We have learned historically that if we can isolate sick people, we can often keep a communicable disease from spreading. Unfortunately, the situation with the new coronavirus causing COVID-19 is different: We can’t reliability determine which people are spreading the disease. Furthermore, the disease seems to transmit in many different ways simultaneously.
Politicians and health organizations like to show that they are “doing something.” Because of the strange nature of COVID-19, however, doing something is mostly a time-shifting exercise: With quarantines and other containment efforts, there will be fewer cases now, but this will be mostly or entirely offset by more cases later. Whether time-shifting reduces deaths and eases hospital care depends upon whether medical advances are sufficiently great during the time gained to improve outcomes.
We tend to lose sight of the fact that an economy cannot simply be shut down for a period and then start up again at close to its former level of production. China seems to have seriously overdone its use of quarantines. It seems likely that its economy can never fully recover. The permanent loss of a significant part of China’s productive output seems likely to send the world economy into a tailspin, regardless of what other economies do.
Before undertaking containment efforts of any kind, decision-makers need to look carefully at several issues:
- Laying off workers, even for a short time, severely adversely affects the economy.
- The expected length of delay in cases made possible by quarantines is likely to be very short, sometimes lasting not much longer than the quarantines themselves.
- We seem to need a very rapid improvement in our ability to treat COVID-19 cases for containment efforts to make sense, if we cannot stamp out the disease completely.
Because of these issues, it is very easy to overdo quarantines and other containment efforts.
In the sections below, I explain some parts of this problem.
[1] The aim of coronavirus quarantines is mostly to slow down the spread of the virus, not to stop its spread.
As a practical matter, it is virtually impossible to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.
In order to completely stop its spread, we would need to separate each person from every other person, as well as from possible animal carriers, for something like a month. In this way, people who are carriers for the disease or actually have the disease would hopefully have time to get over their illnesses. Perhaps airborne viruses would dissipate and viruses on solid surfaces would have time to deteriorate.
This clearly could not work. People would need to be separated from their children and pets. All businesses, including food sales, would have to stop. Electricity would likely stop, especially in areas where storms bring down power lines. No fuel would be available for vehicles of any kind. If a home catches fire, the fire would need to burn until a lack of material to burn stops it. If a baby needs to be delivered, there would be no midwife or hospital services available. If a person happened to have an appendicitis, it would simply need to resolve itself at home, however that worked out.
Bigger groups could in theory be quarantined together, but then the length of time for the quarantine would need to be greatly lengthened, to account for the possibility that one person might catch the disease from someone else in the group. The bigger the group, the longer the chain might continue. A group might be a single family sharing a home; it could also be a group of people in an apartment building that shares a common ventilation system.
[2] An economy is in many ways like a human being or other animal. Its operation cannot be stopped for a month or more, without bringing the economy to an end.
I sometimes write about the economy being a self-organizing networked system that is powered by energy. In physics terms, the name for such a system is a dissipative structure. Human beings are dissipative structures, as are hurricanes and stars, such as the sun.
Human beings cannot stop eating and breathing for a month. They cannot have sleep apnea for an hour at a time, and function afterward.
Economies cannot stop functioning for a month and afterward resume operations at their previous level. Too many people will have lost their jobs; too many businesses will have failed in the meantime. If the closures continue for two or three months, the problem becomes very serious. We are probably kidding ourselves if we think that China can come back to the same level that it was at before the new coronavirus hit.
In a way, keeping an economy operating is as important as preventing deaths from COVID-19. Without food, water and wage-producing jobs (which allow people to buy necessary goods and services), the deaths from the loss of the economy would be far greater than the direct deaths from the coronavirus.
[3] A reasonable guess is that nearly all of us will face multiple exposures to the new coronavirus.
Many people are hoping that this wave of the coronavirus will be stopped by warmer weather, perhaps in May or June. We don’t know whether this will happen or not. If the coronavirus does stop, there is a good chance the same virus, or a close variation of it, will be back again this fall. It is likely to come back in waves later, for at least one more year. In fact, if no vaccine is found, it is possible that it could come back, in various variations, indefinitely. There are many things we simply don’t know with certainty at this time.
Epidemiologists talk about the spread of a virus being stopped at the community immunity level. Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch originally estimated that 40% to 70% of the world’s population would come down with COVID-19 within the first year. He has revised this and now states that it is plausible that 20% to 60% of the world’s population will catch the disease in that timeframe. He also indicates that if the virus cannot be contained, the only way to get it under control is for 50% of the world’s population to become immune to it.
The big issue with containing the coronavirus is that we cannot really tell who has it and who does not. The tests available for COVID-19 are expensive, so giving the test to everyone, frequently, makes no sense. The tests tend to give a many false negatives, so even when they are given, they don’t necessarily detect people with the disease. There are also many people who seem to spread the disease without symptoms. Without testing everyone, these people will never be found.
We hear limited statements such as “The United States surgeon general said Sunday that he thinks the coronavirus outbreak is being contained in certain areas of the country as cases of the virus rise across the United States.” Unfortunately, containment of the virus in a few parts of the world does not solve the general problem. There are lots and lots of uncontained cases around the world. These uncontained cases will continue to spread, regardless of the steps taken elsewhere.
Furthermore, even when we think the virus is contained, there are likely to be missed cases, especially among people who seem to be well, but who really are carriers. Getting rid of the virus is likely to be a major challenge.
[4] There is an advantage to delaying citizens from catching COVID-19. The delay allows doctors to learn which existing medications can be used to help treat the symptoms of the disease.
There seem to be multiple drugs and multiple therapies that work to some limited extent.
For example, plasma containing antibodies from a person who has already had the illness can be injected into a person with the disease, helping to fight the disease. It is not clear, however, whether such a treatment will protect against future attacks of the virus since the patient is being cured without his own immune system producing adequate antibodies.
Some HIV drugs are being examined to see whether they work well enough for it to make sense to ramp up production of them. The antiviral drug remdesivir by Gilead Sciences also seems to have promise. For these drugs to be useful in fighting COVID-19, production would need to be ramped up greatly.
In theory, there is also a possibility that a vaccine can be brought to market that will get rid of the virus. Our past experience with vaccine-making has not been very good, however. Out of 200+ virus-caused diseases that affect humans, only about 20 have vaccines. These vaccines generally need to be updated frequently, because viruses tend to mutate over time.
With some viruses, such as Dengue Fever, people don’t ever build up adequate immunity to the many disease variations that exist. Instead a person who catches Dengue Fever a second time is likely to be sicker than the first time. Finding a vaccine for such diseases seems to be almost impossible.
Even if we can actually succeed in making a vaccine that works, the expectation seems to be that this will take at least 12 to 18 months. By this time, the world may have experienced multiple waves of COVID-19.
[5] There are multiple questions regarding how well European countries, Japan and the United States will really be able to treat coronavirus.
There are several issues involved:
(a) Even if medicines are identified, can they be ramped up adequately in the short time available?
(b) China’s exports have dropped significantly. Required medical goods that we normally import from China may not be available. The missing items could be as simple as rubbing alcohol, masks and other protective wear. The missing items could also be antibiotics, antidepressants, and blood pressure medications that are needed for both COVID-19 patients and other patients.
(c) Based on my calculations, the number of hospital beds and ICU beds needed will likely exceed those available (without kicking out other patients) by at least a factor of 10, if the size of the epidemic grows. There will also be a need for more medical staff. Medical staff may be fewer, rather than more, because many of them will be out sick with the virus. Because of these issues, the amount of hospital-based care that can actually be provided to COVID-19 patients is likely to be fairly limited.
(d) One reason for time-shifting of illnesses has been to try to better match illnesses with medical care available. The main benefit I can see is the fact that many health care workers will have contracted the illness in the first wave of the disease, so will be more available to give care in later waves of the disease. Apart from this difference, the system will be badly overwhelmed, regardless of when COVID-19 cases occur.
[6] A major issue, both with COVID-19 illnesses and with quarantines arising out of fear of illness, is wage loss.
If schools and day care centers are closed because of COVID-19 fears, many of the parents will have to take off time from work to care for the children. These parent will likely lose wages.
Wage loss will also be a problem if quarantines are required for people returning from an area that might be affected. For example, immigrant workers in China wanting to return to work in major cities after the New Year’s holiday have been quarantined for 14 days after they return.
Clearly, expenses (such as rent, food and auto payments) will continue, both for the mother of the child who is at home because a child’s school is closed and for the migrant worker who wants to return to a job in the city. Their lack of wages will mean that these people will make fewer discretionary purchases, such as visiting restaurants and making trips to visit relatives. In fact, migrant workers, when faced with a 14 day quarantine, may decide to stay in the countryside. If they don’t earn very much in the best of times, and they are required to go 14 days without pay after they return, there may not be much incentive to return to work.
If I am correct that the illness COVID-19 will strike in several waves, these same people participating in quarantines will have another “opportunity” for wage loss when they actually contract the disease, during one of these later rounds. Unless there is a real reduction in the number of people who ultimately get COVID-19 because of quarantines, a person would expect that the total wage loss would be greater with quarantines than without, because the wage loss occurs twice instead of once.
Furthermore, businesses will suffer financially when their workers are out. With fewer working employees, businesses will likely be able to produce fewer finished goods and services than in the past. At the same time, their fixed expenses (such as mortgage payments, insurance payments, and the cost of heating buildings) will continue. This mismatch is likely to lead to lower profits at two different times: (a) when workers are out because of quarantines and (b) when they are out because they are ill.
[7] We likely can expect a great deal more COVID-19 around the world, including in China and in Italy, in the next two years.
The number of reported COVID-19 cases to date is tiny, compared to the number that is expected based on estimates by epidemiologists. China reports about 81,000 COVID-19 cases to date, while its population is roughly 1.4 billion. If epidemiologists tell us to expect 20% to 60% of a country’s population to be affected by the end of the first year of the epidemic, this would correspond to a range of 280 million to 840 million cases. The difference between reported cases and expected cases is huge. Reported cases to date are less than 0.01% of the population.
We know that China’s reported number of cases is an optimistically low number, but we don’t know how low. Many, many more cases are expected in the year ahead if workers go back to work. In fact, there have been recent reports of a COVID-19 outbreak in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, near Hong Kong. Such an outbreak would adversely affect China’s manufactured exports.
