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.
>>Moreover, the amount of money oil companies spend developing fields in the North Sea may fall to as little as £1bn by 2029
This does not make sense unless I have missed something. Why would they spend any money going forward when oil prices are fluctuating above and below $30/barrel (for now) but “For most projects in the North Sea to make financial sense, analysts say, oil prices must be above $65”.
That I am aware of, the remaining undeveloped fields in the UK sector of the North Sea are either tiny, far from existing platforms, high pressure/high temperature, contain hydrogen sulphide or poor quality, or a mixture of these. And the platforms are old = high maintenance costs, you would think.
It’s difficult to know what’s truth and what’s spin with respect to all these numbers tossed about by the MSM…
North Sea oil producers may be floating that number because if they do not then investors will lose interest because they’ve effectively raised the flag of surrender.
Think about the utter rubbish that Musk’s PR people pump out —it’s all about creating buzz and keeping the brand in the news.
I just read that Uber is slashing 1/4 of their workforce — that’s likely true — yet they are keeping their autonomous driving division mostly untouched.
Why? Because that’s the basis for their story (lie) that they will someday become profitable — they just need to eliminate the cost of the human drivers.
And because markets are driven by hype and lies — and rely on humans to not ask any hard questions (or just ignore the obvious)…. there is no choice but to employ a big expensive PR team to lie and lie and lie…. because it’s a dog fight …
“Our analysis suggests that most Emerging Market economies will face a painful adjustment of fiscal balances in the aftermath of the COVID crisis…
“Six countries will likely need to make especially painful adjustments relative to the projected 2021 outcome: South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Nigeria, Brazil, and Ghana.”
https://voxeu.org/article/post-covid-dealing-emerging-market-debt-overhang
“Turkey was recovering from its first recession in a decade when the coronavirus hit. Now the economy is on the brink again, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is running out of options.
“With a risk of mass unemployment, a collapse in tourism and an unstable currency, “the situation is extremely bad”, said Atilla Yesilada, an economist at GlobalSource Partners think tank.”
https://middle-east-online.com/en/erdogan-running-out-options-save-economy
“Argentina is currently engaged in intense negotiations with its creditors over at least $65 billion in government debt… that is mostly in dollars, and mostly owned by foreigners.
“Argentina’s 45 million residents, as well as hundreds of millions of people on this planet, have a large stake in the outcome of these negotiations. With vital foreign exchange earnings plummeting in the world recession, how much will be used for essential imports such as medicine or food, and how much to pay off debt?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/opinion/argentina-debt-negotiation-coronavirus.html
“Ecuador said Tuesday it is closing several embassies and state enterprises to save money amid an economic crisis provoked by the coronavirus pandemic.
“”We will close … embassies and diplomatic offices,” President Lenin Moreno said in a speech on television and radio as he presented a plan to save more than $4 billion.”
https://news.yahoo.com/ecuador-close-embassies-state-firms-over-virus-crisis-150619905.html
Price crash makes a third of North Sea oil and gas uneconomic to extract
Research finds that oil at $25 a barrel means about 4m barrels will be unprofitable to produce
By Ed Clowes 20 May 2020 • 7:00am
Over a third of North Sea oil and gas reserves may be uneconomical to extract, according to a new report that casts a shadow over the sector.
The researchers have found that an oil price of $25 a barrel means that more than 3.9bn barrels – which accounts for 35pc of all available hydrocarbons in the North Sea – will be unprofitable to produce.
For most projects in the North Sea to make financial sense, analysts say, oil prices must be above $65. Brent is currently languishing around $35 and was as low as $25 earlier in the month.
Gas from the region will be particularly hard hit at these prices, according to the report, with almost 45pc of all available gas failing to pass the hurdle of economic viability.
Moreover, the amount of money oil companies spend developing fields in the North Sea may fall to as little as £1bn by 2029.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/05/20/third-north-sea-oil-gas-may-uneconomical-extract/
It is low prices that cuts off oil production. High prices encourages more high priced techniques and more extraction. There is a great deal of variability in the amount of oil available to be extracted, depending on how high the oil prices are.
“The World Trade Organization (WTO) said on Wednesday its goods trade indicator fell to the lowest level since its launch, indicating global trade was likely to fall “precipitously” in the first half of 2020 due to disruptions caused by COVID-19.
“The indicator, launched in July 2016, fell to 87.6 from 95.5 in February, the Geneva-based body said. Readings of less than 100 indicate trade below medium-term trends.
““The current reading captures the initial phases of the COVID-19 outbreak, and shows no sign of the trade decline bottoming out yet,” the WTO said in a statement.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trade-wto/wtos-goods-trade-index-hits-record-low-amid-covid-disruptions-idUKKBN22W12A
A big drop in world trade is going to be difficult to reverse. Supply lines get broken and are hard to fix.
It is a bigger drop for February than I had envisioned. Lockdowns outside China did not get underway until March and April.
Ya that’s because the global economy was collapsing…
“Spanish public debt rose in March [only including two weeks of lockdown] to a record high of 1.224 trillion euros ($1.34 trillion), mainly lifted by the financing of government measures to smooth the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, Bank of Spain data showed on Tuesday.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/spain-economy-debt/spanish-public-debt-rises-to-record-high-in-march-bank-of-spain-idUKL8N2D13NE
“Riot police were deployed in force as youths set cars ablaze in some low-income housing estates in the Paris suburbs overnight, online news reports and postings on Twitter showed on Wednesday, amid tensions heightened by the coronavirus lockdown.”
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-05-20/riot-police-deployed-as-youths-set-cars-ablaze-in-paris-suburbs
I can see why authorities might want would be rioters to stay in their homes.
Translation: “low income housing estates” = “ghettos”; “youths” = “third world invaders”.
“Sweden’s highly contested response to Covid-19 left much of the economy open. Even so, the country is now headed for its worst recession since World War II.
“Scandinavia’s biggest economy will shrink 7% this year, Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Tuesday. Shortly after she spoke, the debt office revealed an historic 30-fold spike in borrowing to cover emergency spending amid record job losses.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/sweden-in-very-deep-economic-crisis-despite-soft-lockdown
“Ueli Maurer [Swiss Finance Minister] has warned that the financial crisis following Covid-19 and the resulting instability in Europe are a danger for Switzerland.
“In an interview with public broadcaster RTSexternal link on Tuesday, he said that he is concerned about the repercussions on Switzerland of a possible debt crisis in certain countries, especially Italy.”
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/repercussions_swiss-finance-minister-concerned-about-covid-19-debt-crisis-in-europe/45771552
It works better if Swiss is more apart from other European countries, seems to be what this oracle is saying. European relations are going downhill!
Yet more proofs of the Korowicz-Tainter thesis: there ain’t nothin’ local (‘national’ ha!) no more…… Get your reponse right and it’s annulled by the mess made by everyone else.
In breaking news, surviving members of the Monty Python team are brought in to bring reason, foresight, and sound planning to the British government’s COVID recovery plan.
Rumours also abound that Inspector Clouseau may also be resurrected to guarantee firm leadership and an element of dignity, but scientists say that may take until 2021, but they are ‘quite hopeful and please top up our research grants’….
Simply having quite a few people out sick from COVID-19 would have an adverse impact on an economy. Any kind of social distancing that takes place, such as moving restaurant tables farther apart, will adversely affect an economy. Disruptions in imported parts and disruption in demand for finished goods and services will also affect an economy, regardless of steps taken locally.
7 percent is significantly less than 42 percent.
But that’s for the year, projected, rather than the quarter.
Countries could soon face a ‘wave’ of multi-million dollar lawsuits from multinational corporations claiming compensation for measures introduced to protect people from COVID-19 and its economic fallout, according to a new report.
Researchers have identified more than twenty corporate law firms offering services to mount such cases, which would seek compensation from states for measures that have negatively impacted company profits – including lost future profits.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/wave-of-corporate-lawsuits-challenging-emergency-covid-19-measures/
“The UK chancellor has warned of a “severe recession the likes of which we haven’t seen” as official figures showed a record rise in unemployment claims. Rishi Sunak told a parliamentary committee that there was “more hardship to come…””
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-uk-jobless-claims-surge-by-856-500-in-april-11990753
“Recently the share prices of the UK’s largest banks have collapsed, in common with those of many other companies. Banks such as RBS, Barclays and HSBC have seen their share price fall to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.
“Some market-watchers suspect the sellers know something we don’t…”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52691369
“The industrial group Rolls-Royce is to cut 9,000 jobs, almost a fifth of its workforce, as the coronavirus crisis takes its toll on the aviation industry.
“The jet engine manufacturer said it is targeting £1.3bn in annual cost savings to weather the protracted downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic that has grounded much of the world’s airlines.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/20/rolls-royce-to-cut-9000-jobs-worldwide-as-covid-19-takes-toll
“Post-Brexit talks with the EU have turned sour, after the UK escalated tensions by accusing Brussels of only offering a “low-quality” trade deal.
“Downing Street’s chief negotiator, David Frost, said the agreement on offer amounts to “unprecedented oversight” of laws and institutions from 1 January 2021.”
https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-trade-talks-have-turned-sour-as-uk-attacks-low-quality-deal-on-offer-11991307
“…UK environment secretary, George Eustice…acknowledged that only about a third of workers from eastern European countries who would normally come to the UK for the work were here already and only “small numbers” would continue to travel.
““One thing is clear and that is that this year we will need to rely on British workers to lend a hand to help bring that harvest home,” he said.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/19/quarantine-shortage-fruit-pickers-immigration-bill-coronavirus-britain
EU migration to UK has collapsed over the last couple of years to around 50,000 net in 2019. Non-EU migration is up to 250,000 net in 2019. I am not sure that Brexit voters realised what they were voting for, but I anticipated this before I voted Leave just to be awkward.
It will not be a problem, as the British capitalist state will simply get its workers from outside of Europe. UK already has the highest number of non-European economic migrants of any European country, while Germany has the highest number of refugees.
