The COVID-19 story keeps developing. At first, everyone listened to epidemiologists telling us that a great deal of social distancing, and even the closing down of economies, would be helpful. After trying these things, we ended up with a huge number of people out of work and protests everywhere. We discovered the models that were provided were not very predictive. We are also finding that a V-shaped recovery is not possible.
Now, we need to figure out what actions to take next. How vigorously should we be fighting COVID-19? The story is more complex than most people understand. These are some of the issues I see:
[1] The share of COVID-19 cases that can be expected to end in death seems to be much lower than most people expect.
Most people assume that the ratios of deaths to cases by age group, computed using reported cases, such as those included in the Johns Hopkins Database, give a good indication of the chance of death a person faces if a person catches COVID-19. In fact, the cases reported to this database are far from representative of all cases; they tend to be the more severe cases. Cases with no symptoms, or only very slight symptoms, tend to be missed. The result is that ratios calculated directly from this database make people think their risk of death is far higher than it really is.
The US Center for Disease Control has published Planning Scenarios, based on information available on April 29, 2020.* Using this information, the CDC’s best estimate of the number of future deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms is as follows:
Ages 0 – 49 0.5 deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms
Ages 50-64 2.0 deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms
Ages 65+ 13.0 deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms
The CDC’s best estimate is that 35% of cases have no symptoms at all. Thus, if we were to include these cases without symptoms in the chart above, the chart would become:
Ages 0-49 0.5 deaths per 1,538 cases (including those without symptoms), or 0.3 deaths per 1000 cases with or without symptoms
Ages 50-64 1.3 deaths per 1000 cases with or without symptoms
Ages 65+ 8.5 deaths per 1000 cases with or without symptoms
A recent study of blood samples from 23 different parts of the world came to a similarly low estimate of the number of deaths per 1000 COVID-19 infections. It reported that among people who are less than 70 years old, the number of deaths per 1000 ranged from 0.0 to 2.3 per 1000, with a median of 0.4 deaths per 1000.
The same paper remarks,
COVID-19 seems to affect predominantly the frail, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized – as shown by high rates of infectious burden in nursing homes, homeless shelters, prisons, meat processing plants, and the strong racial/ethnic inequalities against minorities in terms of the cumulative death risk.
[2] There seem to be things we can do ourselves to reduce our personal chance of serious illness or death.
General good health is protective against getting a bad case of COVID-19. Thus, anything that we can do in terms of a good diet and exercise is likely helpful. Staying inside for weeks on end in the hope of preventing exposure to COVID-19 is probably not helpful.
Continued exposure to huge amounts of disinfectants and hand sanitizers is likely not to be helpful either. Our bodies depend on healthy microbiomes, and products such as these adversely affect our microbiomes. They kill good and bad bacteria alike and may leave harmful residues. It is easy to scale back our personal use of these products.
There are recent indications that vitamin D is likely to be protective in reducing both the incidence of COVID-19 and the disease’s severity. Web MD reports:
Several groups of researchers from different countries have found that the sickest patients often have the lowest levels of vitamin D, and that countries with higher death rates had larger numbers of people with vitamin D deficiency than countries with lower death rates.
Experts say healthy blood levels of vitamin D may give people with COVID-19 a survival advantage by helping them avoid cytokine storm, when the immune system overreacts and attacks your body’s own cells and tissues.
While we don’t know for certain that vitamin D is helpful, there is certainly enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that it would likely be worthwhile to raise vitamin D levels to the amount recommended by the National Institute of Health (30 nmol/L or higher). People with dark skin living in areas away from the equator might especially be helped by this strategy, since dark skin reduces vitamin D production.
Masks seem to be helpful in preventing the spread of infection. A person’s own immune system can handle some level of germs. If two people meeting together both wear masks, the combination of masks can perhaps reduce the level of germs to within the amount the immune system can handle. Our immune systems are built to handle a barrage of small attacks by viruses and bacteria. Continued “practice” with relatively low combinations of good and bad bacteria (as occur with masks) will tend to build up our bodies’ natural defenses.
We see dentists and dental hygienists wearing face shields. These shields are readily available over the internet and can be worn with a mask or by themselves. We don’t yet know precisely how much protection they provide, but early models suggest that they can be helpful in two directions: (a) preventing the wearer’s droplets from harming others and (b) reducing the droplet exposure from others. Thus, they may be a worthwhile way to reduce exposure to the virus causing COVID-19, even when others are not wearing masks.
[3] The medical community’s ability to treat COVID-19 cases keeps improving.
There seem to be many small changes that are improving treatment of COVID-19. If patients are having trouble getting enough oxygen, having them lie on their stomachs seems to increase their blood oxygen levels. The cost of this change is pretty much zero, but it keeps people out of the ICU longer.
Originally, planners thought that ventilators would be needed for patients with COVID-19, since ventilators are often used on pneumonia patients. Experience has shown, however, that oxygen plus something like a CPAP machine often works better and is less expensive.**
The simple change of not sending recuperating patients to nursing home-type facilities for the last stages of care has proven helpful, as well. Many of these patients can still infect others, leading to infections in long-term care facilities. Tests to tell whether patients are truly over the disease do not seem to be very accurate.
Last week, it was announced that treatment with an inexpensive common steroid could reduce deaths of people on ventilators by one-third. It could also reduce deaths of those requiring only oxygen treatment by 20%. Using this treatment should significantly reduce deaths, at little cost.
We can expect improvements in treatments to continue as doctors experiment with existing treatments, and as drug companies work on new solutions. Looking at cumulative historical mortality rates tends to overlook the huge learning curve that is taking place, allowing mortality rates to be lower.
[4] More doubts are being raised about quickly finding a vaccine that prevents COVID-19.
The public would like to think that a vaccine solution is right around the corner. Vaccine promoters such as Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates would like to encourage this belief. Unfortunately, there are quite a few obstacles to getting a vaccine that actually works for any length of time:
(a) Antibodies for coronaviruses tend not to stay around for very long. A recent study suggests that even as soon as eight weeks, a significant share of COVID-19 patients (40% of those without symptoms; 12.9% of those with symptoms) had lost all immunity. A vaccine will likely face this same challenge.
(b) Vaccines may not work against mutations. Beijing is now fighting a new version of COVID-19 that seems to have been imported from Europe in food. Early indications are that people who caught the original Wuhan version of the COVID-19 virus will not be immune to the mutated version imported from Europe.
Vaccines that are currently under development use the Wuhan version of the virus. The catch is that the version of COVID-19 now circulating in the United States, Europe and perhaps elsewhere is mostly not the Wuhan type.
(c) There is a real concern that a vaccine against one version of COVID-19 will make a person’s response to a mutation of COVID-19 worse, rather than better. It has been known for many years that Dengue Fever has this characteristic; it is one of the reasons that there is no vaccine for Dengue Fever. The earlier SARS virus (which is closely related to the COVID-19 virus) has this same issue. Preliminary analysis suggests that the virus causing COVID-19 seems to have this characteristic, as well.
In sum, getting a vaccine that actually works against COVID-19 is likely to be a huge challenge. Instead of expecting a silver bullet in the form of a COVID-19 vaccine, we probably need to be looking for a lot of silver bee-bees that will hold down the impact of the illness. Hopefully, COVID-19 will someday disappear on its own, but we have no assurance of this outcome.
[5] The basic underlying issue that the world economy faces is overshoot, caused by too high a population relative to underlying resources.
When an economy is in overshoot, the big danger is collapse. The characteristics of overshoot leading to collapse include the following:
- Very great wage disparity; too many people are very poor
- Declining health, often due to poor nutrition, making people vulnerable to epidemics
- Increasing use of debt, to make up for inadequate wages and profits
- Falling commodity prices because too few people can afford these commodities and goods made from these commodities
- Gluts of commodities, causing farmers to plow under crops and oil to be put into storage
Thus, pandemics are very much to be expected when an economy is in overshoot.
One example of collapse is that following the Black Death (1348-1350) epidemic in Europe. The collapse killed 60% of Europe’s population and dropped Britain’s population from close to 5 million to about 2 million.
Figure 1. Britain’s population, 1200 to 1700. Chart by Bloomberg using Federal Reserve of St. Louis data.
We might say that there was a U-shaped population recovery, which took about 300 years.
A later example that almost led to collapse was the period between 1914 and 1945. This was a period of shrinking international trade, indicating that something was truly wrong. On Figure 2 below, the WSJ calls its measure of international trade the “Trade Openness Index.” The period 1914-1945 is highlighted as being somewhat like today.
Figure 2. The Trade Openness Index is an index based on the average of world imports and exports, divided by world GDP. Chart by Wall Street Journal.
Many of the issues in the 1914-1945 timeframe were coal related. World War I took place when coal depletion became a problem in Britain. The issue at that time was wages that were too low for coal miners because the price of coal would not rise very high. Higher coal prices were needed to offset the impact of depletion, but high coal prices were not affordable by citizens.
The Pandemic of 1918-1919 killed far more people than either World War I or COVID-19.
World War II came about at the time coal depletion became a problem in Germany.
Figure 3. Figure by author describing peak coal timing compared to World War I and World War II.