Italy has a similar situation. It is currently reported to have somewhat more than 10,000 cases. Its total population is about 60 million. Thus, its number of cases amounts to about 0.02% of the population. If Epidemiologist Lipsitch is correct regarding the percentage of the population that is ultimately likely to be affected, the number of cases in Italy, too, can be expected to be much higher within the next year. Twenty percent of a population of 60 million would amount to 12 million cases; 60% of the population would amount to 36 million cases.
[8] When decisions about quarantines are made, the expected wage loss when workers lose their jobs needs to be considered as well.
Let’s calculate the amount of wage loss from actually having COVID-19. If workers generally work for 50 weeks a year and are out sick for an average of 2 weeks because of COVID-19, the average worker would lose 4% (=2/50) of his annual wages. If workers are out sick for an average of three weeks, this would increase the loss to 6% (3/50) of the worker’s annual wages.
Of course, not all workers will be affected by the new coronavirus. If we are expecting 20% to 60% of the workers to be out sick during the first year that the epidemic cycles through the economy, the expected overall wage loss for the population as a whole would amount to 0.8% (=20% times 4%) to 3.6% (=60% times 6%) of total wages.
Let’s now calculate the wage loss from a quarantine. A week of wage loss during a quarantine of the entire population, while nearly everyone is well, would lead to a wage loss equal to 2% of the population’s total wages. Two weeks of wage loss during quarantine would lead to wage loss equal to 4% of the population’s total wages.
Is it possible to reduce overall wage loss and deaths by using quarantines? This approach works for diseases which can actually be stopped through isolating sick members, but I don’t think it works well at all for COVID-19. Mostly, it provides a time-shifting feature. There are fewer illnesses earlier, but to a very significant extent, this is offset by more illnesses later. This time-shifting feature might be helpful if there really is a substantial improvement in prevention or treatment that is quickly available. For example, if a vaccine that really works can be found quickly, such a vaccine might help prevent some of the illnesses and deaths in 2021 and following years.
If there really isn’t an improvement in preventing the disease, then we get back to the situation where the virus needs to be stopped based on community immunity. According to Lipsitch, to stop the virus based on community immunity, at least 50% of the population would need to become immune. This implies that somewhat more than 50% of the population would need to catch the new coronavirus, because some people would catch the new virus and die, either of COVID-19 or of another disease.
Let’s suppose that 55% would need to catch COVID-19 to allow the population immunity to rise to 50%. The virus would likely need to keep cycling around until at least this percentage of the population has caught the disease. This is not much of a decrease from the upper limit of 60% during the first year. This suggests that moving illnesses to a later year may not help much at all with respect to the expected number of illnesses and deaths. Hospitals will be practically equally overwhelmed regardless, unless we can somehow change the typical seasonality of viruses and move some of the winter illnesses to summertime.
If there is no improvement in COVID-19 prevention/treatment during the time-shift of cases created by the quarantine, any quarantine wage loss can be thought of as being simply in addition to wage loss from having the virus itself. Thus, a country that opts for a two week quarantine of all workers (costing 4% of workers’ wages) may be more than doubling the direct wage loss from COVID-19 (equivalent to 0.8% to 3.6% of workers’ wages).
[9] China’s shutdown in response to COVID-19 doesn’t seem to make much rational sense.
It is hard to understand exactly how much China has shut down, but the shutdown has gone on for about six weeks. At this point, it is not clear that China can ever come back to the level it was at previously. Clearly, the combination of wage loss for individuals and profit loss for companies is very high. The long shutdown is likely to lead to widespread debt defaults. With less wages, there is likely to be less demand for goods such as cars and cell phones during 2020.
China was having difficulty before the new coronavirus was discovered to be a problem. Its energy production has slowed greatly, starting about 2012-2013, making it necessary for China to start shifting from a goods-producing nation to a country that is more of a services-producer (Figure 1).
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.
For example, China’s workers now put together iPhones using parts made in other countries, rather than making iPhones from start to finish. This part of the production chain requires relatively little fuel, so it is in some sense more like a service than the manufacturing of parts for the phone.
The rest of the world has been depending upon China to be a major supplier within its supply lines. Perhaps many of these supply lines will be broken indefinitely. Instead of China helping pull the world economy along faster, we may be faced with a situation in which China’s reduced output leads to worldwide economic contraction rather than economic growth.
Without medicines from China, our ability to fight COVID-19 may get worse over time, rather than better. In such a case, it would be better to get the illness now, rather than later.
[10] We need to be examining proposed solutions closely, in the light of the particulars of the new coronavirus, rather than simply assuming that fighting COVID-19 to the death is appropriate.
The instructions we hear today seem to suggest using disinfectants everywhere, to try to prevent COVID-19. This is yet another way to try to push off infections caused by the coronavirus into the future. We know, however, that there are good microbes as well as bad ones. The ecosystem requires a balance of microbes. Dumping disinfectants everywhere has its downside, as well as the possibility of an upside of killing the current round of coronaviruses. In fact, to the extent that the virus is airborne, the disinfectants may not really be very helpful in wiping out COVID-19.
It is very easy to believe that if some diseases can be subdued by quarantines, the same approach will work everywhere. This really isn’t true. We need to be examining the current situation closely, based on whatever information is available, before decisions are made regarding how to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. Perhaps any quarantines used need to be small and targeted.
We also need to be looking for new approaches for fighting COVID-19. One approach that is not being used significantly to date is trying to strengthen people’s own immune systems. Such an approach might help people’s own immune system to fight off the disease, thereby lowering death rates. Nutrition experts recommend supplementing diets with Vitamins A, C, E, antioxidants and selenium. Other experts say zinc, Vitamin D and elderberry may be helpful. Staying away from cold temperatures also seems to be important. Drinking plenty of water after coming down with the disease may be beneficial as well. If we can help people’s own bodies fight the disease, the burden on the medical system will be lower.
There exist certain special forms of ‘alternative medicine’ which have been viewed with derision by the orthodox medical establishment yet do seem to deliver genuine results and in this respect could actually be of help in our fight against the coronavirus. One example is hydrogen peroxide. Amazing claims have been made about the effectiveness of this chemical in fortifying the human body against all sorts of medical conditions, especially contagious diseases, when ingested in suitable amounts. That the said claims can’t be casually dismissed as old wives’ tales can be seen not only in some of the research literature, but also in the very high overall rating and large number of positive reviews given by readers of a currently available book at Amazon providing details on the use of hydrogen peroxide in maintaining one’s health.
https://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Cure-Healing-Virtually-Diseases/dp/0977075141/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=one+minute+cure&qid=1584635342&sr=8-1
I therefore think it might be a good idea to check it out. Who knows, it might turn out to be our best weapon against the cursed virus. (I’ve been taking hydrogen peroxide daily for more than a year now myself.) Here’s also a free ebook on hydrogen peroxide.
https://educate-yourself.org/cn/The-Truth-about-Food-Grade-Hydrogen-Peroxide-2009-James-Paul-Roguski.pdf
I wish to make one thing very clear, by the way: I’m NOT trying to sell anything. I’m just trying to help, that’s all. Thank you. 🙂
I’ve heard some good things about Forsythia.
Jude Law, is that you? 🙂
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EPqfOeqVUAEgqOz.jpg
-GBV
If it works as well as they claim, it seems like someone else would have heard about it as well.
I think the ability of those in power to suppress ‘undesirable’ information — undesirable to them, that is — can actually and unfortunately be quite effective. That could be why hardly anyone around seems to have heard about hydrogen peroxide as a wonder cure; it would constitute very undesirable information indeed for powerful interest groups like the pharmaceutical industry, because people would then be using hydrogen peroxide instead of the countless pharmaceuticals churned out by the said industry.
One good example of how disinformed we can all be by those in power would be simply to look at how many down the street are aware of the terrible issues we all face as spelled out routinely here in Our Finite World. Another example would be the lies we’ve been repeatedly told about WW2, as pointed out by people like Paul Craig Roberts.
https://www.unz.com/proberts/the-lies-about-world-war-ii/
And for a couple final examples of how determined those in power can be to control the narrative, look no further than all the disinformation campaigns routinely indulged in by the CCP — hence the stupid virus we all now face — or how the West is treating Julian Assange…
There was no easy solution to this COVID-19 problem.
1. You quarantine, everybody goes home, economy collapses
2. You let it “run its course”, people across the world get infected across the world at an alarming rate..hospitals are overrun across the world…people with simple ailments die because hospitals cannot even treat them because they’re already overwhelmed by COVID patients…people start dying by the millions…when humans across the world see people dying by the millions, you think they will want to work..everybody will be calling in sick…economy collapses
This a classic case of d a mned if you do d a mned if you don’t…
If the economy weren’t in such bad shape to begin with, there might have been a chance that at least one of these options would have worked.
The financial system is under huge duress. We could easily see limited withdrawals as in India a few weeks ago or bank failures. And, hey, if it’s good enough for Bill Ackman…
“Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman stunned CNBC Wednesday with an intense doomsday economic forecast, and a plea to President Donald Trump’s administration for a full U.S. shutdown…
““Hell is coming,” Ackman said, with his voice breaking. He added, “This is a feeling like I’ve never had. Like there’s a tsunami coming.”
“Ackman claims he’s seen the writing on the wall with coronavirus for two months.
““My colleagues thought I was a lunatic,” he said. “I did stuff I’ve never done before. I’ve never had more than $200 in my wallet. I went to the bank, and I took out a large amount of money in cash. I made preparations a month ago.””
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/hedge-fund-heavy-bill-ackman-warns-cnbc-that-hell-is-coming-in-stunning-interview-america-will-end-as-we-know-it/
Forgive the eccentric opening para^^^ – it was a copy and pasting error.
Thanks, interesting.
Unfortunately, I’m not enough “psychologist” to evaluate this Ackman-boy panic attack, is it genuine or influenced, or even rehearsed? For example, for a guy supposedly trashing his professional credit (panicking at job for past ~2months and taking out tons of cash and other hinted deeper preps) he still refers to authorities saving the day in the end etc.. wtf?
In my book, 70% psyop schooled alphabet agency boy sent out there with this story, 30% probability of genuine reaction..
He is arguing for closing the economy down. This is crazy. There really will be a big problem, if he takes this course of action.
“I’ve never had more than $200 in my wallet”
LOL. I must be straight-up looney-tunes then, as I’m up in Canada and I still tend to carry $100 or so in USD in my wallet (not to mention all my Monopoly-coloured Canadian funny-money) 😀
-GBV
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-updates-lirr-halts-cash-payments-to-stop-spread-of-covid-19/ar-BB11jpuP?ocid=hplocalnews
Next they’ll ban magazines in doctor offices
Vaccine- You first. Sir may i see your certificate of vaccination. Starting to smell a rat.