Productivity growth has been downward toward terminal zero in all ‘mature’ capitalist economies since at least the 1970s. Even the diffusion of IT proved only a limited and brief respite. The incorporation of workers from abroad is the only countervailing factor to offset falling productivity growth and to maintain GDP growth.
UK has a collapsed fertility rate of 1.7 kid per woman. Fertility is collapsed in all of Europe, and all of Europe will be dependent on workers from outside of Europe in the coming decades. The domestic population will ‘age’ rapidly over the next two decades, and natural growth is already negative in some countries.
Of course I am not saying that capitalism, and globalisation, will survive another 20 years, but I do not exclude the possibility. About 40% of births in UK now have some immigrant background, and that will be the future. I have no problem with that.
Prehistoric trends, in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, confirm that population movement tends to accompany cultural change and material development. That has certainly been the case with capitalism, with imperialism and colonialism, in USA, CAN, AUS, NZ. Now it affects Europe too.
Little point in having workers with no experience on farms, etc.
Unfortunately the immigrant workers from the slums of Asia and Africa will not be effective replacements for the nice East Europeans.
Low-value, mostly back-boneless, and socially disruptive. I make an exception for the sweet African women who work in elderly care.
It’s an appalling prospect.
“…In a report earlier this month, the pair suggest that using the banks’ market prices on 1 May, every £100 of bank assets, such as loans, is supported by an average of just £2.73 of capital among the UK’s five largest banks.
That means that if investors’ valuations of the banks are correct, and should the value of all the assets drop by more than 2.73%, the banks would require help from investors or government, or face bankruptcy…”
The banks are ripe for a government takeover. Something similar occurred in 2008, but much worse this time.
It is hard to see how any banks, anywhere, are strong enough to survive the coronavirus.
But hey as of 12pm the Dow is sitting around 24,600 (+1.66%)
Honest banks will survive. Fractional reserve banking will not.
The Tory Party was telling us just two weeks ago that the economy is ‘fundamentally sound’ and that it would ‘bounce right back’, and now they are saying that UK faces an unprecedented recession and a period of mass unemployment.
Did TP not know what it was on about two weeks ago or does it generally not know what it is on about? There is quite a lot of difference between ‘bounce right back’ and ‘unprecedented recession’.
They also said that the lock-downs measures were necessary to avoid a ‘2nd wave’ of COVID: now they say that a 2nd wave is ‘inevitable’.
I should say the stock of politicians is at an all-time low in the UK.
Incompetence and incoherence beyond one’s wildest nightmares.
God help the Brits if a really serious crisis ever develops.
“Britain has sold a government bond with a negative yield for the first time after plunging inflation raised the prospect of the Bank of England cutting official interest rates below zero.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/20/uk-sells-government-bond-with-negative-yield-for-first-time-coronavirus
“Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has said the BoE is “not ruling out” negative interest rates but is “not ruling them in” either.”
https://www.cityam.com/boes-andrew-bailey-it-would-be-foolish-to-rule-out-negative-interest-rates/
Everyone is settling into the life support level…
Singapore is just a whisker away from joining the global negative-rate club.
The nation’s overnight borrowing rate was less than two basis points above zero on Tuesday, down from the year’s high of 1.68% in January. It has never gone negative before based on central bank data compiled by Bloomberg.
The plunge in the benchmark rate comes as the Monetary Authority of Singapore promised to provide sufficient liquidity in the financial system to cope with the virus-induced crunch. As the MAS doesn’t set rates, but instead manages the currency against major trading partners as a policy tool, the city state’s borrowing costs also tend to track U.S.’s benchmark.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-20/singapore-gets-closer-and-closer-to-a-sub-zero-interest-rate?srnd=premium-asia
Well of course they are not SDR…. it is the cattle who are SDR for believing that the elites are SDR…
I am always amused that the CIA is portrayed as bungling fools… of course that’s what the PTB want people to believe… the CIA does not employ fools…. they recruit from top law schools… they have teams of psychologists and financial experts … it is a fairly serious organization …. run along the lines of a top corporation ….
Anyone every interviewed with an investment bank? It takes around 10 interviews with different people throughout the organization … likewise if you try to get a job at Google… or Facebook… you go through the ringer…
The CIA is similar — except that you also have to have squeaky clean background – they do thorough checks….
There is no SDR involved here — It’s very obviously a plan.
I have spoken to epidemiologists and they are all telling me that what the epidemiologists who are advising the government goes against the basic rules of the science.
Even Johan from the WHO told me ‘great – NZ can lockdown — but they will not be able to let anyone into the country for decades – good luck with tourism and the economy’ — of course Ardern knows this….
They are shocked at the recommendations and are at a loss to explain what is going on.
This cannot be put down to people making the decisions being SDR…..
It’s all hands on deck in the PR division … the MSM is pumping fear and disinformation out 24/7….
They are executing something big here….
Of course they know that there will be no V…. they do not want a bounce back… they want to remain on life support
See CDP
“Isolationist Turkmenistan, which proudly claims to be COVID-19-free, has nonetheless been affected by the pandemic. A recent closure of its borders due to pandemic concerns has halted imports, reportedly leading to food shortages.
“The provincial situation became so dire before the borders were reopened that, on April 4, residents in the city of Mary (190 miles east of Ashgabat) apparently marched on the local government headquarters to protest rising food prices.”
https://jamestown.org/program/food-shortages-in-turkmenistan-lead-to-rationing-in-state-stores/
“North Korea is probably having difficulty importing grain due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while continuing to experience a shortage in food production, South Korea’s Ministry of Unification said Tuesday.
““COVID-19 is likely to have significantly hampered North Korea in importing resources from outside,” a Unification Ministry official said.”
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1277578/covid-19-worsening-food-shortage-in-north-korea-unification-ministry
North Korea is a desperately poor country. I am sure that we don’t have accurate COVID-19 case counts. I can believe a worsening food shortage.
We can cut that body part off of BAU and it won’t make a difference… it’s like chopping off a gangrenous little toe
Cutting off the disease is not without difficulties, anywhere! No disease, but no food either.
Disease-free corpses sounds rather hygienic actually. Win win?
More Siren!!!
This would be less alarming if you read this first https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/change.htm
China’s New Outbreak Shows Signs the Virus Could Be Changing
Chinese doctors are seeing the coronavirus manifest differently among patients in its new cluster of cases in the northeast region compared to the original outbreak in Wuhan, suggesting that the pathogen may be changing in unknown ways and complicating efforts to stamp it out.
Patients found in the northern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang appear to carry the virus for a longer period of time and take longer to recover, as defined by a negative nucleic acid test, Qiu Haibo, one of China’s top critical care doctors, told state television on Tuesday.
Cases in the northeast also appear to be taking longer than the one to two weeks observed in Wuhan to develop symptoms after infection, and this delayed onset is making it harder for authorities to catch cases before they spread, said Qiu, who is now in the northern region treating patients.
The virus will infect everyone. We infected will make sure of that. Resistance if futile.
Then we can all dream the same Covid dream…drink blood and hang upside down.
I found a link to the article you quote:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/20/asia-pacific/science-health-asia-pacific/china-new-coronavirus-outbreak/#.XsUlwS3MxTY
Since it has been determined that Covid 19 hits the elderly, obese and those with preexisiting conditions. Is there any data to show whether those with multiple organ damage already had preexisting conditions that made it more favorable for Covid 19 to make things worse for those persons?
China has a massive problem with air, land and water pollution.
“U.S. homebuilding dropped by the most on record in April and permits for future construction tumbled, underlining fears that the coronavirus crisis would lead to the deepest economic contraction in the second quarter since the Great Depression.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy/us-housing-starts-post-record-decline-permits-slump-idUSKBN22V21J
“…if the federal government doesn’t act… furloughs will turn into permanent layoffs and the country will face an extended period of high unemployment that will do sweeping and unrelenting damage to the economy—and the people and businesses in it.”
https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-recession-will-become-long-depression-unless-federal-policymakers-act-now-opinion-1504967
“One has to regret Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s seemingly partial diagnosis of our present daunting economic challenge, especially considering his key role in defusing the crisis.
“In Powell’s view, our economic predicament has nothing to do with the possibility that years of ultra-easy U.S. monetary policy might have contributed to the creation of worldwide asset and credit market bubbles.
“Rather, he seems to believe that our economic challenge is solely the result of the supply side shock delivered to the economy by the coronavirus pandemic. “
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/498573-the-federal-reserves-everything-bubble
Or maybe he realizes the problem is really population outgrowing the resource base. The only tool the government has is more debt, so he advocates using it liberally.
Even if the government does act, it will likely happen!
Wow! I suppose the market for new homes will be down, with all the job loss. Multi-generation families occupying the same home will become more common, as will roommate situations. With uncertainty ahead, people will stick with renting rather than buying.
“With uncertainty ahead, people will stick with renting rather than buying.”
Or living out of their vehicles which is becoming more prevalent.
It’s a good idea when you are rationing the remaining cheap energy.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/13/italian-doctors-find-link-between-covid-19-and-inflammatory-disorder
‘Italian doctors find link between Covid-19 and inflammatory disorder’
“Doctors in Italy have reported the first clear evidence of a link between Covid-19 and a rare but serious inflammatory disorder that has required some children to undergo life-saving treatment in intensive care units. The mysterious condition emerged last month when NHS bosses issued an alert to doctors after hospitals admitted a number of children with a mix of toxic shock and symptoms seen in an inflammatory disorder known as Kawasaki disease. On Tuesday, medics at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital announced the death of a 14-year-old boy, the first known fatality from the condition in Britain. Between 75 and 100 children are now receiving treatment across the country. Typical symptoms include a fever, skin rashes, red eyes, cracked lips and abdominal pain.”
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/cdc-confirms-link-of-inflammatory-syndrome-in-children-to-covid-19-145-potential-cases-in-nyc/2421547/
‘Up to 147 NYC Kids Sickened by Severe New COVID Syndrome; 12 Cases Confirmed in NJ’
It’s in the UK, it’s in other 15 other US states. This is a story that is still on the backburner but will get more attention as the number of cases increases worldwide.
More SIREN!!!!