The problem of inadequate energy resources finally ended when World War II ramped up demand through more debt and through more women entering the labor force for the first time. In response, the US began pumping oil out of the ground at a faster rate. Instead of depending on coal alone, the world began depending on a combination of oil and coal as energy resources. The ratio of population to energy resources was suddenly brought back into balance again, and collapse was averted!
[6] We are now in another period of overshoot of population relative to resources. The critical resource this time is oil. The alternatives we have aren’t suited to fulfilling our most basic need: the growing and transportation of food. They act as add-ons that are lost if oil is lost.
If we look back at Figure 2 above, it shows that since 2008, the world has again fallen into a period of shrinking imports and exports, which is a sign of “not enough energy resources to go around.” We are also experiencing many of the other characteristics of an overshoot economy that I mentioned in Section 5 above.
Figure 4 shows world energy consumption by type of energy through 2019, using recently published data by BP. The “Other” combination in Figure 4 includes nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar, and other smaller categories such as geothermal energy, wood pellets, and sawdust burned for fuel.
Figure 4. World energy consumption by fuel, based on BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Oil has been rising at a steady pace; coal consumption has been close to level since about 2012. Natural gas and “Other” seem to be rising a little faster in the most recent few years.
If we divide by world population, the trend in world energy consumption per capita by type is as follows:
Figure 5. World Per Capita Energy Consumption based on BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy
Many people would like to think that the various energy sources are substitutable, but this is not really the case, as we approach limits of a finite world.
One catch is that there are very few stand-alone energy resources. Most energy resources only work within a framework provided by other energy sources. Wood that is picked up from the forest floor can work as a stand-alone energy source. Wind can almost be used as a stand-alone energy source, if it is used to power a simple sail boat or a wooden windmill. Water can almost be used as a stand-alone energy source, if it can be made to turn a wooden water wheel.
Coal, when its use was ramped up, enabled the production of both concrete and steel. It allowed modern hydroelectric dams to be built. It allowed steam engines to operate. It truly could be used as a stand-alone energy source. The main obstacle to the extraction of coal was keeping the cost of extraction low enough, so that, even with transportation, buyers could afford to purchase the coal.
Oil, similarly, can be a stand-alone energy solution because it is very flexible, dense, and easily transported. Or it can be paired with other types of less-expensive energy, to make it go further. We can see our dependence on oil by how level energy consumption per capita is in Figure 5 since the early 1980s. Growth in population seems to depend upon the amount of oil available.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, the economy is a self-organizing system. If there isn’t enough of the energy products upon which the economy primarily depends, the system tends to change in very strange ways. Countries become more quarrelsome. People decide to have fewer children or they become more susceptible to pandemics, bringing population more in line with energy resources.
The problem with natural gas and with the electricity products that I have lumped together as “Other” is that they are not really stand-alone products. They cannot grow food or build roads. They cannot power international jets. They cannot build wind turbines or solar panels. They cannot put natural gas pipelines in place. They can only exist in a complex environment which includes oil and perhaps coal (or other cheaper energy products).
We are kidding ourselves if we think we can transition to modern fuels that are low in carbon emissions. Without high prices, oil and coal that are in the ground will tend to stay in the ground permanently. This is the serious obstacle that we are up against. Without oil and coal, natural gas and electricity products will quickly become unusable.
[7] A major problem with COVID-19 related shutdowns is the fact that they lead to very low commodity prices, including oil prices.
Figure 6. Inflation-adjusted monthly average oil prices through May 2020. Amounts are Brent Spot Oil Prices, as published by the EIA. Inflation adjustment is made using the CPI-Urban Index.
Oil is the primary type of energy used in growing and transporting food. It is used in many essential processes, including in the production of electricity. If its production is to continue, its price must be both high enough for oil producers and low enough for consumers.
The problem that we have been encountering since 2008 (the start of the latest cutback in trade in Figure 2) is that oil prices have been falling too low for producers. Now, in 2020, oil production is beginning to fall. This is happening because producing companies cannot afford to extract oil at current prices; governments of oil exporting countries cannot collect enough taxes at current prices. They hope that by reducing oil supply, prices will rise again.
If extraordinarily low oil prices persist, a calamity similar to the one that “Peak Oilers” have worried about will certainly occur: Oil supply will begin dropping. In fact, the drop will likely be much more rapid than most Peak Oilers have imagined, because the drop will be caused by low prices, rather than the high prices that they imagined would occur.
Amounts which are today shown as “proven reserves” can be expected to disappear because they will not be economic to extract. Governments of oil exporting countries seem likely to be overthrown because tax revenue from oil is their major source of revenue for programs such as food subsidies and jobs programs. When this disappears, governments of oil exporters are forced to cut back, lowering the standard of living of their citizens.
[8] What our strategy should be from now on is not entirely clear.
Of course, one path is straight into collapse, as happened after the Black Death of 1348-1352 (Figure 1). In fact, the carrying capacity of Britain might still be about 2 million. Its current population is about 68 million, so this would represent a population reduction of about 97%.
Other countries would experience substantial population reductions as well. The population decline would reflect many causes of death besides direct deaths from COVID-19; they would reflect the impacts of collapsing governments, inadequate food supply, polluted water supplies, and untreated diseases of many kinds.
If a large share of the population stays hidden in their homes trying to avoid COVID, it seems to me that we are most certainly heading straight into collapse. Supply lines for many kinds of goods and services will be broken. Oil prices and food prices will stay very low. Farmers will plow under crops, trying to raise prices. Gluts of oil will continue to be a problem.
If we try to transition to renewables, this leads directly to collapse as well, as far as I can see. They are not robust enough to stand on their own. Prices of oil and other commodities will fall too low and gluts will occur. Renewables will only last as long as (a) the overall systems can be kept in good repair and (b) governments can support continued subsidies.
The only approach that seems to keep the system going a little longer would seem to be to try to muddle along, despite COVID-19. Open up economies, even if the number of COVID-19 cases is higher and keeps rising. Tell people about the approaches they can use to limit their exposure to the virus, and how they can make their immune systems stronger. Get people started raising their vitamin D levels, so that they perhaps have a better chance of fighting the disease if they get COVID-19.
With this approach, we keep as many people working for as long as possible. Life will go on as close to normal, for as long as it can. We can perhaps put off collapse for a bit longer. We don’t have a lot of options open to us, but this one seems to be the best of a lot of poor options.
Notes:
*The CDC estimates are estimates of future deaths per 1000 cases. Thus, they probably reflect the learning curve that has already taken place. It is unlikely that they reflect the benefit of the new steroid treatment mentioned in Section 3, because this finding occurred after April 29.
**I have been told that disease spread can be a problem when using CPAP machines, however. Using ventilators at very low pressure settings seems also to be a solution.
The site, Visual Capitalist, is catching my attention, and perhaps this sequence might be of interest with regards to use or petroleum, office space, and computer sales.
The visuals are self explanatory, and some of the conclusions consistent with a demographic that has come of age with the social media – they are used to interacting other than f2f.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-future-of-remote-work-according-to-startups/
There are a number of concerns that come to mind:
1. This lends itself to a gig economy which means changes in taxes received by government entities when based on income tax. In the US home officer are deductible along with utilities, internet, phone, etc. This is capitalism for the masses.
2. It will also allow organizations to understand what is useful work and what is not, the 80/20 rule again. Those who are good do well, the rest wait tables or something similar.
3. Biologically, not being in contact with the herd raises questions about immunity as well as social skills. At OFW we work hard to maintain a positive environment, but it seems most of us are a bit older and have had had real world practice.
4. Things like road taxes, sales of gasoline, sales of cars will change greatly.
5. It seems like there will be less throughput of energy which based on past data implies a decrease in gdp. e.g. Amazon – it is fast and efficient and there is only one truck a day running errands for me and I am a small percentage of that cost based on total number of packages. Airlines are the other example, business travel pays the overhead, lose half of it permanently and not only airlines change but so do air traffic control and security needs, sales of baggage, sales of traveling clothes. cab rides, hotel rentals, business deductible meals.
6. Again, what value do we add sitting at a keyboard? To any of you reading this, how am I useful to you? What are you willing to pay for that usefulness? How do I get any of you to bring me a coffee?
The virus has not only stopped many types of commerce, it may well have changed the direction as well.
Dennis L.
“It will also allow organizations to understand what is useful work and what is not, the 80/20 rule again. Those who are good do well, the rest wait tables or something similar.”
As someone who has been observing the general society for the last ten years–the 80/20 rule is not about quality or merit but power. The people and organizations with greater support from the wealthy and or the government do well, not the talented. Fraud has become standard in finance, technology is driven by the desire to extract money or compliance from others, and the arts has literally become a soapbox for politics. Criticism that is not based from a “sociological perspective” is being met with increasingly with hostility
The virus, to date, has no shrunk the “knowledge economy” or white collar sector.
As the media has been quick to note, it is the essential workers; the blue collar men who keep the infrastructure intact, farmers, the people who produce energy, janitors and slaves (immigrant labor) who have been hit the hardest.
There has been no massive exodus from the cities towards rural areas by any anyone.. There is no uptick in small-scale first time farmers.
Keep dreaming, buckeroo.
P.S. You sound as delusional to me as the people who think this is going to bring about the Singularity sooner.