Interesting report
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6819-covid-19-response-plan/d367f758bec47cad361f/optimized/full.pdf
page 4 assumption 2 “A pandemic will ast 18 months or longer and could include multiple waves of illness.”
Doesn’t the coronavirus look sort of like a certain tropical fruit? 🙂
https://media.mercola.com/assets/images/foodfacts/rambutan.jpg
More like a supernova. Perhaps ET sent the warning message and then the Borg arrived with the stealth space ships sprinkling viruses while shopping obscenities in Wuhan.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Composite_image_of_Supernova_1987A.jpg/300px-Composite_image_of_Supernova_1987A.jpg
FE’s balls after the Hong Kong authorities castrated him.
they’ll eat anything over there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzvTIAqFWgI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fupyU_sRupE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gPuH1yeZ08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-NOZU2iPA8
the worst song ever… at least in portuguese
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYs_5Wu2Pqs
(It’s a parody, of course, cause the guys in the band can’t play nor sing)
First quarantine problem I should cut my hair, but no one can cut my hair no hairdresser are all closed. I don’t know how long. I will have to buy a razor and make my hair short to zero
Yes, cut your own hair, but remember to charge yourself a fee. I suggest 50 euros. After all, you get nothing for nothing, and you might need that money as the crisis progresses.
This is GDP positive, right?
‘This is GDP positive, right?’
Right. If he forces himself to have a haircut every day and charges himself 50 euros each time, he will become extremely rich within his own lifetime.
Yep, same issue.
Well the 20k mark seems to have been pretty well breached with the dow. How much air is underneath? Another 7k?
Goodness, I need a light interlude now. I’ve been rediscovering 10cc – an English band that sounds American.
What about Dreadlock Holiday?
https://youtu.be/fUNTk5xsxk4
“What about Dreadlock Holiday?”
Don’t like that one. Even ‘Donna’ is better.
And at a time like this, who could forget The Wall Street Shuffle?
Gotta keep cool on Wall Street
When your index is low…..
https://youtu.be/foT1ITubs1A
‘You need a mark, to make your yen, if you wanna make MONEY!’
But 3 of the band were Jyoosh, so FE will not be a fan.
So humankind for many centuries has had its way with the other life forms on this planet, has now decided to run from this virus, rather than stare it down. We’d rather hide in the shadows even to the point of abandoning the very economy we depend on for everything we need, than risk personal harm and I admit I’m no different, secure in our domicile, ready to ride it out.
It is a choice though and that choice has been made, but wow, what a choice that was and without any debate or exchange of ideas. The doctors said this is what we need to do, so that’s what we’re doing. Purely a clinical viewpoint, not an economic one. However, even at this early stage of the pandemic, in certain parts of Italy they are no longer able to care for any more sick people. How long will it take for many other parts of the world to reach that same point? And then the strategy of abandoning the economy to even out the flow of patients to hospitals will seem to be for naught.
Yes, it’s very spooky, because you don’t know who in your vicinity has got it and might infect you. We should make it illegal for the virus to be invisible – that’ll put it in its place.
I would tend to agree:.
Once the initial opportunity phase for real and determined containment, quarantine and tracking has failed (all the West simply blew that one) one should let it go -with due advice and practical help for the more vulnerable so they can weather the storm – whereas this crashing of the whole economy is simply nonsensical.
We are adopting a suppression policy which can only fail, as the – Inadequately prepared and equipped – hospitals will be overrun pretty quickly anyway.
So many reports of livelihoods suddenly being lost and solid businesses put in peril, and moving at such great speed.
Bail-outs for the big players will not go down well, even if a pittance of a UBI is handed out for a time to the masses.
I am increasingly leaning towards the planned detonation theory.
We are seeing endless unnecessary headlines that are creating epic panic and fear. Stuff like ‘most people will be infected’ … ‘hell is coming’ and so on.
Even if these assertions are true, what is the point?
If NASA determined a massive asteroid was going demolish the earth in 2035… would we read about that in the MSM? I think not.
Then consider the endless movies and TV series with end of world themes. Other than The Road, I have not watched any of them, but I believe they follow a storyline of ‘things will be difficult and a bit grim, but it will be like living out a great adventure’.
I did download and watch a couple of minutes of one of these shows after being told it was awesome — the characters were all dressed in brand spanking new LL Bean-style preppy outfits. Perfectly clean with nice hair.
I recall mentioning to the person who told me to watch that this was a rather ridiculous depiction and their response was ‘there would be lots of quality clothes in the shops when the end of days arrives’ …… ah… ok…. the end of the world looks like great fun!!!
This smacks of conditioning …. preparing the masses for something big… everyone already knows what to do when faced with the end of the world — rush to the shops and clear the shelves….
Psychologically they are prepared — from watching TV shows?
The riots that were increasing in intensity across many countries have pretty much stopped. If not for the Wuhan Plague, one wonders how these riots would have played out. Given the Elders have no way to quell them since they are ultimately related to the shrinking pie caused by the end of cheap oil.
Surely unrest was brewing in other countries – there are many minorities in the UK that surely are living rough and have in the past taken to the streets….
Examined in this context… the Wuhan Plague may be providing us a bit of calm before the storm. It is certainly keeping us from rioting as we are all glued to the news. And it does make life a lot more exciting particularly for those billions whose daily life is massively stressful because they are unable to balance their budgets.
Their may even be an element of — live is no longer worth living because there is no opportunity — so the plague is actually welcome news because not only does it ‘end my miserable life but everyone else’s including the billionaire parasites’
Of course I can never prove any of this …. but something does smell a little on the fishy side.
When i hear all MSM drumming along the same song, my propaganda antennas start buzzing “alert alert, boss” and i get very very very very suspicious.
Now is albert, the prince of fuquing Monaco that get DA PLAGUE! Hummm… Who’s next? Phillip of Edinburgh?
I’m far from being into conspiracy theories, but the Prince of Monaco did strike me as strange….how random….
Phil the Greek? Isn’t he dead yet?
Are you kidding? I’m not even sure he’s a “deadable” person! At least, he will probably outlive everyone here.
Well, Greece was always THE fabled land of the immortal being 😉
A person would think decision makers would figure out the closures aren’t really very helpful quickly. Mostly they kill the economy and extend the length of time that the epidemic is a problem. Getting a vaccine is mostly wishful thinking, especially in less than 18 months.
“So humankind… has now decided to run from this virus, rather than stare it down.”
What do you mean by ‘stare it down’? How do you ‘stare down’ a virus?
Perhaps you mean finding out how it can be eliminated, how we can be immunized against it etc? If so, aren’t there at least some around who are conducting research on the matter?
And before they can come up with definite answers, what can you and I do to ‘stare it down’? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to run away from it?
The populace in Italy was cocky and tried to stare it down. Unfortunately, like the Italians lack brains, viruses lack eyes and got to work.
They are no longer perky, the stupidity, however is harder to eradicate. But give it a little time and we’ll “see”.
Ummmm, I don’t think ‘stupid’ and ‘lacking brains’ are suitable descriptions for a people who produced Botticelli, Dante, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Verdi. And I’m not talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
If those guys were alive in these days, they would be hunkering down at home after watching the Wuhan outbreak.
It is time to adopt the Scandinavian social distancing and Japanese bowing instead of shaking hands.
Let’s do this! 🇯🇵
Save more COVID-18 illnesses for later! We will have the fun of dealing with many mutated future versions, if the economy survives very much.
Pro tip: Why not go out and hug and kiss people randomly on the street and help out with the immunity process.
Any more volunteers beside Gail? Tim, Norman and the rest of the youth perhaps? Let’s do this together for the future of mankind.
☮️
Life imitating art soon in the streets of NYC?
Followed by this a little later 😉
‘I Am Legend’.
Great clip – must watch this modern version – never knew it existed. Thanks, ITEOTWAWKI.
Dreamer)
‘Vanilla Sky’ – reminds me of south London, October 1987. There’d been a hurricane during the night, but I slept right through it. And there was a power cut, so I couldn’t watch the morning news on TV while getting ready. I went out to find everything deserted. No buses, no trains, barely a car, no people – at first. I was mystified and suspected a nuclear strike on central London. Walking to work took me around 50 minutes, and eventually the fallen trees alerted me to what had happened – though at first I angrily suspected Crystal Palace football fans!
That must have been surreal…BTW I Am Legend is a great movie, if you like post-apocalyptic movies, which I have always loved, even before becoming a so called “doomer”. 🙂
Certainly was surreal. And by the time of the 7/7 bombings in London (2005), I was working in central London. We got sent home from work around 3 p.m. that Thursday and weren’t allowed back until the following Monday. There were police all over the place. Then this happened two weeks later:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes
And all that time I was sh’t scared travelling into work. Suddenly after 3 weeks, my fear went. I grew tired of being afraid and fearlessly got on trains and Tube after that.
I remember that poor guy…in this case were living right now, if we were to survive this (I personally doubt it), society will be changed forever, people will be afraid, psychologically scared….bars and restaurants, a shadow of what they were, tourism, a shadow of what it was, cruise ferries, completely dead, etc, etc.
It felt a lot like that when I was driving my taxi around York on Monday night. I took mostly staff who’d been working in bars, hotels and restaurants. All complained of the lack of customers. The weekend had been a normal busy weekend, even Sunday. What a difference a day makes.
I haven’t worked the last two nights, so it should be interesting working tonight. I doubt many bars or restaurants are still open. If it’s as quiet as I anticipate, and stays that way on the weekend, I’ll be returning the car on Monday morning. No point paying £300 per week to the private hire company if I can’t make it back.
At the supermarket on Monday, everyone seemed quite excited as food flew off the shelves. Not so today. The number of bare shelves had increased dramatically and the shoppers had a haunted look on their faces. A staff member told me there are queues waiting outside at 7 am.
Beautiful Spring day today. With all my extra leisure time, I’m looking forward to a summer of tennis and decorating (bought the paint already). Food stocks running out could put a serious dent in these plans.
Why is it I can’t get that REM song sharing your name out of my head?
Taxi and Uber drivers are definitely at the front line, both for possibly catching the illness and for not being able to earn enough money, if the economy is operated in a “quiet mode” for some time. I feel bad for you and others in your position. We are all getting to the same place, but you have more of a front row seat.