If I wanted to read this rubbish I’d click http://www.cnn.com or bb.com or pravda.com… It’s not why I come to OFW.
I agree. Question covid death numbers. MSM reports covid death numbers undereported. Talk about age demographics. MSM conjours up tiny tim covid cases.
I will say this thing could be bad long term for anyone of any age. The truth is this thing was created to have characteristics that may break all the rules. Its a nasty abomination. I think most would agree on that.
I would have thought the risk of death from starvation and malnutrition / hunger-related disease, in the UK, would be in the thousands, at least. Give it a few months.
https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/child-poverty-facts-and-figures
Webstie’s data is over a year of out of date.
Unfortunate fact that the poorest families in the UK tend to have the most children: professionals are too worried about paying for private education to reproduce so freely.
In many ways, they will have brought their troubles on their own heads: not uncommon to see families with 3 to 5 children in London, all immigrants. OK in the good times, disastrous in the bad…….
Evolution in action. Professionals out, immigrants in.
Xabier… you have seen th idiocracy? That is the script. It is a documentary now although when the movie was made, it was meant to be fiction
Brazil has no policy to mitigate CV-19. Another right-wing boob is in charge, see? It’s cases and death count are rising fast, without any “flattening of the curve” in sight. Currently fourth on the CV-19 leaderboard, it’s set to overtake Spain and Russia for second place in the next few days.
Coronavirus: Hospitals in Brazil’s largest city near collapse amid huge spike in cases, mayor says
https://travel.home.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/travel/fullset/2013/02/08/3f/rio-carnival.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1491591582202.jpeg
The healthcare system in Brazil’s largest city is on the verge of collapse due to coronavirus, its mayor has said.
Bruno Covas, mayor of Sao Paulo, said public hospitals in the city of 12 million people had already reached 90 per cent capacity, and could run out of space within two weeks.
“It is hard to believe that some prefer the population to be subjected to Russian roulette. Indifference in the face of death is unseemly,” he said of those flouting social distancing measures, which includes the country’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Oh ya … it might end up like Bali or Ethiopia or Sweden… what a disaster!
OR it could choose to lock down and end up like New Zealand… a total fkkking basketcase of an economy kept alive by burning my tax dollars and piling on tens of billions of debt.
G3T has extended wage subsidies by another 3 months — she’s handing out money like candy now with artists getting millions….
If only we had a Bolsonaro for PM….
He needs to put up some tents, or put people in unused hotels. Give a list of protocols to med students and whoever else they can find, and do the best they can.
Why not ship all the ‘overwhelmed’ yet empty tents in Central Park to Brazil?
https://nypost.com/2020/04/09/central-park-coronavirus-field-hospital-near-capacity/
I think by Saturday we should start seeing a real sharp uptick in cases throughout USA, since they ended lock downs to some extent in 49 States.
Watch for lots of photos of empty tents ready for the deluge of flu patients (that won’t come)
More sirens on buildings…
Russian roulette as when we drive a car and risk death?
Yep, except in this case, every chamber is loaded, and you’re driving blindfolded.
“The coronavirus lockdown has pummelled the US economy, with some 30m jobs destroyed and trillions of dollars of output and wealth lost. Compounding the havoc is an economic malady that has gone unnoticed: one of the most severe deflations in modern history. Unlike coronavirus, it shows no signs of abating.”
https://www.ft.com/content/c0cff3e0-913b-11ea-bc44-dbf6756c871a
“Returning to the debt deflation risk, it would be truly extraordinary if governments locked down their economies into depressions to protect against a virus which is truly scary for inhabitants of nursing homes but should not be scary for the population at large, particularly for those aged under 50.
“Yet that is what will happen if these lockdowns persist in their present form for an extended period.”
https://grizzle.com/economic-lockdown-money-supply-growth/?fbclid=IwAR2TdhLyTK8axzvlgaC2Tb1zi-UY-vxiToLZnUM6CRLdPljhoJwF6SHjCWo
The Grizzle article is very good. This is a chart from it.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/deaths-per-1m-grizzle.png
If a person doesn’t look at the data themselves, it is hard to believe the divergence in the data among countries. The statements we sometimes see that the US is the epicenter of the problem, or Sweden’s results are terrible, are extremely iffy.
This is a chart I made a couple of days ago showing that 7-day average death counts are falling widely, also.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/sweden-belgium-uk-united-states-one-week-new-deaths-may-17.png
Remember at the start of this pandemic, there were voices speculating that this virus affected East Asians more than other ethnic groups? That one seems to have gone out of the window.
There has been a higher incidence of deaths amongst ethnic minorities here in the UK, as per the article in the Lancet below. It is very difficult to figure out what is causing such huge disparities in mortality rates around the world. Obesity, diabetes, age, ethnicity, exposure to sunlight thence Vitamin D production and perhaps even, as the study you posted elsewhere alludes, certain types of air pollution all seem potential factors.
“As the cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continue to increase across the world, evidence is continuing to emerge that the pandemic could be disproportionately affecting people from black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30228-9/fulltext
While obesity is likely a factor, particularly in the 50 to 70 year old crowd, the simple answer is that if fewer people get infected, fewer people die. Vietnam is reporting under 300 cases.
One of the things that the article points out is that the CRB Commodity Price Index is way down. This is a chart I made of its prices. It does not include food prices.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/crb-commodity-price-index-trading-economics-may-20-2020.png
Prices spiked back in 2008, for all kinds of commodities, then fell as the debt bubble popped. Prices rose with QE reaching a peak in 2010. By 2012, we were hearing complaints from oil producers that prices were too low again. The big fall in oil prices starting in 2014, as the US eliminated QE. Prices hit a low in early2016, when China was stumbling. China regained its footing, and prices have been bouncing around at a level that is too low for producers since that time. The most recent small peak in prices came on December 1, 2019. It was downhill after that, even before China announced a problem.
One interesting thing is that September 11, 2001 comes at a dip in commodity levels similar to what we have recently experienced. (This chart is not inflation adjusted, however.)
If you look at the CRB chart closely, you can see the inverse of a “step down collapse” after 2008. It did not happen in 2000. Peak conventional oil happened around 2004.
You can see that after 2008, there is a spike up but it never achieve the highs. Which each successive “tries” to go up higher, it did not reach the previous peak.
It looks like the energy or the momentum to move higher has gone out after peak conventional oil. This time round, there is no doubt at all that the spike will probably be just a “blip up”
For those who are looking forward to 2021 Christmas, this chart tells you a lot of things.
http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/thumbs/2012/10/02/063644/82824985/lick.jpg
RAILINGS?! Psssh what a rank amateur. People having been doing the toilet bowl challenge for months now.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/coronavirus/video-2137904/Video-Man-licks-toilet-bowl-coronavirus-challenge-TikTok.html
“The pandemic is further widening the fissures between the two largest economies while undermining the foundations of economies throughout the world.
“The responses of central banks and governments to the virus mean it will leave legacies of staggering levels of debt and governments’ intervention within already-leveraged economies, higher levels of unemployment and social stress and an unwinding, to some degree, of global supply chains…”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/what-the-global-economy-will-look-like-after-the-pandemic-20200520-p54upp.html
“”Clearly, the timing of renewed trade tension could not be worse,” wrote economists from S&P Global Ratings in a research note earlier this month.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/19/economy/us-china-trade-war-resume-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html
“China’s decision to impose tariffs on Australian barley imports has highlighted how reliant some sectors are on Chinese demand, with wool producers now “particularly exposed” by the threat of a further escalation in trade tensions.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/20/australian-wool-producers-particularly-exposed-if-trade-tensions-with-china-rise
“This time it’s different. China is the place where the pandemic began and, for all the triumphalism from Beijing, the Chinese economy is in no way back in business.
“The stimulus tools available during the GFC—cheap money from a shadow finance sector and large-scale infrastructure spending—don’t make sense this time because the finance sector is now its own source of risk, and infrastructure oversupply won’t deliver a healthy economy.
“More significantly, Chinese consumer confidence is broken.”
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/china-wont-save-the-global-economy-this-time/
The “demand” Chinese customers isn’t there, because too many are making low wages or no wages at all. According to the article:
Australia wants to do an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19.
Next day China imposes 80% tariffs on Australian barely.
A friendly warning.
A concerning connection!
China has made it clear their not taking the rap for this. They will go on a rampage of nationalist fury rather than take the rap for ending the age of MOAR. This probably why the pangolans are taking the rap. Everyone still needs China.
Maybe tariffs, like protests, should be expected to rise again, as shutdowns end.
I would imagine they will, Gail. The issues that provoked such widespread unrest in 2019 have only been exacerbated by these restrictions of personal movement and economic activity.
I do not believe that the current lockdowns were motivated by a desire to quell protests but this may well be a partial motivation for subsequent lockdowns if the pandemic flares up again.
Flares up .. again?
Record 106,000 new COVID-19 cases reported in a day: WHO
https://www.euronews.com/2020/05/20/record-106-000-new-covid-19-cases-reported-in-a-day-who
Doesn’t matter if this is true or not — it’s the headline – people believe the situation is getting worse
If I were in Australia writing an article, I would mention Australia’s predicament as well. It is terribly dependent on China’s demand.
Food riots and looting has started in Latin America, Africa and India. This is just the beginning.
Mexico has deployed the military to fight rising crime. Just the beginning.
Billions of people are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues.
Ouch!
problem is—food stores can only be looted once
Microbiological life has ruled this world for billions of years. They are at the top of the food chain.
Good luck going to war against them. Good luck doing gene splicing to them.
We don’t know what kind of a monster we have created. The virus destroys lung tissue, kills T-cells and makes us infertile.
I came the with the flu four months ago, the virus is still inside of me.
When did you come down with the flu? January?
There is one more observation that I made and I think it can be a real issue.
Elevators or lifts (in UK) are critical to modern IC. Without it, it is not possible to have high population density. It is as essential as air or water in metropolitan. Elevators are not designed to run with 4-5 people per trip up/down. It is meant to be packed with people and being squeezed in.
If it has to do more trips with less people, then the waiting might be ridiculous and wear and tear will be very high. It no doubt will increase the cost.
