spread of the virus and the accompanying worry and anxiety has a good descriptive word for it:
pandemic…
interestingly enough, the word is not a portmanteau of the two words “panic” and “epidemic”…
but in this case, it might soon become appropriate…
In case you’re not joking, pandemic simply means widespread.
Even though I don’t know Dennis, I’m concerned for his well-being. Further down he suggests that maybe he should clear the way. Not good.
“widespread” is vague…
“A pandemic is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic.”
I’m 60-ish and in fair health, and haven’t had the flu in many many years, but if this virus infects me, or even this year’s flu, then perhaps I will “clear the way”…
at some point, we all clear the way for the younger generations, so what gets us is really no big deal…
the inevitable nothingness of eternal death…
Fair enough. You talk about it matter-of-factly. It*s plain reality. You don’t seem worried either about the pandemic or the broader issues we discuss here. That’s good.
Thank you for your concern and thank you for a view that is outside of myself; that is always useful, it helps to moderate our anxiety over certain new and unsettling ideas.
I no longer worry, much, I am 73, my grandchildren are growing as they should; what I could do has been done. As for clearing the way, said half in jest; most of us want one more day, but in the course of dealing with difficult things, the last is “acceptance.” Should I become ill, what will be will be, sometimes there is nothing more to be done, fight until the end and then accept.
Looked up “pandemic” root words are Greek “pan” all, “dem” people, “ic” is English, appears English synthesized the word in the 17th century which had a number of plagues.
Dennis L.
if it was true it would be biologically engineered to exclude Chinamen
daft
Well, they’ve gone ahead and done it.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/delta-suspends-us-flights-china-amid-coronavirus-154400706–abc-news-topstories.html
“US declares public health emergency over coronavirus, announces temporary travel ban”
“U.S. citizens returning from Hubei province in the previous 14 days will be subject to up to a 14-day quarantine. Foreign nationals, other than immediate family members of U.S. citizens, who have traveled to China in the previous 14 days will be denied entry into the country. The temporary measures take effect Feb. 2 at 5 p.m.
Americans who’ve traveled to other parts of China in the previous 14 days will be subject to a health screening upon entry and asked to self-quarantine for up to 14 days.”
This suspension lasts for (at least) three months. What a mess for students and businesses!
This can’t help Delta’s financial statements and it can’t help China’s ability to produce goods and services.
Gail, once again you have turned the light of experience upon the folly of our present age, Every previous civilisation experienced epidemics, lived through them, and carried on, But we seem to believe that a mere virus can bring down our “global economy”, which is what in these degenerate times passes as an acceptable surrogate for civilisation.
Need there be no better argument that we deserve to fall, and our fall would be the fall of folly, and, if the Gods are merciful, the rebirth of reason.
my worry is the bit that comes between the fall and the return to reason
why?
because you can have reason on a planet with 1 bn people
with 7.5bn, a fall is inevitable because there can be no reason
perhaps there is another aspect to Coronovirus
Humankind has elevated itself to dominant species on the planet, and has used that so called dominance to loot and burn and call the planet ‘property’. But just suppose the 10k years of ‘possession’ has been a dead end? Turning the planet into ‘capital’ has certainly brought us to the point of collapse. We vote for more of the same insanity.
Let’s suppose (just to go along with this hypothesis) that microbial life, the bacteria et al, has a collective awareness of what we are doing
Ridiculous—how could that be?
But micro organisms have been around for 2 bn years. Why should they not have evolved forms of communication we are unaware of? Insects do, higher life forms do, even Trees can communicate by means we cannot comprehend. Without bacteria, we would die in days. Bacteria would not notice our passing. To them we are just mines and prairies.
Which then is the dominant life form? ‘Awareness’ of that might mean different things to different species.
Bacteria have made use of every species that has evolved. Then seen them off. They use us in the same way. They are all aware of their allotted tasks. Perhaps we have interfered with that through our obsession with capital and ownership
Perhaps there is an awareness of something ‘wrong’ that has to be rectified. China postures itself (as do others) as the most powerful nation on earth. To sustain that fantasy they must have infinite growth even though it cannot be. To sustain the lie, the earth must be torn apart.
Microbial life suddenly becomes aware of ‘us’.
And suddenly a virus is released in an overcrowded market and the entire Chinese edifice is rocked and slowed in a matter of days by something too small to see. Even the price of gold has shot up during January, as a result of China shutting down, further destabilisng markets. It could happen anywhere.
Yes, this virus will be contained, but it can only be kept in check by the availability and use of fossil fuels. Our ‘clean’ environments. Remove the input of fossil fuels and we are back to wallowing in our own filth again.
With microbes reclaiming their territory?
And we can only get hold of fossil fuels by the capital that crowds us together and so make plagues repeat themselves, (and yes this applies equally to medieval plagues as well)
I haven’t looked closely at Richard Heinberg’s, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, but I am 99% sure that he doesn’t mention the problem of epidemics coming back, and our not really having a way to fight them. I would expect that forest fires and building fires will also ramp up, to much greater extent to what we have been used to.
It is easy to think that we can just go out to movies a bit less often and grow a little of our own food. Then everything will be fine.
I’ve just been reading a biography of an interesting 18th century lady, Fanny Burney: a horrifying litany of house fires, women burning to death in their homes through standing too close to a sparking fire (or the old falling in to them); slow deaths from TB, pregnancy, the effects of accidents; and of course horrendous infant and young-adult mortality.
Religious faith was often the only consolation they could find for the very brutal facts of life, which hardly appear at all in our modern experience.
Peak oilers, writing about the future, perhaps should have read such biographies. Of course, no one would think that we could be facing this future again, without sufficient energy consumption per capita.
Reading that book I did come to the point of saying to myself: ‘Oh no, not another awful death of a lovely child, or a talented and good person!’
I always feel that the ‘Better, juster world post-fossil fuels future,’ people could do with an intensive course in how people have actually lived – until only yesterday really – and some survey of all the truly ghastly things people have done to one another as a matter of course, all without any fossil-fuels in sight, or Capitalism.