As soon as it became obvious the new coronavirus had become widespread in the UK, I accepted that I was sure to catch it. I strongly suspect I’ve had it already. Hit me like a tidal wave and left just as quickly. Maybe I overestimate my immune system or underestimate the virus.
Some of my passengers have told me they are getting a taxi because it’s safer than a bus. Not so sure about that. Buses are much larger than a car and, at the moment, almost empty. Plus bus drivers get sick pay if they don’t work, taxi drivers don’t.
Interesting! How old are you?
It probably is safer taking a taxi, now, because taxi drivers caught COVID-19 early on.
Haha Yorchichan, always loved that song. Be careful out there and good luck!
“Deutsche Bank is now forecasting euro-area GDP to plunge at a 24% annual rate in the second quarter and 13% drop in the U.S. The declines are unprecedented. The previous record quarterly drop for the U.S. was 10% in the first quarter of 1958.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/severe-global-recession-will-take-place-in-the-first-half-of-the-year-deutsche-bank-forecasts-2020-03-18
The fire hose response might be breath taking and all encompassing:
– UBIs mix (full scale and part time)
– delayed-recompensatory mortgage and tax payments for years
– hard infrastructure budgets relayed to direct household consumption instead
– large ticket items subsidies (cash for clunkers / rooftops / boilers / gardens / ..)
– ..
=> so my previous guesstimate of $30-90T stimulus per year was on the low side
Or not and it all just falls apart very quickly..
Hunger games begin!
Just received call from utilities, very eager to offer ~20% discount if signing updated contract now.. Pushed them off, expecting deeper cuts (or not locking at all).. , lady on the other end a bit perplexed, lolz.
Wow! And some folk think this will rebound in the second half?
Translation: give us more free money.
“Experts described the historic krone collapse as a “fire sale” as it recorded the biggest single day fall in modern times. The Norwegian krone was already at record low against the US Dollar when the currency market hit the panic button on Wednesday.
““The financial markets are about to melt down. The markets almost don’t work,” says Magne Østnor, currency strategist at DNB Markets.”
https://www.lifeinnorway.net/norwegian-krone-collapses-amid-coronavirus-crisis/
“Oil’s plunge has stung currencies across emerging markets, and there’s probably worse to come… Such has been the panic in global markets that even the currencies of net oil importers have tanked.”
https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/this-is-how-the-oil-crash-is-hitting-emerging-market-currencies-45127921
“West Texas Intermediate crude in Midland, Texas, tumbled the most in three decades. The grade, pumped in the heart of the Permian Basin, traded as low as $16.24 on Wednesday, the weakest level since 1999. That’s less than the cost of a ribeye at Midland’s local Outback restaurant.”
https://www.cbs7.com/content/news/BLOOMBERG-Permian-oil-is-selling-for-less-than-a-discount-steak-in-Midland-568911401.html
The quoted price we see for WTI seems to be about $22 now, but that may not reflect local market realities.
Western Canadian Select (oil from the Canadian oil sands) is being quoted at $5.41 per barrel. https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts
I would expect companies to shut down at this price.
that site has interesting numbers:
USA gasoline wholesale price is 69 cents…
Natural gas prices are awfully low as well. Even after prices rose today, Natural Gas (presumably Henry Hub) is 1.723 per Mcf. LNG japan/Korea Marker is 3.40 per Mcf. Shipping costs are very high for LNG. I think of about $2 per Mcf across the Atlantic from the US. Someone nearby has to have awfully cheap natural gas to ship.
Country cannot support itself with oil and gas prices where they are now. Not much arable land relative to population. Likely needs lots of imported food.
“The British pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar in 35 years, a reflection of the U.K. economy’s unique exposure to the disruptions ripping through the global economy because of the coronavirus pandemic.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/british-pound-falls-to-lowest-level-since-1985-11584537813
“The North Sea oil and gas industry is in a “paper-thin” position as global oil markets plummet towards 18-year lows amid the UK’s economic emergency, according to a report.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/19/north-sea-oil-gas-prices-plunge-market-collapse-uk-economic-crisis
Interesting that the FDIC should feel the need to reassure people:
“Yes, these are scary times. But that doesn’t mean you should head to the bank, drain your accounts and put your cash under your mattress…
“First and foremost, the FDIC points out that any deposits with a bank will continue to be protected up to at least $250,000. European countries operate similar deposit guarantees, although the maximum insured amounts differ.
“”The safest place for your money is inside a bank. Banks will continue to ensure that their customers have access to funds either directly or electronically,” the FDIC said.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/18/economy/banks-cash-coronavirus/index.html
Too bad what they are saying isn’t really true.
Nice overview:
“World leaders raced to shore up panic-stricken global markets on Thursday, pouring liquidity into the financial system as investors everywhere dumped assets, switching to dollars in cash amid the escalating coronavirus pandemic.
“Policymakers in the United States, Europe and Asia resorted to emergency action as the pandemic left their economies virtually comatose, with quarantined consumers, broken supply chains, paralyzed transportation and depleted shops.”
“South Korea warned of a global credit crunch and said it was setting up crisis funds to stabilize its financial markets…
“…nearly every stock market in Asia was in the red, with Seoul, Jakarta and Manila hitting daily loss limits that trigger the suspension of trade.
“At one point the Philippines bourse was down 24%. In currency markets, everything except the dollar and the euro collapsed.
“J.P. Morgan economists forecast the U.S. economy to shrink 14% in the next quarter, and the Chinese economy to drop more than 40% in the current one, one of the most dire calls yet on the potential scale of the fallout.
““We’re in this phase where investors are just looking to liquidate,” said Prashant Newnaha, senior interest rate strategist at TD Securities in Singapore.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus/world-leaders-rush-in-to-shore-up-panic-hit-global-financial-system-idUSKBN2160ZP
“A couple of weeks ago… we compared the coronavirus’s economic effect to the credit crisis, saying that stopping the flow of people would devastate economies as badly as, if not worse than, stopping the flow of credit. Now that this thesis has proved alarmingly true, it seems also to be causing one of those original credit crises, involving, you know, credit.
“Businesses and banks are scrambling for cash, and investors are dumping their winners to cover their losses… the market could… be pricing in deflation.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-18/coronavirus-crisis-starts-to-look-like-a-financial-crisis
“A sell-off in the supposedly safe government bond market this week has unnerved investors looking for a haven amid the risk-asset storm. A slump in open positions in bond futures suggests a rush to meet margin calls may be partly responsible.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/enormous-de-leveraging-in-bond-market-smacks-of-margin-call-rush
Treasury bill yields turn negative on fear – “The yield on the one-month Treasury bill maturing in April slipped to minus 0.003 per cent.”
https://www.ft.com/content/317bbb84-694f-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3
“The Fed is throwing all of its fire power at markets, and yet interest rates continue to rise, a troubling sign when the economy looks set to slow down dramatically.
“Rising rates could increase borrowing costs for all kinds of loans for businesses and individuals .The credit and rates markets also are the direct target of the Fed’s stimulus programs.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/interest-rates-are-rising-a-bad-sign-as-the-economy-slides-toward-recession.html
The very close yields are negative; the distant interest rates seem to be up.
“When bonds no longer act as a hedge to falling equities, then the investors will have sell both and move to cash.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETaPp3UUYAA8ElW?format=jpg&name=large
It looks like more than a small problem at the end!
It hit a wall.
Margin calls seem like they often are part of the reason for shifts in prices.
This cannot end well!
Thanks for the link.
“Coronavirus is now spreading in Africa. Zambia, Gambia & Djibouti reported their 1st cases today. South African cases doubled in the past 48 hours. It’s in 33/54 countries. Africa should “prepare for the worst” says WHO.
This will be disastrous.” Liz Sly
No, it will not be desastrous. Some People will die. But most People there are just Kids. They are Young. And People there don’t have the means to Panic buy whatsoever.
Whitey (or newly Chinese) about to return to his former mega acre African ranch living style?
It’s the Wuhan flu.
I visited Wuhan in 2011. One thing I remember is that they have a set of amazing bells that are reproductions of ancient bells (433 BCE) that exactly reproduce the musical scale that we in the West are used to. I heard performers play “Ode to Joy” on them, when I attended a concert on those bells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianzhong_of_Marquis_Yi_of_Zeng
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/reproduction-of-ancient-bells-in-museum-at-wuhan.jpg
All of this was housed in a fairly fancy museum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubei_Provincial_Museum
I once had a Mongolian album with bells and flute.
They made just a wonderful sound.
I think using ancient Chinese bells to play ‘Ode to Joy’ is like using chilli sauce to add flavor to chocolate ice cream, or giving Leonidas a young girl’s voice, gossamer wings and a magic wand. Certain things just… don’t go together. 😛
From the libretto:
German Chinese
Freude, schöner Götterfunken, 中国共产党的荣耀
…
The Chinese which Robert did not translate means “Glory to Chinese Communist Party”.
Bravo, kulmthestatusquo, and you win
one trillion of fake money; spend it wisely.
Yes, my post was satire, but I was most
confident that someone on OFW would
pick upon it. You are the best!
The audience was probably mostly American and European. We were riding on a river boat with other tourists, not too many years after the Three Gorges Dam had been built to provide electricity and flood control. We heard that tourism was very important to the area, because quite a bit of what had previously been agricultural land was being flooded by the wider river. The people needed some new form of employment, and tourism was up near the top of the list.
The disease will be worldwide. It may eventually affect 70% or 80% of the world’s population. There is no point in isolating one country with the disease from other countries with the disease. But it looks like a solution to the medical community.
a world united by the coronovirus
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETcZ2YpXYAAo77o?format=jpg&name=medium
Maybe and then it could be this
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c289996198c13d5fe1f0d0d2b03b8917
Hungry pissed off people are scarey
Everyone sent to heaven.
I’m with you on this Dan… they won’t be singing no koombaya when the food runs out… you can bet the house on that
I think world Will fall down all toghether. No One Will start long domino effect. All toghether
Nope, it’s the end of the frivolous consumerist bonanza, people buying cheap crap they don’t need, bought with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like.
It is officially over.
Good riddance.
https://www.dailydot.com/wp-content/uploads/658/15/5eccf9d4cfbc0d7f36eb45c280ccfc94.jpg
I am afraid that is the result.
Noticed Steve’s newest article in my account… how did I know before I opened it he’d be giddy with delight over a development with PMs… of course I won’t read that claptrap.
