The world’s number one problem today is that the world’s population is too large for its resource base. Some people have called this situation overshoot. The world economy is ripe for a major change, such as the current pandemic, to bring the situation into balance. The change doesn’t necessarily come from the coronavirus itself. Instead, it is likely to come from the whole chain reaction that has been started by the coronavirus and the response of governments around the world to the coronavirus.
Let me explain more about what is happening.
[1] The world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as described in the book with a similar title.
One way of seeing the predicament we are in is the modeling of resource consumption and population growth described in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, by Donella Meadows et al. Its base scenario seems to suggest that the world will reach limits about now. Chart 1 shows the base forecast from that book, together with a line I added giving my impression of where the economy really was in 2019, relative to resource availability.
Figure 1. Base scenario from 1972 Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in “Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil,” with dotted line added corresponding to where the world economy seems to be in 2019.
In 2019, the world economy seemed to be very close to starting a downhill trajectory. Now, it appears to me that we have reached the turning point and are on our way down. The pandemic is the catalyst for this change to a downward trend. It certainly is not the whole cause of the change. If the underlying dynamics had not been in place, the impact of the virus would likely have been much less.
The 1972 model leaves out two important parts of the economy that probably make the downhill trajectory steeper than shown in Figure 1. First, the model leaves out debt and, in fact, the whole financial system. After the 2008 crisis, many people strongly suspected that the financial system would play an important role as we reach the limits of a finite world because debt defaults are likely to disturb the worldwide financial system.
The model also leaves out humans’ continual battle with pathogens. The problem with pathogens becomes greater as world population becomes denser, facilitating transmission. The problem also becomes greater as a larger share of the population becomes more susceptible, either because they are elderly or because they have underlying health conditions that have been hidden by an increasingly complex and expensive medical system.
As a result, we cannot really believe the part of Figure 1 that is after 2020. The future downslopes of population, industrial production per capita, and food per capita all seem likely to be steeper than shown on the chart because both the debt and pathogen problems are likely to increase the speed at which the economy declines.
[2] It is far more than the population that has overshot limits.
The issue isn’t simply that there are too many people relative to resources. The world seems to have
- Too many shopping malls and stores
- Too many businesses of all kinds, with many not very profitable for their owners
- Governments with too extensive programs, which taxpayers cannot really afford
- Too much debt
- An unaffordable amount of pension promises
- Too low interest rates
- Too many people with low wages or no wages at all
- Too expensive a healthcare system
- Too expensive an educational system
The world economy needs to shrink back in many ways at once, simultaneously, to manage within its resource limits. It is not clear how much of an economy (or multiple smaller economies) will be left after this shrinkage occurs.
[3] The economy is in many ways like the human body. In physics terms, both are dissipative structures. They are both self-organizing systems powered by energy (food for humans; a mixture of energy products including oil, coal, natural gas, burned biomass and electricity for the economy).
The human body will try to fix minor problems. For example, if someone’s hand is cut, blood will tend to clot to prevent too much blood loss, and skin will tend to grow to substitute for the missing skin. Similarly, if businesses in an area disappear because of a tornado, the prior owners will either tend to rebuild them or new businesses will tend to come in to replace them, as long as adequate resources are available.
In both systems, there is a point beyond which problems cannot be fixed, however. We know that many people die in car accidents if injuries are too serious, for example. Similarly, the world economy may “collapse” if conditions deviate too far from what is necessary for economic growth to continue. In fact, at this point, the world economy may be so close to the edge with respect to resources, particularly energy resources, that even a minor pandemic could push the world economy into a permanent cycle of contraction.
[4] World governments are in a poor position to fix the current resource and pandemic crisis.
In our networked economy, too low a resource base relative to population manifests itself in a strange way: It appears as an affordability crisis that leads to very low prices for oil. It also appears as terribly low prices for many other commodities, including copper, lithium, coal and even wholesale electricity. These low prices occur because too large a share of the population cannot afford finished goods, such as cars and homes, made with these commodities. Recent shutdowns have suddenly increased the number of people with low income or no income, pushing commodity prices even lower.
If resources were more plentiful and very inexpensive to produce, as they were 50 or 70 years ago, wages of workers could be much higher, relative to the cost of resources. Factory workers would be able to afford to buy vehicles, for example, and thus help keep the demand for automobiles up. If we look more deeply into this, we find that energy resources of many kinds (fossil fuel energy, nuclear energy, burned biomass and other renewable energy) must be extraordinarily cheap and abundant to keep the system growing. Without “surplus energy” from many sources, which grows with population, the whole system tends to collapse.
World governments cannot print resources. What they can print is debt. Debt can be viewed as a promise of future goods and services, whether or not it is reasonable to believe that these future goods and services will actually materialize, given resource constraints.
We are finding that using shutdowns to solve COVID-19 problems causes a huge amount of economic damage. The cost of mitigating this damage seems to be unreasonably high. For example, in the United States, antibody studies suggest that roughly 5% of the population has been infected with COVID-19. The total number of deaths associated with this 5% infection level is perhaps 100,000, assuming that reported deaths to date (about 80,000) need to be increased somewhat, to match the approximately 5% of the population that has, knowingly or unknowingly, already experienced the infection.
If we estimate that the mean number of years of life lost is 13 years per person, then the total years of life lost would be about 1,300,000. If we estimate that the US treasury needed to borrow $3 trillion dollars to mitigate this damage, the cost per year of life lost is $3 trillion divided by 1.3 million, or $2.3 million per year of life lost. This amount is utterly absurd.
This approach is clearly not something the United States can scale up, as the share of the population affected by COVID-19 relentlessly rises from 5% to something like 70% or 80%, in the absence of a vaccine. We have no choice but to use a different approach.
[5] COVID-19 would have the least impact on the world economy if people could pay little attention to the pandemic and just “let it run.” Of course, even without mitigation attempts, COVID-19 might bring the world economy down, given the distressed level of today’s economy and the shutdowns experienced to date.
Shutting down an economy has a huge adverse impact on that economy because quite a few workers who are in good health are no longer able to make goods and services. As a result, they have no wages, so their “demand” goes way down. If the economy was already having an affordability crisis for goods made with commodities, shutting down the economy tends to greatly add to the affordability crisis. Prices of commodities tend to fall even lower than they were before the crisis.
Back in 1957-1958, the Asian pandemic, which also started in China, hit the world. The number of deaths was up in the range of the current pandemic, relative to population. The estimated worldwide death rate was 0.67%. This is not too dissimilar from a death rate of 0.61% for COVID-19, which can be calculated using my estimate above (100,000 deaths relative to 5% of the US population of 33o million).
Virtually nothing was shut down in the US for the 1957-58 pandemic. When doctors or nurses became sick themselves, wards were simply closed. Would-be patients were told to stay at home and take aspirin, unless a severe case developed. With this approach, the US still faced a short recession, but the economy was soon growing again. Populations seemed to reach herd immunity quite quickly.
If the world could somehow have adopted a similar approach this time, there still would have been some adverse impact on the economy. A small percentage of the population would have died. Some businesses might have needed to be closed for a short time when too many workers were out sick. But the huge burden of job loss by a substantial share of the economy could have been avoided. The economy would have had at least a small chance of rebounding quickly.
[6] The virus that causes COVID-19 looks a great deal like a laboratory cross between SARS and HIV, making the likelihood of a quick vaccine low.
In fact, Professor Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and winner of a Nobel Prize in Medicine, claims that the new coronavirus is the result of an attempt to manufacture a vaccine against the AIDS virus. He believes that the accidental release of this virus is what is causing today’s pandemic.
If COVID-19 were simply another influenza virus, similar to many we have seen, then getting a vaccine that would work passably well would be a relatively easy exercise. At least one of the vaccine trials that have been started could be reasonably expected to work, and a solution would not be far away.
Unfortunately, SARS and HIV are fairly different from influenza viruses. We have never found a vaccine for either one. If a person has had SARS once, and is later exposed to a slightly mutated version of SARS, the symptoms of the second infection seem to be worse than the first. This characteristic interferes with finding a suitable vaccine. We don’t know whether the virus causing COVID-19 will have a similar characteristic.
We know that scientists from a number of countries have been working on so-called “gain of function” experiments with viruses. These very risky experiments are aimed at making viruses either more virulent, or more transmissible, or both. In fact, experiments were going on in Wuhan, in two different laboratories, with viruses that seem to be not too different from the virus causing COVID-19.
We don’t know for certain whether there was an accident that caused the release of one of these gain of function viruses in Wuhan. We do know, however, that China has been doing a lot of cover-up activity to deter others from finding out what actually happened in Wuhan.
We also know that Dr. Fauci, a well-known COVID-19 advisor, had his hand in this Chinese research activity. Fauci’s organization, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided partial funding for the gain of function experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. While the intent of the experiments seems to have been for the good of mankind, it would seem that Dr. Fauci’s judgment erred in the direction of allowing too much risk for the world’s population.
[7] We are probably kidding ourselves about ever being able to contain the virus that causes COVID-19.
We are gradually learning that the virus causing COVID-19 is easily spread, even by people who do not show any symptoms of the disease. The virus can spread long distances through the air. Tests to see if people are ill tend to produce a lot of false negatives; because of this, it is close to impossible to know whether a particular person has the illness or not.
China is finding that it cannot really contain the virus that causes COVID-19. A recent South China Morning Post article indicates that roughly 14 million people are to be tested in the Wuhan area in the next ten days to try to control a new outbreak of the virus.
It is becoming clear, as well, that even within China, the lockdowns have had a very negative impact on the economy. The Wall Street Journal reports, China Economic Data Indicate V-Shaped Recovery Is Unlikely. Supply chains were broken; wholesale commodity prices (excluding food) have tended to fall. Joblessness is increasingly a problem.
[8] If we look at deaths per million by country, it is difficult to see that lockdowns are very helpful in reducing the spread of disease. Masks seem to be more beneficial.
If we compare death rates for mask-wearing East Asian countries to death rates elsewhere, we see that death rates in mask-wearing East Asian countries are dramatically lower.
Figure 2. Death rates per million population of selected countries with long-term exposure to the virus causing COVID-19, based on Johns Hopkins death data as of May 11, 2020.
Looking at the chart, a person almost wonders whether lockdowns are a response to requests from citizens to “do something” in response to an already evident surge in cases. The countries known for their severe lockdowns are at the top of the chart, not the bottom.
In fact, a preprint academic paper by Thomas Meunier is titled, “Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic.” The abstract says, “Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, or reproduction number trends. . . We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.”
It appears to me that lockdowns have been popular with governments around the world for a whole host of reasons that have little to do with the spread of COVID-19:
- Lockdowns give an excuse for closing borders to visitors and goods from outside. This was a direction in which many countries were already headed, in an attempt to raise the wages of local workers.
- Lockdowns can be used to hide the fact that factories need to be closed because of breaks in supply lines elsewhere in the world.
- Many countries have been faced with governmental protests because of low wages compared to the prices of basic services. Lockdowns tend to keep protesters inside.
- Lockdowns give the appearance of protecting the elderly. Since there are many elderly voters, politicians need to court these voters.
[9] A person wonders whether Dr. Fauci and members of the World Health Organization are influenced by the wishes of vaccine and big pharmaceutical companies.
The recommendation to try to “flatten the curve” is, in part, an attempt to give vaccine and pharmaceutical makers more time to work on their products. Is this really the best recommendation? Perhaps I am being overly suspicious, but we recently have been dealing with an opioid epidemic which was encouraged by manufacturers of Oxycontin and other opioids. We don’t need another similar experience, this time sponsored by vaccine and other pharmaceutical makers.
The temptation of researchers is to choose solutions that would be best from the point of their own business interests. If a researcher gets much of his funding from vaccine and big pharmaceutical interests, the temptation will be to “push” solutions that are beneficial to these interests. In some cases, researchers are able to patent approaches, even when the research is paid for by governmental grants. In this case they can directly benefit from a new vaccine or drug.
When potential solutions are discussed by Dr. Fauci and the World Health Organization, no one brings up improving people’s immunity so that they can better fight off the novel coronavirus. Few bring up masks. Instead, we keep being warned about “opening up too soon.” In a way, this sounds like, “Please leave us lots of customers who might be willing to pay a high price for our vaccine.”
[10] One way the combination of (a) the activity of the virus and (b) our responses to the virus may play out is as a slow-motion, controlled demolition of the world economy.
I think of what we are experiencing as being somewhat similar to a toggle bolt going around and around, moving down a screw. As the toggle bolt moves around, I picture it as being similar to the virus and our responses to the viruses hitting different parts of the world economy.
Figure 3. Image of how the author sees COVID-19 as being able to hit the economy multiple times, in multiple ways, as its impact keeps impacting different parts of the world.
If we look back, the virus and reactions to the virus first hit China. China’s recovery is moving slowly, in part because of reduced demand from outside of China now that the virus is hitting other parts of the world. In fact, additional layoffs occurred after Chinese shutdowns ended, because it then became clear that some employers needed to permanently scale back operations to meet the new lower demand for their product.