And another course in our basic biological nature, and how it manifests in social organisation and behaviour.
So many naive dreamers (with good hearts, many of them, of course)! But belief in a possible Golden Age seems to haunt our imaginations…..
Xabier, a wonderful discussion of exactly this idea of a “Golden Age”:
L Sprague de Camp: Lost Continents (Dover, New York, 1970)
Subtitled ‘The Atlantis Theme in History, Science and Literature’.
Here is my favourite quote:
“But most of all it strikes a responsive chord by its
sense of the melancholy loss of a beautiful thing, a
happy perfection once possessed by mankind. Thus it
appeals to that hope that most of us carry around in
our unconscious, a hope so often raised and as often
disappointed, for assurance that somewhere, some time,
there can exist a land of peace and plenty, of beauty
and justice, where we, poor creatures that we are,
could be happy. In this sense Atlantis – whether we
call it Panchaia, the Kingdom of God, Oceana, the
Classless Society, or Utopia – will always be with us.”
Here in France we had no growth in the last three months of 2019
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/f3088ca8-43f9-11ea-abea-0c7a29cd66fe
I saw that. I am sure that if the economy is not doing well, it helps encourage cutbacks in programs, and those cutbacks encourage riots. The headlines about France have not been very good recently.
When I was looking for an article on Google about nuclear power, I ran across this one as well, EDF misses 2019 French nuclear power target.
This means less cheap nuclear electricity to sell outside of France, and the need for more imported electricity, I expect. France once had above average electricity supply, but its nuclear power generation hit a high point in 2005, and has been drifting downward since. In fact, France’s total electricity supply hit its highest point in 2005 as well. It is down a bit, but if population has risen, it is down on a per capita basis.
Love your closing paragraph.
“They help prune back the population of the old and weak.”
Sure, but I think it can be serious.
The poor physical condition of people today compared to 1918. Most people take drugs that did not exist in 1918 for diseases that practically did not exist.
The population density is far higher than that of 1918. This accentuates the spread.
The quality of the food is lower, people stuff themselves with junk food without nutritional value.
One thing is certain, the quarantines are powder in the eyes, the planes continue to leave China with sick people without anyone knowing it.
Even Delta will be bringing people home until February 2. The article talked about self-quarantines. People need to the grocery store and bank, however.
You might be surprised to learn this, but there was a lot of malnutrition and a lot of environmental pollution back in 1918. And soldiers back then took a lot of vaccines laced with who knows what?
It wasn’t all Roses in Picardy and a Long Way from Tipperary.
https://youtu.be/9T6sHoQ5GvE
Yes, the poor front-line soldiers were badly fed even in the first years of that war – looking in to the history of the regiment my great-grandfather served in (1914-19 )revealed that, something I hadn’t really appreciated before.
When training in 1914, a visiting general asked if they had any complaints and it was the food they all belly ached about: little did they suspect what awaited them in France…..
World War I was really a war related to collapse, as far as I can see. The big problem was peak coal in the UK. The amount that ordinary workers in general had fallen far too low; the amount that coal miners earned, in particular, was way too low. Many of them quit coal mining to volunteer for the war, because the pay seemed to be better. It also didn’t seem to be a whole lot more risky than working in the mines.
This was also true in the Great Depression and in World War II. As I have commented before, World War II seems to have corresponded to the peak in hard coal in Germany. Without enough coal, the system tended to collapse. Wages of common workers fell too low. It set the stage for all of the problems of Nazi Germany.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/52-peak-coal-in-uk-and-germany-led-to-world-wars.png
Gail, on this one I must disagree. Your analysis is too fatalistic. The Great War was the result of several acts of folly that have been analysed by historians quite exhaustively, One was the French obsession with “revanche”, the recovery of Alsace Lorraine and the humiliation of Germany. Another was the Schlieffen Plan, a crazy military decision that placed Germany in an impossible Zugzwang, where Russian mobilisation would force her to … invade France.
And perhaps the most criminally stupid: the decision of Britain to form an “unofficial” alliance with France, whose effect was to lead France to believe Britain would fight, and Germany to believe she would not. That, in turn, was the supposed “solution” to a problem created by the Liberal government of Asquith and Lloyd George, which spent vast sums building a “welfare state” while letting our military preparedness wither away.
Denial is natural
Our ancestors evolved in small groups, where cooperation and persuasion had at least as much to do with reproductive success as holding accurate factual beliefs about the world. Assimilation into one’s tribe required assimilation into the group’s ideological belief system. An instinctive bias in favor of one’s “in-group” and its worldview is deeply ingrained in human psychology.
A human being’s very sense of self is intimately tied up with his or her identity group’s status and beliefs. Unsurprisingly, then, people respond automatically and defensively to information that threatens their ideological worldview. We respond with rationalization and selective assessment of evidence – that is, we engage in “confirmation bias,” giving credit to expert testimony we like and find reasons to reject the rest.
Political scientists Charles Taber and Milton Lodge experimentally confirmed the existence of this automatic response. They found that partisan subjects, when presented with photos of politicians, produce an affective “like/dislike” response that precedes any sort of conscious, factual assessment as to who is pictured.
In ideologically charged situations, one’s prejudices end up affecting one’s factual beliefs. Insofar as you define yourself in terms of your cultural affiliations, information that threatens your belief system – say, information about the negative effects of industrial production on the environment – can threaten your sense of identity itself. If it’s part of your ideological community’s worldview that unnatural things are unhealthful, factual information about a scientific consensus on vaccine or GM food safety feels like a personal attack.
Unwelcome information can also threaten in other ways. “System justification” theorists like psychologist John Jost have shown how situations that represent a threat to established systems trigger inflexible thinking and a desire for closure. For example, as Jost and colleagues extensively review, populations experiencing economic distress or external threat have often turned to authoritarian, hierarchicalist leaders promising security and stability
https://news.yahoo.com/humans-hardwired-dismiss-facts-dont-130032262.html
Denial is a river in Egypt as they say
Political scientist working in universities have to come up with something to write about.