Maybe he can get together with Tim to talk about the awesome future that awaits us (if we have PMs and believe downsizing works)…. that’s a DelusiSTANI conference that I’ll skip
MASSIVE SURGE IN PHYSICAL SILVER BUYING: Totally Distorted & Broken Markets
NZ Closes Off to the World….
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12318284
Pointless… even if the virus is eliminated (another 8 cases today … so that is unlikely)…. if the virus is not stopped globally … the economy collapses… and we will starve.
No chems… no food…. simple as that.
Might be time for pizza and beer… pizza and beer… pizza and beer….
What did you think of Jenny Shipley’s assurance that we don’t need to panic buy toilet paper because we make plenty of it in New Zealand, Fast Eddy?
I was wondering if she was aware that the chainsaws that chop down the trees are imported, the parts used to keep them functioning are imported or fashioned from imported materials, the fuel for them is either imported or refined from imported oil, the same is the case for the helicopters and trucks that transport the logs and the trucks that transport the toilet paper. The machines that are used to mill and pulp the logs, produce the paper, are imported or made / maintained using imported parts, the food, clothing, cars, medicines, etc used by the employees are either imported or produced using imports, the roads are made using imported machines burning imported oil and making the road using chemicals from imported oil. Plus all that relies on a functioning banking system. Plus the imported packaging that the toilet paper is wrapped and shipped in. Oh, and let us not forget the electricity from hydroelectric power plants involving imported parts… etc…
It is quite possible that our politicians are severely lacking in an understanding of the way the world works and therefore the degree to which New Zealand is dependent upon foreign economies functioning properly just so that we may enjoy the experience of wiping our behinds. Let alone having water flowing from the taps, food on the plates, medicines in the cupboard, and everything else.
Great post Curt…and what you just described is true for the….
WHOLE!!!!
EFFIN!!!!!
PLANET!!!!
Let’s say I am not a fan of Jacinda… she’s the female version of Justin T… who is quite possibly the limpest dick on the planet…
Jacinda is clueless at the best of times…
She always has that odd look on her face… as if she is always worried or constipated… or maybe that’s just what Mormons look like all the time?
I don’t trust anyone in a leadership who cries… such people are weaklings and need to be returned to teaching grade 3 where they belong.
If what you’re saying is true, it’s a perfect example of the trajectory that civilization has taken humans. Instead of letting the weak and incompetent survive, we are increasingly, giving them responsibilities that were once reserved for the strong, such as leadership.
I suggest that you heartily take one for the team and remind her what it’s like to be a lady. You can do it, FE.
We stand with Hong Kong.
It is the supply chains that break in ways we can’t predict. Thanks for your examples.
What you describe sounds like an almost completely automated production system. As far as I am aware, COVID-19 isn’t a computer virus.
🦠
Let’s have a look how the COVID-19 beer, Corona is being manufactured.
https://youtu.be/2tLim5pkfOw
🍺
i had dinner once in Aukland with a wealthy Kiwi businessman who was making money with a fast-growing white pine on the North Island. he sold the wood to a mill making disposable chopsticks and toothpicks that were being sold in Japan. he claimed the business was recession-proof, at least to a point.
I agree, pointless. I suppose the one way it might make sense is if there are 50 different variations, and a person can eventually get all of them.
Next boom industry: Semiconductors. Amazon, Consumer, Telecoms/Network hardware Medtech providers.
During lockdown people will need their entertainment fixes. Netflix, YT, Games, Smartphones, TV’s. And of course Medtech gear to take care of the fallout.
Especially networking gear will sell like hotcakes.
It is why the “work safely from home” NASDAQ companies will not be as severely savaged by the pathogen. The semiconductor fabs are basically already a clean room, virus free operation. Can’t have surface contamination (viruses) on the wafers, ya know. Plus plenty of protective gear for the staffers to take home.
Dead industries: Airlines, Automotive, Hotels, Retail, Night Clubs, Pubs, Restaurants. All the regular frivolous “bragging rights” consumerist jank providers will be utterly devastated.
Not with broken supply lines. Unless the semiconductors can be made into finished products (such as cell phones, computers, and cars with much technology), there will be no use for the semiconductors. China’s part of supply lines seems to still be broken. The West is locked down too much to keep its demand amp.
China is lighting up like a Christmas tree.
Fabs running 3-shift operations for Medtech, industrial and Consumer gear. The virus is contained in East Asia. TSMC, GloFo and Intel have the output dial locked at 11. Expect no changes to happen anytime soon.
Ka-Ching. Remember where you read it first.
https://youtu.be/Hb1WDxSoSec
Too bad that they won’t find anyplace to sell the semiconductors to.
It’s fully booked semiconductor and electronics production lines, that is why China is lighting up like a Christmas tree. Low oil prices on top of it.
Full blast on the transformation to Civ 2.0
The old tangible consumerism is dead, long live the new intangible consumerism.
🙏
Let’s face it; the much despised white male with the blue pants will be operating the logistics and manufacturing systems, and with dozers shoveling the corpses towards the crematoriums towering outside the emergency care units while this COMET-19 virus lights up the BAU night sky and burns through the lifeblood of mankind.
Who will thank them for keeping this tragicomedy playing out while the rest stays home hunkering down until it subsides?
To that I can with absolutely certainty answer, not a single person. Instead there will be papers released by the gender “sciences” detailing the intersectional properties of the patriarchal structures of the COVID-19 protein composition.
That is the world we live in. 80% of all consumption and reproductive decisions are made by females, thus aggravating the situation by indulging in the excesses of IC and putting yet more disease-spreaders to this earth. No, I am not a misogynistic person. Let’s face the reality; women are the dictators of BAU and the men operate the controls and weaponry.
Women’s maternal instincts compel them to protect the weak but most of them don’t want to make babies with the weak and when given choice…they choose to mate with only the fittest men. The result of that female choice is a much lower birth rate compared to more patriarchal societies.
Men with their high sex drive and therefore drive more offspring has a lot to do with population growth.
Technology and civilization were merely efforts for men to impress women and get them to have sex.
Women appreciate the comfort but find themselves inexplicably not sexually attracted to the nerds who are managing our complex society.
Case in point:
https://images.app.goo.gl/RDMCGrF3jxm6LH7k8
That’s not really a good example. Being born into large amounts of wealth, like Gates and many “entrepreneurs” who are lionized in the education system, allows an ugly man to buy a wife. Gates was one of the lucky ones where his wife didn’t wake up one day with regret and divorced him. Then again, Melinda’s not good looking either, so William was probably the best she could do.
Government communique as to why schools in Australia are to remain open:
According to expert advice, keeping children at school minimises the risk of contagion and the spread of Covid-19.
Jesus wept.
I think it is fine because the kids have no parents probably
Mine do
Same.
Depends on who, if any, takes care of the kids if not in school.
Actually, it allows parents to work so that the economy will not collapse immediately.
And the madness continues! APRA, the Australian prudential regulator, following in the U.S.’s footsteps, has just suspended all capital requirements for Australian banks. The market was so impressed it fell some more.
We live in a very strange world!
Have you noticed Gail and Fast Eddy never post together. Hmmmm, curious. There is a med shortage, is Gail cutting back?
Gail is running out of time with all of the comments and all of the other things to do.
Australia’s Reserve Bank cut interest rates again today to 0.25%. The Aussie dollar immediately fell 3 cents!
The banks were bailed to the tune of $90 billion dollars! The local stock market took the news well and fell nearly 4%.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-virus-plan-anticipates-18-month-pandemic-and-widespread-shortages/ar-BB11ktjA
“A federal government plan to combat the coronavirus warned policymakers last week that a pandemic “will last 18 months or longer” and could include “multiple waves,” resulting in widespread shortages that would strain consumers and the nation’s health care system.”
perhaps a best case scenario…
I skimmed through the report. The “shortages” it anticipates are mainly medical supplies. In general, the authors of the report seem as unclear as the rest of us about how the virus will play out, and devotes most of its attention to forming committees of various types (if there are food shortages, I guess the Secretary of Agriculture would be expected to bring that up at a meeting), and specifying which phase of the response would be triggered by what phase of the disease.
Committee: an organism with at least eight legs and no brain.
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/18/hayward-its-time-to-quarantine-the-chinese-communist-party/
long live Hong Kong…
So China should have done more. But it is doubtful that the virus could even have been controlled.
ATM update…
first went to a bank ATM… no cash withdrawal would work… empty machine…
then I drove to an ATM which is not attached to a bank… a safe location, and perhaps not as busy…
as I had hoped, I got some funds out of it, and now safely stored in my cookie jar…
I was thinking how it might be more risky to get cash from the supermarket (they had a $40 limit on the cash-over per customer)…
since I’m guessing the virus would be more likely on the supermarket cash if a recent infected customer had paid with cash…
perhaps some paranoia there, but US money seems quite dirty… I don’t know about other countries…
There was a limit of $20 on supermarket debit amounts over purchase amounts when I shopped yesterday.
A request for the OFW community:
Has anyone seen any climate / temperature data lately? Specifically, since China and some of the other manufacturing hubs of the world shut down?
One good/bad thing that might come out of all this is that we’ll finally be able to put Guy McPherson’s anthropogenic climate change theories to the test…
Cheers,
-GBV
A Scientific American blog says, February 2020: Earth’s 2nd Warmest February and 3rd Warmest Month on Record
Europe and Asia crush their all-time warmest winter records by a huge margin
Perhaps the loss of global dimming in China is already having an impact on temperatures.
shopping today in a supermarket… I’m in the northeast USA…
the aisle for paper towels/TP was empty for its full length… bleach/cleaners/disinfectants still missing…
canned goods very low, and bottles/cans of juices half low…
the bread shelves were empty, and the meat section was about half empty, as was the frozen packaged foods section… the conclusion here, which concurs with a conversation I overheard yesterday, is that people are stuffing their freezers as full as they can…
lots of fruits/vegetables, and lots of most of the other non-food items…
it doesn’t look like total full BAU…
small chance, but once people have overstocked their homes, perhaps the supermarket shelves will get fuller…
at least I got my months of TP before it was too late…
Here in Taiwan, my local supermarket has big bags of rice and jumbo packs of toilet paper stacked out front, next to the windows. They’re on sale.
We will need to fly there and get some.
Yep, that’s what happened in Europe already.
Smaller fridges and pantries.. from certain threshold the panic wave subsides, but the US is more imports depend still (CAN/MEX/RoW).. so slightly worse situation (longer restocking) is to be expected.
welcome back fast eddie
Guys…. the Flight Radar is really scary… nothing in London (I know it is night time). Most of the planes in HK are and Changi are grounded (no call sign). 3 planes only in Shanghai.