Nope,
Thanks for the thoughts, I use this site to try and understand how various people see what is happening, it is not an attempt to form an agenda, but to be able to understand the agendas of others. In the end my belief is becoming “what works is right” which is more or less reality wins.
Thanks to Gail, more and more I see philosophy and many attempts to explain life as stories that correlate more or less to what is seen but really are neither dependent nor independent variables of reality. These stories, some of which are excellent polemical discourse neither influence nor are influenced by the world as it is.
With regards to exodus from the cities, you might investigate rents in NYC and San Francisco. Price is determined at the margin, rents are declining.
Again thank you, the response was thoughtful.
Dennis L.
There is massive run of NYC people to 100+ miles away from NYC. Houses are selling, they are being updated/refurbished. It is Boomtown around here.
ATTENTION:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/07/second-wave-not-even-close/
the BEST article about the pandemic ever!
author from Stanford U shows it’s all about Herd Immunity Threshold.
we have reached the HIT.
the pandemic is nearly at its end!
it’s over!
rarely do I go out on a limb and say that something is a must read.
this is a must read.
that is, IF you want to understand where we are in this pandemic.
IF you don’t read it, you won’t know.
sorry for being so bold, or obbnoxious.
this is a must read.
the pandemic is over!
Even if the virus disappears today, the economic contagion. collapse, and money printing will continue. It really doesn’t change much of anything.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-deaths-compared-with-swine-flu/
your link is April 9th. The data has now arrived in July.
you might want to reread the article by that smart Stanford dude.
or read it for the first time, if that’s the case.
Let’s see what happens, then.
‘COVID’ will fry your brain even if you have a mild case: yes, YOU!!!’, v. ‘It’s almost over,and you are most probably immune anyway!’
How exciting the second half of the year promises to be.
I have to say, it looks like many pharmaceutical interventions are fairly promising.
sure, there will be a major delay between the death totals dropping to nearly zero and the general public and its politicians catching on to the new facts on the ground.
I agree that medical interventions look fairly promising, and that just adds an additional benefit to the science that says the pandemic is past peak and is quickly winding down.
Mix a general population with low math skills, a media that breathes and lives on fear to stay alive, a government that bases policy on politics and the next election cycle, and Hollywood feeding us our ideas of reality, shake but don’t stir, what do you get? The next great depression. We reap what we sow.
yes, even though the pandemic is winding down, the economic consequences are winding up.
Q2 is down into a great depression level.
when the pandemic is almost totally over, that will help with the economic recovery, but a partial recovery at best.
Jason, thank you yes, a bad brew.
“the pandemic is over!”
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
The rising global flow of daily new cases (212,000 so far today) does not support that idea.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/from-our-experts/early-herd-immunity-against-covid-19-a-dangerous-misconception
“We have listened with concern to voices erroneously suggesting that herd immunity may “soon slow the spread”1 of COVID-19.
“Although more than 2.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide, studies suggest that (as of early April 2020) no more than 2-4%3–5 of any country’s population has been infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19). Even in hotspots like New York City that have been hit hardest by the pandemic, initial studies suggest that perhaps 15-21%6,7 of people have been exposed so far. In getting to that level of exposure, more than 17,500 of the 8.4 million people in New York City (about 1 in every 500 New Yorkers) have died, with the overall death rate in the city suggesting deaths may be undercounted and mortality may be even higher.”
The stats in the previous paragraph indicate we are no where near herd immunity. It remains a virus simply taking advantage of opportunities to infect new hosts. No first or second waves, it just keeps penetrating the masses. Some say it’s a nothing burger but it’s only 6 months into the spread and yet it’s just about everywhere worldwide with more people getting infected all the time. People that survive sometimes have to get a limb amputated due to blood clotting. This is really bad news but hope still springs eternal for the right vaccine or treatment.
Unless the T-cells are providing immunity. We have no way to measure this, as far as I know.
once again I see data from April.
the up to date data shows that places like NYC have reached HIT = the Herd Immunity Threshold.
that’s why after the nationwide protests, there was no spike in NYC cases, because most people in NYC are now immune.
I admit that I’m somewhat uncertain about how HIT applies to every area. It seems that an area of higher safeguards and lower cases may not be safe yet for high risk individuals.
and yes, cases are rising but deaths are down. It’s July.
that is good.
cases now are way more towards younger persons, and they are spreading the virus faster and accelerating the time when the entire country reaches HIT.
in other words, unlike early 2020, now in most “cases” they are not even sick.
cases where the people do not even get sick. What kind of misdirection is that?
the surge in benign cases is good.
the pandemic is winding down.
More panic mongering from the US medical profession. Wrong yesterday, wrong today, but always right tomorrow. John Brunner in one of his fantasy stories invented an interesting demon. He would play evil tricks on people, but he always got away with it, because he also had the power to make them forget what he had done. The US medical profession seems to believe it has the same power, thanks to a mass media equally committed to panic.
And the debate about “herd immunity” is totally pointless, because all pandemics, always, end only when herd immunity has been achieved. How long that takes is irrelevant to the virus.
David, you are positively chirpy today! I like it!
I often read off-G as I’m a former Guardianista too. And I do so want the pandemic to be over so that we can all get back to bitching about things like Brexit, taxes, whose fault everything is, and the like. But at the same time I think the people promoting awareness of this pandemic are not about to give up just yet. They haven’t marched us all this way through the gloom just so we can all wax chirpy again.
https://youtu.be/gGyPrmbgan0
sure, and maybe tomorrow I’ll read something else and turn into a Doomer or a Gloomer.
chirp chirp.
I live in one state and work for a company based in another. Both states are seeing increases in cases since reopening. In Both states it is not easy to get tested. You have to be showing symptoms or prove you came in contact with someone that showed symptoms and tested positive. So it is not like they are deliberately trying to increase testing, at least in those 2 states. People are getting sick. Thankfully treatment seems to be better so not that many are dying. Deaths always lag new cases.
Plus, there seems to be a certain percentage of the population that does not develop long term immunity to this virus.
Opening up or not, it doesn’t matter. The economy would have taken the hit anyway. Sweden is having horrible economic issues along with everyone else.
Everyone talks abut increases in cases. What is a “case”?
And what is the fatality rate?
@ Chrome Mags
“Even in hotspots like New York City that have been hit hardest by the pandemic, initial studies suggest that perhaps 15-21%6,7 of people have been exposed so far. In getting to that level of exposure, more than 17,500 of the 8.4 million people in New York City (about 1 in every 500 New Yorkers) have died,…”
So in the simplest terms, a fatality rate of 0.2% (ignoring the well-established fact that byofficial policy and stimulated by financial rewards all kinds of deaths have been falsely attributed to COVID). But how does 0.2% compare to the normal yearly flu fatality rate?
https://www.health.com/condition/cold-flu-sinus/how-many-people-die-of-the-flu-every-year
“During a March 11 hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee on coronavirus preparedness, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, put it plainly: “The seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1%,” he told the congressional panel, whereas coronavirus is “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu,” per STAT news.”
Well, as we now know, Fauci was wrong by a very long way. Covid is not ten times more lethal than the seasonal flu. At most, in New York it is twice as lethal and in any case appears to be a figure produced by fraud and that brings foward deaths that might have happened in the near future in any case.
For this we close down national economies?
The economic damage has, in a way, acquired a life of its own, regardless of what happens with the progression of the virus.
Throw a stone into a pool and you can’t stop the ripples……
Exactly!
Its not like Sweden didn’t close at all.
With all gatherings above 50 ppl forbidden, all who can working from home and many faking sickness out of fear business takes a hard hit anyway.
It’s funny how a person will write about what they want to believe and produce graphs that support their case.
It’s also amazing how the date at the end of any graph varies, so that a point can be made. The very first graph is out of date by nearly 3 weeks, so it shows deaths declining, a weekly number of around 1250 for the USA. Shame the last week has been back up to over 5,000 deaths, but the most recent numbers don’t support the narrative, so the author didn’t bother with them.
However the author was prepared to make a declarative statement, “trendline is unmistakable”. Adding the next 3 weeks to that graph clearly shows the deaths going back up, which defeats his narrative.
We basically don’t know enough about this virus to make any conclusions, yet many are doing just that. We do know the IFR from the Diamond Princess but not for any country, because the antibody testing is not accurate enough with large error calculations making any statistical analysis useless/meaningless.
The death rate from the Diamond Princess is about 2%, with some active cases remaining, months later. (we don’t know if an accurate record is being kept about these people, but given the active cases of 48, even getting a death rate of ~2% assumes they all ‘recovered’.
We don’t know how this disease affects people long term, though there are many reports of ‘recovered’ people having long term problems. We don’t know the effect of catching this a second time, yet there have been many reported cases of people getting this virus a second time. Herd immunity might not even be possible, we just don’t know.
What we do know is that the virus and our collective reaction to it, has been a huge hit to our modern debt binging overpopulated world, with ramifications unknown.
May we live in interesting times.
WORLD daily deaths have plateaued at about 5,000.
therefore your first 3 paragraphs are errroneous. sorry.