The office building that I am in where I am at the 34th floor, is usually very packed and have to wait for 1-2 cycles (of the elevator going up/down) before it is my turn. However, when Malaysia was reopened 2 weeks ago, there are actually very few people. I asked around and found out that probably 60-70% of the people are not there. It is either they work from home or are probably jobless.
then perhaps with this necessary reset of the economy, high rise buildings will have to be abandoned as uneconomical…
No idea. It is just an observation and not a positive ones. I am just wondering how the large cities like Singapore, HK, NYC or those with a lot of high rise are doing?
Lifts and air-conditioning: any malfunctioning in either renders them unusable and death-traps.
Excellent observation about the need for a certain volume and flow of users – always fun to muse on these aspects of modern life which we never really give a thought to while things are ticking along.
Someone also mentioned the problem with necessary spare parts not necessarily being available.
Running the elevators all of the time, without necessary spare parts, is recipe for a system that will break regularly and cannot be fixed.
Yes. My office broke down during the peak infection in China and it was down for weeks until the supply chain came back up
@ beidawei
I think you requested a citation regarding Cuba, aborton and infant and maternal mortality. Here is one:
https://www.pop.org/abortion-and-infanticide-in-cuba/
“Abortion Keeps Cuban Infant Mortality “Low”
The Cuban government proudly proclaims its successful health care system, citing impressively low rates in child and maternal mortality. But the truth is that such rates are not based on a real effort to save mothers and their newborn children. Rather, they are based on the abortions performed on pre-born children diagnosed with certain types of defect which are considered life-threatening in later infant life. They are also based on the widespread use of contraceptives for those women who suffer from pathologies which otherwise might put their lives at risk should they become pregnant.”
more…
“Late abortions are also performed in Cuba using, as in China, the “Rivanol method.” Such procedures are limited in number, because they endanger the mother’s life, and hence the low maternal mortality rate that the Cuban government wants to maintain. By means of this method the unborn baby is expelled alive from the uterus. Given her prematurity, the baby dies outside the womb without the medical assistance that could have saved her.”
Oh, you were talking about Cuba! I thought you meant some US state. Thanks though.
It is widespread. Common in China and India as well. But – as you might but apparently do not have the grace to concede – you can see from this that the claim that excellent Cuban health care is what produces its vaunted low maternal and infant mortalities is nothing more than the most cynical kind of propaganda.
Interesting: seems it’s the usual ‘Everything’s Perfect in this Socialist Paradise, Comrades!’ stuff.
I can readily believe this about Cuba. I thought you were claiming this about the USA, which I found implausible (hence my “citation needed”).
There are also different practices in deciding what is a “live birth,” I believe. In some countries, a baby under a selected weight is not considered a live birth, if I remember correctly. If Cuba follows this practice, it would also help its live birth rate.
“Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
Peer reviewed paper nature magazine 2014
I posted a version of this way upthread but thought it might be more visible here..
Matthew Krajcik had asked: “How would a thing that had never infected a human before, optimize its evolution for infecting humans?” Ferrets have receptors in their lungs which are very similar to those in humans. So if it affects a ferret, chances are it will affect a human. That’s how they may have “optimized its evolution”.
=====
“Further support for possibility that serial passage through lab animals played a role in the creation of COVID-19 comes from an April 2020 pre-print, which found that coronaviruses that target the ACE2 receptor bind with ferrets cells more tightly than any other species except the tree shrew, which only scored about 2% higher. Tree shrews have also been used for serial viral passage, and were promoted in a 2018 paper out of China as a preferable host for laboratory serial passage since they’re cheaper, smaller, easier to handle, and closer to humans evolutionarily and physiologically than ferrets. ”
April 2020 pre-print = https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.025080v1.full.pdf+html
2018 paper out of China = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6177411/
“… several years prior to tinkering directly with bat coronavirus spike-proteins, Baric orchestrated research that involved isolating a coronavirus from civets and then passing it through mammalian ACE2 receptor cells that were grown in the lab from kidney and brain samples – serial passage through host cell lines instead of entire hosts, which imparted a strong affinity for ACE2, and presumably created an airborne strain of coronavirus. And if cells derived from kidneys and brains were used for the serial passage development of COVID-19, that might help explain its affinity for attacking the kidneys and brains of its human hosts.”
passing it through mammalian ACE2 receptor cells = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2519660/
attacking the kidneys and brains = https://www.cathlabdigest.com/content/are-kidneys-targeted-novel-coronavirus
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
Right, this is selective breeding like creating a labradoodle or a tigon, not natural evolution. The previous person, I think, was claiming that the virus would somehow just live in bats and naturally evolve to infect humans.
So a virus can be developed this way, and not be “engineered” as it would have “naturally” acquired the selected traits, rather than being designed.
So a nuclear reactor is natural too? After all the materials are just gathered and placed. then nature does its work.
Wow the issue on ho.ax or not. I have written this before in previous posts.
1. This virus is real. What difference does it make now whether it is man-made or natural?
2. The virus is not lethal. It is not like Ebola where you have blood flowing out of every orifice
3. The lethality is higher than normal flu but lower than SARs. It is also much lower than Ebola
4. The economic consequences, however is lethal.
5. It is the response that is a ho.ax, not the virus. People can still die from it but people should not be “depressingly scared”.
At this point of time, it does not matter anymore if it is centrally planned CDP or a bunch of incompetent/power hungry politicians doing it.
There are lots of articles, news on MSM or alternative sources that business are not doing well at all after reopening.
In Malaysia, due to social distancing, taking temperature and registration of customers (for tracing purposes if required), there are some restaurants find it impossible to make money and are not opened for dine in. If these premises violate the rules, they will be fined. So, damned if you and damned if you don’t. Those who open for dine in may find that in the coming months, it is just not worthwhile to do it and shutdown.
Chicago Chicken Shop Charges 26% “COVID-19 Fee”, Claiming Rapid Food Inflation
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/chicken-shop-charges-26-covid-19-fee-claiming-rapid-food-inflation
Are these the first signs of desperation? I think the shop knows that buy increasing the price, the revenue will drop, no increase.
Agree its real. Why does it matter that its man made? It matters a lot. The press not admitting that the bsl4 lab PUBLISHING THAT THEY HAD DEVELOPED A CORONA VIRUS THAT HAD “VORACIOUSLY” ATTACKED HUMAN TISSUE 5 YEARS AGO. The press citing people refuting that it originated from a lab WHO WORKED WITH SHI ON THE CORONA VIRUS DEVELOPMENT. The press continues to push the jumped to humans naturally narrative while patently ignoring this jump was published in a lab created corona virus 5 years ago. This is either profound dysfunction or there is a agenda. What should be occurring is a outcry demanding enhanced function research be banned. And all of the people associated with the development of corona viruses be held accountable in a court of law where the facts can be examined objectively. Instead we are trusting the very same people that created this problem to create a even more dangerous solution. Why is devotion DEMANDED for these pandora box opening techno geeks?
The narrative being distributed is the people responsible for creating the virus are kind souls and our only hope of eliminating it. I reject that narrative. I refuse to be made a slave by the same people who created the crisis by creating a virus that killed thousands of people.
Man-made, natural? What difference does it make? We’re all just stupid monkeys. Nature, either via our behavior in creating such viruses, or through our activity, by crowding out the other species and exposing us to new contagions, was always in charge.
Freedom? Lol.
https://youtu.be/B2oLFKYNInQ
At this point of time, knowing if it is man made or not is akin to picking pennies in front of the steamroller. The damage has been done. It is, I personally thing, quite beyond repair. If it is found to be from the lab and things get nasty, then we will get mushroom clouds that will put everyone to sleep in a nice and painless way (if you are in the epicenter) or a horrible way to leave earth due to radiation?
At the death bed in hospital, what the dad wants is to be closed to your loved ones and not bickering over why and how the son destroyed the car. It is irrelevant at this point of time. It will only make matters or relationship worse.
Chicago Chicken Shop Charges 26% “COVID-19 Fee”, Claiming Rapid Food Inflation
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/chicken-shop-charges-26-covid-19-fee-claiming-rapid-food-inflation
so wholesale beef prices are way up…
and chicken production is somewhat down, causing higher prices there also…
this is what we get with a self-organizing system that is resetting itself…
demand for essentials is still number one… always has been, perhaps just disguised by the demand for non-essentials…
now that the economy is going through a reset that was always due to happen sooner or later, there is a reset of supply/demand…
higher food prices will result in more money being diverted away from non-essential subsystems, and back to food producers and distributors…
this is crucial if the food subsystem is going to hold up…
in this view, rising food prices are not “good” or “bad”, but just necessary…
(non-essential subsystems will become more obvious as their products and services continue to show falling prices)…
higher priced food is better than no food… (it’s another topic: gov programs to help those who can’t afford enough food)… (hyperinflation is another topic also)…
Yes from day one my concern has been the economic implications…. that is all that matters.
Simple solution. the percentage of the population willing to take oxyclorquinine and zinc as a prophylactic is allowed to do so (40 years proven) r0 drops below 1, virus eradicated. Wheres the problem?
Clearly a human created abomination. So we accept this not call for these practices to end or the solution is more human created abominations and a big brother is watching you world government administered by non elected technocrats. Ill gladly take any risk from the corona abomination to not endure the latter.
Me to! Freedom over 0.25% chance of death.
Really? Why didn’t her IT people simply block them? It’s fairly easy – even a G3T could do it… right click — Block Sender. Bock Sender’s Domain.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/121567039/man-charged-with-sending-harassing-emails-to-jacinda-ardern
Incredible! Is she going to start hanging people from piano wires next?
And are people who posted photographs comparing her to an ass going to have their collars felt?
Ooohhh…. I am waiting for the Black Helicopter to descend …. How Dare I!!!!
Had the final teeth cleaning of my life today — listened to the dentist regurgitate MSM covid stuff… all in a typical day in DelusiSTAN.