Commodity prices, including oil prices, are now depressed because of low demand around the world. These low prices can be expected to gradually lead to closures of wells and mines extracting these commodities. Processing centers will also close, making these commodities less available even if demand temporarily rises.
As one country is hit by illnesses and/or shutdowns, we can expect supply lines for manufacturing around the world to be disrupted. This will lead to yet more business closures, some of them permanent. Debt defaults tend to happen as businesses close and layoffs occur.
With all of the layoffs, governments will find that their tax collections are lower. The resulting governmental funding issues can be expected to lead to new rounds of layoffs.
Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and forest fires can be expected to continue to happen. Social distancing requirements, inadequate tax revenue and broken supply lines will make mitigation of all of these disasters more difficult. Electrical lines that fall down may stay down permanently; bridges that are damaged may never be repaired.
Initially, rich countries can be expected to try to help as many laid-off workers as possible with loans and temporary stipends. But, after a few months, even with this approach, many individual citizens and businesses will likely not be able to pay their rent. Default rates on home mortgages and auto loans can be expected to rise for a similar reason.
We can expect to see round after round of business failures and layoffs of employees. Financial systems will become more and more stressed. Pensions are likely to default. Death rates will rise, in part from epidemics of various kinds and in part from growing problems with starvation. In fact, in some poor countries, lower-income citizens are already having difficulty being able to afford adequate food. Eventually we can expect collapsing governments (similar to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union) and overthrown governments.
Longer-term, after this demolition ends, there may be some surviving pieces of economies. These new economies will be much smaller and less dependent upon each other, however. Currencies are likely to be less interchangeable. The remaining people will need to learn to make do with many fewer goods than are available today. It will be a very different world.
The experts are confident
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/top-virginia-health-official-warns-state-lockdown-could-be-two-year-affair
to enough to indicate the real lengths of the lockdowns.
https://time.com/5804555/coronavirus-lockdown-uk/
“Once you get things under control, with a lot of targeted surveillance, there are ways of locally relaxing restrictions and returning to some level of activity,” Katzourakis says. “[But] it will never be the same until there is a cure, or a vaccine. ‘Returning to normal’ simply isn’t something we should expect to see for a very, very long time.”
They are meant to be permanent.
The motto seems to be never to let a man-made crisis go to waste.
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2008/09/the_constitution_and_911/
After the health crisis comes poverty, Italy warns the world:
“When Italy’s COVID-19 lockdown began in early March, it resulted in an estimated 11.5 million Italians losing their income and having to apply for state aid, amounting to half the official workforce.
“Two months on, and their loss of income is already taking its toll as the country sees the biggest jump in numbers of those in poverty since the aftermath of WWII.
“Agricultural lobby Coldiretti has now estimated that another 1 million Italians will have to turn to food banks and other forms of assistance as a result of losing their jobs under COVID-19 lockdown.
“At Banco Alimentare, Italy’s largest food bank, there has been a 40% increase in the number of requests, many of those coming from the middle classes…
“Many businesses that closed temporarily under coronavirus lockdown now look likely to never reopen.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccahughes/2020/05/26/after-the-health-crisis-comes-poverty-italy-warns-the-world/#41db13082d31
Half of the official workforce need aid! That would seem to be a huge problem.
A Reuters report published Monday claimed 11 states recorded a number of new COVID-19 cases, including Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Maryland, Maine, Nevada, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to a Reuters tally.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/media-exposes-100s-uncounted-covid-19-deaths-japan-lifts-state-emergency-us-death-toll
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/VA.png
Oh no, fear, hysteria and panic. We need another lockdown ASAP. Who cares what happens to the eCONomy? We need to save lives from the Black Plague II
I think that a person needs some sort of perspective when looking at this material. All of these states had much lower reported cases than the states in the US Northeast and in Western Europe. Eleven states are too many to display on a single chart. Instead, I made charts with the first part of the group of 11 states followed by the second part of the group of 11.
First group of increasing states compared to New York State – Newly reported cases relative to population
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/ny-plus-group-1-states-new-covid-cases-may-25.png
Second group of increasing states compared to New York State – Newly reported cases relative to population
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/ny-plus-group-2-states-new-covid-cases.png
None of these states really had a peak and decline in reported cases, because of March 15 and following efforts to increase distancing and close some facilities. I know that Minnesota, for example, attempted to lock down early, and so did many of the others. Maryland is clearly the highest. It is probably has higher urban density than any of the others as well.
In terms of deaths, the only state doing somewhat poorly is Maryland.
Group 1 states deaths:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/ny-plus-group-one-covid-deaths-may-25.png
Group 2 states deaths:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/ny-plus-group-two-states-covid-deaths-may-25.png
I looked at hospitalizations relative to population as well. None of the hospitalizations rates (seven day average) is very high, for the eleven states in question.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/05/25/uk-explore-self-sufficiency-end-reliance-china/
“The British government will make plans to reduce the United Kingdom’s reliance on imports from foreign countries like China after a study revealed that the UK is reliant on the communist country for the supply of 71 “critical goods” including pharmaceuticals, personal protective equipment (PPE), and electronics.”
the tide turns against China…
Making those 71 “critical goods” are easy I imagine, you just snap your fingers …
No need for raw materials from around the world!
Wouldn’t that require war-level planning? How would such planning compare with Brexit planning?
A quote from source listed immediately below regarding death rate from cov19:
“More importantly, as I mentioned before, the overall death rate is meaningless because the numbers are so lopsided. Given that at least half of the deaths were in nursing homes, a back-of-the-envelope estimate would show that the infection fatality rate for non-nursing home residents would only be 0.1% or 1 in 1,000. And that includes people of all ages and all health statuses outside of nursing homes. Since nearly all of the deaths are those with comorbidities”
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-cdc-confirms-remarkably-low-coronavirus-death-rate-media/
I chased down his chart to this
site:https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html
The chart shown is there at the CDC site.
If I am reading the CDC site those infected have a less than half a percent chance of death from the disease. Of those 0-49 years of age there is a .04 percent chance of death, >65 about 1.3% chance of death. Please check the numbers, if there are errors I acknowledge them.
These numbers are retrospective and perhaps there are actual percentages on comorbidities. The risks of opening the economy now seem less than keeping it locked down.
It might be a very interesting political season going forward, we are running an experiment and we won’t really know the results until sometime in the fall.
Dennis L.
thanks D L…
“… those infected have a less than half a percent chance of death from the disease…”
yes, the numbers are getting clearer, and not varying as much as weeks go by…
perhaps a 0.5% death rate from C19…
(compare 0.05% death rate from flu)…
almost all of the C19 “related” deaths have comorbidities…
almost all of the flu “related” deaths have comorbidities also…
C19 has gain-of-function which means it is slightly more contagious than flu and slightly more deadly… multiply those two and it kills perhaps 10x more per epidemic…
but that’s just %… the overall numbers are still very small except for older unhealthier victims who would have had only a few more years to live anyway…
“The risks of opening the economy now seem less than keeping it locked down.”
yes yes yes yes yes…
“… we are running an experiment and we won’t really know the results until sometime in the fall.”
preliminary results are already in… and terrrible…
by Autumn, the result will be widely known as another Great Depression…
This is a link to a PDF version of the report:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios-h.pdf
It has written across it, “For planning purposes, only.”
It is reasonable to believe that even if initial death rates were somewhat higher than in the planning scenario, we have now learned a few things. Putting people on their stomachs (prone position) when they can’t breathe helps a lot. Some people need anticoagulants. Respirators at high volume tend to kill patients.
Taking Vitamin C and Vitamin D seems to reduce both the chance of having the illness and its severity. There might even be an inexpensive cure, such as ivermectin and doxycycline.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/singapore-reports-first-quarter-gdp-cuts-2020-forecast-on-coronavirus.html
“Singapore’s economy is expected to shrink by between 4.0% and 7.0% this year, the third official downgrade in economic forecasts this year, according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry.”
fast forward to December:
Singapore’s economy is expected to shrink by between 34% and 37% this year, the eighth official downgrade in economic forecasts this year…
Where in the world aren’t forecasts being downgraded for? Antarctica? No tourist business, probably not much research either.
There is an article called, Tracing the origins of COVID-19 that gives indications that the virus that caused COVID-19 is lab-made.
The article links to two different “This Week in Virology” broadcasts. Based on this information, it says:
Someone with a better background than I have might be able to evaluate this more critically. It does sound like yet more evidence that the virus is lab-made.
Dont count on hearing such a complete analysis in MSM. Its somwhat contrary to the trust our saint like viroligists to inject you with their vaccine narrative if the truth is that they created the virus the vaccine is needed for. The MSM will continue with the “probably naturally evolved” and “we just dont know” even though any third grade investigative journalist with a inspector gadget beanie could see the smoking gun,
The same people (or type of people) who created the virus will now force you to be injected with the vaccine.
And they will have total legal immunity should anything go wrong.
But what could go wrong with that? Now roll up your sleeve, peon.
I meant “force you to be vaccinated with the vaccine they also created”
seems only Fatih Birol has faith in the future.
(Bloomberg) — Oil rose as the head of the International Energy Agency forecast demand will likely grow past its level before the global pandemic.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-dips-u-china-tensions-222118811.html
WTI was $64 in January…
about $34 now…
half price sale!
oil permanently in the teens or single digits was probably too extreme for 2020…
it could rise more, though I think we’re in the fluctuating model of oil rising but not to “higher highs” but yes falling to “lower lows” as time goes on…
Oil price always fluctuates, just as the prices of most commodities does. But at a lower level now.
Daniel Lacalle: An “L”-Shaped Recovery Is Not An Anomaly, It Is The Norm.
that’s quite good…
of course the lockdowns have been longer than 22 days and the “back on track” could be much longer than the 10x which they are merely guessing at…
so 220 days could be way too optimistic…
“… generate further overcapacity in indebted and overinvested sectors. Central banks and governments are bailing out the past…”
this is spot on…
it will be a big waste to bail out “overcapacity” such as restaurants, airlines, auto companies etc…
let half of them fail…
it’s simplistic but true to say that if half of these businesses go under, then the surviving half will get the remaining customers…
this would be the “self-organizing” way back to a partial recovery from this depression…
After 2 months, the apathy is almost palpable here: curtains and blinds now remain drawn until well into the day, there are far fewer joggers around, not even many people walking around the beautiful old part of town – lock-down is sapping the will to live.
The idea that an extra holiday in October -the weather might still be nice if it’s early in the month – will see people swarming out to spend lots of cash on domestic tourism and restaurants seems utterly ludicrous.
What can we call it? Grasping at a broken straw?
Meanwhile, Spain is dropping all pretence at contagion control in order to get its hands on North European euros, from July. We shall see how that goes – I’m quite sure they will fiddle the stats if COVID starts to spread again.
“We shall see how that goes – I’m quite sure they will fiddle the stats if COVID starts to spread again.”
Why? Healty people don’t die from the hyped virus …
“Central banks cannot print jobs.
The biggest problem in this crisis is that the massive stimuli is driven to incentivize a demand that may not come back ”
What is missing from discussions on OFW about government response to this crisis ist that posters don’t seem to understand s that there is an entire class of people who do not want things to go back to normal–who see this crisis as an opportunity for drastic change.
This change involves more of SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. Higher living standards without higher consumption.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/08/12/world/dog-FLEISCHMANN-obit/dog-FLEISCHMANN-obit-superJumbo.jpg
when scientists are on the road to a discovery, to finding out some secret of nature not previously recognized by them or anyone else, they usually have to experiment, then repeat the experiments until there is a consistency in the results that is plausible. in the above depiction of Pons and Fleischmann, they thought they had made a discovery consistent with cold fusion, but were fooled by basically making a hydrogen battery in palladium metal, then watching it discharge. if it were indeed deuteron-deuteron fusion, the neutron flux at that heat output would have killed them if not properly shielded.
my point is along the lines of Richard Feinman, you have to be careful to not fool yourself, and the biggest fool is often you. I add that one has to recognize that you will experimentally follow leads down blind alleys, and it’s best to recognize them and then move on.
And this is all happening with just ONE lockdown. What happens next to the eCONomy when there are calls for another lockdown and another after that? Unfortunately politicians never seem to work things thru. In the end they create even more problems, if they had just left things alone.
There may be no additional lockdowns… the goal here is not to smash BAU into pieces… rather it’s to operate BAU Lite… that can be achieved by maintaining the threat of a second wave….
More Sirens … and now masks (suddenly they are all the rage)… masks are a good reminder that the second wave is lurking…
it’s a remarkable building. one foggy night, it was hit by an airplane (B-17 Bomber) but did not pulerize and fall into its footprint a near freefall speed. obviously don’t build them like that anymore.
Accidentally crashing into a steel structure building in a 1940s airplane at probably a fairly low speed is somewhat different than planned smashing a jet plane at max speed at a specific angle and height that engineers determined would take down the building. I know many people think that brown people can’t do that kind of math, but I think they can.
by letting the subject drop, and reducing the ranting about it
I thought the WTC nonsense would die a quiet death and exchanges on OFW might get back on subjects that mattered and were based on reality
I was wrong
Cool … huh?
https://21stcenturywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/1-Building-7-collapse-Copy.gif
Pretty amazing what you can do if you place explosives in all the right places
http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/1-67.gif
It’s difficult to believe 1970s NY construction was that shoddy.