I think scientists now have plenty of accurate data to make some solid conclusions.
the basic conclusion is that Farr’s Law once again is proving correct.
the pandemic is past its peak and is winding down, though of course not equally all at once in every place.
and yes, besides deaths there have been serious damage to the health of many people.
I don’t think he is saying that the virus is going away forever and 100%, but the data seems conclusive that peak deaths are in the past.
and peak cases which are happening now are dubious because a large % of these “cases” are people who are not even sick.
the pandemic is winding down.
A 7 day moving average of world daily deaths is rising. It was down to around 4,100 per day in early June, but has risen to around 4,700 per day since then.
Rising average daily deaths is clear evidence that the pandemic is not ‘winding down’.
The author of that piece is being deliberately misleading as the article was published on 7th July. That first graph and his interpretation of the “trend being unmistakable” was the basis of his entire argument. It was out of date by over 2 weeks and clearly missed the data that was counter to his point.
I’m surprised you gave credence to such poor one sided writing. There are currently many ‘professors’ that are using bad science and making huge statistical blunders in trying to prove an argument, one way or the other.
It seems to me that both science and statistical accuracy have been brushed aside with ‘belief’ being all that is needed to ‘prove’ any point.
Then again decisions have been made based on religious ‘beliefs’ for thousands of years, with no evidence needed there, so why bother with all this science stuff anyway?
Does anyone really wonder why Industrial Civilization is doomed, when we ignore all the scientific evidence and go with belief systems instead for lots of important decisions??
I agree that it is premature to say that the pandemic is winding down.
Although the study linked to makes a good case re herd immunity, it is still to early to definitively attribute falling deaths in the US to this when there are so many other potential factors, such as the lag between diagnoses and deaths, more clued up medical staff and the falling age of those being diagnosed (in Florida, the median age of new COVID-19 cases fell from 65 in March to 35 in June, for example).
Time will tell.
Also worth noting that deaths have started ticking up just a little bit now:
“The number of coronavirus deaths per day in the US has begun to climb, driven by the surge in infections across the south and west of the country.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-florida-death-toll-cases-rise-latest-today-a9613936.html
Death rate has been increasing in California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona. Hospitalizations are also increasing. Pneumonia deaths are 400-500% above normal for the last few months in many of these states, which could be a way of fudging the official death data to make it look dramatically lower. Either way you slice it cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are INCREASING in the US in almost all states except for the north east. There is no logical way to conclude that the outbreak is doing anything but accelerating or at the very least fully sustaining itself.
Oh no, the pandemic can’t be over. If it was over and everyone knew it then people would want to go back to jet travel, professional sports, large gatherings, concerts, restaurants. That would drive oil demand back up and we can’t support that any more with oil production shut down. It would create a spike in price that would collapse the economy again, and lead to massive civil unrest. And how would we explain that with the need for massive government intervention?
The pandemic needs to stay and get worse over time. If it starts to recede then there needs to be a resurgence or another nastier virus needs to appear. That’s the only way to control the decline of civilization. Don’t you get it?
Oh no, the pandemic can’t be over. At Central Casting, we love to make a drama out of a crisis.
Adults keep saying, “We owe it to young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day, and then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”
https://sb.ecobnb.net/app/uploads/sites/3/2019/06/Greta_Thunberg.jpg
yes, the next one is coming someday.
before then, many persons will be forever trying to safeguard themselves from this virus, even after the daily deaths are down to near zero, which shouldn’t be too long now.
I might be wearing my masks for a long time too.
What I can see is the rising inability to see the truth: the people are becoming blind to the reality, they misinterpret, ignore the facts, lie, manipulate more and more.
We surely live in the times when the system goes apart, when your neighbours, family members, friends lose orientation. You are falsely accused, misunderstood, abused.
The belief in the truth, i.e. that the human world is temporary and vanishing, is the only way out of this mess. No matter what other people or the propaganda say.
The truth is hidden by the tongue of man, more than by any mask.’ Caliph Ali.
And in a stressed society, suffering impact after impact, many people will simply go nuts.
I flatter myself that I am interested in seeking the truth.
But many people I speak to regard me as deluded; I can see it in their eyes, the expression on their faces, and their overall body language when I begin a conversation with something along the lines of, “John Lennon isn’t really dead, you know. He’s just a bit moldy!”
We are indeed living in trying times. People are anxious and disoriented, as you point out. Fortunately, I am so estranged from my extended family and most of my former friends that we don’t have to endure each other’s cognitive dissonance.
As the collapse progresses, we will eventually reach the stage of large-scale cannibalism. Those will truly be times that fry man’s heart!
Oh, dear!
Yes, there are not only physical disabilities, but also various psychiatric problems that are left untreated in the collapsing world.
Together with the ageing populations, it is an overall decline of the humanity.
Remember the burning of the witches during the Medieval Times: it was a harsh necessity in the times of collapse, although also misused, to fight the rising insanity of the populations and thus keep the society functioning.
Keeping sanity is often overlooked by those who talk about the collapse.
Interesting story found on Tim Morgan’s blog.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/9/1959135/-Four-first-hand-reports-from-Real-World-Covid19-edition-They-do-not-fit-any-narrative-very-well
It is well reported COVID19 onset often has a loss of smell and taste. But it’s not just when the disease sets in. Apparently many “recovered” patients are reporting these senses have not come back. Or in some cases, everything tastes like something odd including descriptions that eating is like “chewing foil” or “having some kind of heavy mush in your mouth that you can feel it there, but you can’t tell what it is other than weight.”
Breathing problems are well documented. But for many this remains an issue including strange spasms or inexplicable “pauses” in what is normally something you simply don’t think about.
…
Perhaps most horrific. An Inability to think or focus on an idea. All my nurse friends report seeing people who have “recovered” who can not remember basic things including: what road-signs mean, how to email, how to read a children’s book. Or who have mental blackouts and have no idea where they are or how they got to where they are when the blackout resides. Most of these report ongoing feelings of extreme heaviness in their limbs and/or tingling, electricity or vibrations in their body, one of my nurse friends said they are like “really tired and confused zombies.”
Sorry for this long quote below, but it reminds me of ‘break-down contagion’ described by Korowicz. Does any of you experience breaking supply-chains?
I don’t see it myself – stores are full of the same products as usual. Not counting inflation/deflation issues, though.
I am not a medical professional. I am a technology executive at a company deemed “critical”. We are making hardware for 1000s of can-not-fail systems for hundreds of final solutions you use. We provide Tier2/3 parts to name brands in Aerospace. Communications. Banking. Cloud Computing. Medical Devices. Transportion Safety. It is nearly a certainty that everyone who reads this will be doing so in part via a piece of hardware with a subsystem our firms built. Most of you will likely use things we added parts to multiple times a day.
I also serve on the board and have advisory roles on other companies in the Circuit Board, Advanced Materials and Water Treatment spaces. I understand I am part of a decision making process which will impact hundreds of employees, hundreds of customers, and literally 100s of Millions of end users. I also have the perspective of being in the middle of a huge supply web. I depend on hundreds of other companies to provide inputs to us. Hundreds of firms depend on us to supply inputs to them.
Jet aircraft sensors should be nominal, our parts of optical switches must be very hard to breach and very rare to fail, our water treatment systems must remove toxins and carcinogens, wireless comms we add parts to must carry designed loads, and the oxygen monitors using our parts are helping treat thousands of patients.
I don’t lose sleep over the quality of our products. Nor our ability to supply the best-in-class products my customers demand. But I can see a time just ahead where this will be an issue.
We have tried to take every possible precaution to protect our work force, leadership, customers and supply chain from both the disease, and increasing complexity of trying to operate during a building plague. But, our efforts along with the efforts of our partners— piece by piece — are cracking.
We have multiple inputs that are becoming increasingly difficult to get. Some of our usual suppliers are shut down. Or they can not get the inputs they need.
We are having to contemplate alternatives we do not have the time, nor the partnerships to fully vet or re-engineer around. Anyone who does advance manufacturing knows, if you change just one input in a 100 input process — the effects can cascade in unexpected ways.
We can no longer get on airplanes. Meet. Work through issues with other teams in person.
The global reduction of air-traffic is making our logistics harder. We can not count on brokering space in the belly of a flight bound overseas to get product to our customer, or get inputs from our supply chain. We can not courier prototypes to EU customers. Or most of Asia. Nor even some of customers in US States.
We have now had multiple employees required to self-quarantine due to possible exposures outside of the company. We have now had our first employees test positive. We believe from exposure outside the company. We have had to scramble to constantly update our own tracing, tracking, team security and safety. If anyone tells you testing is now in place. They are lying. It’s not.
If a company wants to test 100+ employees on site, it is a 7-20 day wait for a testing day. 2-5 days for results. The agreements state it has “up to” a 20% false testing rate. We were told we could buy testing blocks of 20 to self administer. The return time for results is 7 days.
This level of testing does not allow a business to operate safely.
And the mental fatigue. This is wearing us all out. Dealing with COVID and supply chain disruption is now consuming 25%+ of management time. Time that should be dealing the product development, safety and optimization.
It is happening to us. Our suppliers. Our customers. Their customers.
At what point does it break? I don’t know. But I can feel the system cracking. Complex things, like bridges, planes and supply webs don’t tend to break slowly. They give of telltale signs they are going to fail, and then the fail. Big. Fast. Completely.