BTW – I am thinking of buying one of these … we are in a two floor house so if I put it on the roof it will be seen from the highway…. I’ll turn it on every night to do my part in creating Fear and Panic.
https://www.carrel-electrade.co.nz/alarms/auer-alm1.htm#xb2
https://www.carrel-electrade.co.nz/alarms/graphics/isl.gif
Being mean to Big Mother rarely pays off; least of all to New Zealand’s!
Lock downs work to my surprise.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12333249
Fact or fiction: Is Ardern really the most popular PM in a ‘century’?
Minimal lockdowns work better…
HK – 8 million
Confirmed 1,056
Deaths 4
NZ – 4 million
Confirmed 1,503
Deaths 21
Let me clarify “work” for the politician.
Taiwan–24 million
Confirmed 440 (down to 32 live cases)
Deaths 7
Lockdowns 0
This is a valid comparison because in all other ways HK and NZ are similar, population density, rural to urban ratio, etc.
Ha!
WOW FE I read in a New Zealand newspaper
Live: Bridges on the brink – National leader confirms coup attempt, two MPs named.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/
I did not know NZ had fallen apart or that the press had no shame on click bait.
Have a good extinction to all!!!! 202020202020
Who else wants to “eat crow” (admit error) when 2021 comes and we’re not living in Mad Max world? I will if the opposite happens.
Collapse is a process and not an event, in other words it takes time. In some cases it takes many years and other times many decades. You might be disappointed when you are reading Gail’s articles in 2021. It’s possible the entire system could come crashing down this year but don’t be surprised if 2021 rolls around.
“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”
― William Gibson
“… it takes time.”
I agree… 2021 is only about 225 days away… that isn’t much time for the whole thing to break apart…
but it could… there was a “glue” holding the economy together… it was that 99% of persons with jobs kept going back on the next workday, and that about 95% of persons with car loans and credit card debt and mortgages kept making their monthly payments…
now the economy is “unglued”…
if Q3 is worse than Q2 then none of us may be on the internet in 2021… if Q3 is better, then our chances go up… it takes time…
2022 then? Or will the collapse always be just a year or so in the future?
(I’ve already put my money on 2026, but would be happy to be proven wrong. That crow will be delicious.)
“Starling Marte announces wife Noelia has died of a heart attack”
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/starling-marte-announces-wife-noelia-has-died-of-a-heart-attack/
A Major League Baseball players wife died from a heart attack awaiting surgery for a broken ankle. The article doesn’t say why she was waiting for surgery. Could it be the Hospital was only accepting Covid 19 patients? If so, we can add another Covid 19 indirect victim.
A young woman dying of a heart attack? That sounds strange in the first place.
If you break a large bone the bone marrow fat can be released and form an embolism and kill you. This was an episode of Gray’s Anatomy.
Spain now envisages a possible ‘safe (air) corridor’ to bring all those nice, pale, Germans over, in order to spend their even more welcome euros in the sun.
Making masks more or less mandatory almost everywhere in he country is part of this master plan.
Terribly disappointing for my cousins living on the coast, who were hoping for a German-free summer, just for once.
I found an article about it:
https://www.channel3000.com/europe-promises-to-reopen-for-summer-tourism-in-wake-of-coronavirus/
I suspect that they will end up fiddling the figures for COVID deaths in the EU so that they can continue with some level of tourism – so vital to alt the places which live off German, Dutch, French, Belgian money and need the summer money to get through the whole year. And of course the quite large internal tourist trade.
Impose gagging orders on hospital staff and all other medics, lean on the press for the sake of ‘national interest’ in order to stop any reporting of resurging cases, etc. ‘No, abuela Ana didn’t die of COVID, just plain old pneumonia, how sad……’
It will be like the novel ‘Death in Venice’: when cholera breaks out at the height of the season, everyone denies it.
Xabire, “Der Tod in Venedig” is based on a real cholera epidemic that reached Italy in 1911, while Mann was visiting. Much of his description is true to life, including that of the young Polish boy.
Say what!? Let them eat CAKE!
Record-high grocery prices exacerbate America’s growing food insecurity problems
Stephanie AsymkosReporter
Yahoo MoneyMay 19, 2020, 12:19 PM EDT
A lot of America is going hungry.
The coronavirus pandemic has set off a domino effect in the country’s food supply chain that is hurting food banks and pantries in the nation’s largest cities and the millions of newly unemployed Americans who now depend on them.
The latest sign of the food disruption: Grocery prices spiked by the largest amount in nearly 50 years last month because of the shutdown of infected food facilities and higher costs of freight
In 2018, 22.2% of U.S. households, or 28.6 million, fell on the food insecurity spectrum at some time, according to the USDA. Nearly the same percentage — 1 in 5 workers — reported that in the last month alone they or their immediate family have gone without food for 24 hours due to a lack of money, according to a recent survey of 1,500 people from Jobvite.
A surge of Americans are also applying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the federal program formerly known as food stamps, according to an earlier Yahoo Money report, while swelling numbers are seeking assistance at food banks and pantries with the country’s four largest cities all reporting an increase in demand.
We’ve ain’t seen nothing yet!
Been seeing prices jumping up for what I buy and this ain’t no joke…empty shelves.
Also, went in Harbor Freight store, a tool, hardware, garden product line chain that imports mostly from CHINA….same empty shelves,…..and the weekly truck day delivery was already put away.
We gots a problem here and it ain’t no China flu…more live a financial ICU.
PS. As unbelievable as it seems been buying a brand of corn chips for YEARS and paid $1.99?
Recently, like 8 months ago noticed less chips in the bag, the price has gone up now to $2.29 and not kidding the bag is blown up with air and is HALF of what it had in chips!😭
On the package in bold type ONLY $2.29….!!!!!
No longer buying them…
well, herb, they aren’t Free-tos…
anyway, it was always the case where sooner or later the economy must go through a reset… your Fritos are part of that reset…
here’s a main part of the reset: economic subsystems that are more essential are in need of having more money directed their way, and less essential subsystems need to shrink or become discarded by the new reset economy…
and how will this happen?
supply/demand will accomplish this with its invisible hand…
it’s interesting that supermarkets have almost totally eliminated deals/specials… supply/demand has turned sharply in the direction of food and other basic essentials…
higher food prices are actually a GOOD thing…
the higher sales and profits of food sellers means that more money will continue to flow back to food producers and distributors…
this is necessary… it keeps this subsystem running…
(it’s another topic, but governments may have to increase their programs for getting free food to those who can’t afford it)…
higher food prices mean that this economic subsystem is still working…
failing subsystems will have products and services with falling prices…
deflation is not our friend…
inflating food prices are good… (hyperinflation is another topic also)…
In the Race for Immunity, Sweden Leads the Pack
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/in-the-race-for-immunity-sweden-leads-the-pack/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=5f9dc86f58f66c6c91e5512ae4601f2c3c029cb0-1589902247-0-AVEtZcrqP-sBnCvL1URBJK6ybafKlZwIt5-qWos_cTRZVwLYd3rsOvl3ahBcbpEC4ONu73Hvl69lYcQ4IcedBnAiSBXnjy7kHmGHu_c0CoPDYalGEXxtO5cqQ0ievKWChGY1ckg7-LeOcHfThfUnpzwlygqTQleX8wt-D76ffhDBnr_X1Xkb2Q3vP4SSR9lUzPWa7V-BzHMD9MsvDMGpY-ZelTELtaSHbOaCDHwzyy4GDO58Tay-ramurcK3pq6Oth1czPZX4ySd2-dPdX-o_s8jRfmGyRb6onMfzLAZZKgV41NtAlvzGcUUS5oKYvqMWfkGzsevHz1BT6dOk2ncsQFB1nwQZW_Q3If8LVqs9kIK
This article looks like it has been posted on several websites. This one has several comments after.
Article includes an interesting video 4 minutes long where 3 Ozzie journalists are interviewing Swedish ‘infectious disease clinician’ Johan Giesecke, who raises probably the most important point – how are all the countries which have imposed lockdown going to get out of lockdown if the virus keeps coming back every time they try? This point seems to go over the heads of many if not most of the anti-Sweden commentators. There are some good comments.
Somehow, we really do need to be thinking about herd immunity, I expect. It is an issue that gets hidden.
I’ve communicated with Johan… he has a sense of humour….
Hi Gail, I tried emailing this to to you but comcast.net is playing up. I hope it’s just technical, and not this message.
I’ll simply point to a book “Plague of Corruption” and
its author Dr Judy Mikowits. (Briefly Nr1 at Amazon)
Either you’re up to speed on this, or you aren’t. Either
she’s an exceptional liar with a lot of evidence or
she isn’t.
What’s important to an Actuary is the Science. Her claims,
if implemented, could cut US health costs by two thirds,
and improve US lifespans. I’m just posting this for your
information, and based on what she has said.
But thanks for putting that article on the coming changes
together, it needed done.
Thanks for the tip! I had noticed the information about it with some of her videos, but I hadn’t followed up on ordering it.
Regarding the problem with Comcast, double check that you got the email address spelling correct. I don’t see any new emails from you in my in box.
Cuba has better health care outcomes than the US, at one twentieth the cost. Infant mortality, for example, Cuba: 5.0; US: 6.5. (at of 2018)
They regularly abort right to the birth day in Cuba. If the kid looks like it might be a problem, it gets the chop.
But why in any case would anyone believe anything of a government anyway? It is all lies and rubbish. Has this coronafraud taught us nothing?
Having said that (and observing that the two systems and their realities are in no way comparable) we should also note that the US does not have a “health” system. It has a system the sole purpose of which is to subsidize the interlocked business models of Big Ag, Big Chem, Big Pharma, and Big Med.
It is well known that the surest way to become obese and develop diabetes, heart disease, cancers, arthritis, diverticulitis, chronic digestive problems, osteoporosis, and other inflammatory diseases is to eat the high carb/factory oil Food Pyramid as recommended by all of the health “experts”. Why is this evil advice general? Because the Bigs make money from selling grains at high markups and from managing sickness, not from maintaining health. They know this. They are that evil.
How evil? Well, just think of the Sacklers. They are pinups for the kind of evil that the health industry peddles. And you can add Fauci, WHO and the CDC to the list.