But easy to explain why the towers fell.
Let’s go live to Ground Zero Manhattan where Mark the Harley Guy has it all figured out within a couple of hours of the event.
Things would have to be obviously bad so that the common person is willing to lock down again. People can only stay afraid for so long. At least in USA, I don’t think second lock down is going to work.
It would appear NZ is not realizing much from Jacinta’s ‘domestic tourism’ push…
We have to head up to Nelson later this week and are going to break the journey with a night in CC… the best hotel in town (never stayed there in the past as there are better value options)… is priced at NZD104…. that’s roughly USD60….
It’s around 1/4 the normal rate….
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g255118-d256485-Reviews-The_George_Christchurch-Christchurch_Canterbury_Region_South_Island.html
More desperation https://hotel115.co.nz/special-offers/
Long term luxury accommodation from $250 a week
Our high-quality rooms are now available to rent both short and long term.
Rooms come with:
– Free done-for-you laundry
– Free power
– Free unlimited WiFi
– Free car parking
– Free weekly servicing of rooms.
Live in luxury at the heart of Christchurch.
https://hotel115.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/1.-HO149_161107.jpg
End-Of-The-World discount!
Every room must-go!
—————-
And no, Fast, a room will not come with a visit from Jacinta.
I like Christchurch.
But I have only been there a couple of times.
Not the best dining options on South Island, but CC does have a few opportunities .
It is all about the Fly Fishing.
If you were there before the quakes you’d be disappointed now. All the architecture was flattened and what’s replaced it is all flash steel and glass….
Dunedin in the new CC….
Excuse me, I feel a painful pun coming on.
We’re all Dun-roamin’ these days and pretty soon we may be Dun-eatin’!
https://www.letsbookhotel.com/img/max300/190/19076482.jpg
Also known variously as dulledin, dumpedin and dungedin.
Wasn’t aware of that….
But I have heard that people who live in CC are utter w ank ers… who judge people on school ties … I guess they think they are posh like Brits… but don’t realize that posh Brits would see them as vermin from the ‘colonies’…. so the joke is on them
End of the day — the whole fkkkking lot are SDRs as far as FE is concerned (and that is ALL that matters)….
FE thinks Dunedin is pleasant town… would rather be going there tomorrow but it’s not the same direction as Nelson…..
https://www.porthole.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/dunedin.jpg
can you imagine the housework associated with that manor? floors to mop, rugs to vacuum, dishes to wash, etc. guess that’s where the hired help comes in handy.
I suggest that they implement a “New Zealand Laundering Together” campaign where GDP can be generated by everyone taking in each other’s washing.
I’ll take my “Nobel” Prize for Economics now thanks.
Don’t forget giving each other haircuts.
begging the question, I guess that’s why such service-based economies don’t work. one has to be making things, like new cars, turbines, etc. out of some cheap raw materials that adds value to the economy from new produced stuff. recycling doesn’t count, as you already added the value and cannot repeat the process by reselling it back into the economy. this economics stuff is either too profound for me, or is just silly, made-up stuff, like saying it’s so “just because it is”.
do marmots need an economy to survive? no, but apparently humans do, at scale.
Let’s pretend the economy is a human body. It takes in energy and uses it to repair, replace, or multiply cells. Fat is the best way to store excess energy. Now our government is part of the brain that has conscious control of our voluntary action. It gets caught in a loop and decides to stop eating. After a day the body shifts into ketosis, a method of fueling the system with stored energy or fat. Now at first everything is uncomfortable and lots of protests from different cells in body because it takes time to shift over to new system. After the shift has happened hunger goes away and the body starts to feel good because loss of extra weight, blood sugar doesnt oscilate, cholesterol goes down. Its the lean green metabolic machine. The government is handing out money, which are signals directing where the energy is to be used and no energy has to be spent on digestion or aquiring food. After a month or so some problems arise. Protein which is needed to convert fat to fuel is being taken from vital sources. Minerals needed to keep the system running are not being replaced. Soon the system seizes up and dies. We are at the stage of early ketosis. People have money from government without working. They are given the ability to use energy that is stored but not being produced. Life is good and society is downsizing, creating less waste. Soon shortages of something vital will need replacing but there will be no replacement. Then panic, then seizure, then death. It’s hard to reverse an eating disorder once it takes hold.
Excellent analogy, I fear. The economy has an eating disorder.
good
What impulse drove ancient cultures to create sites like Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, and the pyramids at Giza? Why are we so transfixed by their presence today? And what do they reveal about our ancestors-and humanity?
The dynamic force of religious belief is responsible for some of the world’s most popular and ancient locales.With these 36 riveting lectures, you can dig through the earth and learn how sacred buildings, complexes, tomb structures, artwork, and more have provided us with unparalleled knowledge about early spiritual experiences around the world. Using the tools and knowledge of their field, archaeologists can now determine the nature of a sacrificial ritual, compare the visible attributes of ancient deities, and map out the orientation of a temple or tomb.
Professor Hale gives you a comprehensive look at specific religious archaeological sites around the world-inside caves and crypts, through vast deserts and ancient cities, from Polynesia to Mexico to the American Midwest.
Studying these breathtaking sites such as Lascaux Cave, Machu Picchu, and Easter Island, you learn the points of interest that attract the attention of archaeologists and scholars, survey the principal features unearthed during the site’s excavation, discover what evidence at the site reveals about the evolution of religion, and more.
By the final lap of your international journey, you’ll have developed a new vision of religion and its crucial role in ancient history. You’ll become more attuned to spirituality’s universal elements and its unique characteristics. And you’ll realize just how much credit religion deserves for remarkable sites that continue to captivate us.
https://www.audible.com/pd/Exploring-the-Roots-of-Religion-Audiobook/B00D8EMBQG?ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_&pf_rd_p=13bed4e9-e83d-4210-8510-a695400e0d63&pf_rd_r=F6RS899573V6RVNJK1ZN
Um … how can one study “breathtaking sites” with an audiobook? For that matter, how can one really study breathtaking sites without visiting them?
I agree, it’s not my job to keep drivers safe.
It’s up to them.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYuGXBdWkAAVQMu?format=jpg&name=small
Go to India. When I visited Mumbai, the lane markers seemed to simply be lane suggestions. Stop lights were also stop suggestions.
In Bali I have seen people drive on the shoulder of the road to get to the front of a traffic jam…
That’s what happens when you sell drivers licenses….
However Bali has very few Covid cases or deaths without locking down…. they sure know how to not lockdown
Worldofhaunaman if you are still visiting this blog. Miss your posts. We all get edited now and then. at least i do. Gail is in a tough position…
he was one of the strongest optimists here…
often suggesting that 2020 was not going to be the end…
more like 2030 – 2035 he would say…
I thought that he was quite reasonable…
I hope he is well…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CpYH1jmVMAIxwED.jpg
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/25/us-city-lockdowns-rat-aggression-lack-food-waste
“‘CDC warns of aggressive cannibal rats facing shortage of garbage to eat’
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned of “unusual or aggressive” behavior in American rats as a consequence of more than two months of human lockdown for city-dwelling rodents who now find themselves unable to dine out on restaurant waste, street garbage and other food sources.”
Rats… a harbinger…
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LEfJt70cgPk/maxresdefault.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6d/79/93/6d79931e119f7ac31d35c4126648a63f–evil-villains-post-mortem.jpg
Bitter Harvest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKLBp3fZ5zA
https://www.magnetdl.com/file/4009155/bitter-harvest-2017-bluray-720p-yts-yify/
FE,
I shall put “Bitter Harvest” on the list to watch.
Re the photos above, there is much pain and sorrow in this world, but there is also much joy and beauty. For me dwelling always in the dark spaces would cause many opportunities to be missed.
Perhaps you missed a comment I made to you, your PM spoke and the earth moved beneath her feet. Hmm, perhaps the earth trembles before her?
Dennis L.
Keep in mind that your moments of joy are built on the back of us spreading misery around the world as we pillage the resources (and cause billions to suffer) to supply our comfortable lives.
If you think if it that way… there isn’t much joy or beauty..
But don’t dwell on that as you sit down to dinner… in your warm/cool home… and relax…
Mmm, yummy!
Nice article from Charles Hugh Smith: “TINA’s Orgy: Anything Goes, Winners Take All”
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/05/tinas-orgy-anything-goes-winners-take.html
You and I, mere taxpayers? We get to watch as our “betters” feast on the Fed’s limitless bounty of free money for financiers and other parasites and predators. Of course we don’t get a clear view of the proceedings; the orgy is all behind closed doors.
Not correct – everyone benefits.
Pensions are bailed out (they hold a huge proportion of all stocks) Wages are paid. BAU (lite) continues so the electricity stays on. We are not starving.
Of course some are going to benefit more – but the CB motives have nothing to do with that. If you have put yourself in a position to benefit more that others… then the CBs do not care — anyone could have shorted the airlines when they saw what was about to hit….
That’s the reason people are in a position to benefit more than others — they are just smarter… more knowledgeable… more willing to take risks
The CBs mission is to keep BAU alive for as long as possible. Not to enrich the rich.
“The CBs mission is to keep BAU alive for as long as possible.”
yes, true…
govs/CBs/billionaires/elites are all working like madd to keep bAU going…
yes, true…
there is no seecret plan to do anything else but that…
2020 depression, 2021 slightly better…
stay safe, FE…
Every once in a while a true gem pops up on Twitter. Today’s headline from Bloomberg:
“It’s a modern dilemma for the ultra-wealthy: a yacht awaits, but how to safely reach it without exposure to the germ-ridden masses?”
https://twitter.com/business/status/1264837379652714496
“Anything Goes, Winners Take All”
in his other writings, perhaps he has shown what alternatives might be possible…
but otherwise, this is just a rannt against the 1% who manipulate the system and skim their billions off the top…
I don’t see any alternative but to bail out the big banks etc to keep bAU moving…
it’s somewhat nauseating, but necessary…
do whatever it takes to prevent collapse…
bailouts, zirp loans, negative rates, helicopter money, print trillions, nationalization of key industry…
he might eventually be correct that there is no alternative to collapse, but I think there is an obvious alternative for now, and that is for “them” to continue to make it up as “they” go, try to duct tape the breaking parts, and see if the Everything Bubble can be kept from popping, instead having it lose its air at a slower rate than a pop…
[pardon the mixed metaphors]…
2020 depression, 2021 slightly better…
.How the world works the virus:
Attributed to an interview with Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky
“For instance, if it was to turn out that this virus may have come about because of an accidental lab release that would have implications for how we do viral research in laboratories all around the world which could make doing research much harder.
“So I think the inclination of virus researchers would be to presume that it came from an animal until proven otherwise because that would have less ramifications for how we are able to do research in the future. The alternative obviously has quite major implications for science and science on viruses, not just obviously political ramifications which we’re all well aware of.”
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6158843835001
Assuming this is accurate, it is consistent with Gail’s ideas on publishing, funding, etc. Many who are in the world of virus research don’t want to know, it would affect their world. Our world seems mostly to work on the basis of self interest; this almost seems in imply some information can be almost anti-networking and those who are the best networked have the most incentive to keep the networking going irrespective of the overall consequences.
Winning an information war appears possible not so much by being correct as postponing a reckoning until new information has essentially buried the information of concern.
Tip O’Neil was correct, all politics is local.
Dennis L.
Good point! All of these researchers would lose their jobs, if it becomes clear that it is not really possible to do this research securely. They are hardly unbiased in their findings on this subject.
yes… more logic that points away from a wet market and towards the Wuhan lab…
also, a point made maybe in January here, someone suggested that the main Chinese virus lab should not be in a city of 11 million… accidental (or even intentional) release of a virus is always potentially there, given that we are talking about human beings here…
that Wuhan lab should have been on the most remote Chinese military base, in a desolate area far from any city…
though scientists likely would not want to be living out there near their job, when they could be in an area with all the modern conveniences…
no one with enough authority must have questioned the location of the lab…
at least the US government is smart enough to place their experimental nuclear facilities far from population centers, like the Idaho experimental breeder reactor out on the Snake River plain. far from fast-food restaurants, etc.
And Plum Island Lab is a whopping one mile from Long Island and eight miles off the coast of Conneticut. Yeah the US Govt. is smart alright. It’s one of those wild coincidences that Old Lime Conn. is in sight of the lab across the water. Old Lime as in Lime Disease.
https://www.amazon.com/Lab-257-Disturbing-Governments-Laboratory/dp/0060011416
another story that leads to the conclusion that humans often have a poor combination of hubris and stooooopidity…
putting a lab full of dangerous items close to large populations…
“So I think the inclination of virus researchers would be to presume that it came from an animal until proven otherwise because that would have less ramifications for how we are able to do research in the future.”
I agree 100%. Virologists are having way too much fun making good money tinkering around w/viruses to ever admit this pandemic came from a lab. It would also be too much egg on their faces as a profession. Personally from looking at as much information as I could find, much of it from Chris Martenson videos that this virus came from the Wuhan lab, I’m 99.99% certain it did. Human beings are so good at denial when it’s to their advantage.