Check out flight radar 24 – https://www.flightradar24.com/AXB683/2439f7b6
The were only so few planes over Changi Singapore and Tokyo, almost none (at my time of writing) over Beijing, Korea.
Surprising quite a lot over Bangkok
This is fatal
yes, fatal for one industry…
Leonardo sticks Davidinamilliongazilliintrilliionbazillion years, Leonardo sticks….
yes, the airline industry is perhaps one minor stick…
but models are not reality…
” .. eeh, ehm, .. Dr. Leonardo de Sticks… calling Dr. de Sticks… immediately for attending conference in Head_Doom_Master’s office..”
https://images.app.goo.gl/AD7bMQi9DQ49mLfLA
Singapore relies on transport for its survival. That is why Changi is important. The poeple, tourist coming to Singapore.
This is the Malaysia-Singapore checkpoint. The usual traffic jam takes hours to clear. There lots of trucks carrying food over.
Check out the current situation
https://www.onemotoring.com.sg/content/onemotoring/home/driving/traffic_information/traffic-cameras/woodlands.html
Shutdown of border (Malaysian side) is minimum 2 weeks.
There are still plenty of flights about, everywhere. The perfect delivery system for transmitting the virus worldwide. Just as steamships were during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which infected 27% of the then population and killed 3 percent of them.
The ships from Europe to Australia took so long that most of the people with the virus would be over it or would have died, I expect. This likely explains, in part, the lower relative death rate in Australia.
There are not many flights over Europe, but perhaps this is because it is night as I look at flights there. There are an awfully lot of flights over the US.
There are a lot of planes over Japan (including Tokyo) now, but few over China. Singapore has planes, too. Time of day may make a difference.
Ok… I am huffing and puffing after hauling a 90kg pig out of the bush that I shot 15 minutes ago…. I forgot to bring my hatchet so had to drag the entire body out ….
Anyway… I’ve just hacked off the head and done this with it outside our front gate:
https://www.litro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/lordofthefliespigshead.jpeg
Later I will add lipstick and some specs and a ball cap to give it a more human appearance … anyone who dares approach will see that and know Do NOT Fokkk with Fast Eddy. Only pain and misery are on the other side of the gate. A few high calibre rifle round whistling past their ears will put a nice !!!! on that point.
The dog is surely having a great time tearing hunks off the carcass… I might snatch some of the tender bits and get M Fast to make a nice pot of soup….
pig virus…
nice to see FE has gained a bit of steam and is posting like the old days.
the pig virus is replicating…
Others might see it differently …
I heard humans taste like pig.
Did I mention I bought more AMMO yesterday … the guy says do you want steel or lead… I thought hmmm… I dunno … so I said I am not sure why one or the other… he said well with steel you’d be shooting ducks normally …
I thought about that … is shooting a bad guy more like shooting a duck… or say a pig … and I thought surely a pig… so I said … I am doing some wild boar hunting so I guess lead is better right… oh for sure lead is the way to go….
8 boxes of lead buckshot….. and a box of 100 22 shells for good measure
That’s what I heard. Had a dream and these dudes had some humans hanging up that they were butchering and they called it “upright pork”.
All the people on Earth came from ancestors that didn’t just lay down and die when times got tough.
If the MaxVax (see Tom Clancy RAINBOW SIX) doesn’t work , it will be the cannibal age.
Starving sick people staggering around will explain our fixation with the zombie meme.
7billion too many people headed for correction.
Needs more lipstick
What happens when someone eats that pig head – Do they become the new king
Btw – as a connoisseur of pictures of pig heads on stakes that is from the classic film “Lord of the Flies”.
On a lighter note, one of the great mysteries that I have had with them comments section of this blog for many years is the following:
FE (Fast Eddy for the non-regulars here) HOW ARE YOU ABLE TO PUT YOUR REPLY TO A COMMENT AT THE TOP OF THE LIST EVEN IF YOU WERE NOT THE FIRST ONE REPLYING TO SAID COMMENT LOLLLL
Also, unrelated to the topics discussed here, for those who are already staying home either because of forced quarantine or optional (such as myself) you can entertain yourself by watching the German series Babylon Berlin. It captures the zeitgeist of 1929 Berlin perfectly and it also incorporates elements of another bubble in our history (which was obviously not final, like ours will be I believe), the 1929 crash. I have seen tons of series over my 48 years on this planet, and I must say I think it is the BEST I have ever seen. I highly recommend watching it in German with subtitles to catch the full authenticity of the series. But better hurry up, because the clock is ticking on all of us 😉
I am just a mortal like everyone else — put my pants on one leg at a time…. so I am not sure how my posts appear higher….
Hey hang on … perhaps I am not like everyone else… perhaps my comments are coming from the Higher Power and I am just a conduit… and the HP is intervening on OFW to ensure his/her/its message gets priority.
Might I be Jesus 2.0? The Saviour? A Puppet?
Wow that would be cool. I am waiting for the tap on the shoulder….
I am going to finish Vikings … then on to Babylon. I may binge that as time is likely running short…..
LOLLLL
Yes… that is 100% pure unadulterated FE. Confirmed it is him
All shackles torn off and thrown to the ground.
Let the truth be delivered in the belly of B52’s with FE piloting towards the oncoming carnage.
Oo-rah!
[gif removed – Gail]
We love you but no one but a crazy person would choose a doomed for their leader.
No offense but there is no future in it.
Sorry ITEO, but however good that series may be, “Utopia” is simply unbeatable. And better than “Utopia”, just maybe “The Road: The Series”, still in production fase but that is supposed to premiere worldwide sometime next year.
I looooooooved Utopia! But have you seen this one? Absolutely stunning!!! As for “The Road: The Series” I don’t think we will get to see it 😉
er,,, there’s no The Road series, it was just an attempt of dark humour, sorry, my english is feeble and my sense of humour is even worse 🙂
no, that is pretty clever…
so it will be a Reality Show… 😉
Hahahaha JMS, I was never the sharpest tool in the shed. 🙂
No. II’m an certified expert in tools, and you seem pretty sharp to me!
Haha thanks JMS 🙂
The Road series is launching shortly … it’s going to be reality without the TV… cuz their won’t be no TV…. and we’ll all get starring roles … all 8B of us!!!!
It will run 24/7…. the Martians will watch through their telescopes.
Speaking of Mars… where’s Elon in all this….
Surely, as the Saviour, he is going to announce the Tesla Vaccine… and the Tesla share price is going to $100,000 per share.
Don’t be surprised….
Hasn’t he already gone into hiding?
Automotive is a dead man walking. Let’s see, which business is Tesla currently in?
🤔
Elon is hiding from the pitchforks of the disgruntled stock holders.
My NASDAQ IT/electronics industry portfolio still +15% up this year. Is that telling or what? Now China is coming back online swinging.
A Phoenix will rise from the ashes. It will have a rock hard beak of silicon, feathers of glittering fibre optics and talons of limitless computational power.
How is that for Industrial civilization 2.0?
“It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twenty-first century came the great disillusionment.”
That’s the answer, isn’t it? The Martians read Wells’ book, and abandoned the production of tripods fitted with heat rays. Much smaller artifacts could be used to prepare our planet for colonisation …
Agreed, Babylon Berlin is fantastic.
Whole swath of industries – entire tourist, food and beverage, events, retail are burning. Decimated is not even the correct word. Everywhere in the world. Closed business means no revenue. No revenue means no jobs. No jobs means no money. No money means no food. No food means you rob/kill. You die. That is collapse. Is it in slow motion? Most airlines will be out of business and bankrupt by end of May. End of May is like 2 months away only. Hospitality is shutting down. Large companies are drawing down their revolver loans, exacerbating the banking crisis. People are maxing out their credit cards to buy food and drawing down their income to survive.
People are not paying for the utilities and soon, utilities will go broke (very soon) and they may not be able to buy the fuel to burn. People not paying mortgages or loans will break the banks, Factories not running will cause the entire supply chain to collapse – If customers are not paying for the product, the entire chain will be deeply affected.
Do this experiment – click here to see DJIA in Yahoo.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EDJI/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAF7ZIFMRNGfiPrl5Nz3Mm055Kty_6yJqJ5tzGdjswBESwtTE2ybVrlFF8tW69oujmBSiX7vEitn_-LnlOyZJ2rc0wDeQnovi18Z0l9b4TrV-NVvsuUBHDxOi3xlhMHOIlKLWxkwad2XNnkVnsTewJqSEABE1NNXHrU8batY5bUo8
Click on the chart 1D – looks normal. Click on 5 days, it is trending lower, click on 1 month, it is quite a big drop. Click on 1Y or 5Y, it is a vertical drop. Is not that Seneca Cliff?
In Zerohedge, from late Jan till last week, many articles on the virus and only a few on economic collapse. Now, it is split half-half. I prefer to go to ZH and scan at the headlines because it is condensed and it is not MSM. I use my brain to filter out which is “fake” or irrelevent”. Very soon, it will be all economic collapse news.
Wait until London and NYC start quarantine…..
those in the know (OFW), know it’s bad out there…
saying it’s bad out there is an understatement…
“People are not paying for the utilities and soon, utilities will go broke (very soon) and they may not be able to buy the fuel to burn. People not paying mortgages or loans will break the banks, Factories not running will cause the entire supply chain to collapse…”
there was OFW talk last year about nationalizing the oil industry if/when shale oil busted…
unlike 2008/2009 when it was mainly banks (?) that needed bailouts, this time it may require nationalization of banks, utilities etc…
which could mean our fates are in the hands of our “leaders”…
it’s bad out there…
There are some newbies to OFW ….. so, this is mean for them. Not for “old birds” like you
If things get this bad and people are starving and rioting then the quarantine measures will be reversed.
At some point, reversing the quarantine doesn’t work. In fact, this point happens very quickly. Too many supply lines have been broken. Too many bank failures have occurred. Prices of commodities remain too low for businesses to make money extracting or producing them.
Good point, now there is a limited time left to do whatever of (importance/interest to you) can be done before econ crash (and or phased in command style economy) gets too obvious for large %of the masses out there..
Here yee here yee…. Fast Eddy staggers out of the Tour Bus… white powder clearly visible on his upper lip…. Fast Eddy has another annouc..8876hhhh,… ment…. to …. make…. bafhaabhafheare (unintelligible mumbling>..)