The greatest advantage that the Cuban health system has going for it is that people in Cuba ges lots of sun, have to walk and bicycle everywhere, and can’t afford to eat high carb and corn syrup obesity-inducing rubbish like the cattle in the West.
Kim, your last paragraph I completely agree with. And also most of the others. Just to point out, though, that several US states now allow abortion *after* the birth date. It seems their established religion is the worship of Moloch.
I see. You must be worried your mom will try to get rid of you now.
Humor is an increasingly rare commodity, since we cannot afford it anymore, amid such a shortage of trust and money. We need non-sense humour as bread. Go Malcopian!
(By the way, in the last few years I’ve found myself only able to see comedy shows/movies. Ok, and dystopic/apocalyptic movies/series. All other films, the european and american classics -i was a serious movie buff – just make me yawn now. Should i see a shrink?)
(citation needed)
I’d vote for aborting any child up to the age of 10… I am pro choice.
I almost got tossed in jail due to the Cuban health system… M Fast was not feeling well so we asked if we could get some Tylenol … the hotel instead sent up two doctors (sweating greasy sleazy doctors) who asked if we had health insurance… obviously they wanted to gouge.
I said no we just want Tylenol…. they kept insisting on running this test and that test…
Ultimately it ended up in a bitter war of words — with me calling them communist scum bags or something like that and telling them to fkkk off… (maybe not quite that… ) — security ended up coming to the room and calming it down before I threw them out the window…
Needless to say — I am not an ambassador for Tourism Cuba… it’s one of the worst places I have ever been… crap hotels crap wifi… crap restaurants ….crap crap crap….
The only thing that was not crap was the Tropicana show…. our driver informed Fast afterwards that it is possible (if one has the means…) to engage one of the girls (or more..) as a mistress…
Unfortunately M Fast was privy to that comment … otherwise we’d have moved to Havana instead of NZ…. even though everything in Cuba is crap….
I have a business partially related to education in a place where no more cases were detected in the last 40 days, in Latin America. Still, authorities are not reopening schools. It is the best example I know that people on power could be very happy with the Orwellian side of the situation. No need to be a member of an esoteric club of world rulers to get the point
yes, whether it’s incompetence (not being systems thinkers) or the thrill of exercising power or the fear of being blamed for a spike in deaths, “authorities” seem reluctant to end lockdowns quickly…
but after finally being ended, a majority of people will realize how unnecessary the lockdowns are…
and perhaps nowhere will lockdowns return, which will be like the millionth nail in the cofffin of those abbsurd theorries about “esoteric club of world rulers”…
that would be an incompetent club, if they made some bizzzarrre plan and it failed…
Q2 depression and tiny recovery from Q3 forward…
“that would be an incompetent club, if they made some bizzzarrre plan and it failed…”
You cannot say that it “failed” or that the planners were “incompetent” if you don’t know, as I don’t know, what the ultimate purpose of the plan might be.
If the CDP is the plan (and it is)… then it’s a wonderful plan. Although I have a lot of guns and ammo and enviable knife-fighting skills … do I want to have to put all of this to use?
Why go through that when you know even if you win you die….
I am 100% pro lockdown — pro control — pro starvation —- my only suggestion would be to hand out Fentys.
Other than that… this plan is superb.
I do hope we get to see some of those 1.6B hollow points used to shoot dead the vermin from the ZH forums…. unfortunately most of them are loud mouthed cowards… but surely a few of them walk the walk….
That is my dream. To open a video and see ZHers being shot down like dogs for breaking lockdown
This is crazy, unless there really aren’t funds to reopen schools, and not reopening them will save funds.
Yes it’s crazy. But there is also a funding problem, possibly derived from the lockdown, though. It’s a vicious circle
But masks are still mandatory everywhere at this place, despite not having any positive since mid April. That’s not a budget situation, looks very ideological
A study about the bat virus and the Sars-Cov-2.
The divergence between the viruses is explained by natural mutations in the host.
The study doesn’t look into the added sequence though.
https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/fvl-2020-0066
The Unspoken Reason for Lockdowns
Governments cannot openly admit that the “controlled easing” of COVID-19 lockdowns in fact means controlled progress toward so-called herd immunity to the virus. Much better, then, to pursue this objective silently, under a cloud of obfuscation, and hope that a vaccine will arrive before most of the population gets infected.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/governments-cannot-admit-covid19-herd-immunity-objective-by-robert-skidelsky-2020-05
This is bull sh it. NZ for instance… has demolished the economy… and herd immunity is limited to just over 1000 people…
And the moment infections increase we have been warned of reinstatement of serve lockdowns.
This has already happened in China and Japan… and been threatened in many countries…
This is not about herd immunity… it will take years to get herd immunity at this pace.
The Covid 19 fear, hysteria and panic is just becoming an excuse to blowup the eCONomy. It was heading in that direction anyway, now they have CREATED an excuse.
Covid 19 has become the “Russia did it” meme.
I don’t think they are actually trying to blow up the economy — it was going to blow up if they had not hit it with this nuclear bomb.
I think the strategy is to keep it on life support for as long as possible.
If they wanted to blow it up they’d not be paying wage subsidies etc…. they’ve taken it down to a very basic level keeping enough of it running to allow it to stagger along.
I also suspect that the oil issue is critical to what is happening — perhaps we have been weaned off the expensive to produce stuff and have fallen back on the lower cost conventional that remains?
“I think the strategy is to keep it on life support for as long as possible.”
The billion dollars question is: there is a plan to use this last fumes of IC to dump all the radioactive material into the Mariana trench? If i had to bet my hard-earned fortune of 1 million merits, i would bet there is a plan for deal with that nuclear issue.
(But as Professor Mike Tyson says, all plans can be refuted with a punch in the nose. And if there’s a boxer who knows how to punch, it’s Mom Gaia.)
1. How do you get it all to the trench without it overheating and going … nuclear?
2. There are hundreds of thousands of tonnes of this stuff so dumping it all in the trench would surely just result in killing everything in the ocean — which surely would destroy the planet because so many animals up and down the food chain rely on the oceans — and as ocean water evaporated the toxic stuff would circulate and fall as rain everywhere….
I don’t think there is anyway out of this knot…. not that it matters because even if there was the only humans that would be able to survive would be primitives….
Gradual easing, hoping to keep deaths below the magic 50-100 level per day, over which the MSM wil start screaming Doomsday, seems to be the aim everywhere now.
‘Herd immunity’ are two very dirty words now, so never to be uttered by governments.
The tourism industry is lobbying for an extra Bank Holiday in the UK, in October (!?) to get some cash in.
Hmm, I for one have lost some 70% of anticipated income this year -who knows if I will recoup it – so that extra day of utter freedom might mean no more than moving my lounger to sit in a different part of my garden for the day, not paying a penny outside the home…..
They shot themselves in the foot in March, and the throb of pain is only just registering in the dull governmental brain: gangrene and amputation by Q4?
It is almost as if each country has its own plan and is not part of a single global master plan.
yes, and then they are often altering their plans…
here, there are 50 plans for 50 states…
it is in the selfish interests of every gov/CB/billionaire/elite to keep bAU moving…
the primary motivation is everyone’s own selfish interests…
depression in Q2, then tiny partial recovery from Q3 forward…
to be clear, that’s 50 Reopening Plans in 50 states…
it’s great!
we are reopening!
too bad other countries aren’t…
and after these lockdowns end, a majority will not want to ever go back to those former opprressive lockdowns…
Every Governor wants to avoid the angry mobs, hence re-opening.
They can re-open a little but the control measures remain — you will obey! — mission accomplished — the economy is already beyond repair…
And if infections spike — they’ll race back to full lockdowns
If you look closely the bars and restaurants are open on the good ship BAU:
https://a57.foxnews.com/images.foxnews.com/content/fox-news/world/2013/03/13/abandoned-russian-cruise-ship-remains-adrift-in-north-atlantic/_jcr_content/par/featured-media/media-1.img.jpg/0/0/1422517118466.jpg
‘People are scared’: Italy’s restaurants and shops reopen after 70 days, but customers stay away
— For a country devastated by the coronavirus, the reopening of businesses is just a small step towards a return to normal life – and struggling business owners tell Alessio Perrone they ‘don’t expect good times soon’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/italy-restaurants-reopen-lockdown-customers-latest-coronavirus-a9520601.html
Anyone else see a contradiction in the subtitle – ‘a return to normal life’
Which Gov’t genius missed the part of customers not wanting to be in a crowd after they have been REPEATEDLY, scared to death with the Covid 19 fear, hysteria and panic? They lock people up in their homes and threaten them with jail time if they’re caught outside because they have turned another Flu into the Black Death II.
And the govt geniuses expect business to return to normal? Silly them.
Three months in, and it’s killed 100,000 people a month so far and infected nearly 5 million, although both figures are certainly under-reported. That’s with social distancing, lockdowns, or whatever you want to name the mitigation regime involved. I don’t know of any flu that does that. In fact, I’ve never met anyone who knows of anyone that’s ever died of the flu. However, I do know of people that have died from CV-19.
Places like Italy, which have experienced a disproportionate level of cases and fatalities, would feel particularly nervous at going out and about at the moment, even if they even have the cash to splurge on eating out. Plus, No one relishes getting back on the breakout rollercoaster again, although I don’t see how it can be too long avoided, given how contagious the virus is.
Plus, the world economy is completely in the crapper, only partly thanks to the virus. It’s just the catalyst, and a convenient scapegoat for a world gone mad from too much debt masquerading as economic growth. Well, the growth caboose has finally come off the rails, it was always going to anyway. Why do you act so surprised, and uptight about it? How long have you been visiting this website for anyway?
“Three months in, and it’s killed 100,000 people a month so far and infected nearly 5 million, although both figures are certainly under-reported.”
Out of a population of 7.8 billion and those who have died are predominately, old, frail with preexisting conditions and that’s the majority of the victims in Italy. You say under-reported? You mean like the guy in Florida who jumped out of a plane with NO parachute only wearing his Speedos? He was added to this hoax.