I agree, Gail, but I would add, “something profitable to write about”. And the post contains exactly that strategy: the political scientists defend vaccines and GM foods against doubters driven by irrational attitudes. And it just happens that these are two products associated with massive and expensive propaganda campaigns in their favour by two of the most profitable sets of companies on the planet. Clever political scientists!
I agree, the article is all bunk and nothing to take notice of….I’m not in denial
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtYZxgMkzg
Well, it could be worser
And we worry about a little old virus?
Japan panel: Fukushima water release to sea is best option
MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated PressJanuary 31, 2020, 8:51 AM EST
FILE – In this Oct. 12, 2017, file photo, ever-growing amount of contaminated, treated but still slightly radioactive, water at the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant is stored in about 900 huge tanks, including those seen in this photo taken during a plant tour at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, northeast of Tokyo. A government panel on Friday roughly accepted the economy and industry ministry’s draft proposal that cites the gradual release of massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water stored at the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant to sea as a best option.
FILE – In this Feb. 23, 2017, file photo, storage tanks for contaminated water are seen through a window of a building during a media tour to the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan. A government panel on Friday roughly accepted the economy and industry ministry’s draft proposal that cites the gradual release of massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water stored at the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant to sea as a best option.
FILE – In this Oct. 12, 2017, file photo, ever-growing amount of contaminated, treated but still slightly radioactive, water at the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant is stored in about 900 huge tanks, including those seen in this photo taken during a plant tour at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, northeast of Tokyo. A government panel on Friday roughly accepted the economy and industry ministry’s draft proposal that cites the gradual release of massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water stored at the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant to sea as a best option. (Pablo M. Diez/Pool Photo via A, File)
TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese government panel on Friday roughly accepted a draft proposal for releasing into the sea massive amounts of radioactive water now being stored at the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant.
The economy and industry ministry’s draft proposal said releasing the water gradually into the sea was the safer, more feasible method, though evaporation was also a proven method used after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. The proposal in coming weeks will be submitted to the goverment for further discussion to decide when and how the water should be released.
Nearly nine years after the 2011 meltdowns of three reactor cores at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant, it was a small step toward deciding what to do with the water and follows expert recommendations
The solution to pollution is dilution……like this was a surprise….
People eat the fish that swim in the ocean. They may not like radioactive fish.
They may not like radioactive fish but they’ll eat it anyway. Why? Because the MSM no longer covers Fukushima, instead they are all about the NBA Legend Koby Bryant and his daughter Gigi.
The MSM doesn’t care either about all the micro plastics currently in the oceans which works its way up the food chain. Eating shell fish like mussels or other types of fish will already contain plastics. So what about some radioactive waste water, who cares? [/sarc]
Just wait till BAU collapses under its own weight, governments collapse and NPP and its radioactive waste like spent fuel rods are no longer maintained. We’ll have plenty of Fukushima’s to worry about.
Wrong, I expect glowing reviews.
How much more tritium will be in the oceans if all the Fukushima tritium water is dumped there?
Let’s try to do some simple arithmetic.
It was officially reported that the March 2016 holding of tritium on-site was 760 TBq (terabecquerels) (equivalent to 2.1 g of tritium or 14 mL of tritiated water) in a total of 860,000 m3 of stored water.
Meanwhile, worldwide production of tritium from natural sources due to cosmic rays interacting with atmospheric gases is 148 PBq (petabecquerels) per year. The global equilibrium inventory of tritium created by natural sources remains approximately constant at 2,590 PBq. This is due to a fixed production rate and losses proportional to the inventory.
760 TBq is 0.76 PVq, which is equal to about 0.5% (half of one percent) of the annual production of tritium from natural sources, or about the amount that nature produces every two days.
760 TBq is also about 0.0295% of global equilibrium inventory of tritium created by natural sources, or one part in 3,400. Moreover, as tritium has a half-life of about 12 years, so within half a century only a tenth of the original amount remains.
So it doesn’t really make much difference.
This is similar to the calculation that was done at the time of the much-publicized BP oil spill. It is/was tiny in relationship to natural seeps of oil from the ocean floor. Petroleum eating bacteria feast on the new supply of nourishment!
Reminds me of an infamous report from a global firm of accountants about smoking in one of those Eastern European countries …
Lots of tax revenue from tobacco sales
Smokers die younger, and die quickly, giving big savings on both pensions and health care costs.
Recycling assets to the next generation good for growth.
What’s not to like?
=)
Aside from capitalism, smoking is the most harmful legal thing you can do.
Hong Kong looking crazier by the day:
“The Hong Kong government has privately warned diplomats it is bracing for a bombing campaign by radical pro-democracy protesters as the territory enters its tenth month of unrest.”
https://www.ft.com/content/5636f828-3e69-11ea-b232-000f4477fbca
“privately warned diplomats”? In other words, the corrupt pro China government is preparing some false flag attacks to discredit the democracy movement, and preemptively signing up some diplomats to spread the accompanying disinformation.
Why do I believe this? Because that government has enough spies, double agents, and general toadies to detect and neutralise any such campaign. Therefore, if it happens, it will because the allowed it.
Didn’t somebody suggest that Fast Eddy went back to Hong Kong? Perhaps he has rethought that and moved on elsewhere by now?
I just came across a Fox Business News article that says Chevron loses 6.6B due to American Shale write down. It’s in Apple News App so I can’t post the link. Here’s the content of the article:
“Chevron posted a massive fourth-quarter loss after taking $10.4 billion worth of writedowns related to North American shale projects.
The San Ramon-California-based oil giant lost $6.6 billion, or $3.51 a share, in the three months through December as revenue fell 14 percent to $36.3 billion. Adjusted earnings of $1.49 a share topped the $1.43 that analysts surveyed by Refinitiv were expecting.
“Cash flow from operations remained strong in 2019, allowing the company to deliver on all our financial priorities,” Chevron CEO Michael Wirth said in a statement. Those included paying $9 billion in dividends and buying back $4 billion of company shares, which typically drives up value for remaining stockholders.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/chevron-earnings-q4-2019
^^^There’s the link for that.