I also agree…
and egg on the faces of the Chinese gov commmunists if there is ever proof that it came from that lab, which it surely did…
again, just the fact that they placed the lab in a city of 11 million, which shines a spotlight on the potential for human stooooopidity to cause big problems…
if the lab was out in a desert military base, and the pandemic came, I would be questioning if this was intentional…
but it looks like stooooopidity (or add hubris: look at us humans, we can keep our lab secure) all the way down… first the location, then a fallible human makes one little mistake, and the virus is out…
My understanding is that this sort of research was curtailed in the US. So the technology/money was transferred to a more accommodating country.
This is not a simple case of blaming a country; money seeks opportunity. Corporates search for advantage and profits. Shareholders want dividends…and so the game goes on.
Is it true that Fauci has some involvement with the Wuhan lab?
The US Federal Government funded research at the Wuhan lab. I believe but offer no proof at the direction of Fauci. If true he should be tried for treason.
Fauci’s organization provided some of the funding for the Wuhan’s lab’s gain-of-function experiments with bats. Newsweek reported Dr. Fauci Backed Controversial Wuhan Lab with U.S. Dollars for Risky Coronavirus Research:
so…
if a lab is going to do gain-of-function experiments, it should be located at a secure site (military base sounds good) and far from any city…
we’ll never know if top commmunist leadership knew what was being experimented with up to 2019…
the top people now know, for sure…
Admitting that humans have power beyond their maturity as a species is a taboo subject. Whoops let a killer virus lose, no problem we just cook up a vaccine. Everybody is unemployed no problemo we just print up some more fiat. Think positive!
Similar allegation has been made regarding the overblown pile-on for global warming from CO2, ignoring the many other variables that could have at least if not more impact on the climate. Scientific research is no less faddish than any other human endeavor.
I have one name for anyone who does not think man-made G W is a ho ax:
Al
Gore
A friend Pete just suggested this is the opportunity for China to drive out all undesirables from HK. They can resettle in NYC, SF, Miami, and save these otherwise dying cities. China get HK full of loyal citizens. It is a win/win.
But what would this do to HK’s economy? Gotta remember the priorities.
2M people attended a protest last year. Assume there were some others who did not want to go out in the July heat… assume there are a lot of old people who could not make it but support the movement. Then there would be a lot of young kids who did not attend.
We are probably looking at 70% of the population being in opposition to the CCP.
That’s 5M people….
So they emigrate — then you fill the city with more brain dead morrrons from China…. and HK is suddenly just like Shenzhen…. the CCP can then restrict all freedom … throw anyone who dissents into the gulag where they will have their liver and kidneys removed and sold….
And the banks and law firms and accounting businesses will all move their HQs to Singapore…
and that would be the end of HK….
HK exists because of rule of law. Strip that away and you would have just another mid-sized shi ttty … polluted … Chinese city… filled with meat heads who are ok with the fact that they are ruled by a neo-Nazi party….
I do hope that the black shirts — if cornered — burn the place to the ground … then the world offers all HK citizens who want out passports…. there are loads of highly qualified people in HK — better than letting Syrian taxi drivers to flood the world….
https://hongkongfp.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Benjamin-Yuen-central.jpg
It would be amusing if the world were to band together and accept all HKers who desired to leave what the CCP would think of that…
They’d be left with a 3/4 empty city filled with brain dead morrrons and skyscrapers….
Now how fkkkkked up is it when you have to surround the government building when you want to pass a law…. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3086000/hong-kong-police-ramp-security-ahead-planned-protests
It is so disappointing that mainlanders are not allowed to visit NZ…. there were so many of them before…. how can I taunt and provoke what does not exist?
The UK in 1997 should never have made Hong Kongers second-class citizens with no right of abode in the UK. Had they that right of abode, the CCP would not have been so Bolshie about taking away their other basic human rights. Well, it’s too late now. How Many HKers would like to go live in washed up Blighty these days?
Fortunately the police state won’t last long in HK
“Hertz Bankruptcy & Fleet Liquidation Threaten to Make Mess of Used-Vehicle Prices with Burst of “Pent-Up Supply. Here come the “bankruptcy-remote special-purpose subsidiaries” and $14.5 billion in rental-vehicle-backed securities. The stock market – other than Carl Icahn – smelled a rat for years.”
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/05/24/hertz-bankruptcy-threatens-to-make-mess-in-the-used-vehicle-market-with-burst-of-pent-up-supply/
“This is the scenario the industry has been dreading for the past 10 weeks or so, when the distant likelihood of a Hertz bankruptcy suddenly became front and center. Hertz has already laid off about 20,000 people, or about half of its global workforce, it said in its bankruptcy press release.
On April 29, Hertz disclosed that it had missed a lease payment on part of its fleet. And this is where it gets interesting, in terms of financial engineering and corporate complexity.
Hertz, which runs the second-largest rental fleet in the US behind Enterprise, owns its fleet in two types of setups: as “program vehicles” and “non-program” (or at-risk) vehicles.”
This will be part of the problems affecting the financial system, with the defaulting debt scattered everywhere.
But the price of used autos will also be affected, especially if other rental companies have similar problems. There could be even more problems if some of the many unemployed sell some of their vehicles or if retiree couples decide to sell one of their vehicles.
In fact, trying to repossess the vehicles of the unemployed (and resell them) would tend to add to this effect.
BAU is one touch SOB…. I want this to end so I can think of Xi dying from radiation poisoning…
I propose a new business “Clean Communities”. Only people who have had Covid may enter and live there. Everyone get a nose swab every six months to check on continued immunity. If they have lost it they are placed in the resort outside the walls and given a shot of Covid. When they are again immune they return. In the community no social distancing, bars and restaurants are open. Life is normal.
Spin off businesses “Clean Airlines”, “Clean Uber”, “Clean Universities”, “Clean Private Schools”.
Anything green seems to be the way to go… buy some green paint… spray paint loads of coal green … and sell it as eco-friendly.
Anyway – don’t get to worried — there surely cannot be much longer to go….
‘We are All in This Together’ (as in we will all die soon)
Margaret, the lab tech, corrects me make that a blood test for anti-bodies.
I wonder where to house these people? You would need to buy housing near to jobs for these people. Many of these people would be jobless, I expect. This would create a problem in paying rent.
The community would need all kinds of services as well. Somehow, you would need workers of this category to provide these services.
Many of the relatives of these individuals (including children and parents of residents, even spouses of residents) would not qualify. Or if they do qualify, they might lose their qualification as their immunity drops.
Hopefully, a new strain of COVID-19 doesn’t come along that is enough different from the old one that the people in this community are not immune.
Gail, we all work from home. At least the better paid. Community member can go out to visit anyone they want any where outside the community kids, parents, etc. But yes the non immune relatives and friends may not enter. They can of course solve this by being injected with Covid and acquiring immunity. Yes at the cost of a 0.2% chance of death, maybe much lower if they are healthy, a fit weight, supplement with C and E and maybe Zinc(?). What will be the death or maiming rate of Bill Gates vaccine? What is the current death or maiming rate of the annual flu shot?
Yes, incoming plumbers will have to be tested. We the community would not want to be blamed for killing his/her grandmother even though we are all immune.
My proposal back in February was for the government to offer $1000 for healthy people in their 20s through 40s to go spend a month at a beach resort, intentionally infected with COVID-19. At an estimated 0.2% fatality rate, I figured America would lose fewer than 250,000 people and it would have cost less than $100 billion to get to 60% herd immunity. Lots of people didn’t like the idea, and there were no supporters.
It looks like with hydroxychloroquine and zinc, people might be ill for as little as 3 days, with far fewer ever progressing to serious illness if they are treated as soon as they show a fever or their blood oxygen drops. People might only need to go on a one week trip to get immune, and the fatality rate would be far less than seasonal flu for healthy young adults.
ivermectin plus an antibiotic like Zpak…
it wouldn’t take a vaccine to negate the fear of the virus…
just a reliable cure, as we have just seen with the report of 60 out of 60 bad covid cases cured in 4 days…
then it all fully reopens…
then The Big Test to see how much partial recovery we will see… 2020 has much more to show us…
Do you think they really want to negate the “fear” of the virus? Jerry Springer. Very popular show.
yes, “they” are working like crazzzy to keep IC from collapsing…
a main point is that “they” need the masses to get back out there consuming to keep big biz alive…
“they” don’t need a vaccine to prevent all deaths, just a good enough solution to get most consumers back to consuming…
a fairly reliable cure might be enough to convince most unemployed people to try to find a job again…
and finally, “they” want a full recovery, but even with such a medical cure, the economic results are only going to be a partial recovery…
“Ivermectin is an anti-infective. It is used to treat infections of some parasites. The lowest GoodRx price for the most common version of ivermectin is around $17.11, 61% off the average retail price of $44.97.”
so it’s kind of cheap…
which could be a problem because there’s less incentive for the medical community to push it as a cure…
You can get apple-flavored paste at the local Tractor Supply for, like, $4.
?
and vitamin D is free…
Matthew great idea. But I think “they” do not want to end this circus.
I think “they” certainly do want to end this…
money talks, and the big money in the world is behind big business…
“they” don’t want their investments going to zero…
of course, much big biz may tank this year, but not before “they” try like madd to preserve their wealth…
2020 has much more to reveal to us…
Desperation!😳 So, I go through tablets every year or so and saw one at Brandsmart, a chain discount department store here in South Florida, on sale. Drove up yesterday and highway traffic light around noon and shopping center was somewhat half full Anyway, not too many shoppers and was able to get waited on right away. Salesman wrote the ticket and told me I was a lucky winner and have been selected to win a Brandsmart Credit Card! Not kidding, raddled off some list of bennies and 4,000 limit. I declined and thank him. Nope, won’t take no for an answer, held hostage and had to find a Manager! After finding one, was approached with a look of desperation in the young man’s face. Basically, said the same, thanked him again. Did not end, “What will it take to get you to sign up!” …worried expression….Hey, I was there on the sales floor and had to meet a quota or out the door. Retailers are in survival mode and the restrictions are going to hurt.
When I was in retail, when I achieved one goal, it automatically increased to a peg up!
Poor chaps and gals now selling….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6YPhxIe5fws
Spot on!
Poor devils, they must hate it. But what a way to drive customers away…
Interesting, Herbie. A friend of mine here in the UK went to a branch of the NatWest bank to withdraw £5k in cash from his savings to pay his builders and the au pair. They were very obstructive and resistant to him making the withdrawal on the basis of “fraud prevention”, even though he had all the relevant ID and had made an identical withdrawal with no issues two months prior.
He had to argue with the bank manager in order to get his hands on his cash. Looks like the psychology of contraction is firmly taking hold with both banks and retailers struggling to keep their heads above water.
“The core metrics of the Big Five UK banks have deteriorated sharply since the
New Year, and even more since the end of 2006, i.e., the eve of the Global Financial Crisis. Their market capitalisation is now £148.5 billion, down 40% since the New Year and down 57% since December 2006; their average priceto-book ratio is 42.7%, down from 71% at the New Year and 255% at end 2006; their average capital ratio, defined as market capitalisation divided by total assets, is 2.7%, down from 4.7% (end 2019) and 11.2% (end 2006); their corresponding leverage levels are 36.7, up from 21.5 (end 2019) and 8.9 (end
2006).
“By these metrics, UK banks have much lower capital ratios and are more than four times more leveraged than they were going into the previous crisis. These metrics indicate a sickly banking system. If the banks were in good financial shape, their PtB ratios would be well above 100% and their capital ratios well above current levels. Traditional rules of thumb also suggest that leverage levels should be no greater than 10 or 15 to be considered safe.
“In addition, UK banks have hidden problems relating to their off-balance-sheet positions, their gameable ‘Fair Value’ Level 3 (or ‘mark to model’) and loan book valuations, and their problematic implementation of IFRS 9, all of which have further adverse consequences for their capital adequacy.
“The BoE’s ‘Great Capital Rebuild’ narrative about a strongly recapitalised UK banking system is little more than an elaborate, and occasionally shambolic, window dressing exercise. The BoE focused most of its efforts on making the banking system *appear* strong by boosting banks’ regulatory capital ratios instead of ensuring that the banking system *became* strong through a sufficiently large increase in actual capital meaningfully measured. The result is that the UK banking system enters the downturn in a worryingly fragile state and avoidably so.
“Another massive bank bailout now appears inevitable.”
[Durham University Professor Kevin Dowd and former Bank of England regulator Dean Buckner]
http://eumaeus.org/wordp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Can%20UK%20banks%20pass%20the%20COVID-19%20stress%20test%206%20May%202020.pdf
The Basel requirements never made sense to me. Perhaps put off small problems a bit, but create a huge bigger problem.
“He had to argue with the bank manager in order to get his hands on his cash. Looks like the psychology of contraction is firmly taking hold with both banks and retailers struggling to keep their heads above water.”
I see this as more evidence that we are headed towards a cashless society.