I see a lot of things cracking. One of my best ops people said to me on Monday: “I’m Calling Audibles every day Boss, but I am running out of Audibles…” Exactly. It’s a plague. We have no play book for it. We are making it up as we go. Calling audibles. But there are a lot things cracking.
At some point we either beat COVID, or systems will fail.
Thank you, that is very informative.
Dennis L.
Covid-19 usual cautions about agendas apply.
This is from Zero Hedge and looks at Sweden which did not do a lock down; it claims that the deaths have been manageable, and are now declining as would be expected. I am uncertain how much is allowable to quote, so mine is brief and the entire article referenced.
“The Swedish model is a threat to that approach because it allows people to maintain their personal freedom even in the midst of a global pandemic.” …………………………
“Of course, none of this has anything to do with Sweden’s fatality rate, which is higher than some and lower than others. (Sweden has 543 deaths per million, which means roughly 1 death in every 2,000 people.) But like every other country, the vast majority of Swedish fatalities are among people 70 years and older with underlying health conditions. (“90% of the country’s deaths have been among those over 70.”) Sweden was not successful in protecting the people in its elderly care facilities, so large numbers of them were wiped out following the outbreak. Sweden failed in that regard and they’ve admitted they failed. Even so, the failures of implementation do not imply that the policy is wrong. Quite the contrary. Sweden settled on a sustainable policy, that keeps the economy running, preserves an atmosphere of normality, and exposes its young, low-risk people to the infection, thus, moving the population closer to the ultimate goal of “herd immunity.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/whitney-looks-sweden-was-right-after-all
At OFW we are of divided opinions on this issue, Duncan thinks this pandemic is the defining event of our lives, at my age that may well be so and come in the form of a coda. I don’t know but fear hiding out may cause me to miss immunity in some way, not being around people is also not good for me.
A recurring theme of mine is demographics, they are out of sync, the old are starting to be too much for the young to carry. NY lost a number of seniors in nursing homes but most seniors in nursing homes run out of money and Medicaid carries the bill which is in turn paid by working age adults. Having one’s loved, elderly relatives pass suddenly is very heart wrenching, yet all of our times come. What I do find interesting is the willingness of many to sacrifice having children, to abort “unwanted” children and yet almost sanctify spending huge amounts of money on the “vulnerable.” One wonders if the authors of this idea fear becoming one of the vulnerable which I take as a dog whistle for the old. Biology does not listen to reason, to pleadings, to anger, etc., it is. One can’t help but notice many on the Federal task force are senior citizens.
It is interesting to note that some older, probably tenured professors at “elite” universities are reported to be concerned about becoming ill secondary to classes resuming. Some philosophers have found the passing of older academics a positive.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. . . . An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.”
— Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33, 97
It is a time of change, but betting on the end of the world has to date been a bad bet, there will be a tomorrow.
Dennis L.
thank you DL.
that is a good link.
it refers to the link I posted below, which is a GREAT scientific article about how we have reached the HIT.
the pandemic is over!
Dennis, in former times a major incentive for people to have children is so that they would be cared for in their old age. The welfare state changed that: the old could now be cared for by taxing other people’s children. Elementary game theory would have predicted the result: an ever increasing population of elderly free loaders, a parallel reduction in fertility, and, as we see now, the demographic collapse of the West. Exactly as predicted by Oswald Spengler in 1922.
I’m fascinated by this dynamic. I was born in the late 60s and grew up learning about our environmental degradation and the depredations of warring nations. I figured it would be insane to have children, and have lived my life accordingly. But now I simply doubt that any existing social arrangements make sense: none are aligned with the terrible truth that we have greatly surpassed the carrying capacity of Earth. Virtually everything about our modern world ensures our destruction. Demographic collapse is but one small part of that; the pollution blowback of our industrial-scale overproduction & overconsumption seals the deal.
Trevor Burrowes “I suspect that this era of economic stagnation, electronic interconnectedness, the apparent failure of rational government and growing environmental challenges, could be the beginning of a widespread collapse of expectations about progress, growth, and quality of everyday life. If this is the case, all types of places will have to become more resilient to unpredictable change and more self-dependent.”
https://sustainingplace.com/…/sustaining-a-citys…/…
Right! We are facing the beginnings of collapse.
November Will be epiventer of collapse?
not this November.
by then, we will be seeing how the problems are piling up, with only a partial economic recovery.
it’s coming, but 2020 has only about 170 days left.
that doesn’t look like enough time for this slow process to accelerate to a collapse.
https://sustainingplace.com/index.php/2020/07/08/sustaining-a-citys-culture-and-character-my-take/
“In light of these complex, intermingled layers that define the city, I believe that if anyone tries to determine, declare and impose a local urban essence quickly and then sustain it—based only on dogma or as an urbanist missionary—it will escape them and slither through their hands.”
cities are all about importing food and exporting waste.
Hi, you are citing to a quotation in my blog and the full cite is not coming through for other readers. See: https://sustainingplace.com/index.php/2020/07/08/sustaining-a-citys-culture-and-character-my-take/
“The social and economic crisis left in the wake of the ongoing Covid-19 health pandemic is being capitalised on in Italy by a mafia group called Camorra.
“One million people have been pushed into poverty in the country as a result of it, while another 8 million are temporarily unemployed. The Camorra has seen it as an opportunity to offer those in need ‘help’ when they could not get state support.”
https://www.euronews.com/2020/07/10/covid-leaves-italy-poorer-as-mafia-groups-cease-new-opportunities
“By corrupting local officials, [the Mafia] have been able to make vast profits from contracts given to their own front companies, establishing monopolies on health services ranging from delivering patients in faulty ambulances to transporting blood to taking away the dead.
“All these services were billed to the Italian taxpayer through the country’s centrally funded yet regionally administered health service, which distributes an annual budget of billions of euros — an unrivalled prize for criminal gangs.”
https://www.ft.com/content/8850581c-176e-4c5c-8b38-debb26b35c14
“Investors around the globe were buying bonds backed by a notorious mafia in Italy for four years, The Financial Times reported, citing financial and legal documents.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/international-investors-reportedly-bought-bonds-backed-by-the-italian-mafia.html
Thanks Harry? Or should I call you Panopticon? 🙂
“I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse”
I’ll offer you a loan you can’t get elsewhere. A lot of businesses are going to have new partners.
It is a return to feudalism.
I mean a return to slavery. People who cannot survive otherwise can volunteer to become slaves. That is what it means to borrow from the mob.
Wherever there is economic opportunity, someone will exploit it. Usury, extortion, or taking over of a business with some value, if the business was stolen rather than purchased.
That applies to governments as well as individual and mafia enterprise – that’s when, if successful, they become empires.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is the “job-killer of the century”, Fiji’s prime minister has said, as economies across the Pacific face collapse from economic and travel shutdowns, exacerbating existing illnesses, and potentially driving people into hunger.
“…the economic impacts have devastated tourism- and import-dependent economies.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/11/job-killer-of-the-century-economies-of-pacific-islands-face-collapse-over-covid-19
“The Maldives is wading into unchartered waters as it restarts efforts to lure visitors to its necklace of remote, luxury island resorts…
“Resorts need to meet new health standards… The regimen includes designated rooms for “isolation and quarantining of both staff and guests if required,” appropriate use of personal protective equipment, access to medical facilities, and the appointment of a COVID-19 safety manager in every resort…
“The economic shocks unleashed by the COVID-19 crisis are unprecedented,” Fazeel Najeeb, the former governor of the Maldives Monetary Authority, the central bank, told Nikkei.”
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Maldives-tests-waters-by-opening-resorts-to-COVID-weary-tourists
A person wonders about transportation to and from the Maldives. What happens to the fellow passengers of silent carriers of the coronavirus on flights to the Maldives, for example? Are all of these people quarantined as well?
I notice that New Zealand shows an average of 1.9 new cases per day, after supposedly getting down to zero cases. The European Union added 4,187 new cases on July 10. Mortality rates keep coming down everywhere, fortunately.
Hi From New Zealand,
Yes we are adding new cases however they are all from New Zealanders returning from overseas (about 30.0000 since March) who are in compulsory government organised isolation. We do not have any cases that are speeding from domestic sources.
We have had a few instances of people escaping from isolation and the public outcry was harsh.
Cheers
Bones.
COVID-19 needs to be understood as a job-killer, even more than a people killer.
Haven’t really seen covid-19 looked at in this light, but wondering if it more of an event that has exposed how much unnecessary employment we have in the world today (e.g. tourism, coffee shop barristas, restaraunteers, factories producing faux rubber dog poop)?
It would be nice to see covid-19 wake the world up a little and push more people into a more agrarian lifestyle, but I guess there’s too little money to be made that way in a world that is awash in unnecessary debt and consumer spending.
Thus why collapse can’t come soon enough – once we can’t choose debt / consumer lifestyles, practical living (or starvation / death) will be our only choice.
Cheers,
-GBV
The trucks bring boxes of wine, and with a scribble on a screen and a credit card you are into the bottle. The coffee house is drive through and the burgers.
Restaurants with service workers, hotels, business meetings, all sidelined.