Shell’s profits down, too:
“Royal Dutch Shell has blamed weaker oil and gas markets for delaying the world’s largest share buyback scheme after its profits halved in the final quarter of the year…
“Other major oil companies including Chevron, BP, Repsol and Equinor have all written off billions of dollars due to a slump in US shale prices.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/30/shell-blames-falling-energy-prices-for-plunge-in-profits
Chevron’s write-down was primarily with natural gas, as I understand.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/31/chevron-cvx-q4-2019-earnings-beat-but-revenue-falls-short.html
Natural gas prices have been, and continue to be, way too low.
We are inclined to think that our age is particularly corrupt, but here are some features of plagues in the 16th-century in Europe: do they ring a bell?
1/ Deliberate official under-reporting.
2/ Initial complacency and misdiagnosis.
3 / Doctors trying to cash in: ‘I have a cure, give me millions!’ (No exaggeration: a doctor was paid £15m for his ‘cure’ in Venice, and voted a further pension of £1m per annum).
4/ Locking infected people in their homes to die.
5/ Useless, and poorly-organised, quarantines.
6/ Government view that deep economic damage is far worse than large-scale deaths.
7/ Mistrust of the authorities.
Nothing new under the sun…..
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“…since the last recession, the interest rates have not recovered to the level required to tackle a new downturn…
“In addition, government debt across the world is at record levels. The average debt for advanced economies stands at more than 100% of the GDP, while in China it is through the roof at 300% of the GDP (mostly because of its panicked borrowing during the 2008 financial crisis to support massive fiscal stimulus valued at roughly 12.5% of its GDP). Italy, with an insurmountable government debt valued at roughly 130% of its GDP, is a ticking time-bomb.
“In this interconnected world, it only takes one weak link to radiate out an economic weakness that spreads globally.”
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/perspectives-on-global-political-economy/economic-panics-are-hidden-until-they-are-not-the-next-recession-and-potential-policy-responses-with-central-bankers-backs-against-the-wall/
“…if we guess wrong by vastly underestimating the ultimate personal and then economic effects of the virus, then this could be a black swan that KO’s the global economy.”
https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/peter-switzer/could-the-coronavirus-be-a-killer-black-swan/
I was reflecting that if the mortality rate is fairly low then a global pandemic might actually be better for the global economy, ironically, than a outbreak that remains localised in China because it would render travel restrictions pointless.
Right!
But if travel restrictions do actually slow the path of the virus, and we can do something in the fairly near term to mitigate its effects (vaccine or antiviral) then a person could argue that there would be a positive impact of slowing the spread of the virus.
The issue is that travel restrictions and the closing of businesses have a terribly detrimental impact on the economy. And I am not sure we can really do enough to slow the spread of the disease to make any difference.
“The issue is that travel restrictions and the closing of businesses have a terribly detrimental impact on the economy.”
Looks like Goldman Sachs had the same thought, Gail. In fact, Dow currently as of this moment at -532 and descending. But there’s time today for it to recover.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/31/business/coronavirus-goldman-sachs-us-economy/index.html
‘Goldman Sachs warns that the coronavirus could slow the US economy’
“The note said that it doesn’t “find a clearly discernible effect of past pandemic scares on aggregate US activity.” Overall, analysts predict the coronavirus will result in “only a small net drag” for the full year. Reasons for the slight decline are a decrease in Chinese tourists to the US and fewer exports to China.”
Let’s keep our fingers crossed. No one things about all of China’s debt and its need to keep its economy going. They also don’t think about all of our supply chains. The Dow seems was down 592 a bit ago, but has back up a little.
A headline says, “CDC Quarantines Americans Evacuated From Center of China Virus Outbreak.”
“A public health scare on this scale is likely to have immediate economic repercussions for China’s economy in three vital ways:
“…a sharp downturn in the tourism and leisure industry as people cancel or avoid travel and events; a pause in spending, production and borrowing as uncertainty and travel restrictions impact businesses, jobs and consumer confidence; and higher costs related to measures introduced to mitigate the spread of infection…”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/30/perspectives/coronavirus-economic-impact/index.html
“Commodities including crude oil and copper fell Thursday, extending their recent slide on concerns that the worsening coronavirus outbreak would pare Chinese demand for raw materials.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/commodities-slump-on-fears-chinese-demand-will-drop-11580393760
“Fallout [from the coronavirus] for crude-tanker shipping and public equities took center stage on the quarterly conference call of tanker major Euronav. While the comments on the call were about crude tankers, almost all of them could apply to all modes of shipping.
“”This is bad news,” said Euronav CEO Hugo De Stoop. “Let’s not pretend it’s anything but bad news…””
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-crisis-affects-tanker-shipping-215050824.html
I see that WTI is currently at $51.63. Not may producers can live with this.
Germany’s Overdose of Renewable Energy
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/01/29/germanys-overdose-of-renewable-energy/
“Germany now generates over 35% of its yearly electricity consumption from wind and solar sources. Over 30 000 wind turbines have been built, with a total installed capacity of nearly 60 GW. Germany now has approximately 1.7 million solar power (photovoltaic) installations, with an installed capacity of 46 GW. This looks very impressive.
Unfortunately, most of the time the actual amount of electricity produced is only a fraction of the installed capacity. Worse, on “bad days” it can fall to nearly zero. In 2016 for example there were 52 nights with essentially no wind blowing in the country. No Sun, no wind. Even taking “better days” into account, the average electricity output of wind and solar energy installations in Germany amounts to only about 17% of the installed capacity.”
“Today, in order to guarantee stable baseline power and fill the gaps left by its fluctuating wind and solar generators, Germany is forced to rely on (1) CO2-spouting coal and natural gas power plants; (2) its remaining handful of nuclear plants, which it plans to shut down by 2022; and most notably (3) importing electricity from other European nations.
Most of the imports come from France, where about 75% of electricity is produced by nuclear plants, and from Sweden, where 40% is nuclear-produced. On “bad days” Germany could hardly get along without a piece of this much-dreaded nuclear energy.