The aide rushes up and gives Fast a snort of high grade something or other…. could be caffeine powder — who the fokk knows or cares at this pt… whatever it is it’s definitely not organic….
Ah that’s better!! I have an announcement to make:
NZ Government is urging everyone to come home …. Expecting a halt to all flights as airlines are ‘no longer economically viable’
I have the POWER to read between the lines so this = come home now because all flights to all countries will soon be halted. Come home now and die with your loved ones (and your mother in law).
There is very little time so get off your as-ses NOW and get on a plane. The demons are pounding very hard on the gate…. get out while you can… return to your villages….
See the video on this link:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120404655/coronavirus-ministry-of-health-to-provide-update
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/battlingram.jpg
How appropriate that we are ended by a bug. Our hubris will be punctured.
The wind is blowing hard here again today…. its building into a crescendo…. a portent….
http://www.kirabutler.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/the_ides_of_march1.jpg
I think we all made it safely past the Ides of March…
no?
The Ides of March are come, and gone.
We have been dead men walking since well before the Ides…..
It is strange! The virus is everywhere. What does cutting off travel do, if the virus is already everywhere? I suppose it might reduce the number of people sitting together for long periods on airplanes, if there are fewer people leaving on airplanes in the future. It also reduces shopping, tourism, collaboration on projects, and attendance at conferences. It also reduces space for air cargo to be transported.
SELL, SELL SELL….been there done that. Rinse and repeat
Recent moves in risk-free assets — in money and rate markets — is “puzzling” strategists at Citigroup led by Matt King, citing rising inflation-adjusted yields and falling gold.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hGYTqwzJt6w
Nice time to watch Jimmy Stewart
“Our best guess is that these have been exacerbated by margin calls, by the oil sell-off, and by the unwinding of loss-making positions by risk-parity and other hedge funds and by absolute return funds,” King wrote in a note on Tuesday. “Basically investors have been liquidating positions everywhere, whatever their rationale
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/traders-liquidating-positions-everywhere-upend-133442286.html
The trigger for the latest synchronicity is government announcements of stimulus measures to fight the outbreak, as investors adjust to the likely flood of new debt issuance and its impact on growth.
All the same the bond rout in conjunction with stock declines is one of a series of dislocations sweeping major assets as investors liquidate exposures including bond positions. Illiquidity and extreme positioning make for a dysfunctional market.
Just last week, ETFs tracking U.S. large-cap stocks and long-dated bonds saw their sharpest combined loss since TLT was born in 2002 — another reminder their inverse relationship doesn’t always hold during crises.
Recent moves in risk-free assets — in money and rate markets — is “puzzling” strategists at Citigroup led by Matt King, citing rising inflation-adjusted yields and falling gold.
“Our best guess is that these have been exacerbated by margin calls, by the oil sell-off, and by the unwinding of loss-making positions by risk-parity and other hedge funds and by absolute return funds,” King wrote in a note on Tuesday. “Basically investors have been liquidating positions everywhere, whatever their rationale
Don’t lose your head, STAY CALM….it may be a buying opportunity says Mr Potter
Why wasting “precious bodily electrons” on discussing Matt the clown..
This current crash and its detailed profile-peculiarities (quality stocks and bonds combo drop) have been predicted and advised as actionable strategy by several market predators for ~two years already.
Some places are have already collapsed. Some are not. Slow decline has happened since 1913 when Fed Reserve was formed. Since 1970s when Nixon broke the gold peg, the collapse accelerated. Many of us here do not feel it because we are probably still young or we are not at that social strata to feel it.
Every recession is a collapse of quality of life and people are left out. It just happen that these people are not “us”. There are many people who did not recover from the 2000 and 2008 financial collapse. “We” recovered because we have the skills or we have reserves. From 2008 till now, continuous, many people fall and again, it was not “us”.
However, these kind of gradual collapse is not visible to us because we don’t mix well with those below our social strata. The people on top of us will never know what is happening. That is why people say “The rich are so detached from reality” because they did not mix with the people out of their strata.
When the collapse hits you, then you will realize that it is immediate. If you are very rich, you may not even feel the collapse even though there are riots outside and people are killing each other. You just retreat to the bunker and say that you will come out when all these are gone.
Collapse is relative. It is just that it is punctuated by period of calm and some intense period of collapse. Unfortunately, this 2020 collapse might be the final straw that broke the camel’s back.
In my previous post, depending on the time scale, circa 2020-2023 will be cited as the collapse of humankind. Everyone is correct. Everyone, please take the cuddle soft-toy as a prize.
Yes, thanks for the effort to sum it up.
That’s what the instadoomers deny to acknowledge, ongoing stair case collapse with actors (of relative weight) is a historical reality up to present time, full stop. At some threshold there is a phase change inside global IC into abrupt collapse. And even that is nuanced because there are countries more vertically integrated than others, so again the used example of quasi rehash of the W-E Roman Empire crash, when one part tends to solider on. Are the chances of the surviving branch of IC high nowadays (sub scenario)? Certainly not, it could be just attempted “circling of wagons” in span of few years to meager decades.
That’s all.
“At some threshold there is a phase change inside global IC into abrupt collapse.”
that would be the ultimate tipping point…
I would mostly agree with you. I don’t think collapse really started until the 1970s though. Growth in cheap fossil fuels allowed a rising standard of living for many. Wage disparity that peaked in the 1930s decreased.
Let me dust off some old comments (about 5 years ago) on the slow-fast collapse.
Excerpts from a paleontology expedition to planet X (3rd plant from a young star) by an alien life-form.
“There is exist a life form that is possible intelligent which suddenly vanished approximately 1,000,000 orbits around the star (which we will term as “years in this literature”). Our finding that this life-from suddenly vanished from planet X eventhough they have successfully lived throughout the whole planet. Large quantities or carbon and iron were discovered in a thin sedimentary layer. there is no known cause of the disappearance although it coincides with a warming of the planet who happened around that time frame (plus/minus 3000 years). We cannot conclude if the species died out due to weather change or some other causes”
Excerpts from a future archeologist on earth (may not be humans)
“The modern human civilization started the inevitable decline when they learned how to start and use fire. As this is a non-renewable source of energy (killed animal for food and burn down the ecosystem), the decline was already set in place. The false prosperity of agricultural and subsequent industrial revolution masked this decline and the population was complacent to their final days. Around the first half of the 21st century, the entire modern human civilization vanished . We could not pinpoint the exact dates but we suspect it is between 2000-2100.
Excerpts from a human archeologist, maybe in the year 2400.
“The decline of the modern civilization started in the industrial revolution when their insatiable appetite for energy and expansion caused them to devastate their ecosystem. Initially, trees, whale oil, coal and finally petroleum or FF. They were lucky as there were replacements just when the previous energy source is about to run out. However, the usage of the energy source was exponential due to the increase of population and when it was running low, the substitute it with debt. Some historians said that after the creation of The Federal Reserves in 1913, the pace of decline accelerated. Punctuate by the 2 world wars that brought false prosperity to the population, the general population was complacent. In the early 2000s, the production of fossil fuel declined and complex but expensive methods are used to extract fossil fuels but these inefficiencies were masked by massive debts. There is a general decline in living conditions for many parts of the world starting from early 2000 after conventional fossil fuel declined. There was a major financial crisis late 2000 (circa 2007-2009) in which great parts of the economy has to be supported artificially and the quality of life deteriorated for many in different countries. It turned for the worse in early 2010 for Europe and mid of 2010s, mini financial crisis struck but there were shrugged off with more debts which only made the situation worse. The final nail came in when a rather mild and not deadly flu-like virus (nCOV-SARS2) popped the debt bubble in 2020 and the declined became very rapid. Due to the interconnected commerce, everyone on earth was affected. By early 2020, a very large majority of the humans have died off due to lack of food and basic necessities. ‘
The other big thing that occurred about 1913 was the peak in UK coal production. Iwonder if that was more important than the formation of the Federal Reserve. Or, perhaps peak UK coal was the underlying reason for the formation of the Federal Reserve, which allowed more debt. More capital goods were being made, but it was increasingly difficult to make and operate them because of the tightness of the coal supply. Debt, in part, could substitute.
Didn”t the conspiracists talk of fake alien invasion after terrorist fear ran out of steam? Was a virus outbreak sandwiched in there?
Here’s the reality. I presently have two people I personally meet with on a semi weekly basis confirmed. We cut off contact two weeks ago. Hopefully soon enough. They have been infected from two completely unrelated avenues. They are also of two completely different demographic sets.
My point is the US isn’t going to have the mild South Korea model. It’s going full Italian. That’s it’s style. Rather than test preemptively. Test those you know have it. “Just checking wanna make sure your dying from what we suspected it was”.
Who can trust any of the mortality ratios we’re seeing. Bunch of useless numbers.
Hope you are ok JT.
They do say pneumonia is an ‘old man’s friend’ …. now I am not an old man….just had a check up and the machine is in excellent order….
But I am thinking … do I want to go down in a firefight that might result in me being overrun and beaten to death — while M Fast gets passed around….
Or do I actively go out and seek The Wuhan Plague… perhaps licking hand rails and door knobs… in the hope that I am fortunate enough to be infected… return home and infect everyone else in the house… and we all go down peacefully…
There is always the car into rock cut option … but how much easier would it be to just take one Fentanyl… drift off a bit… then a second to chase an even great high… and a third… and so on….
Where is that GOD DAMN Fentanyl package!!! Come on Jacinda – get your SH IT together!!!
Classic FE
if he disappears again, we could guess why…
inaccurate but somewhat useful numbers…
that tell us this virus is much deadlier than seasonal flu…
other numbers tell us that younger healthier persons have low risk of death, perhaps not much higher than seasonal flu…
but there are numbers that tell us that older unhealthier persons, especially with high blood pressure and obviously lung issues, have double digit mortality rates (full Italian if you will)…
because of these facts, yes, I agree that the USA will have lots of dead…
i turned 70 in February and am giving up smoking cigars as a gesture of healthy good will to the corona plague.
fun with numbers:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
like fun, but with numbers:
Netherlands 58 deaths and 2 recovered = 97% death rate…
now we all know that these statistics do not correlate well with reality…
perhaps it is worth repeating that the comorbidity issues involved with COVID-19 patients are far worse than with the typical seasonal flu… or not? I don’t have a source…
otherwise, just fun with numbers…
The numbers are the same if you only test those in ICU.
yes, deaths are faster and easily countable, while recoveries from an ICU would be much slower…
and less severe cases are impossible to count accurately…
the numbers will never correlate well with reality…
The talking heads on the Media keep saying that we need to get money in the hands of people in the form of stimulus etc…. They talk as if the problem and solutions are so obvious. What they don’t say is what are the dangers of this expansion of cash….and if there is no danger than why have we been playing by this old system!