Conventions, sports, concerts, the DMV, and most government paper shills all waiting for last year. But last year never comes.
If by some small chance you were formerly employed in primary production of food you are probably no worse the wear unless you depended too heavily on restaurant sales. But those delivery trucks keeping you going kinda grate agains’t what agrarian means or what supports it. The farm-stand failed years ago because three miles from a town means a left or right turn is problematic off a highway with traffic moving over seventy mph. You gotta know you’re making an exit a half mile before you get there and people don’t and fly right by. An anachronism has a certain draw for some people to visit but not likely imitated, and supported far more in conversation than deed.
The farm goes on out of pure hardheadedness, fishing the same. Free to fail with one miscalculation. Luck being as important as skill because weather and markets are always unpredictable. But the job of primary food production after a lifetime(40-60 years of work) gets harder and harder as your body wears down. There is no new farmer waiting to get the place although it’s sale will buy some new toys for whoever divides it up. So the farm and I will likely die together.
An agrarian system needs new life to follow the plow. Dreamers need not apply.
When a region in the Pyrenees which supported lots of farms and small villages for thousands of years had a motorway put through it, turn-offs to those places were not even included.
The last people left, the old footpaths and mule-tracks decayed, and now you would have to cut your way through the forest to get to them. They only survive as a memory in family surnames.
COVID has been just terrible for small farmers supplying local restaurants in Spain, above all the shepherds.
Rising general poverty, too, means the young don’t eat enough of this excellent meat: and fashionable politics mean that they turn Vegan.
GBV, no disagreement with your take on “unnecessary” acivities, but I have a slightly different take. They are a good way of transferring money from richer people to poorer people. The woman having an hour long manicure is a lot richer than the manicurist; likewise the woman with a fashionable and expensive hairstyle. The coffee drinker is richer than the barista, even as he enjoys his overpriced and inferior drink (I know: I once ordered a cappuccino at Starbucks. Once only; never again).
And moving up the scale, the buyer of a luxury yacht is employing many craftsmen who are preserving skills we may need badly in a downsized future. But tourism I do not defend; it is a force for economic slavery.
“Britain will suffer the sharpest peak-to-trough economic slump of any major economy this year, rating agency Moody’s warned on Friday…
““We forecast a contraction of 10.1% in the UK’s GDP for this year,” a group of Moody’s analysts wrote in a note.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-rating-moody-s/uk-economy-to-slump-over-10-debts-to-surge-moodys-idUKKBN24B121
“Boris Johnson will next week tell office workers to start returning to their desks to help save the British economy…
“He and Chancellor Rishi Sunak are said to be aghast at the impact empty offices are having on town centre shops and restaurants – and worried that widespread homeworking is wrecking Britain’s productivity.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8511629/Boris-desks-offices-killing-town-centres-warns-PM.html
“Residential property prices in the U.K. fell by the most since the global financial crisis from April through June, according to mortgage provider Halifax.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-10/u-k-house-prices-see-biggest-quarterly-fall-since-2009
“The cost of household staples, ranging from meat and cheese to school uniforms and drinking glasses, will substantially increase if there is no Brexit trade deal, British retailers have warned.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/10/no-deal-brexit-will-raise-cost-of-uk-household-staples-say-retailers
“The European Commission has given a stark warning of the barriers that will go up between the EU and the UK when the post-Brexit transition period expires at the end of the year, whatever the outcome of negotiations.”
https://www.euronews.com/2020/07/10/brexit-britons-warned-of-thorough-eu-border-checks-after-transition-period-ends
Needless to say, wages won’t go up at the same time.
Three news stories Harry, all related to the British. And Politicians are now starting to figure out that the UK eCONomy is in crisis? Shameful that politicians around the world have duped their citizenry about this “Plandemic”.
Boris can say what he likes, but companies and their employees will assess the risks and do as they think fit.
It’s not their duty, personal or commercial, to save shops, restaurants and coffee bars!
The wife of a customer works for a company with only 30 staff. Two caught nasty cases of COVID in March, and one died within 2 weeks – a super-fit man of 57, sporty, no underlying conditions, etc.
Obviously, this shocked them deeply, they are scared stiff and are home-working for the foreseeable future, certainly until there is a vaccine.
Business is just fine, why go back? Nothing the govt. says will change that.
Boris will be whistling in the dark, or should we say past the graveyard…..
Obituary from NYT.
“James F. Fixx, who spurred the jogging craze with his best-selling books about running and preached the gospel that active people live longer, died of a heart attack Friday while on a solitary jog in Vermont. He was 52 years old.”July 22, 1984.
Dennis L.
Speaking of jogging, Florence Griffith Joyner, more of a sprinter, was once once super-fit and remains the fastest woman in history. She died in 1998 at the tender age of 38 from asphyxia during an epileptic fit.
Joyner was a notorious user of performinance enhancing drugs.
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/FLO-JO+DID+USE+DRUGS+TO+WIN%3b+Steroids+transformed+her+says+training…-a060559543
Olympic sprint star Florence Griffith-Joyner did use drugs to boost her career, it was claimed yesterday. Her former training partner Lorna Boothe revealed yesterday that Flo- Jo used a cocktail of steroids and testosterone to change from average athlete to world-beater.
The sprint legend died of a suspected heart attack on Monday, at the age of 38, after a career tainted with allegations of drug- taking.
Lorna, who is now manager of the British athletics team, said the American star regularly took a cocktail of drugs in the run-up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The former Common-wealth silver medallist hurdler, who trained with Flo- Jo in Los Angeles, said she had not spoken out before because she was afraid she would be killed.
But she made the sensational allegations yesterday as a “warning”‘ to youngsters entering the sport. She said: “I was astonished by the way Flo-Jo changed from the slightly overweight, sluggish sprinter I was easily able to beat in training in California.”
………………………………………….
Carl Lewis, too. Of course. But as they say in professional sport, if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying.
“Two caught nasty cases of COVID in March, and one died within 2 weeks – a super-fit man of 57, sporty, no underlying conditions, etc.”
i wonder if COVID is actually catching an underlying condition that may have been missed. unlike humans, the virus won’t be fooled by exterior looks or in denial about a person’s actual health.
https://freebeacon.com/media/nbc-contributor-reveals-he-never-had-coronavirus-after-network-documented-his-recovery/
Fair speculated his tests came back negative because he delayed going to the hospital for more than week when he first felt ill, and he said his doctors felt he must have the virus.
“I was a very healthy person. I exercise five to six days a week,” he said. “If it can take even me down, it can take anybody down.”
…………………………………………………………….
If even a really healthy person can have a paranoid episode, anyone can have a paranoid episode.
A friend of mine in Texas…his entire family caught Covid…all ten of them…nothing more than a one degree fever, some lower back pain, a few headaches,….everyone is fine.
Details that no one thought about!
In my experience in England, many office workers could best help the economy by not returning to their desks.
“Hundreds of protesters in Serbia clashed with the police in front of the parliament building in Belgrade on Friday, as protests rocked the country for the fourth consecutive day.”
https://www.dw.com/en/serbia-protesters-try-to-storm-parliament-amid-fresh-unrest/a-54135350
“A large, violent protest is expected in Tel Aviv Saturday evening as Israel goes deeper into economic crisis amid new coronavirus-related restrictions…
“”The protesters do not intend to be nice,” one of the organizers told the media outlet, adding that the demonstrators’ plan for Saturday evening is “showing rage and blocking roads to make sure the protest will not be forgotten.””
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/massive-protest-expected-in-tel-aviv-amid-economic-crisis-report-634676
A section of the rioters are chanting and sloganizing in English. Another color revolution?
Martin Armstrong touched on the Serbia story briefly here:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/civil-unrest/europe-exploding-into-civil-unrest/
I’m sure he’s right about European civil unrest, by my goodness does that man do everything in his power to be ignorant of limits to growth (instead, let’s blame it on the New Green World Order and Bill Gates)!
One other thing he may be right about though… if Europe starts imploding, capital may flee and find itself driving up the US dollar and US equities markets (as if they weren’t skyrocketing to unsustainable highs already).
Cheers,
-GBV
A similar problem in many parts of the world, with different excuses for the reasons for the clashes.
Common sense would suggest that we will see a resurgence of the unrest of 2019 in the coming months, with popular discontent exacerbated by lockdown-induced hardships. Congo was one of many hot spots of unrest last year:
“At least three people have been killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as protests in several cities against the nomination of an election commission head turned violent.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/drc-3-killed-protests-election-chief-nomination-200710074318115.html
“Protesters in Mali’s capital Bamako blocked two of the city’s main bridges and hurled stones at the parliament Friday, AFP journalists said, during a protest against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.”
http://north-africa.com/2020/07/mali-political-unrest-and-protest-in-mali-protesters-demand-ousting-of-president/
A similar problem, many places!
“…the US economy was only able to rise from its sickbed last month because of the federal government’s fiscal life support. The disbursement of $1,200 relief checks and $600-a-week federal unemployment benefits has enabled personal income in the U.S. to rise since the onset of the pandemic.
“But once the stimulus checks were cashed, household income began to decline; and if Congress refuses to extend the $600 unemployment bonus when it expires at July’s end, consumer purchasing power will plummet.