On “good days” Germany floods the rest of Europe with excess power from its wind and solar installations, often at dumping or even negative prices. In this way Germany has turned its huge amounts of wildly fluctuating renewable power sources into a European-wide problem.
Even with the flourishing European electricity trade, however, Germany is still far from being able to close down its coal and gas power plants.”
“If we want the system to be largely CO2-free, then the only available option is nuclear energy.”
If we want the system to be CO2 free, the only option is less energy. Far less energy. And how can we sustain our civilisation? Far fewer people. But you already knew that. Back to my third reading of Catton’s “Overshoot”.
I read Overshoot every year just to keep myself grounded. Each year, more relevant.
What about writing a post about nuclear energy, Gail! Many different groups on both sides of the Atlantic see ne as a «solution».
https://energypost.eu/an-evening-with-ecomodernist-michael-shellenberger-or-a-defence-of-nuclear-power-you-have-not-heard-before/
Writing a post about nuclear is indeed an idea. I have done it several times before, but years ago. I also live in the area where the only new US nuclear power plants (2 of them) are being constructed. In fact, I am paying for them in my electric bill now, so that the utilities involved would not have to borrow as much. The story we hear, year in and year out, is the same:
Is There More Trouble Ahead for Plant Vogtle Expansion? Experts testify that serious challenges remain
The cost of the project bankrupted Westinghouse, who was in charge of the project. (So presumably, the real cost of the project was way over $28 billion). Now Southern Nuclear, which is a division of Georgia Power Company, is trying to finish the project by itself. The Fukushima accident happened after the new power plant was started, and it was decided to add more safety features, if I understand the situation correctly.
If there is a renewal of nuclear power plants, one of the big questions I have is, “Who will build them?” Westinghouse is out of the business. France had to take over AREVA, its company that used to be in the business of building nuclear power plants, until it too had huge financial problems. Nuclear power plants had become too complex and expensive to build.
There seem to be two standards for construction: a lower concern for safety and much higher concern for safety. The plants that are now planned are mostly in Asia and Russia. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx
These are almost certainly plants built to a lower standard of safety.
Are there even companies available that can build to the expected standard of construction today? EDF in France seems to be trying to restore confidence in French nuclear power plants. It also seems to be lined up to build a plant in the UK. Otherwise, I wonder if we are left with companies from China, India or Russia who are still in the nuclear power plant construction field.
The nuclear power construction industry seems to me to be in disarray right now, at least outside of Asia and Russia.
The 2 new blocks of the nuclear power plant in Mochovce, Slovakia still not operating. The new and new tests must be made in order to remove all improperly carried out works or installed components with compromised quality. Although these faults are outside of the reactor area, they delay the start of the blocks. The police also investigates possible frauds during their construction.
https://www.webnoviny.sk/venergetike/eight-criminal-prosecutions-in-mochovce-npp-project/
Is this a Russian project?
It is the original robust Russian design completed without Russians with additional safety enhancements after Fukushima:
https://www.nuclear.sk/nuclear-physicist-safety-at-mochovce-is-robust-and-the-austrian-or-global2000-claims-are-false/
Why is socially progressive Finland succeeding on the nuclear energy front? Seems to be the only country forging ahead. Or is that an illusion. Their 5th nuclear plant is due to be commissioned early this year. A 6th is due to be built subsequently. I think they are being developed via a Finnish – Russian consortium.
https://www.standard.net.au/story/6608802/power-returns-to-portland-smelter/
I can think of two reasons:
(1) They have not fallen for the absurd safety standards of some. Russia doesn’t build to absurd safety standards.
(2) Finland has an electricity system that has very little wind and solar, which is generally given the subsidy of “going first.” This wrecks the rate structure for other producers, including nuclear. Wood and hydroelectric do not wreck the rate structure.
There are good reasons to be fearful of the risks associated with nuclear energy production, but my main observation over the years is that fear of nuclear is much greater than is fear of climate change. This tips the scales strongly against nuclear energy.
Oddly both are invisible forces so you wouldn’t think that would be the case. Much of that fear stems from the two bombs used at the end of the 2nd world war plus three major incidents at nuclear power plants. So it’s not hard to see why this fear is so solidly embedded in the public psyche.
Meanwhile it seems that climate change disruption will almost certainly destroy our civilisation as we know it. This reality does not seem to lead people into the same level of fear. Rather, this prospect is rather sanguinely accepted – by comparison.
A second issue that I might have mentioned regarding nuclear is the way the subsidies for wind and solar are usually put in place, it makes nuclear electricity non-economic. It even drives existing power plants out of business. Once a country has decided to give wind and solar the subsidy of “going first,” they wreck the system for everyone else. The system lasts shorter, rather than longer, as it drives backup power out of business.
There are many aspects of the above that the world could manage without, and an equal amount that it can’t without causing too much disruption. There are some forces wanting to cut off China, and this post explains why that could be misguided. But we can also overreact regarding the latter. Overreaction is overreaction. And it has dubious efficacy in a hugely complex world. Why not pursue the “push” that suits one at the local level, and let others do what suits them at whatever level? Why must there be a single approach to China? Who says small groups pushing their local agendas can’t have a useful effect on a self governing system? Why must China be the only game in town for everything? Isn’t that the role of a self organizing system? Isn’t it problematic to make centralized one-size-fits-all lurches rather than pursuing diverse microscopic breakthroughs you can make in your own corner?
With nuclear you have to think small, modular, short construction time, spent fuel rods thereafter thorium, assembly lines, batteries of small units (100 MWe) – but it may very well be too late:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/05/seaborg-molten-salt-reactor-will-fit-on-a-truck-and-cost-less-than-coal-power.html
It is worth to note that exactly in Denmark where wind is hailed as a deity there are actually two start ups with the goal to go nuclear.
You also have to think “Concern about guarding the reactor; concern about foreign terrorism; concern about spent fuel.” Also, time to approve new devices.