Yes. Yes, digital wallet of the Federal Reserve and Capital Controls coming very soon to us all! It will be implemented very quickly, perhaps in the second wave of the China flu!
Social Distancing will be enforced for your own welfare!
Coming soon to YOU….some Ten years ago 2009
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/03/north-korea-won-currency-revaluation
North Korea’s surprise decision to redenominate its currency has prompted panic and despair among merchants left with piles of worthless notes, even driving one couple to suicide, activists said today.
North Korea informed citizens and foreign embassies on Monday that it would redenominate its national currency, the won, diplomats said. Residents in the reclusive communist state were told they have until Sunday to exchange a limited amount of old bills, they said.
The news sent Pyongyang residents rushing to the black market to convert hoarded bills into US dollars and Chinese yuan, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, citing unidentified North Korean traders operating in neighbouring China.
Shops, bathhouses, barber shops and restaurants have closed, activists said.
“We heard business and market activities were all suspended,” said Lee Seung-yong, an official at Good Friends, a Seoul-based civic group that sends food and other aid to North Korea. “People have no money to engage in business.”
Authorities have threatened “merciless punishment” for anyone violating currency exchange rules, Good Friends said.
The overhaul of the North Korean won – the most drastic in 50 years – aims to curb runaway inflation and clamp down on the street markets that have sprung up in the tightly controlled nation, analysts said.
Unable to feed its 24 million people, the regime began allowing some markets in 2002, including farmers’ markets.
The markets may have encouraged trade but they also brought in banned goods such as films and soap operas from South Korea, threatening leader Kim Jong-il’s totalitarian rule, analysts said. The country’s largest wholesale market, in Pyongyang, reportedly closed in June.
With the currency overhaul, the government is retaking control of the economy from merchants, analysts said.
It’s all about POWER and CONTROL…OBEY
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hze7OChCXS0
Cashless society? Solution = EMP attack by domestic terrorists.
It’s almost as if the Powers That Be want to make the world more fragile for those who wish to see it burn…
Cheers,
-GBV
The UK banks are offering small businesses ‘bounce back’ loans underwritten 100% by the government. So guess what the banks are giving them out to anyone who asks. My friend got £35k and another got £20k which was in his business account in two days. Neither needed the money, one in fact invested his loan in the stock market. What a shocking state of affairs, none of this will ever be repaid.
The UK is attempting to get investment in making goods and services. If instead, the loan recipient simply buys shares of the stock market, the price of an existing asset rises instead. This is obviously not wanted.
If these loans are not to be repaid, the interest rates on the loans would seem to be a large negative percentage. But they still don’t work to fix the system.
Gail, classical economics (again) tells us that you cannot help an economy by giving money to producers, but only to consumers. That way, you know the producers will produce, rather than sequester or squander. But politicians do not understand game theory.
Did you just say that supply side theory is rubbish? Of course, any 6th grader could have told you that. An economist I read often asserts that what drives capital investment the most is not taxes, regulations, etc. or even profit, but capacity utilization. Provide demand, and producers will assuredly provide supply.
Thank you, Stevie, and I agree. But I accept no credit; all I know of economics comes from the works of those far wiser than I. Including, of course, Gail Tverberg.
MFN (C4F) …. damn… might as well take the handouts.. I mean loans….
The essence of what is happening now
Rabobank: “Quite A Market Disconnect Has Formed: We May Be Just Weeks Away From The Levee Breaking”
Quite the market–politics disconnect…for now at least. But we may be just days or weeks away from the levee breaking, with Hong Kong the most likely trigger. However India-China, where the PLA are reportedly 2-3km inside Indian territory and setting up camp, is also another flashpoint to watch.
Meanwhile “arrogant and offensive” is also what the different sides in Europe appear to think of each other: the East vs the West on liberalism vs. illiberalism, and north vs. south on stimulus v. surplus; and with a whole lot of truth twisters on all sides of all those arguments. Will we see any further breakthrough on that front this week? Markets will move accordingly.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/rabobank-quite-market-disconnect-has-emerged-we-may-be-just-weeks-away-levee-breaking
There seem to be a lot of choices of which parts of the system could break.
When it breaks I would not want to be a Mainlander in HK… I’d also be concerned about my family if I was a cop…. the protesters will know who they are…. but so far have kept the knives sheathed…
Senator Harry Reid created AATIP a UFO program inside Pentagon. Pentagon recently declared that the UFO phenomena is real.
Pentagons spokesperson Susan Gough just stated that AATIP is still running and analysing UFO encounter by the military personnel. They take these reports very seriously.
That’s it. That’s all they got. They are still flying in tin cans with wings. The phenomena has at least been around since WWII.
Humanity is a bore.
“Klaatu Barada Nikto!”
The most recent famous incident appears to be of ducks caught on IR. The jet is traveling 650 MPH one way at a height of 35,000 feet, while the ducks are a few thousand feet above the ocean, so the parallaxing makes it appear like the ducks are defying the laws of physics, and the IR makes them look pill shaped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs
FE,
Your beloved PM spoke and the earth moved under her feet! Now that is a real speech.
Dennis L.
Neither a rigged market nor Vera Lynn will pick the crops
http://justfunfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/wheat.jpg
“The crop picking crisis is revealing the fundamental failures of free-market capitalism and invoking national spirit won’t fix it, argues Kevin Ovenden.”
A possible teatment https://www.firstpost.com/health/medical-team-in-bangladesh-suggests-combination-of-ivermectin-and-doxycycline-for-covid-19-treatment-8380171.html
Wow!
That is quite the finding. Ivermectin is the drug we were reading about earlier that seemed to kill the virus in the lab. It is a generic that has been around since the 1980s. Both of these drugs are widely used on animals as well as on humans.
Treatments other than vaccination will not be considered. Bangladesh didnt get the memo. NWO aside the AMA would rather sniff bed pans than acknowledge a treatment developed in Bangladesh.
I think you are correct. We have to look outside the current system (AMA) for the real solution.
It is just like the economists not truly wanting to know how the economy works. Fitted curves applied to what happened in the past give results that are acceptable to politicians.
Someone has to come from outside of the system and to point out the obvious. This has been the OFW approach.
Coronavirus LIVE: Highest spike of 635 cases in Delhi in 24 hours, Kejriwal says due to relaxations
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/coronavirus-in-india-live-news-updates-covid19-vaccine-status-world-usa-1681505-2020-05-25
Mumbai heads for highest number of daily new Covid-19 cases for any city in the world
https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/mumbai-heads-for-highest-number-of-daily-new-covid-19-cases-for-any-city-in-the-world-1681635-2020-05-25
Eventually, the virus seems to get around, even to warm areas of the world.
Let’s see total deaths caused by the lockdowns….
Good point!
Further proof of the habitual callousness of governments in times of crisis, and that it’s not necessary to be a wicked Imperialist to screw the poor of the world without a thought.
Those in the West who have been thrown out of work by the short-sighted lock-down policies are in much the same position, just temporarily disguised with welfare and furlough-subsidies.
Hear, hear, Xabier. A totally back-to-front policy.
“Just as early bets on an emerging-market recovery start fuelling appetite for stocks and currencies, an old bugbear is reappearing to haunt investors: US-China tensions.”
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1923488/emerging-markets-stumble-as-us-china-tensions-return
“China’s central bank on Monday lowered its official yuan midpoint to the weakest since the 2008 global financial crisis, reflecting losses in the spot yuan on Friday after Beijing proposed a new national security law for Hong Kong.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/china-yuan/china-lowers-yuan-midpoint-to-weakest-since-2008-global-financial-crisis-idUSAZN0FOZ00
https://rlv.zcache.com/i_stand_with_hong_kong_bumper_sticker-r7e930cef2b4e4f69afb629727b51293c_v9wht_8byvr_307.jpg
Now sit down again.
Not enough resources to go around.
“China’s army of 290 million migrant workers has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, but most are unable to access unemployment support. Covid-19 is having a deeper impact on employment in China than the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak and the global financial crisis.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3085904/coronavirus-has-hit-chinas-migrant-workers-harder-sars-and
“The national lockdown, which completes 68 days at the end of its fourth phase on May 31, has pushed India’s migrant worker population into a vortex of uncertainty and despair.
“Jobless and penniless, thousands of them continue to fight the unprecedented situation, hoping to make it to the other side of the crisis. Many, though, are losing the battle for survival.”
https://www.indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/migrant-deaths-trigger-hunger-alarm-1681461-2020-05-24
Deaths from COVID-19 and from starvation are likely to be indistinguishable.
The Second Wave:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wpahZzZGZjM/TNTNK3trgxI/AAAAAAAAAvs/7J88PyEo900/s1600/Starving+Child+5.jpg
“Some European economies have now adopted negative interest rates for the longest period in history. The controversial policy has turned banks’ business models upside down, leaving economists unsure of their next move.”
https://www.europeanceo.com/finance/as-negative-interest-rates-persist-banks-are-stepping-into-the-unknown/
“…it is nearly impossible to argue convincingly that a banking crisis will not emerge very soon, perhaps in as little as a month or two [in the EU or UK].
“A banking and systemic crisis will raise the costs for central banks and their governments considerably, not just because they will have to fund bailouts, but they will also have to cover the associated fallout, such as the inevitable evaporation of interbank credit in the financial sector and of bank credit from non-financial borrowers.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4349773-path-to-monetary-collapse
Maybe the next move is simply giving away money, with no expectation of paying it back. This is similar to a very highly negative rate.
That is pretty much what these mortgage holidays and wage subsidies… I cannot see how they can be rolled back.
Right!
Is what we are seeing not some form of MMT?
Or MFN (C4F) Money for Nothing (Chicks 4 Free)
As expected this would just encourage people to not want to work.
Like BAU Lite… it has a very limited shelf life… as we’ll find out
“A slump in capital investments, private consumption and exports pushed the German economy into a recession in the first quarter, detailed data showed on Monday, giving a glimpse of the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-gdp/slump-in-consumption-exports-push-germany-into-recession-in-first-quarter-idUSKBN2310KI
“The reopening of Italy’s restaurants, cafes and stores earlier this week brought hopes of a return to normality for many Italians after a punishing two-month coronavirus lockdown.
“But the picture is not so bright.”
https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2020/05/24/italys-restaurants-shops-caught-between-rock-and-hard-place.html
“The U.S. and global economies are in a perilous state, and yet we may be underestimating the dangers. Just out of sight lies a second large threat: a global debt crisis that, centered in Europe, would further destabilize a world already struggling to combat the dreadful consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
“If some sort of financial rescue isn’t organized, Italy might be forced out of the euro, dragging along some other highly indebted countries.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-italys-debt-matters-for-everybody/2020/05/24/12b2f310-9baf-11ea-ac72-3841fcc9b35f_story.html
“Europe’s leaders may be united on the need to throw money at economies during the coronavirus crisis, but they have yet to confront how to pay for it all.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/bailouts-debt-european-leaders-difficult-decisions-200525031258228.html
Central Banks won’t allow a debt crisis — they’ll bail it out.
I just read the the UK is also providing home owners with a mortgage holiday … as is Australia…
I wonder how many governments are not officially offering a debt holiday — but if you simply don’t pay they don’t foreclose…
The old rules do not apply …
Yes, the UK has just extended its mortgage holiday scheme by three months. Even as someone who has long expected widespread ‘helicopter money’ my mind was still blown when Hong Kong announced it was handing out HK$10,000 to all adult citizens back in Feb.
Amazing how quickly such things become normalised.
HK has still not made good on that 10k… USD1200….
We have just now applied for the wage subsidy for staff.. that is HKD9000 per month.
All companies get that even if they are still profitable.
Here is what we are seeing in QT… the very popular restaurants with a local following are doing ok — on the weekends….
We dropped into one place for lunch on Saturday — normally there is no way you could get a table on the weekend without booking well in advance…
There is a large outdoor area with very limited indoor seating https://akaruaandartisan.co.nz/
The indoor area was maybe half full due to spacing … the outdoor area was a little more than half full. There was not a single person at their wine tasting bar (that would mainly interest tourists).
When we paid I asked how business was… the lady said the weekends are decent but weekdays are completely dead.
They are getting families who are out for a meal on Saturday/Sunday …
I would be surprised if they are able to break even. Their busiest days would be limited to maxium half capacity… and they are not even filling the place even with only half the tables available.
Restaurants that have a limited local following and rely on tourists will be drowning in red ink… I can only think of 4 or 5 restaurants in the entire area that would be big with locals… and none of them are in the town… those are all overpriced rubbish that cater to tourists… locals avoid them like The Plague.
Even if the restaurants open up, they can’t get enough people to eat at them to run the businesses profitably.
So now Germany has also had two quarters of economic contraction.
“The UK is facing a “tsunami of job losses” when the Government’s huge support for workers’ wages is wound down, the boss of Britain’s biggest recruiter has warned.
“Some 856,500 people made new benefit claims in April, six times higher than any point in the financial crisis, while eight million are furloughed.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/05/24/boss-britains-biggest-recruiter-warns-tsunami-job-losses-furlough/
“Rising unemployment is toxic for the property market and low interest rates may not be enough.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/24/most-ingredients-are-in-place-for-a-property-crash-later-this-year
Keep pumping! Maybe collapsing prices can partly be prevented.