“What’s more, although the CARES Act’s provisions have left many working people better off, others have fallen through our welfare state’s many cracks.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/congress-coronavirus-recession-stimulus-relief-unemployment-insurance.html
“Even when the Great Recession dampened consumer confidence and drove up unemployment things weren’t as bad for retailers as they have been during the current Covid-19 crisis…
“The retail sector’s first-quarter operating income fell 57.7% compared with last year – and 71.1% when not including Walmart…”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/first-quarter-retail-industry-operating-income-falls-58percent.html
“U.S. banks are… about to reveal what three more months of Covid-19 did to the industry…
“We’ve got a full three months of the pandemic coming through the numbers now,” Kyle Sanders, an analyst at Edward Jones, said in an interview, adding that the second quarter was probably the worst for bank earnings since the financial crisis…
“Soaring unemployment left many consumers unable to pay back their debts or take on new borrowing, forcing banks to set aside more to cover souring loans and crimping their net interest income. At the same time, nationwide stay-at-home orders left once-bustling downtowns and retail districts deserted…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-10/biggest-u-s-banks-set-for-worst-quarter-since-financial-crisis
“New York City is starting to tentatively emerge from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic but a revival in outdoor restaurant dining is facing a new hazard – a plague of rats.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/10/new-york-rats-diners-outdoor-restaurants
My ancestors of two centuries ago had no problem dealing with rats. They trained terrier dogs to be “ratters”. A good ratter could easily dispose of 100 in a day, and of course they could go almost anywhere a rat could. But knowing New York City, it will probably send the rats online voter registration forms..
“rats torment diners” — how nice! Is bubonic plague the new risk we should worry about? A recent story said, Chinese authorities confirm case of bubonic plague in Inner Mongolia.
Or course, the article ends in the expected way:
Wow!
Even the huge amount of aid given has left the Producer Price Index (a measure of commodity wholesale prices) falling. As the aid drops off, I would expect commodity prices, including oil prices, to fall further.
“It is when the broad masses “lose faith” in their currencies that things really start to move… I am guessing that this will happen in 2021.
“But, I am not too concerned about that. Years ago, I figured that this would be the endgame, and there wouldn’t be much anyone could do about it.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2020/07/10/modern-monetary-theory-goes-mainstream/?fbclid=IwAR2uwpfQxmEVKUaF9xvaz1S-APScxEBourAnayqI7PjHOsA7jFUYSFyWlag#77fc09fd21e5
Interesting chart! Too bad it only goes up to 1960. I would expect it to continue to go trend downward until recently.
https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5f0881072a05ab0006cec0e5/960×0.jpg
It looks like during collapse/major recession, reserves are high relative to deposits. No one wants to borrow money. They fall as a percentage of deposits when demand is higher. The Civil War period was very similar to the 1930s, in some ways.
https://www.yahoo.com/money/personal-bankruptcies-plunge-during-pandemic-but-a-flood-could-be-on-the-horizon-195638567.html
“In the fall, there will be a flood of bankruptcies,” he said. “I think it will be a bloodbath.”
bloodbath, flood, dam burst, tsunami.
lots of apt metaphors.
take your pick.
No kidding! Unless governments everywhere do something to “extend and pretend.” Even at that, there will be a basic problem of not enough goods and services to go around.
the plan is to cull the population with the vaccine if you watched the documentary “Plandemic” you would be on the same page as me and know where the virus came from .
Since the world population continues to rise, I guess the cabal didn’t think things through.
Oh wait–you mean that the vaccine (which we don’t have yet) will cull the world’s population. Okay, carry on then.
Many people, if they avoid other ways of dying, will die the death of a thousand cuts. Lots of cumulative assaults and unwise lifestyle choices can add up over a lifetime.
Vaccines are interventions that are specifically designed to provoke an immune response. Is it any wonder that an immune system that has been “provoked” excessively can become dysfunctional? Surely even Duncan can understand that?
Maybe Duncan has insights from a different perspective, however.
despite being smart billionaire elites, the cabal sure can come up with some quite inncompetent “plans”.
They do come up with a lot of plans. So did Napoleon. He had a strategic policy of keeping many balls in the air at once, then, if the winds blew this way or that, he would apply a particular plan, or reuse its resourcez.
Despite being one of the greatest military minds in history, his plans for the invasion of England were worse than incompetent. He had no idea of what he was doing.
But he had a notion that particular plans didn’t matter. The whole national militarized beast just had to maintain its momentum and he would improvise off that.
It was an incredibly wasteful and expensive process. But what did he care?The important point wasn’t that millions died or were impoverished but that it was all dedicated to the glorification of Gates, Soros, Fauci, …oops…sorry, Napoleon.
The general trend is what is most important, strategically speaking. It doesn’t really matter if we fail to achieve specific short term goals, as long as in the process of trying to achieve them, the long term strategic goals are advanced.
The main strategic goal is always the same: more centralized power. Less individual choice.
In a strategic sense then, the flu hoax has been a resounding success.
Unfortunately the mid-term result will be the inflaming of such popular unrest that it makes 2019 look like a picnic and a hastening of total socio-economic collapse.
The long-term result will be the death of most if not all humans, probably including your Machiavellian anti-heroes.
https://www.memesmonkey.com/images/memesmonkey/db/db97ff0ceb017bb4fb1053cf2f9a4e6b.jpeg
@ Harry
Napoleon my hero? No. No. I must have been unclear. He was a monster.
One of Napoleon’s main assets (other than his tactical genius) was his emphasis on mobility. He trained his troops by means of forced marches, believing they would learn not to get tired. (Didn’t work at the battle of Borodino, the last battle in the Russian campaign that he “officially” won). He also taught his gunners how to move quickly, which probably cost him the Battle of Waterloo, because he waited for the ground to become dry enough to move cannon, and then launched an attack that didn’t need the cannon to be moved.
His invasion of England was hopeless because he never understood naval tactics. Ships becalmed cannot be made mobile; ships with the wing gage cannot be evaded. As he did not learn from the Battle of the Nile, and it cost him Trafalgar. Britain’s unparalleled series of naval victories was discussed with great clarity by Alfred Thayer Mahon (of course), and would repay study today.
There is a very interesting (and well written) book called Bonaparte in Egypt by J. Christopher Herold. A fascinating read. I am sure it can be found online. He really treated his men badly and they had a terrible time of it there.
Napoleon also made the mistake of underestimating the Spanish, sending mostly 2nd-class troops to occupy Madrid and the other larger cities.
To him, of course, the Peninsular was a peripheral theatre of war.
When the Spanish saw them they said to themselves ‘Is this the Grand Army? What runts!’ This made an uprising seem practical.
The Spanish war also enabled the British to harden and perfect their infantry, and this greatly assisted them in holding out at Waterloo, – they were nearly all veterans of the Peninsular campaigns – waiting for the Germans to sweep in and win the day.
This subject gives me a golden opportunity to share one of Sandy Denny’s very best ballads, called Banks of the Nile.
https://youtu.be/5qiC6Yobgv8
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
New Daily Cases Records – Day just ended so click at link on yesterday
Globally: 236,918 (not far from 1/4 million)
USA: 71,787 (not that far now from Fauci’s warned potential 100,000 a day new cases)
India: 27,761 (keeps ratcheting up)
good point:
it’s not just the USA, it’s global. it’s 75% in other countries!
it’s almost as if the virus can’t be stopped.
here’s my warning: 250,000 a day new cases in the USA later this Summer, and one million a day globally.
who is going to stop me from being correct?
oh wait, the actual math says 70% in other countries.
what’s wrong with the rest of the world?
What is a “case”? And is it a good thing, bad, or indifferent?
A case is simply a person who obtains a positive PRC or antibody test result. It should be a matter of indifference as it could very well be a false positive and in any case will most probably will not result in illness. But pronouncing someone, particularly an already old and infirm person, “COVID-19 positive” is a great way of scaring them to death.
As the number of COVID cases rises, the availability of processing tests (after they have been taken) does not rise as rapidly. In the US, the wait for test results becomes longer and longer, I understand. Sometimes there is also an issue of a long wait to obtain the test in the first place. Thus, there is an increasingly long time between exposure and test results becoming available. The value of the test becomes less and less. The lag between the time test results are available and the time when deaths would be expected to occur would seem to become shorter and shorter.
At some point, we have to cut back on COVID-19 tests. Perhaps the tests are needed to make certain that health care workers are not currently infected and to make certain that patients who plan to have surgery are not currently infected. But it is not clear exactly who else needs to be tested. People who are working closely together in a meat packing plant, for example?
What stops you from being correct? We run out of tests for the virus, so we are forced to stop counting in this way.
I’m not sure if this has been posted here before. Someone linked to it over at kunstler.com.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/07/second-wave-not-even-close/
Cases up, but death rate falling and pandemic virtually over.
This is related to the point I made in responding to another comment. There seem to be two types of immunity: (1) T-cell immunity and (2) antibodies against the particular virus. Most people, simply because of the colds they have had and other opportunities to fight against similar virus, such as the earlier SARS, seem to already have immunity, presumably of the T-cell type. We don’t have a good way of measuring this immunity, however.
https://www.rt.com/russia/494361-covid19-vaccine-russia-final-stage/
‘As Russia begins final stage of coronavirus vaccine trial, volunteers are confirmed to have immunity – and no side effects’
“It said that data obtained by scientists “indicates that volunteers in the first and second groups formed an immune response after injections of the vaccine against the coronavirus.”