What are you going to do with the electricity as well? Any place that have much wind and solar will need huge amounts of variable fuel supply for balancing. Nuclear is generally not balancing, unless it is designed that way. If it is designed that way, its return for investors (also, its EROEI) may be too low. Having variable wind and solar basically wipes out the economic incentive for any fixed supply type of electricity, the way solar electricity is priced.
I hope the people in Denmark read the blog posts of Paul-Frederik Bach. He is a a retired electrical engineer. Until his retirement in 2005, he was responsible for the integration of wind power into the power grid of Denmark.
P-F Bach talks about the big subsidies that are needed for wind in Denmark. The orange part of the bars in this chart represent the subsidies.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/netherlands-wind-energy-amount-paid-for-electricity-under-pso-compared-to-market-value.png
P-F Bach talks about how built transmission is falling behind what is needed. Adding the needed extra transmission will likely need subsidies as well. With inadequate transmission, there is a big difference between the price of necessary imports, when wind is not available, and the selling price of excess wind, when it is available. (It is also not clear to me that there is enough balancing power in Norway/Sweden, if more transmission is built.)
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/demark-relative-wind-and-pv-prices-for-export-and-import-p-f-bach-1.png
He talks about “45% of Danish Green House Gas Emissions Ignored in Climate Targets,” and how its GHG emissions have not really been decreasing.
He talks about the many near misses that are happening now, in terms of trying to keep the lights on, using as much wind and solar are currently being used in Europe.
The nuclear “safety” issue founders on one irreducible fact of Nature: the waste products of a nuclear reactor are far more dangerous than the fuel that went into it. Because they have a much shorter half life.
Unless this problem is solved, nuclear power is unsafe and will remain so. But nobody (outside Russia) is even attempting to solve it, preferring to bury the waste in the ground or flush it into the sea. In other words, export your radioactive waste somewhere else.
As ever, entropy trumps human ingenuity.
Why Asia is so prone to epidemics attacks?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/01/bill-sardi/your-chance-of-developing-symptoms-or-dying-from-the-menacing-coronavirus-that-now-threatens-global-human-populations-is-0-0000017482-symptoms-0-0000001137-death/
“Just in case you are worried, out of a population of 7+ billion people on Earth, your chance of developing symptoms from this corona-shaped cold virus is ~1 in millions and for death ~1 in hundreds of millions. However, risk dramatically increases with advancing age and among malnourished populations such as in Asia where deficiencies of essential nutrients, namely zinc and vitamins C and D, are often prevalent. Modern medicine casts a blind eye at nutrition.
But regardless of what you have just read here that minimalizes the risk, health officials are beating the Coronavirus drum, with mass contagion predicted and an expert predicting this outbreak could be ten times worse than the 2003 epidemic that left 813 dead. That may only be true in a country with a large portion of malnourished people like China. The estimate that the Coronavirus will grow to 10,000 cases in the Chinese city of Wuhan (11 million population) is still a very low risk — 1/100th of one-percent.”
“All the advice to stay away from crowds, wear a mask, wash your hands, is silly. That is because the lack of hygiene is not why cold and flu viruses plague the planet in winter months. It is just that winter months are when the human immune system crashes. The disease is lack of internal defense, not external exposure and transmission. The primary reason for this is plunging vitamin D levels from lack of sunlight as the earth tilts away from the sun in the winter solstice.”
Why You Can’t Skip Magnesium If You’re Taking Vitamin D
“”People are taking vitamin D supplements but don’t realize how it gets metabolized,” study co-author Mohammed Razzaque, a professor of pathology at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Pennsylvania, said in a statement. “Without magnesium, vitamin D is not really useful.” [9 Good Sources of Disease-Fighter Vitamin D]”
https://www.livescience.com/61866-magnesium-vitamin-d.html
I’m sure extra magnesium is not necessary when taking vitamin D, if you already have enough magnesium in your body. I’d followed the advice to take a magnesium supplement alongside the vitamin D tablet.
Before long, I began having memory issues. I’d spend about 3 minutes to recall from my memory a well known name such as Woody Allen. Alzheimer’s has afflicted some of the older members of my extended family, so I was worried. Then I saw a comment from a reader in Gail’s previous post that taking magnesium supplements had given him “brain fog”. I ceased the magnesium supplements and the speed and efficiency of my memory of names gradually returned – thank goodness! So BEWARE!
Taking magnesium in large amounts can be harmful. The German norm for magnesium intake from supplements is just 250 mg or less.
https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2017/12/14/Germany-sets-new-daily-limit-on-magnesium-supplements
Moreover, when somebdy has got a magnesium defficiency, it can not be repaired immediately by ingesting large amounts of magnesium.
I prefer magnesium chloride baths and magnesium malate w/SRT, which are well tolerated.
http://scottsdalemagnesiumstudy.com/
Magnesium l-threonate for memory works in those who need it, but also in reasonable amounts, rather smaller doses for the people with lower bodily weight.
I take magnesium tablets as if they were M&Ms, and I’m certainly not having any Old-Timer’s issues.
Woody WHO?
It certainly depends the needs of your body. You can have your magnesium levels checked by your physician. The given study (http://scottsdalemagnesiumstudy.com/) shows that it takes long time to achieve healthy levels of magnesium, when somedy is defficient. Determining magnesium defficiency is best done with the complex evaluation of the symptoms.
D vitamin levels should also be checked by your physician.
Simply said: The long term defficiency problems usually can not be solved with large doses of vitamins or minerals, as the small defficiencies for longer periods are their cause. You have to wait, untill the levels normalize and the symptoms disappear.
I would worry about too high levels of vitamin D leading to kidney problems.
Magnesium and potassium are two trace elements hardest to find in a normal diet. My solution was a breakfast cocktail: 50% grapefruit juice, rich in K, and 50% natural mineral water, rich in Mg. My preferred water source was “Gerolsteiner Sprudel”, from the German Alps, which has been a reliable source ever since the Romans found it, and so can be considered a renewable resource.
I believe that for every shortage in our diet, Nature has a remedy. Thank Gaia, or thank Darwinian evolution; your choice.