My understanding is that with these mortgage holidays …. they are not adding months to the end of the maturation date… rather once the holidays expire you have to pay more per month….
Obviously since there will be no recovery then there will still be massive joblessness in say 6 months…. so either the holidays get extended or the market collapses. And even those who might find work will still have to paying higher debt servicing costs.
There can be no clearer indication that we are in very serious difficulty. There is no way out. Just endless subsidies. Well… not quite … endless… indefinite is a better word
Wage subsidies will extended… and extended again .. and again
TINA
TINA?
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/no-alternative-tina-principle-going-ahead-bad-decision-there-30377112.jpg
I think people understand this — here in NZ everyone is in a very pleasant mood because they don’t have to work… and they still get paid… petrol is cheaper and they don’t go out much … so what’s not to like.
Nobody seems stressed because they think there will either be a total recovery soon or the govt will continue to pay them.
“We will not go back to your stinking jobs!”
Jacinderella effect…twinkle dust!
No wonder she has a high approval rating …. money for nothin… chicks for free….
BTW – there are no takers for the long term rental homes being dumped into the QT market…. the total rentals is actually increasing… it was 202 the other day … now 2010….
https://www.realestate.co.nz/residential/rental?by=featured&lct=d300&ql=20
Kind of the same here in Canada, though I’ve noticed that gas prices have almost climbed back up to where they were pre-lockdowns ($0.85 – $0.95 per litre).
Cheers,
-GBV
People in my place of work in Canada are playing the game. When called in, they say they feel ill, going to doctor, etc, even not answer the phone! I feel that saying these people are asleep is not strong enough, the few times I’ve been called in I’ve been sure to make it in, asap. How can a person feel that comfortable when getting paid to be at home? We have been lulled into some kind of “I’m invincible” trance.
Cov i d iocy rules
I’m all for these knockdown payouts. It’s my hope they will destabilize the system and bring about the collapse of BAU sooner rather than later…
Cheers,
-GBV
You also want to see humans go extinct? Cool…
http://www.annemateer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/kindred-spirits.png.png
Fuel still ‘cheap’ in NZ… 1.20 for diesel… usually around 1.70
And by “knockdown”, I mean lockdown… stupid fat fingers 🙁
Cheers,
-GBV
Wow!
“Jaguar Land Rover is reportedly seeking state support as car sales have collapsed under the lockdown. The high-end car maker could need more than £1bn of aid, Sky News reported, to help it bridge the slump in sales.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/05/24/jaguar-land-rover-rescue-talks-sales-collapse/
“Aston Martin is sacking its chief executive, Andy Palmer, following a 98% collapse in the luxury car company’s share price since it floated on the stock market less than two years ago…
“…the company reported that losses had ballooned to £119m in the first three months of the year as the coronavirus pandemic caused the already struggling British car maker’s sales to plunge across the world.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/24/aston-martin-sacks-chief-andy-palmer-after-shares-plunge
“British finance minister Rishi Sunak has authorised a bailout plan to rescue companies that are seen as strategically important, with the Treasury saying it may step in to support crucial businesses on a “last resort” basis after other options run out.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/bailout-britain-rescue-plan-strategically-important-firms-200525025146076.html
A few years back, I read on the internet an article about government intervention and stimulus on car sales. That person used Jaguar as an example. The one who wrote that article was probably someone from UK. It goes like this.
The government wanted to help Jaguar and intervene. Provided incentives like rebates. People will buy. As the sales drop, the government intervened again and provided low interest rates. sales picked up and then it sagged again. The next one was zero interest rate, free petrol, free insurance, free services, etc. It goes on and on and the sales picked up and sagged. It repeats but each peak is lower than the previous peak until one day, everyone has a Jaguar in the garage and any further incentive makes no difference.
The moral of the story – demand destruction, “you can do so much until it does not work”, stimulus needs to be bigger and bigger..
It kind of rhymes with what happened now. Velocity of money, stock markets, bonds, trade volume, etc. The current peak is less than the previous peak (except for unemployment) and at one point of time, it saturates.
The question is when it will saturate? at what level it saturates? Will it give early warning?
Land Rovers are expensive pieces of garbage…. if they built a better vehicle they might be viable
In 2012, the same year that Land Rover and Jaguar merged to become one entity, a consumer report from What Car? magazine (in collaboration with Warranty Direct) announced that, when it came to used cars, Land Rover was the most unreliable brand on the road. The report stated that 71% of used Land Rovers and Range Rovers break down each year and was based on analysis of 50,000 extended warranty policies.
https://www.osv.ltd.uk/how-reliable-are-land-rover-and-range-rover/
FE, do you know that 85% of all Land Rovers ever built (first was built in 1948) are still on the road?
I considered buying a Land Rover Freelander around fifteen years ago but was put off by reports of their terrible build quality. However, the Land Rover brand’s build quality has apparently improved in recent years.
Funnily enough, Islay fancies itself the birthplace of the Land Rover:
For top of the range — German.
For the rest – Japan.
Ya I had one in Bali – a 1957 model — it broke down almost every single time I drove it …. and I am not exaggerating .. it was so bad that M Fast refused to go for joy rides… it is the first and last time I will ever buy an old vehicle.
That said — they were probably pretty good cars at one point in time (back when if a car started reliably it was considered a great piece of machinery…)
But the brand is now trash. And it was headed for bankruptcy long before the Covid travails….
I suppose if you paid over $100k for anything…. you’d keep it on the road rather than write the lemon off and crush it.
It’s like Tesla — they have horrible reliability scores too — yet you will be hard pressed to find an owner who will say that buying a Tesla was a terrible mistake…. if you have spent 100k on a sports car (and you are saving the world…) even if it rattles and squeaks ….you stay pretty quiet ….
You can safely buy an old car as long as you buy a Mercedes 190 aka “the best car ever made”. It’s bBy far the most common “old car” I see in the streets around here. Very popular also in Eastern Europe, I believe.
Why would I want an old car when I can buy a new car that is a thousand times more comfortable… has a top of the line stereo system…. handles ten thousand times better… accelerates and corners far better than those old jalopies.. and displays everything I need to know include GPS on my windshield?
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aoIgxnnK22Q/maxresdefault.jpg
I really do not understand the appeal of old cars.
I have had my truck for 5 years and my car for 3…. and not once have I had either of them in the garage for anything other than their normal maintenance.
When you buy a new car you are actually buying a future old car, only much more expensive! Then why not buy the old car now, for a third of the price, and spending the difference on more useful things like wine or books (and free time to read them)?
(I do not recommend though that this reasoning be applied to other types of products such as shoes, fish or wives. 🙂 )
Cuz Fast Eddy doesn’t care about money…. (cuz he’s going to be dead soon)
When I was in Canada in January I got up to speed on the legalization of smoking pot…. and I had a look at the vendor’s sites and to my shock and horror I saw that they were promoting not only smoking but options for people who can’t tolerate smoke and prefer to get wasted by eating gummy bears or other THC infused stuff that children might enjoy https://pacificgrass.co/product-category/edibles/gummies/
I had thought that legalizing weed was to get it out of the hands of scumbags… and to tax it…
Yet here we have companies encouraging it … let’s get everyone getting stoned….let’s appeal to the kids…. I was left shaking my head….
Then I saw this interview on Hockey Night in Canada promoting cannabis use for kids right up to seniors…. 3:30 mark ‘Cannabis can be family oriented and part of a healthy lifestyle’
W…T…. F….. did I just hear what I think I heard???? You listen — am I hallucinating?
Is the CBC encouraging Canadian families to pass around joints as part of a healthy lifestyle?
Of course some people won’t like to smoke it so there’s gummy bears…..
https://www.facebook.com/rogershometownhockey/videos/ross-rebagliati-interview/2247325628851881/
“Smoking cannabis really DOES make people lazy because it affects the area of the brain responsible for motivation”
And now it hit me… like a diamond bullet between the eyes…. this is another part of the CDP… frequent marijuana use leads to lethargy…. people who lay about smoking weed do not riot… they don’t even want to work never mind rip their neighbour’s face off.
Hmm… okay FE, I’ll bite. Despite being legal now in Canada, I haven’t smoked weed in years, but I’ll field a counter-argument to your rant:
Not sure why you would be opposed to people of any age consuming marijuana – it’s just a plant. I don’t have kids, but I’d sooner have my non-existant child smoke up rather than be put on the cocktail of mind-altering pharmaceuticals they’re prescribed by most quack doctors today.
In fact, I really ought to plant some marijuana plants – we’re allowed to grow up to four plants per household here in Canada – as when collapse inevitably does arrive, it may be difficulty to walk down to the pharmacy and buy a bottle of Aspirin…
As a side argument, I hate the “nanny state” world we live in that treats teenagers as children (kinda thought you might too, given how often you complain about your NZ Prime Minister treating your nation like a bunch of children who cannot govern themselves). I get it that everyone wants to “protect the children” these days, but is it any wonder we get so many authoritarian world leaders who insist on telling us how to live and what we can/can’t do or even say (instead of letting us just live our lives)?
If you continue to raise generations of children who are protected from everything and everyone “for their own good”, don’t be surprised when those children grow up to be authoritarians who believe they are doing “the right thing” by exercising control over their countrymen, often to impose laws (and punishments) that may be consistent with the values / beliefs of the day, yet make little sense and/or are incredibly tyrannical (e.g. we don’t have free speech laws here in Canada, and like most nations, we have tyrannical “conspiracy” laws that punish you for discussing criminal activity, even if you do nothing to actually engage in said activity).
While it might sound ridiculous and harsh, perhaps the best thing that could happen to us would be a return to the days that children were seen as “small adults” and were offered no special treatment over anyone else. At least then you wouldn’t have to worry about children consuming marijuana, as children forced to work in sweat shops and live in crushing poverty don’t have time to be smoking doobies, am I right? 🙂
Cheers,
-GBV
Willow Bark is rich in Salicylic acid, but it looks like some processing is needed to turn it into Aspirin.
As for the kids, teenage rebellion is a neat thing, keeps things changing. Kids raised in an authoritarian regime may tend to feel strongly the opposite in their teens and early twenties.
I recall having a discussion with an obese teacher in Canada many years ago… (I had a side gig during uni as a supply teacher)
I was taking issue with the fact that the school cafeteria was selling rubbish — french fries burgers crisps chocolate bars etc…. nothing even remotely healthy….
He said well if we don’t offer these then they will just go down the street and buy them….
To which I said …. we should start selling kokaine… l s d…. smack … in the school.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tVGVXKBkyds/maxresdefault.jpg
If we are going to push marijuana on children … the why stop there — the legal drinking age should be reduced to 5… nah … let’s just put beer and whisky into baby bottles…. and when kids are misbehaving give them a tab of MDMA or inject them with smack to calm them… if they are being antisocial and pouting… a nice fat line of kokaine will fix that…..
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tVGVXKBkyds/maxresdefault.jpg
Heaven forbid we let young people make their own decisions and learn the consequences of them. Or worse, actually do some parenting so that children are healthy and emotionally secure enough not to have to escape into a world of alcoholism and narcotics abuse… 😐
Cheers,
-GBV
” let’s just put beer and whisky into baby bottles” – they were doing that 170 years ago, alcohol plus a little morphine.
“”Charlotte N. Winslow, a pediatric nurse, originally created Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup as a cure-all for fussy babies. The syrup was first produced in 1849 by her son-in-law, Jeremiah Curtis, and his partner Benjamin Perkins, in Bangor, Maine. It was widely marketed in North America and the United Kingdom.
Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was known as a patent medication (this term often refers to a product that was marketed in the United States during this time but typically did not prove efficacy or safety). The concoction was used for babies who were crying, teething, or had dysentery, for which the opioid effect of the syrup caused constipation, to treat the diarrhea.
The syrup contained morphine 65 mg per ounce, as well as alcohol. One teaspoonful had the morphine content equivalent to 20 drops of laudanum (opium tincture); and it was recommended that babies 6 months old receive no more than 2-3 drops of laudanum.
One teaspoonful contained enough morphine to kill the average child. Many babies went to sleep after taking the medicine and never woke up again, leading to the syrup’s nickname: the baby killer.
Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was hugely popular. In an 1868 court summary, Curtis reported selling more than 1.5 million bottles of the remedy annually.””
from:
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/contributor/karen-berger/2019/03/pharmacys-past-the-soothing-syrup-known-for-causing-death-in-thousands-of-babies-
MCH, welcome to 1971. When my children were teething, we rubbed vermouth on their gums. It worked, and was a whole lot safer than the laboratory garbage being peddled by the paediatricians.
In Canada the CBC recommends rubbing kokaine on childrens gums… and feeding them THC laced gummy bears.
“Smoking cannabis really DOES make people lazy because it affects the area of the brain responsible for motivation”
People consume pot because they are lazy / disheartened, or are they lazy / disheartened because they consume pot? In many cases, I suspect that it is the lack of motivation or the lack will to succeed that leads to the consumption of cannabis in the first place, not the other way around. The desire to be successful and the feeling of having achieved it are a drug in itself: shots of dopamine galore.