I tried to find this incident you refer to, there are a surprising number of different results for “Florida man jumps from airplane without a parachute”. Seems like an annual occurrence. Some of them even survive.
Spot on commentary. Let’s see those calling hoax at this time six months from now and see what they are saying then. Covid-19 is the boss. It loves to take the low hanging fruit and top of that list are the hoax conspiracy nuts. Six months. Let’s see where the hoaxers are then…
>>hoax conspiracy nuts
As confessed to already, a nut I may be, but there have been several videos and articles posted here over the last few weeks that point to conspiracy facts. Have you read or watched any of them?
Six months from now, my guess is Sweden will be well past the worst, and almost everybody else won’t be. Because the virus will keep coming back everywhere that does lockdown. If we are still here, the economy will be in a truly awful state, and many people will be jobless and very hungry.
Difficult to see how the virus will still be all that matters, but I am sure a way will be found.
For the common cold, antibodies only last a few months. In general, the more serious an infection, the longer the body retains antibodies. For SARS, there is evidence that a second infection is worse than the first. Herd Immunity might be a temporary effect, before the second set of infections for those who had immunity kicks in, and they get much sicker than the first time.
Additionally, there is growing evidence of children having bad reactions two or three months after they got over the virus. Either a defect in the immune system, or the virus is still hiding somewhere driving the immune system to attack the body.
On top of all that, there is no evidence that surviving one strain of SAR-CoV-2 gives immunity or even resistance to other strains, and the virus is diverging quickly due to being isolated into separate petri dishes all over the world.
Just because Sweden hasn’t instituted a formal lockdown doesn’t mean that people aren’t voluntarily self-isolating, or that its economy hasn’t been dramatically affected. Every country will try and do it their own way in dealing with the outbreak, which is a great environment for the virus to keep spreading in. And, six months from now, when the chickens come home to roost from all the economic hijinks and devastation, I think we’ll all be sweating it. Depression is coming, one way, or another.
https://bit.ly/2VSCMzT
When you close all international air travel – and smash the global economy to bits — no country will be immune the impacts.
Of course Sweden’s economy will be in ruins.
No kidding. But we always knew something was going to do that. Derail BAU. Why are you so indignant that it was this?
Sweden may as well locked everyone down … end result is the same — economic collapse.
six months?
we will be in Q4 with a tiny recovery from the Q2 depression…
the (mild) virus will still be spreading through reopened economies… masks and social distancing will still be in many places… C19 will still be killing older weaker Oma’s and Opa’s a few years sooner than they would have died anyway…
no certainty at all, but that looks like the big picture…
most people will be remembering how terrrible the lockdowns were six months previous, and a majority will not want to go back…
Exactly. Also, don’t you love it when people who downplay CV-19 actually contract the thing? Like Boris Johnson, who, as someone said, almost died of irony from it?
On 294,000 Brits have been confirmed as being infected by the CV-19 virus as of now. When Boris came down with it the number was well under 100,000 or less than one in 600 people.
So it’s quite unlikely that Boris was one of those 600 and his wife was also one those one in 600 and the Health Minister Nadine Dorries was another of them, and far more plausible that they were all tired and stressed out after three years of arguing about Brexit and came down with bad colds, and someone on the PR team thought, “We can milk this! Never let a good sniffle go to waste!”
According to Wikipedia, the common cold is the most frequent infectious disease in humans. The average adult gets two to three colds a year, while the average child may get six to eight. Infections occur more commonly during the winter. These infections have existed throughout human history.
The common cold is a viral infection of the upper respiratory tract. The most commonly implicated virus is a rhinovirus, a type of picornavirus with 99 known serotypes. Other commonly implicated viruses include human coronaviruses (≈ 15%), influenza viruses (10–15%), adenoviruses (5%) human respiratory syncytial virus (orthopneumovirus), enteroviruses other than rhinoviruses, human parainfluenza viruses, and human metapneumovirus. Frequently more than one virus is present. In total, more than 200 viral types are associated with colds.
I am sure that Boris and his wife were early ones who caught CV-19. They were around a lot of other people. Being rundown and overweight did not help, either.
On the other hand, Boris went to the hospital to visit the COVID-19 patients, did not wear a mask, and shook all their hands, so I don’t think you can just use the “1 in 600” probability.
If I were a fat pc of sh it like Boris I’d be worried about flu/Covid too…. if anyone wants to bet 100k I’ll go out and lick railings till I get Covid and I’ll bet I don’t die… I’ll bet I don’t end up in the hospital…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105596/covid-19-mortality-rate-by-age-group-in-spain-march/
SDDR x 10000000000000000000000000
Reduces demand for energy and other resources?
Allowing BAU to stagger on?
One for you, FE, and all those who feel that there is method to the madness (I am yet to be convinced):
“Lockdowns around the world have dramatically reduced the number of street protests and political demonstrations.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/protests-and-lockdown-in-bangkok-then-and-now
The lockdowns look to be another match on the powderkeg of popular ill-feeling around the world:
“Protesters and police have clashed on the outskirts of the Chilean capital Santiago amid tension over food shortages during lockdown.
“Local television showed police using tear gas and water cannon to quell unrest on the streets of El Bosque, where poverty is high.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-52717402
Film of ventilators being flown in … hmmm…
https://www.france24.com/en/20200519-wild-protests-break-out-in-chile-over-covid-19-lockdown-food-shortages
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/06/cbs-news-edits-testing-story-after-project-veritas-exposes-clinics-line-stuffing-ploy/
Notice the Stay Safe interstitial during the press conference announcing the 7.7M into quarantine… Chileans are being conditioned using fear to follow orders…
That’s why this Covid 19 hysteria is manufactured bullsh*t. Here in the US that’s also the catchphrase and repeatedly we are hearing pretty much the same catchphrase in different parts of the world.
Comment posted at PO News…
I wasn’t totally convinced early on that was a hoax, but it’s getting more and more obvious everyday. The timing of it was very suspicious. The entire globe was crashing. GDP, trucking, shipping, manufacturing, service, etc. were all imploding. Rate cuts weren’t helping, as many countries were already negative. They were pumping 100+ billion in the repo market per night to keeps the banks solvent. Now they have an excuse to print unlimited trillions and blame Corona and nobody will care.
Shock Doctrine in Action
Everywhere opening up, if you think its a hoax, go out and party! Go be with the big dense crowds celebrating their liberation. If you’re right, nothing bad will happen.
This is all formulated in a PR HQ… then disseminated globally…. the whole lot.
Again – the cattle are so SDR they can’t see this — even if we TELL THEM!!!!
From my own personal experience, it is an exaggerated crisis.
Couldn’t get an appointment to get tested even though my family me!her was infected that I cared for because I did not fit the criteria they seemed necessary!
Went back to work without getting tested and the corporation did not deem it necessary!?
Went to get tested for Covid 19 on my own once they opened it up to all people and still waiting for results after a full week!? Called, emailed and contacted Health Dept….no response. Getting retested this week….
Getting a yearly physical exam at primary Doctor without test results….just wear a mask to office!?
All window dressing and smoke and mirrors….
Oh, they call to update on how my family member is doing, bed, that’s a big help sarcasm.
“The lockdowns look to be another match on the powderkeg of popular ill-feeling around the world:”
what? riots were supposed to be gone forever!
now what? rioting about inconsequential things like food?
and why are lockdowns ending?
they were supposed to control the masses forever!
That’s the Plan — but it’s not necessarily going to work…. (and that’s a rather minor protest in Chile)
I imagine the Planners look at any protests and say — well… we’ve tried to put you down with dignity and as little suffering as possible … but if you insist on taking to the streets… go for it…
Quite the photos. If I were a politician, I would be tempted to get in on the lockdown phenomenon.
“Two reports out Monday [IHS Markit and Deutsche Bank Wealth Management] predict that global growth will struggle to bounce back from the lockdowns, travel restrictions and business closures meant to contain the pandemic.”
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/world-economy-faces-tough-journey-back-from-crisis-reports/articleshow/75817202.cms
“Risk managers expect a prolonged global recession as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a report by the World Economic Forum showed on Tuesday.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-wef-report/long-lasting-global-recession-likely-due-to-covid-19-says-world-economic-forum-report-idUSKBN22V0GR
“The global economy will take much longer to recover fully from the shock caused by the new coronavirus than initially expected, the head of the International Monetary Fund said, and she stressed the danger of protectionism.”
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/imf-chief-kristalina-georgieva-warns-full-global-economic-recovery-unlikely-in-2021/articleshow/75813580.cms
Why is this a surprise?
“QE in an Emerging Market? Sounds Like a Brilliant Plan.” [Sarc]
“Emerging markets don’t have the luxury of pursuing their own QE. During the taper tantrum of 2013, the rupiah lost 15% of its value in just three months after former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke floated the idea of ending bond purchases that May. Indonesia’s 10-year sovereign yield jumped as much as 3 percentage points. This wound is still fresh for investors and the threat of capital flight is real.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/qe-in-an-emerging-market-sounds-like-a-brilliantplan/2020/05/18/6bc6f43e-995b-11ea-ad79-eef7cd734641_story.html
“With the coronavirus pandemic ravaging the global economy, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have started paying banks to borrow from them…
“This subsidy is the newest twist in the topsy-turvy world of negative rates policy: rather than just punishing banks for sitting on their idle cash as they have been doing for years, central banks are now rewarding them for lending, or, in the ECB’s case, just for the mere fact of borrowing.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-centralbanks-rates/amid-rising-talk-of-negative-rates-policies-in-japan-europe-get-subtle-tweaks-idUKKBN22V0HP
I expect not too many of the bank’s customers have a real need to borrow for a productive purpose. Their main need to borrow is to cover up the problems currently besetting them.
“So far this year, new car registrations are down 42.4%, with a drop of 83.8% in April on top of falls of 55.6% in March, 7.2% in February and 8.2% in January.