Potsssium is not such a big problem:
“In fact, one study reported that potatoes are the best dietary source of potassium, calculating that a small baked potato provides 738 mg of potassium, or nearly 16% of the AI (1, 19Trusted Source).”
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-loaded-with-potassium
In Europe before the modern age, physicians were used to regular, if not annual, outbreaks of high-mortality ‘fevers of the poor.’
Same context: dense populations in slums, very poor nutrition and lack of hygiene, and less able than the rich to move away to safety once the epidemic had started.
The frequency of epidemics in early days is one of the reasons why the 1918 Spanish Flu didn’t get much publicity. Everyone expected these. This was part of the reason for big family sizes.
“Just in case you are worried, out of a population of 7+ billion people on Earth, your chance of developing symptoms from this corona-shaped cold virus is ~1 in millions and for death ~1 in hundreds of millions…”
Of 7 billion people, only 1 in 100 million are at risk of dying. That is just 70 people worldwide. The death toll from China alone is more than double that. Need I say more? These people are in so much panic, they cannot even lie convincingly.
I think the issue that has caused so much panic was Hubei’s response to the virus, stopping people from leaving Hunan and building more hospitals. China had been criticized for not doing enough with earlier viruses. It wanted to be sure to do enough this time around. This encouraged other in China (like Disney World) and around the world to emulate its actions. Once the example of the type of response was telegraphed around the world, China was in deep trouble, especially because these actions wouldn’t really stop the virus.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/world/asia/coronavirus-china.html
“Coronavirus Live Updates: Infections Up Tenfold in One Week, to Nearly 10,000.
213 people have died and Chinese officials on Friday reported the highest death toll in a 24-hour period.”
Is it really possible to stop this in China now that 10,000 have it and in all provinces, especially since it spreads from droplets from coughing or sneezing?
(Bloomberg) — The market took the Federal Reserve’s message Wednesday as fresh evidence of its dovish leanings, with traders gaining confidence that the next move will be a cut late this year.
While the Fed’s statement offered nothing much new for investors, Treasury yields extended their declines to toward multimonth lows, taking the 10-year to 1.59%, and traders ramped up their bets on a rate cut by November’s meeting. That fed funds futures contract now implies the Fed’s target policy rate will be 1.28%, roughly two basis points lower than earlier in the day. The dollar traded little changed after an initial slide.
The impetus for the rallies came as Chairman Jerome Powell addressed reporters, emphasizing that policy makers “are not comfortable with inflation running persistently below our 2% objective.” His remarks were to elaborate on the Fed statement’s reference to the current stance of monetary policy as appropriate to support “inflation returning to the committee’s symmetric 2% objective.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-message-reinforces-dovish-market-205952827.html
Boy, I couldn’t make this stuff up….like they are in CONTROL….
By some tape, string and old gum stuck together…
As always, much to learn from each new article. But given that people my age are being so easily seen to be expendable, I want to put in a word for us: Yes, getting rid of the old and the weak gives us a fresher, more energetic crop of people. So we gain physical health…but we lose experience. And at a time when hyper progress is waning–a time that coincides neatly with people slightly younger than me–it could be very useful to have older people around to recall simpler times, times when the Great Depression still reigned.
It is very common in this culture to think of material QUANTITY alone, and not in terms of qualitative experiences that some might argue as being what makes us civilized. You have more quantity to spread around with fewer people, but you don’t have more quality.
Also, making blanket recommendation to cull the old and weak wouldn’t appear to be consistent with the “leaving alone” that a self organizing system might recommend. It seems more economical to steer the direction of the new independently of erasing the old to replace it with the new. I think some conservatism, commonsense and balance would help in determining the health responses to various age groups, and regarding levels of treatment, during the epidemic.
Allowing the culling older people has zero long term effect on population levels. To that extent it’s much better to cull fertile or pre-fertile humans. To put it crudely. Not suggesting that any category should be deliberately culled. But disease has a way of culling in nature.
Most of the major diseases that have been eradicated hit young and old, and few people lived to old age. Meaning that human population was auto correcting. Stopping people from dying is the main occupation of medicine and nearly everyone supports this task. It’s tied up to a very strong human trait that informs us to try to deny our mortality.
Backwards. Parents who lose infant children tend to have more children to replace them.
Anecdotally, people who lose partners or siblings in their prime are also likely to want to “replace” them. High infant mortality is everywhere correlated with high fertility, and falling mortality *precedes* falling family sizes. “I want every good thing for this child before I have another”.
Save the children, avoid the population bomb.
Back when I started work as an actuary, I heard that awards for the death of children in private passenger automobile accidents were very low, about $1,000 per year of life. The reason given was, “The parents can have other children.”
Thaks Gail, for thinking this through. I’d also mention that it is an opportunity for people to educate themselves about vaccines, and begin by noting that a flu vaccine protection has a best before date. There seems to be raised expectations of what a vaccine can do.
But in regard to grandparents, this was how most of our useful knowledge was imparted to the very young. Some things can be taught, and some things you have to get from your parents and grandparents. Once that is lost, it becomes very difficult and expensive to re-learn.
I know that some autism groups have been concerned about taking small babies and vaccinating them, simultaneously, for many different things. One of the issues was the preservatives in the vaccines being in the aggregate, detrimental for the babies. I would suppose the impact on the immune system might be another. Needless to say, the medical profession has fought back furiously.
Thank you, Gail: that was exactly my conclusion. The vaccines were thoroughly tested and proven to be safe. But those were the vaccines tested in the laboratory. The ones distributed to the masses were adulterated with several other chemicals, to improve their shelf life, and those chemicals were never tested.
One such adulterant is metabolised by the human body to yield metallic mercury. How much mercury can you inject into a small child before they become mad as a hatter? Modern industrial scale medicine is no longer about health; it is about profit.
Those who recall life before the credit and asset booms and the spawning internet can offer a useful counter-poise to the clueless young, I’d agree.
The most esteemed, and wisest, friend I have is 80 this year, but I am resigned to their loss in the near future whatever this virus gets up to.
On the other hand, the demographic imbalance is going to be unmanageable, and perhaps we all have to make our peace with God and the world by the age of 50 and recognise that, historically, we have had long lives – brief as that might seem! It’s all bonus time….