When Canada legalized recreative marijuana investors thought it would be the next biggie and they went overboard with it… as a consequence the market is oversupplied now. That’s why they are promoting its use.
Of course one can always come up with another reason for the purpose of supporting a different narrative.
And yet, the regulated market price for cannabis products is significantly higher than the black market price. The premise was that regulated products would be cheaper, and undercut criminal activity. But now we have research in Canada that certain strains of marijuana might give you resistance to COVID-19: https://calgaryherald.com/cannabis/cannabis-shows-promise-blocking-coronavirus-infection-alberta-researcher/
yes let’s unload the surplus on 10 year olds in the form of gummy bears… makes total sense
As I understand it, we do have pretty prohibitive laws that restrict giving marijuana to children / youths (harsher punishment than our laws about giving them cigarettes or alcohol, both substances which I personally believe may be worse for you than marijuana).
Also, there may be instances where the medicinal properties of marijuana (or alcohol? or tobacco? or…?) could be helpful / beneficial to people of any age. Were that the case, taking the position that an individual of a certain age should NEVER have access to those substances is… well, kind of stupid 😐
Cheers,
-GBV
CBC is promoting marijuana as a ‘healthy family activity’
This really is a must watch (I am not making it up)
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2247325628851881
I have wondered for some time, why not use hash oil instead of tear gas and pepper spray to control riots? Once people are greened out, they are pretty mellow and easy to control. Instead of vandalizing all the local businesses, they’ll buy snacks and sit around eating.
Because peace officers (read: law ENFORCEMENT officers) are sadistic, and enjoy causing pain and suffering?
Cheers,
-GBV
Debts is causing a lot of problems now. I went to a coffee house yesterday and learned that the owner of the coffee has expanded his coffee houses to many locations in the city. He is one of the people of complains a lot about the lockdown. Yeah, possibly due to the fact that he cannot service the loans. If there is very little use of debts, then this lockdown might not be such a big issue.
If this is the olden days of “layaway” or 40% down for a house and there is nothing much to spend, then I believe this lockdown might not be such a problem. To service debts, we need an expanding economy (because our total repayment has to include interest). Debts is stealing from the future.
One man’s debt is another man’s assets. So, resetting the debt is not a solution. With such low velocity of money, it is just not possible to service any loans. It will only get tougher over time.
CTG,
Last paragraph: Were it person to person, yes, bank creates money out of air, only real risk is the banks capital which is a fx of the loan. Velocity seems to be a real issue. In private business A/R have a longer turn time and an allowance for doubtful accounts.
When I ran my last business, a non profit, I drove the board nutz as we essentially had no capital other than A/R – these were from the State of WI and were paid with a 10 day delay, velocity was good, A/R were the same as cash. A/P were 30 days, what is not to like? All the money is at the edge, don’t you know?
Dennis L.
The problem now is that they are interconnected in a complex web of holdings. Pension funds are buying these products to pay our to pensioners and investors. Too complicated
Accounts payable and receivables are as good as cash if there is trust. Right now, trust is precious commodity. I know that many banks and organisations are begining to distrust them.
Gone were the good old days where things are simple and straightforward.
More tales from blue pill land…
“The electorate will be a little bit disgruntled”, that they’ve been thrown to the wolves. But, hey, Wall St. is safe, so that’s o.k.
The economy is ’10 times worse than anything we’ve ever seen,’ says Former CBO Director
“Douglas Holtz-Eakin President of the American Action Forum joins Yahoo FInance’s Alexis Christoforous and Rick Newman (as they) break down the government’s monetary and fiscal response to the coronavirus pandemic.”
https://153news.net/player/embed_player.php?vid=18990
I find absolutely nothing to dissagree with about your 10:59 pm comment!
While I, on the other hand, find it vacuuous and lacking in substance.
Is this a “glass half empty” type situation? No, the glass is completely empty!
Well, I’m speechless!
I am always curious about the people, remarkable lead singer, Belinda Carlisle.
Quote from an an article in Express whatever that is : “FROM stardom and drugs to marriage and family, Belinda Carlisle’s done it all. Now the singer’s found her heaven on Earth.”
We are all so concerned about what is happening, what will happen, she lived life, but she had talent and reading one of the paragraphs worked very hard.
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/854041/Heaven-singer-Belinda-Carlisle-drug-addiction-success
When Ed asked how to start his own business I mentioned caffeine and alcohol as being one of safer combinations to manage the stress and the need to keep going. This woman went a bit further. Also an interesting life, she went all in.
Quote from the Express article: “I got to meet Prince, Whitney and Michael over the years. Ten years ago I was at a 80s-themed birthday party to sing a song for the Sultan of Brunei’s son. Afterwards the promoter asked if I wanted to meet the queen of Brunei. As we walked through the club, I looked up and there was Michael Jackson and Raquel Welch – and everything went into slow motion.” CTG maybe was at this party, he seems to be in the right area.
These people get around, Prince lived in the cities, occasionally hung out at the Dakota Club, I never saw him, rumor had it when in the house he would sometimes go on stage, really can’t confirm that one, but it is a good story. Damn, clubs are fun, nothing like working flat out all week and come late night Friday going out, ah BAU!
Sometimes we are taking this too seriously, we are all going to die, what counts is the time spent between birth and death – it has always been finite and we are all burning the days. Fire up the Gulfstream, FE, it is time to rock and roll one more time.
Dennis L.
Business? I’d go dodgy – sell Fentys. Even if you get caught by the time you go to trial this should all be done and dusted
There are con-spira-cy thoeries that both Prince and Michael Jackson did not die but instead moved to the Persian Gulf to be closer to their Gulf Royal mates and indulge their enthusiasm for the pleasures of the harem….
Imagine coming home to this sort of welcome!
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e8/c9/91/e8c9916c829318438518c4dff5bce390.jpg
I think Mike preferred young boys … actually… Prince… well who knows what sort of deviancy he got up to
Tim always the center of controversy.
Oh… wow…
Cambridge University moves learning online for full year
Given the likely need for continued social distancing, we have decided to suspend mass lectures in person for the next academic year. Lectures will be available online; this system is already in place in some University Departments.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/coronavirus/news/update-from-the-senior-pro-vice-chancellor-education-regarding-the-academic-year-2020-21
Those are just the large group lectures where the students sit listen and take notes. No loss attending online. The smaller groups and labs and tests still in person. Still a ways from learning out of your parents basement but starting to lean that way.
Large groups – ya like most of the students… and most of the classes
Lectures will continue via video until summer 2021, while it may be possible for smaller teaching groups to take place in person if they “conform to social-distancing requirements,” a spokesperson said.
Exams will also continue to be carried out online.
Cambridge can still charge full fees for online classes.
“Cambridge University has some of the leading virologists, epidemiologists, zoonotic disease experts and professors of medicine in the world. And they won’t be having students in classes until at least 2021. Yet [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson wants YOUR kids at school,” said author Will Black.
It comes after a decision from Manchester University earlier in the week to scrap all face-to-face classes for the next term.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/cambridge-university-moves-learning-online-full-year-200520075756707.html
The central form of teaching at Cambridge is the ‘supervison’, and that is usually 1-to -1 and can easily be done within any distancing rules.
Many students skip lectures which are not mandatory anyway.
Frankly, often the only reason to attend lectures was if you wished to contrive a meeting with a particular girl….
Thanks FE, you are making me feel good, got to love affirmation.
Howe thinks we might have multiple waves of this disease, I stuck my neck out and thought maybe one, oops. Can I buy you a scotch?
Dennis L.
No need for actual multiple waves… it’s the threat that counts.
Kinda like terrorism….
In that case, I think it’s high time we declare a “War on Coronavirus”. I’m sure we’ll win that war, just like we won the war against terrorism… and the war against drugs… and the war on poverty… 😐
Cheers,
-GBV
More on the Zoom economy, continuation of moving in with parents; the new economy Gail and others have suggested? A wag writing headlines might say “Zoom made the apartments go Boom!” Well, may stick with my day job which is retirement.
The following is consistent with Howe, it could be consistent with what seems to be happening at universities. Observation of students: When I retired from private practice in 2002 I immediately enrolled in a technical college, 60 credits when done, programming to welding, I was around kids. The from what I have seen kids today are very well behaved , very respectful, very serious, very nice. 18 years is not quite a generation, but it gets close. Personal observation, your mileage may vary.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/young-people-are-rushing-leave-big-cities-favor-less-infected-suburbia
All of us are headline aware, they are designed to draw us in and it is easy to find things which affirm one’s beliefs. This virus may not have changed much, but it seems to have hastened change.
Dennis L.
” A former NYC bartender, she has left her apartment in Brooklyn to move back in with her parents in South Carolina. She is currently using unemployment to pay her part of the rent and says that she is stuck “rethinking” the appeal of living in the big city.”
“rethinking” my foot…
these are young people with almost no choices… most of these unemployed are never going to get their jobs back, whether they know it or not…
and perhaps millions are “rethinking” their lives, but it’s all because it is being forced on them by massive economic damage…
many Boomers and others of middle age and up probably have some savings and/or investments/property that might allow them to lose their job and actually sincerely “rethink” what they want to do with the rest of their life…
but most young persons have no wealth…
too bad…
centuries of increasing prosperity are now in the past…
the future is for much fuller houses, whether an extended family or more, and in those households the average number of employed adults will be half or less…
half in the lucky households…
Covid, the wealth is their youth, their wealth is between their ears. Someone is going to make it.
Dennis L.
Dennis, I enrolled in Community College in 2002 to complete my degree as an older non-traditional student. Although CC had more older students than four year schools, still plenty of typical college age youth all around. I was also impressed with their ambition, politeness, and dedication. Certainly no worse, and often better than their boomer counterparts. Other bloggers have also noted that generations succeeding the boomers have been generally less antisocial than the boomers themselves, a sentiment I agree with.
If anyone is a parent with kids heading to or in Uni… tell them to drop out .. and instead follow FE’s post on OFW…. they will learn so much more here than they could ever learn in any school.
And its FOC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux1vBolJf5Q
TOKYO (Kyodo) — Japan is expected to end its coronavirus-related state of emergency Monday by easing curbs on economic activity in Tokyo and four other prefectures ahead of schedule, with the spread of infections under control.
After the emergency is lifted, the government will establish a transitional period and assess the infection situation every three weeks meaning requests for people to stay at home and avoid large gatherings may be eased only gradually.
Abe is calling for Japanese people to alter their lifestyles by wearing face masks, maintaining social distancing and working from home to allow the lifting of the state of emergency to breathe life into the recession-hit economy. The Tokyo area and Hokkaido account for about a third of the nation’s gross domestic product.
The premier is scheduled to hold a press conference to explain his decision later in the day.
Japan is lifting the coronavirus emergency declaration roughly seven weeks after it was enforced. Abe expanded the measure to all 47 prefectures in mid-April ahead of the Golden Week holidays from late April to early May to encourage people to cancel their travel plans.
Earlier in the month, Abe extended the state of emergency until May 31. But on May 14 he exempted 39 prefectures where the spread of the virus had been brought under control, followed by Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo in western Japan last Thursday.
The state of emergency gave prefectural governors legal authority to request people forgo nonessential outings and businesses to suspend their operations, even though Japan cannot legally enforce a hard lockdown similar to those implemented in Europe and the United States.
We will see what happens.
Good way to keep BAU on simmer…
Has this been posted here?
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/22/10c-above-baseline/
In the post, there is a link to an extremely McPhersonian video presentation by John Doyle, Sustainable Development Policy Coordinator of the European Commission in Brussels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Deaz3UN0rw
I gather this is from May 2019, with the video having been posted in September. I don’t know to what degree this sort of reckoning filtering into mainstream policy channels would have anything to do with the world-wide lockdown. Thoughts?
I think it is the same video that Tim Groves posted, saying:This John Doyle (there are others John Doyles more famous than him) is a ClimateAlarmist of the first water. He is up there with Guy McP, both in his predictions of gloom and his eyes—those staring eyes!
You are right. Even if Doyle is way off, his views may influence some others as well.
Finished the podcast, readers here may skip to 46 minutes which begins his ideas on what I would call the definancialization of America and its effect on GDP. Gail has mentioned a new economy, part of this is my youth, my grandmother lived with us, a three generation household, formed in the depression, it is how my father got a house, a wife and finally a son; sounds like today. Wealth stayed in the family, jobs were not hired out which is part of what Howe sees with millennials, they live with their parents, multi-generational families.
Whether or not this guy is right or not is for each to decide, it is $500 to subscribe to his site, my car will last one more month, done. He is not with a university, that may well be a great strength.
Gail meets so many interesting people, I am envious.
All the best to all of you,
Dennis L.
$500 to subscribe… in this time, I suspect many persons are just going to go ahead and splurge (not necessarily this, but whatever meets their fancy) if they have abundant funds… saving for the future might be a goner, if there isn’t much of a future ahead…
I read stories of collectibles becoming much higher in demand recently…
but a season of splurging won’t last long…
After 2008 we had many more customers at the gallery putting money into paintings and prints (true originals, not those phoney ‘limited editions’ which one should never touch) as interest rates were so low.