“The United Kingdom, Italy, France and Spain were the most affected markets, with falls of 97.3%, 97.6%, 88.9% and 96.5% respectively…”
http://thecorner.eu/news-europe/new-car-registrations-in-europes-five-major-markets-fell-by-83-8-y-o-y-in-april-european-sales-will-slump-by-nearly-25-in-2020/86248/
“…it could take ten years for the European car industry to recover. For that to happen, he says there has to be above all a general economic recovery and a positive development in the job market.
““If people have the feeling they’re going to lose their jobs, they’re not going to buy a new car,” he said.”
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/covid-19-and-transport_slump-in-car-sales-risks–garage-death-/45768552
An excellent time to shut down the automobile industry. There are enough cars on the road and on the dealers’ lots to keep people moving for ten years. That is surely enough time to retrofit transport for pedestrians, cycles, jitneys, and public transit. But of course it won’t happen.
“There are enough cars on the road and on the dealers’ lots to keep people moving for ten years.”
This statement is likely true is it not?! How will they attempt to goose demand for autos??? This industry is absolutely enormous, global, requires materials from so many different sectors (metals,plastics,electronics)
Can this be papered over for another 10 years?
“European-built cars imported to the UK from 2021 are set to become around £1,500 more expensive after the government confirmed that these vehicles would be subject to a 10 per cent tariff from 1 January.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/cars/article-8336985/European-cars-1-500-expensive-Brexit-10-import-tariffs.html
January and February registrations were already way down! This illustrates the problem.
The trend in US car registrations has been down since 2014, according to the 10 year chart found here:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/car-registrations
“The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the U.K. soared in April, as the coronavirus outbreak created mass job losses in the country, the latest data showed. U.K. jobless claims rose by 856,500 to 2.097 million, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Tuesday…”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/19/uk-jobless-claims-rise-by-70percent-in-april-to-2point1-million.html
“A trail of hunger left by COVID-19 is flooding the streets of Madrid. Spain has recently made huge strides in curbing its COVID-19 outbreak. But millions of residents are now paying the price of weeks of economic shutdown.”
https://www.euronews.com/2020/05/18/coronavirus-fallout-hunger-queues-in-madrid-in-wake-of-covid-19-lockdown
“Spain’s two main independent institutions have issued warnings about the steps that must be taken to avoid a debt crisis that could drag down the economy in the wake of the coronavirus recovery effort…
“”What’s required from Europe is “a risk-sharing scheme to finance states in comparable conditions beyond the European Central Bank (ECB),” Bank of Spain governor Pablo Hernández de Cos said.”
https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2020-05-18/bank-of-spain-asks-for-cuts-predicts-bigger-slump.html
“European banks could face greater credit losses from the economic impact of Covid-19 than those suffered in the aftermath of the global financial crisis — and what supervisory bodies usually test for…
“…the European banking sector could face capital and liquidity challenges.”
https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/european-banks-credit-losses-could-exceed-global-financial-crisis-20200518
Spain is less attractive as a tourist spot if it is clear that they are very poor. Theft becomes more of a problem, for example.
“The COVID-19 outbreak unleashed an economic catastrophe [in the US]. The stock market is betting that it will be brutal but short-lived, thanks to massive infusions of monetary and fiscal help. These charts show how brutal it has been. It remains to be seen if it will be as short-lived as the market hopes.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/raulelizalde/2020/05/18/the-economic-devastation-in-6-charts/#651174583364
“…state and federal jobless benefits aren’t getting to millions who are eligible and need the money.
“A report from the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project finds that according to the Treasury Department, federal and state governments had sent out $48 billion in unemployment checks by the end of April. But the amount of income that Americans lost in April from layoffs and lack of work due to the pandemic was at least $80 billion.”
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/18/half-of-americans-who-lost-work-or-wages-are-getting-0-jobless-benefits/
$48 billion is less than $80 billion. Lots of processing problems are part of the problem, according to the article.
“Wildcat strikes, walkouts and protests over working conditions have erupted across the US throughout the coronavirus pandemic as “essential” workers have demanded better pay and safer working conditions.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/strikes-erupt-us-essential-workers-demand-better-protection-amid-pandemic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1262377453273702403
Come on … can we just end us…. I’ve had enough
Amazing how fast human apes can be trained to make silly figures. How smart they are! (Much more than puppies, although puppies are in general much more cute i think).
If the other animals had laughing muscles, humans would be the laughing stock of the planet.
If humans weren’t so prone to violence and capable of stabbing me… I’d keep one around the house… and kick it in the face every so often.
LOL. Classic FE.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/18/early-data-show-moderna-covid-19-vaccine-generates-immune-response/
“A candidate vaccine for Covid-19 developed by the drug maker Moderna appears to generate an immune response similar to the response seen in people who have been infected by the virus and recovered, the company said Monday.”
will we be forced to get the vaccine?
here’s a puzzle, perhaps a strawman arrrgument:
if a person thinks that IC is going to collapse this year, why would that person be worried about being forced to get a vaccine?
how could a vaccine be mass produced if IC has already collapsed?
puzzling questions looking for answers…
Details! But the vaccine industry will prosper, as long as any other industry prospers.
Government pondering extra public holidays to encourage domestic tourism
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/back-your-backyard/121560031/government-pondering-extra-public-holidays-to-encourage-domestic-tourism
I know – let’s give everyone $2000 to spend on these holidays… since nobody has any savings to go on holiday (and those that do are AFRAID)
You see! Great Mother Ardern thinks of everything for her dear children, and will soothe away all the pain. More holidays!
On the net I see Kiwis are generally indulging in an orgy of self-congratulation -‘We all pulled together and beat that virus!’ – and seem to get rather angry or simply bemused at any fellow Kiwis who point out the economic damage which must ensue, and that it is not all over yet.
In the UK, the tide of opinion is turning against the government for not acting soon enough with lock-downs and neglecting all the grannies in care homes – ‘We could have been like New Zealand!’
But that is balanced out by excitement at the imminent Green Recovery and the prospect of London on bicycles, forever.
Heaven forbid anyone mention that Hong Kong with double the population crammed into a much smaller space — has had fewer total infections and deaths (HK 4 – NZ21) — yet their most restrictive lockdown resembles the current L2 in NZ…
Once again — I reference Bernays… the cattle are easily manipulated because they are SDR… facts and logic do not matter… the PR people working with the MSM have branded Ardern as the saviour… it is a complete waste of time trying to explain to everyone (including those who are headed to the poor house because of the lockdowns) that she made a catastrophic decision.
The fear buttons have been pushed… bankruptcy is better than drowning in your own snot….
Hong Kong restricted border access, enforced mandatory quarantine and isolation, wore masks and used social distancing. They learned from SARS and don’t trust the CCP or its puppets at the WHO.
Don’t worry about producing less with all of those holidays, of course.
“As a result, we cannot really believe the part of Figure 1 that is after 2020.”
Dennis Meadows himself has said that after the peaks are reached – sometime in the 2015-2020 time frame – that all bets are off, since the assumptions that their growth model is based on are no longer reliable. He didn’t include debt most likely because since in the early 1970s, that wasn’t an issue yet – President Nixon had only recently eliminated the gold standard…
Right! Also the group were basically approaching the issue from an engineering point of view. One thing they considered important was the amount of resources required to extract other resources. Once this exceeded quite a low percentage, the system tended to collapse. Energy was not considered separately from all other natural resources.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-05-18/most-us-states-reopening-as-coronavirus-cases-decline
“Most U.S. States Reopening as Coronavirus Cases Decline”
“While most U.S. states had loosened social distancing restrictions by Monday, new data shows the number of coronavirus cases in the country has dropped in recent days.”
time for The Big Test…
how much recovery will there be in the coming months?
if nothing “breaks”, if the gov/financial/banking “operating system” of the real economy is not mismanaged too badly, then Q2 could be the bottom, in a deep depression style, and Q3 forward could have small growth…
overall, any small growth in Q3 forward will not return the economy to 2019 levels… a V shape recovery is not in any way reasonable…
to be sure, this entails a 3 to 6 month process in order to see growth directions and economic trends, but at least The Big Test can now begin…
We’ll see the new case numbers starting Saturday to see what happens. It looks like people in a few States completely went back to normal life, no masks or social distancing or anything, so that should be exciting, post some big numbers.
US seven day average new confirmed cases are up a bit today. Lots of countries have 7 day averages of new cases moving up. These include:
India
Bangladesh
Indonesia
Iran
Kazakhstan
Saudi Arabia
Qatar
Brazil
Argentina
Chile
Columbia
Egypt
South Africa
Hmm… didnt Julian Simon predict correctly that commodities would get ever more abundant and cheaper ? More people means more brains means better methods of extraction and lower usage per unit of production. Thus prices should fall.
Except that Julian Simon missed the fact that more technology means more specialization and more spending on capital goods. Low wage people increasingly get left out of this equation. Nearly all of the output goes to the owners of the capital goods and the top levels within countries. People who are selling their labor as human labor are increasingly left out. Their lack of “demand” leads to an affordability crisis. Prices fall, because there are too few citizens who can afford the end products which are made with commodities. Commodity suppliers collapse because the market price is too low, relative to the cost of production.
I beilieve Julian Simon also said that “there was enough intelligence in the human mind to allow us to grow our population for billions of years” or something along these lines. Seems utterly foolish to this prole, but hey, he won a bet so he was obviously right.
House prices are being tipped to plummet more than 10 percent thanks to COVID-19.
The prediction – chilling for homeowners, a silver lining of the pandemic for others – comes from economics researcher Infometrics.
Forecaster Gareth Kiernan says the lockdown will be followed by months, if not years, of negative and slow growth. Many will lose their jobs, and anyone looking to sell a house will struggle to find a buyer.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2020/04/coronavirus-house-prices-tipped-to-plummet-as-potential-buyers-go-broke.html
10%???? hahaha….
Well, how terrifyingly chilling! 10% !!! Covered in goosebumps and can’t stop shaking…..
As a measure of the magnitude of the real estate bubble here in the UK, if the valuation of my house were to fall by 50%, it would still be no less than 3 x what I paid in 2001.
And that was almost double what it had been 10 years before.
No one wants to forecast to big a change.