If we’re not seeing a “better” lifestyle up ahead, why shouldn’t we hold on to this one to the best of our ability, and for as long as possible?
Because no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. … Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
I was thinking of it socially (not individually) for the reasons you mention.
No, Man is an island, entire of itself, and totally insular. It is not part of the UK and was not part of the EU either.
On the other hand, The peninsula of Kintyre is only semi-insular, although it’s tip, the famous Mull of Kintyre, might as well be an island given how far along the Long and Winding Road it is from the nearest pub or fish & chip shop. No wonder Paul got bored with crofting there.
https://youtu.be/EH7I-WV0LZA
Rather than hold on to the lifestyle we have, people want to dismantle the ff industry and replace it with “renewables.” They don’t see the cost to this lifestyle of doing that. Maybe in similar ways, people are anxious to discard something that works, on a gamble that the new thing will be better. Many many things that can be maintained with a different mindset are left to crumble. For me most of our predicament stems from what’s in people’s minds.
I agree very much:
“people are anxious to discard something that works, on a gamble that the new thing will be better,” and
“For me most of our predicament stems from what’s in people’s minds.”
Regarding the second: Yes, but this is the way self-organizing systems work. Somehow, it is what people think that brings down the system, perhaps in a way that leaves survivors. The system works in a very mysterious way!
If people could really reach a situation where all resources were distributed equally, the population would die close to simultaneously.
Thanks very much for clarifying this. What it suggests is a don’t worry, be happy philosophy. So don’t worry about what the others are doing that might be bad–we can’t know whether it IS bad. But assuming we are a microcosm of a self organizing whole, doing off in our corner what we feel we were put here to do seems a good bet.
There is a basic error in your estimation of the fatality rate of this new virus. If you simply divide the number of deaths to today by the number of cases you get an understated figure. People are not dying instantly. They take time to die, so it is much more accurate to compare deaths today to the number of cases a week ago. Then you get a much higher and probably more realistic figure. If you compare the number of deaths to the number of “cured” you get an even bleaker picture. As of Monday 27 January there were 106 deaths and 60 “cured” (to use the language of the Chinese Communist party). The rest of the cases are still unresolved. We don’t have the luxury of looking back at an historical event with all the cases and all the deaths to get an accurate picture at this stage because the situation is rapidly changing.
The Chinese are aware of how much political instability a badly performing economy involves (look at the troubled history of the 1800s in that country) and yet they are still taking drastic measures. Obviously something has them rattled but we can’t get an accurate picture because of the clampdown on information.
At the moment we can know nothing of any real value, except for the apparently high infection rate: all parties – governments, NGO’s , media, etc – involved are busy obscuring the truth, even if they know it themselves which is most doubtful.
But we likely also get an overstated ratio, because some people are fighting off the virus and never seeking medical care.
At this point, we don’t really know very much, except that we really cannot stop transmission. The best we can do is slightly slow transmission. Even doing this seems to have an indirectly seriously negative impact on the economy.
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Hi everybody. It’s good to take 5000 units per day of vitamin D3 for immune support and antiviral properties. It is cheap and readily available. Start now. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3308600/
John Day MD, public health, Austin Tx.
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Thanks for your interesting article. I’ve heard that countries that had effective quarantines regimes in place e.g. Australia were able to limit the % of death from the 1918 flu. While those that had no quarantine and a population with less immunity to European diseases e.g. Samoa suffered terribly. There is a view the 1918 virus mutated extremely rapidly to a less lethal strain so that when Australia subsequently lifted quarantine restrictions its population was exposed to this less lethal strain.
I wonder if any country can really keep out the virus today. Australia was pretty isolated in 1918. It took boats a long time to get there, so it was clear who had the disease. Any dead bodies would have been dumped overboard. This is a map showing how long it would take to travel from London in 1914. Travel from London to Australia would have taken more than 40 days.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/leadAssets/35/14/isochronic-map-191_3514977a.jpg
I also found this history write up. http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime-history/1918-1939/index.html
With respect to the Depression, the same reference gave this interesting information (not that it is relevant to your comment)
This virus has turned up during the norther hemisphere Winter. Here in the southern hemisphere the spread of the virus will depend a lot on the extent to which it is contained before, say, April. It is the dense air traffic that instantly connects the two hemispheres that enables viruses to spread and mutate during the annual cycle. Of course, many individuals do travel between hemispheres throughout the year, but I think susceptibility of a population to respiratory diseases is markedly increased during Winter months.
We live in the world that is shaped by the word “competition”. The competition has become something that is considered to be normal: the people celebrate sportsmen who spread unhealthy attitudes towards reality. As if winning, overcoming somebody else was the right thing.
But the reality does not function that way. The functioning of the system is based on reliability, not on being faster, cheaper etc.
The biggest surprise for the people is when they rely on the cheap and easy availability of others in achieving them their goals and when they take the availability of others for granted. Like in the case of China: the world has become accustomed to the supply of Chinese goods so much that e. g. USA started to impose tariffs on the goods imported from China. The big surprise is that China stops to be a cheap and reliable supplier as it starts to face the same problems like those who rely on it, like ageing of the population, the spread of diseases etc.
Nothing lasts forever.
Actually, the age of competition is over. Peter Thiel said competition is for losers.
Ownership of the land is forever. The papacy is forever. I am sure you witnessed many landowners who lost their land on 1945 returning with a vengeance and an iron determination to recover their properties.
Technofeudalism is the future. Those who have a large plot of land will remain lords forever. Those who don’t will be serfs forever.
How about survival of the best adapted? Dead landowners don’t remain lords forever. Their children may have no use for the land.
Governments tax land and what grows on it, or whatever else it is used for. Governments can easily take away land.
The “funny” thing about the current situation is, that the face masks, which have recently been in short supply in Slovakia due to the people buying them in large amounts, are imported from China, where they are produced…
Face masks sold out here days ago; but we have lots of Chinese students and academics, and I wonder if they didn’t rush out and buy them all up?
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