These are interesting times In the OFW comments section. I personally started lurking on OFW in 2011, started commenting in 2015, until the summer of 2017, when I just left to concentrate on other things. I came back in the last week or so, with all that is happening!
Everybody that hangs out on OFW know that there is a problem. But there have always been 2 school of thoughts amongst the commenters:
1. People like myself who are of the opinion that Industrial Civilization and the global economic system that underpins it, especially since WW2, has 2 options: Grow or Die…if the economy contracts even for a short time (let alone completely stop!!) it crumbles under the weight of all its debts accumulated over the last 8 decades (especially since 2008)…debts might be a human construct, but it is very well tied to the real world…the reason debts skyrocketed since 2008 is because the surplus energy needed to grow the whole economy has been diminishing, so by increasing debt we have been able to temporarily keep on growing the global economy (building a Houston every 3 weeks for years like they did in China certainly helps lol). But it was also a short-term solution to a reality that was never going to go away (diminishing resources and EROEI, while at the same time adding 85M humans every year, which is a double-whammy, in the sense of comsuming those resources). For those who are of this school of thought, we think that the Coronavirus will expose this reality and collapse the whole world economy, bring grids down and eventually kill us all in pretty short order.
2. People that are of the slow collapse school of thought….they think that output can be decreased (even by 50% gasp!). That basically the global economy can just triage itself, let millions, even billions die, but the rest can keep on living, although with a lower standard of living.
The reason I bring this up, is that for years there have been comments going back and forth between the 2 groups, but it was always just talk. Now, with what is happening across the world we will finally get our answer, as the Global Economy will not only go into a recession, but a depression.
Let’s see who will be right! 🙂 In my opinion, we will know within the next few months!
Number 1 is reality 2 is fantasy. However there will be enough political manipulation to make number 2 seem practical. Which fundamentally explains the run on toilet paper. 😉
The masses are making rookie mistakes….
Yep, a case of toilet paper and a case of canned food will see me through….
Nothing one can do can see one through…. realization will come in stages…
Number 2 is reality 1 is fantasy…
fun with words…
really Iteotw, or just “as we know it”?
ITEOTW you nailed it… we finally have an actual real worldwide crisis which gives OFW its first real test case for the speed and severity of so-called “collapse”…
“Let’s see who will be right! In my opinion, we will know within the next few months!”
maybe a bit longer than that, or less, who knows?
it’s freakin’ excitin’…
Indeed, in a macabre sort of perverse way. It is the kind of pitch black reality only a spoilt by IC/BAU die hard realist can appreciate, yet not comprehend.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/29/7a/18/297a18e943129775da99e249368c9780.jpg
If it gets really bad, save one .308 for your own internal remedy from the consequences of the COVID-19 predicament.
Thanks for bringing that up.
I wonder if the slow collapse camp will man up and acknowledge their mistake.
Surely now that growth is contracting — this exposes the fallacy of their position.
And as expected, and stated a thousand and twenty seven times (at least), when the CBs push on a string and their policies no longer grow the economy…. we will fast track into total collapse.
How long’s it been since things started to go sideways… less than two months…. the CBs are pushing levers and pushing buttons like crazy — and nothing is working …. stock markets smash down … companies are dumping staff… or collapsing entirely… across the board…
The unravelling is accelerating… I suppose the only time certain people will ‘get it’ is when they get the pink slip … or for the truly delusional (or thick of head) it will be when the shelves no longer get restocked…
how convenient, that the fast collapse camp was looking to be totally wrong, but then along came the WUHAN PLAGUE to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat…
well played, sir, well played…
long live Hong Kong…
Nah…. it was always going to be something that triggered this.
And no matter what it was, the slow camp was going to say ‘see it would have been slow except for _____’
What do you think would have happened if the Wuhan Plague had not hit — to the global auto sales? What about German industrial production.
The CBs were pushing on strings already. The numbers have been falling for many months – in spite of CB efforts
As I have postulated — I believe the CBs planted this virus to create a controlled demolition of the global economy…. much better to lock everyone down and have them cower in fear – than rip each other’s heads off.
perhaps…
I’m on record saying that 2020 would experience a severe recession, since it looked fairly obvious…
and without a crisis such as the WUHAN PLAGUE, the downslope of declining net (surplus) energy could have continued steadily and somewhat evenly through the 2020s and 2030s…
sure, I can say that now because there can never be proof that that would have been the case…
but ITEOTW is right, we’ll know soon…
Catabolic collapse. R.I.P.
I’ve been fearing catastrophic collapse and hoping for catabolic collapse
I am also disgusted by my cognitive dissonance.
It let’s be real, this sucks.
👎
I agree that rapid crash-collapse is more probable than a slow crumble or managed collapse – for reasons covered many times by Gail and others here. However, outside of this website and a few others like it, most people would seem to be holding onto the view that the current situation is all about the Corona virus and everything will be back to the “normal” growth trend once the virus has been conquered or has burned through the population. That, after all, is what we are being told time and time again by such trusted experts as economists and politicians. It is also what people need to believe in order to have a chance of keeping a little bit closer to (what passes for) sanity than to insanity.
it’s also scary that many/most economists and politicians actually believe “everything will be back to the ‘normal’ growth trend”…
The world economy was already a stinking pile of crap before the virus hit. A misdirected f*rt could have taken it out.
The official global GDP figures coming from the likes of the World Bank have suggested reasonable growth prior to the effects of the virus considering the ongoing effects of 2007/2008/2009 and what led to that, but numbers for commodity prices (especially oil and copper), the Baltic Dry Index, and such sub categories as manufacturing, trade, and tourism, paint a different and far more grim picture. How many people relying on the nightly broadcast for their news are going to put the time and effort into chasing down such underlying data? It seems that in today’s world, journalists and news anchors can get away with saying pretty much anything they or their bosses want.
“How many people relying on the nightly broadcast for their news are going to put the time and effort into chasing down such underlying data?”
Curt, you bring up an excellent point…before I came to the conclusion that we were going to collapse (my a-ha moment came in 2013), I literally spent hundreds and hundreds of hours reading books, blogs, articles and watched videos on the three topics that relate to collapse (Energy, Economy, Environment)….however I had no dependents (and still don’t obviously) and I had a job that was pretty much 9 to 5. So I had TONS of free time to study these topics. There might have been others like me out there that would have had the curiosity to dig deep (very deep) into the rabbit hole, but they were missing one critical thing: Time. If you have a career and a family, for the most part you cannot even come close to the time I spent reading up on these topics.
“(my a-ha moment came in 2013)”…
so seven years and counting?
yes, seven years and counting!
but you’re right, we’ll know soon enough if you can get to eight…
Reality and nature don’t care about comfortable illusions, or politics.
Basically a fast collapse would mean widespread blackouts/brownouts, no more internet, no more OFW. So as long as we are still posting here from all corners of the world we are in slow collapse.
The thing is that this virus is targeting the sick and weak, the world community has so far made an effort to protect these people. But soon it will be clear that the drawbacks of these measures far outweigh the gains and then the measures will get reversed. The damage is done and we will start living again on a lower staircase.
Perhaps. We can hope.
ITEOTWAWKI,
I agree with you about the two schools of thought, not only among commenters but also among others who write about related issues.
I have been in (1.) Fast collapse. I think Dmitry Orlov has been in that school, as well as James Howard Kunstler. Dennis Meadows is more or less in the fast collapse school, I would say.
John Michael Greer has of course talked about (2.) Slow Collapse. Ugo Bardi talks about the “Seneca Cliff,” but he probably thinks of the Seneca Cliff applying to oil, and hopes that other resources in general will offset.
In general, Peak Oilers and most academics seem to follow the slow collapse point of view, to the extent that they consider collapse at all. They think that prices will rise very high, and allow much more extraction than there is today. They are confused. Collapse really isn’t part of the issues that they are considering. Somehow, we will become more efficient, and that combined with higher prices will solve all problems.
Thank you Gail for your detailed response. I also, as some others have done, want to thank you for this blog and help enlighten me on the predicament humanity finds itself in. I would love to be in the slow collapse corner, but I would be lying to myself, I just can’t see it happening. This is not the Roman Empire…we are all in the same global system, from the slums of Kolkata to the Shanty towns of Nairobi, to the high-rises of Paris, London or NYC where the so called “movers and shakers” of the world live (amongst others). We are all part of the same global entity. No regional collapses this time around…
My feeling is we will kinda glide quickly down the stairs.
https://tenor.com/0Mi9.gif
2015:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-triggers-debate-34502
Fast forward to present = very weak rebuttal (VWR):
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/theory-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-a-lab-lacks-evidence-67229
Qantas Airlines has effectively just vapourized… every airline on the planet is facing the same fate — most flights must be flying near empty.
If you were a delusional optimist, you might see a positive in this — 4 empty seats lay across and sleep on.
http://www.mygc.com.au/breaking-qantas-to-stand-down-majority-of-their-30000-workers/
the global depression is here… only a delusional optimist would deny it…
passenger airline travel was nice while it lasted, but it’s not food clothing shelter…
air freight was/is more important, so there’s that problem too…
yep, as posted before, e.g. Germans with current grounded policies are loosing 50% cargo capacity from these pass. flights, and that’s a bummer because these are usually higher priority parcels (incl. various JIT spare parts)..
What will all of the airline workers do to support themselves? There is a limit to how many can work at Woolworth’s. There are lots of airlines in the same boat.
Can one still become a hobo?
ah, hobo…
such a nostalgic word, now replaced by “homeless”…
“… terms like “hobo” and “tramp” conjure up nostalgia that belies the difficulty in their wandering lifestyles…”
The old rule of thumb was that a “hobo” travels and works, a “tramp” travels but doesn’t work, and a “bum” neither works nor travels.
Except every hobo dreams of becoming Lloyd Blankfein…
or King of the Road…
a global depression would always be enough to take out this or that industry…
of course airline employees will be some of the first victims of the global depression…
as somebody said earlier, grow food or else…
Hopefully they haven’t laid off all those workers maintaining all those spent fuel rods around the world. 🙂