Antiquarian books have also done well since then, reaching auction highs, but I suspect many of those buyers will be severely stressed by what is coming and disappear.
We may also see many collections coming on the market due to excess deaths among the elderly, which will likely have a depressing effect on prices.
“Whether or not this guy is right or not is for each to decide…”
okay I listened from the 46 minute mark to the end…
he seems big on polling people of various generations for their thoughts about their wants and needs…
no doubt he has a good grasp of the past, but I think he takes a big swing and a miss about the future…
for most people, especially the youngest generations, their wants (especially) and needs are going to be plowed aside by the massive economic damage taking place now, and the severely downsized economy that is coming with this 2020 reset…
their choices will be limited… yes, multi-generational families will be quickly increasing, not because of personal preference, but because for millions there will be no way to afford the apartment, and so it’s back to the parent’s house…
I think he might discover this in his future research, but he’s not going to have valuable insights…
from the brief interview, I sense that he’s cluelless about the depression heading our way, and the powerful force it will be that pushes people to do what they need to survive, not to have their “wants” fulfilled…
so he doesn’t know yet what his research will discover, but I think it’s obvious from the perspective of OFW type knowledge…
Howe is not an OFW type. I was not terribly impressed with his insights about the future. He did have some interesting observations about the past.
He had a younger wife/girl friend that he was with constantly. They left the minute his talk was finished. He didn’t seem at all interested in talking to me.
https://www.biometricupdate.com/201909/id2020-and-partners-launch-program-to-provide-digital-id-with-vaccines
You will be silent and obey, or you will not eat, or be free to travel. Your whole life will be locked down.
And yes, Bill Gates is behind it.
https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/whats-id-2020-and-are-you-ready-to-become-impacted-by-it/
Just so we all know what the next step will be. Total control and surveillance at all times. Be silent and obey or you will get nothing and be allowed to go nowhere.
And can we stop using the term “conspiracy theorist”?
https://www.biometricupdate.com/201909/id2020-and-partners-launch-program-to-provide-digital-id-with-vaccines
“The ID2020 Alliance has launched a new digital identity program at its annual summit in New York, in collaboration with the Government of Bangladesh, vaccine alliance Gavi, and new partners in government, academia, and humanitarian relief.
The program to leverage immunization as an opportunity to establish digital identity was unveiled by ID2020 in partnership with the Bangladesh Government’s Access to Information (a2i) Program, the Directorate General of Health Services, and Gavi, according to the announcement.
Digital identity is a computerized record of who a person is, stored in a registry. It is used, in this case, to keep track of who has received vaccination.”
…A partnership was also formed earlier this year between Gavi, NEC, and Simprints to use biometrics to improve vaccine coverage in developing nations.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/whats-id-2020-and-are-you-ready-to-become-impacted-by-it/
Gavi was officially launched at the World Economic Forum in 2000 at a time when multiple organizations were pursuing siloed approaches to immunization, leading to inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in the market for vaccines. The organization’s founding partners, including UNICEF, the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, developing and donor governments, and others…
“Digital ID is being defined and implemented today, and we recognize the importance of swift action to close the identity gap,” comments ID2020 Executive Director Dakota Gruener. “Now is the time for bold commitments to ensure that we respond both quickly and responsibly. We and our ID2020 Alliance partners, both present and future, are committed to rising to this challenge.”
ID2020 also announced new partnerships and provided progress reports on initiatives launched last year. Since last year’s summit, the ID2020 Alliance has been joined by the City of Austin, UC Berkeley’s CITRIS Policy Lab and Care USA.
The City of Austin, ID2020, and several other partners are working together with homeless people and the service providers who engage with them to develop a blockchain-enabled digital identity platform called MyPass to empower homeless people with their own identity data.
A pair of inaugural pilot programs launched last year in partnership with iRespond and Everest have each made progress, ID2020 says. The iRespond program has improved continuity of care for more than 3,000 refugees receiving treatment for chronic conditions from the International Rescue Committee in Thailand, according to the announcement, while Everest has assisted with the provision of access to critical energy subsidies and a range of additional services with secure and user-centric digital identities without relying on a smartphone.
I notice that a footnote to the first article now says:
This post was updated at 4:58pm on March 26, 2020 to clarify that the program is intended to allow people to receive vaccination and prove they have received it, not to track individuals, as claimed by some conspiracy theorists.
Of course, requiring vaccines, and being able to track those with vaccines, is still a problem.
“homeless people” and “blockchain-enabled” wow if this was 2017 they’d raise hundreds of millions off their ICO.
“And can we stop using the term “conspiracy theorist”?”
How can we comply with the demand to discard wrong thinking if we dont have a designation?
Having read “The Fourth Turning” many years ago, I find this video with Howe to be very interesting, it is done in with Chris Martenson which may put some off, but so far Chris is listening more than talking.
https://youtu.be/4yuHVCHH1a0
Howe’s book “Generations” is on the way from Amazon of course, used book to save on resources – no sarcasm implied.
There is so much to learn, so much to read, so little time. We live in a very interesting time again, no sarcasm. One of the challenges in getting glimpses of these changes is not seeing them as doom and gloom, they are periods of change.
Dennis L.
Neil Howe was one of the other speakers when I spoke in Bermuda to a large life actuarial audience in September 2018, so I met him there.
Here is a thought coming through from me for the 14-day quarantine that an international traveller has to go through. I stand corrected for any wrong information posted (but I don’t think I am wrong)
1. A majority of the people is infected by the virus. They are asymptomatic and they don’t even know they have it unless they are tested
2. The swab test done is to collect the DNA sample from the human body and by using PCR, it is amplified and sequences of SARS-nCOV2 is being detected
3. Once SARS-nCOV2 goes inside the body, it will replicate, maybe quickly or slowly but replicate it will. If that person is healthy, then chances are high, there is no symptom.
4. It has been documented that in general, within 1 week of initial infection, the person would have the symptoms.
It seems like this is a world according to FE (CDP or gross incompetence).
The 14-day number is the number given out when China was at its peak (Feb) where it takes around 2 weeks to show the symptoms. It is just a figure put forward by politicians or medical doctors as a way to see if that person has the symptoms of the virus. Why not 8 or 9 days but a round figure of 2 weeks? To me, it is like a “cover your backside” type of number where the politicians asks the doctors and the doctors say “to be on the safe side, say 2 weeks”.
Now, we know that a lot of those infected are asymptomatic and if those who are to show symptoms, many of them will have it within 1 week. Furthermore, a swab test will reveal the presence of the viral RNA matter regardless if the person is symptomatic or not. There is no need to wait for 2 weeks to see if that person is symptomatic. It is a waste of time to quarantine for 2 weeks “to see if there are symptoms”. Just do the test and find out after 3 days of arrival. If that person is negative for swab test because the virus would have replicated immediately once it enters the body. Symptoms are just showing that your body is weak.
That 14-day quarantine is just nothing more than a figure plucked out from the air and it is never changed even though it is wrong.
14-da quarantine will kill international travel. If I were to visit country A, I will be quarantine 14-days there and then when I return home, I have to do another 14 days. Every economic sector will be dead with this 14-day quarantine thing, not just tourism but business meetings, conventions, etc.
Herd immunity or a vaccine—
Comrades, this is going to take a year minimum, if everything goes right.
So, do what you want.
You are right. It seems like the 14-day quarantine period could be shortened, if the test for COVID-19 does not produce too many false negatives. I know that originally these were a major problem. You would still have to build in time for taking the test and getting the results back, probably twice, to help work around the false negative problem. I am guessing that the quarantine could be reduced to five days, if tests could be given on days two and three, and the results gotten back two days later.
The intention is to kill international travel…. it uses up our precious remaining cheap to produce oil….
On the other hand, there seems to be evidence that over 95% of cases become symptomatic within 11 days, so 14 days gives a buffer for outliers. Reports originally of possible cases of 27 day incubation, although realistically they probably were exposed later than they thought.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-incubation-period/
There are reports of a new variant of the virus in Jilin / Harbin that takes 2 to 4 weeks to incubate, and infects people for months. This could just be rumors, we’ll see. It seems possible that selective pressures would encourage slower, less deadly versions to be most successful.
No comment on Brazil but the Mexico Al-J video is interesting…a 2 minute 15 second video that has barely a paragraph article attached. Bit too sparse of an article/video to really draw much from. I’m surprised you didn’t link the sensationalist May 13th Skynews video on Mexico- ‘The ovens never stop burning’ which has been independently deemed inaccurate.
Nevertheless it’s true that governments virtually everywhere are getting it all wrong. Bizarroworld!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF10UHN-8PE
That’s a video on the covid19 situation in Brazil. Best sequence to watch from 1:10 thru 1:30, in which medical experts say the death toll is being under-reported from 21,000 reported with 11,000 more unreported, is actually 33,000.
Also suggest looking up a YouTube video on the situation in Mexico City in which most hospitals are at capacity.
You have a choice:
Get on with live as we have with other viruses e.g. flu were circulating — lots of people get sick — some (mostly old KFC Big Gulpers die – which is actually a good thing because culling them saves money on keeping the diseased vermin alive)….
OR…..
Lock down like NZ — ruin the economy permanently — and pump out tens of billions to keep it on life support paying people to do nothing because there is no work…. meanwhile people are turning to suicide, drugs, booze… beating their families…. because all hope has been smashed out of them trying to lockdown a virus.
It’s rather obvious that a) is the best choice… no?
I’d vote for Bolsonaro over G3T without a second thought
BTW: why didn’t the US shut down?
The overall burden of influenza for the 2017-2018 season was an estimated 45 million influenza illnesses, 21 million influenza-associated medical visits, 810,000 influenza-related hospitalizations, and 61,000 influenza-associated deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm
Based on the early estimates of 3% mortality rate, if 60% of USA was infected with the Wu Flu, 6 million people would have died within a few months. It seems like the virus might be significantly less deadly than early estimates, but it is hard to tell.
Its clear we need to lockdown for 50 years. Just to be sure. Better safe than sorry. Only evil oligarchs would ask people to work in a unsafe environment.
IN 2017/18 if they had pressured doctors to report all deaths in people who had KFC Big Gulp Diseases along with the flu — imagine what the death rate could have been then too!!!
The infection rate for the U.S. is probably around 5% at the moment, based on the number of cases per million in the population. Given that this is a novel virus, without a vaccine, everyone in that country could potentially contract it. Without any mitigation measures it would still take some time for the virus to spread to all possible hosts. Much longer than 6 months.
The virus is being slowed down in its penetration and lethality through mitigation, so the health system is still intact, and people can be treated. However, if the health system ends up collapsing, then your scenario becomes quite realistic. Now, if everyone can potentially catch it, at the current mortality rate, it could easily still end up killing many people over time, even with mitigation, just not all at once.
Both roads lead to economic collapse, but the economy was always going to collapse. The virus was just the catalyst. If not it, then something else would have done the trick.
You say catalyst I say tool…
You’re giving the monkeys in charge too much credit for thinking that.
33,000 deaths out of a population of 213 million in Brazil. Fear, hysteria and panic.
I put together a few charts comparing some of countries south of the US to the US. (Quite a bit of Europe is higher than the US.)
With respect to new confirmed cases per million population, Chile seems to be off the map, high. Mexico looks fairly low. In fact, it would be low, even if cases were three times higher than stated.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/chile-peru-mexico-brazil-new-covid-cases-may-23.png
On a cumulative reported confirmed COVID-19 cases basis, Mexico again looks low:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/peru-chile-brazil-mexico-total-confirmed-covid-19-cases-may-23.png
On a cumulative reported death basis, Mexico looks relatively a little higher. Brazil and Peru are tied. Chili’s low deaths relative to reported cases probably relates to the fact that most of these cases are new. Patients have not had a chance to die from COVID-19.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/brazil-peru-mexico-chile-cumulative-deaths-may-23.png-.png
With respect to Mexico’s hospital bed problem, I can think of a couple of possible explanations:
1. The cases are concentrated in the Mexico City area. The problem might not be as bad if they were spread out more.
2. Mexico never had very much margin in its hospital system for an influx of cases.
Another possible explanation – there’s no consistency between nations on tracking covid-19 infections / deaths, and thus the statistics we keep getting hit with every day are of little use?
I’ve given up on believing almost everything… nobody, from the MSM presstitutes with their promises of recovery to the OFW doomers with their warnings of collapse, really seem to know what’s happening – financially, politically, statistically, spiritually, epidemiologically, etc.
The worst part (so far) is being stuck in this limbo / purgatory of not knowing where we stand on so many fronts. I know some of you here have been enduring it longer than I have, but I’ve been living it since 2010 and it’s really starting to wear thin… 😐
Cheers,
-GBV
Same here, GBV, how much more can we take!? Between Harry McGibb and Fast Eddie my head is spinning like a top….even my pills have little help on my condition….my hair now is turning gray and we still are no nearer to the end..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TCJJ2ejDfek
Yes, I believe