“On Thursday, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko announced that research was underway on 17 separate Russian coronavirus vaccines, of which the Gamelei drug is just one.”
I would take this article for face value, i.e. it’s gone well through phase II trials, but until there is robust data from phase III, we won’t know for sure it’s effectiveness. We also don’t know how long immunity will be remain in the body, ready for exposure to live virus later. One problem so far is immune response provides antibodies, but only for a short duration. Ideally a single shot & maybe a booster later will be all that’s needed, but it could also be a scenario in which booster shots need to be administered on a recurring basis. We also don’t know if the virus will mutate as it encounters antibodies.
What is exciting is numerous corona virus vaccines are now in phase III trials. Data should be forthcoming in the next few months.
I would strive to avoid the application of any such vaccine for myself or my children. There are already far too many assaults on our immune systems making us chronically sick.
But of course it is the job of that vampire industry called Big Pharma to make us sick and keep us sick.
Also, just like viral infection side effects, vaccine side effects often don’t show up for years or even decades, and then—if you are unlucky—it’s Pow! Wham! IMHO, it would be irresponsible to conclude “no side effects” based on an observation of “no side effects so far”, and unwise to accept any newly formulated vaccine that hasn’t be subjected to rigorous testing over at least five years.
Oh my! Hope you are ok with wearing a mask for the rest of your life!
I do not understand what you are trying to suggest.
Are you saying that if I do not take an untested, unnecessary and likely highly dangerous flu shot, certain lunatics will compel me to wear a face mask?
If I do not permanently compromise the long term health of my children, I will be forced to wear a mask?
Why? How? Please explain.
Vaccines are not going to eliminate COVID-19 and may do more harm than good.
Different experts are offer different advice, and people can take their pick. But IMHO, masks are not going to make much difference to infection rates apart from in specific situations such as in hospitals. In most other situations the risk of becoming ill is minimal provided you wash your hands after one of the infected sneezes in your direction.
Voluntary mask wearing is fine, but there is absolutely no need to compel others to wear masks in public merely in order to avoid triggering panic attacks among mysophobes.
People are going to have to learn that their pathological fear of germs is their own problem and to stop taking out on the rest of us.
Hopefully, this will become clear to everybody as time goes by.
What is exciting is numerous corona virus vaccines are now in phase III trials.
This is precisely the kind of excitement I can well do without.
https://i.imgflip.com/17c24g.jpg
the vaccine, I will refuse.
I will not try to refuse it.
do or do not take the vaccine, there is no try.
I would simply slip $20 across the table and in return take my stamped vaccination card. Same way I got my driver’s license?
The right to bare arms—bare of needle marks—offers a Constitutional protection here.
There are multiple research and articles that the receovered patients of Covid-19 do not show immunity after 3-4 months from infection. Except small 2-3% group.
If the real virus/infection cannot teach your body immunity, how can the vaccine? Can someone explain this mystery?
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/25/844939777/no-evidence-that-recovered-covid-19-patients-are-immune-who-says?t=1594455324535
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/health/coronavirus-antibodies.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/immunity-covid-19-rapidly-declines-research-shows/
Thanks! An important point is at the end of the NPR article:
Excellent question!
Do any of our pro-vexers have an equally excellent answer?
I believe that in addition to antibodies providing immunity, t-cells also provide some immunity. We don’t know how this is divided up, and we don’t know as much about the t-cell immunity. It may be that t-cell immunity is allowing some people not to show symptoms at all, if I have understood a few things I have seen recently. We cannot really tell what level of herd immunity a population has, because we have no way of measuring t-cell immunity.
“Can someone explain this mystery?”
No, because science is dead. Only politicized rhetoric remains.
Big Brother says we need to get the vaccine so that we can win the war against Eastasia… or was it Eurasia? I can’t remember anymore.
“In Oceania, to think is to do, and no distinction is drawn between either.”
Cheers,
-GBV
The virus is free; the vaccine is expensive.
You may have noticed that I migrated the site to a different “theme.” This is a very similar theme to the one I used before. It supposedly displays better on portable devices. It also allows a reader to translate using Google Translate.
You will notice that the right side bar appears only on the home page. The later pages don’t show widgets down the side. I suppose that this is so that portable devices can reproduce more accurately what is shown on a full-sized computer.
On the pages that show individual posts, I can add more “widgets” at the bottom, if you like. For example, I added a Google Translate button on each sheet. I am wondering if I should try to put the “Recent comments” widget at the bottom, so it will show up on individual posts.
Let me know if there are other things that need changing. This theme allows a person to change fonts, background colors and many other things.
I liked the other theme better, but maybe it was just out of habit, since I’m an animal of habits and I hate changes (my soul firmly believes every change is for worse!) But probably a month from now this theme will be my favorite ever. Anyway, it’s just graphics.
I did too. A consultant whom I talked to thought that perhaps this theme would be preferable for a few reasons. It should load faster on some computers, for example.
Before talking to the consultant, we were concerned that perhaps the prior theme was contributing to the red flags that Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Edge is giving the site. That doesn’t seem to be the case, so I need to work on that problem a different way. I have started down that path.
In theory, I could migrate the site back to the old theme if I want to. The two themes are fairly similar, so it is not very hard to change back and forth. The old one is called Two Thousand Ten. The new one is called Two Thousand Eleven. You can guess what years they were developed. Neither is very new.
They say a change is as good as a rest. I too am a creature of habit, but I don’t see any problems looking at or using the new theme. And I’m sure all of us visit lots of different blogs that use many different layouts, and we have no trouble flipping between them.
This layout is more aesthetically pleasing IMO and works better on my phone but I do miss being able to see on on the current page who has posted most recently. I am on the fence then.
Seems I prefer the old format also, just feels more right and easier on the eyes to read and follow.
Herbie, the new layout has smaller text on my computer screen, which was a bit difficult for my old eyes to read. To get around that, I used the Zoom In feature on my browser and now it’s much easier on the eyes.
Recent comments would be useful. Thanks.
Recent comments are on the sidebar of the front page right now. I can change this so that they are at the bottom (footer) of the current post. (At least in theory. I haven’t tried this.)
I figured out what was wrong with my old browser, at least from the view of Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Defender. People using Microsoft Edge as their only browser could not read my posts at all. I know my sister-in-law in Nashville complained about this issue, because she uses only Microsoft Edge. It turns out something about the widgets that allowed people to leave their email addresses or to sign up for RSS feeds seems to upset the Microsoft products. They are concerned that I might use emails collected in this way for spam. Or I might leave cookies on your site. Give me a break!!
For right now, I don’t have any widgets at all on the front of OurFiniteWorld.com to use to sign up to be on the email list for OurFiniteWorld.com or for comments. I think you can still sign up for responses to comments you made, but I am not certain.
There seem to be some newer widgets available that might work to allow sign-ups. I will look into this. They may put up the ridiculous “accept cookies” option, except that I don’t use cookies! I will talk to my happiness engineer at WordPress about the issue.
“Let me know if there are other things that need changing.”
Well, if you’d like to pay us $1 per comment, I certainly wouldn’t be opposed, Gail 😀
Ohhh, changes to the layout / format / theme you mean…
Well, I like this new layout / format / theme save for one big problem – by the time you get down to the “third tier” comment responses, they’re all squished up and pretty difficult to read. At least in my phone anyway.
Cheers,
-GBV
I think that that is a problem with comments on a phone, regardless.
I can set the maximum depth of comments at 3 instead of the current 5. That would make it necessary to start new threads more often. I won’t do that right yet, until I hear what other commenters have to say on this subject. The new format does give a little bit better idea of who is replying to whom, viewed on my computer.
It is hard for me to know who uses which type of device. I would expect that in lower income countries, a higher percentage of readers would use phones. Retired people in high income countries I expect will mostly use computers.
Dear Gail, please do not reduce the depth of comments. I have found the extended dialogues with other OFW contributors a most refreshing critique and counterpoint to my own views. It has been a learning experience i would like to continue.
That is what I am thinking. If people are reading with phones, they will still have a problem. They had a problem before, I expect, as well.
From the Bay Area, Santa Clara County:
“The County’s eviction moratorium has been extended through August 31, 2020. Tenants now have up to 6 months after the moratorium expires or terminates to repay at least 50% of the past-due rent, and up to 12 months after the moratorium expires or terminates to repay in full the past-due rent.”
For landlords:
“You still have a right to collect rent if the tenant qualifies for protection under the moratorium. However, the tenant has 6 months after the moratorium ends to repay at least 50% of the past-due rent and 12 months after the moratorium ends to repay in full the past-due rent. You cannot charge a late fee. Before initiating any repayment plan with a tenant protected under this moratorium, you must first inform the tenant of these repayment protections.”
https://www.sccgov.org/sites/osh/EvictionMoratorium/Pages/home.aspx?fbclid=IwAR1lZDeoZ8OPPi8KrM14eGzD0lbbZLfimKp55BZBPzwe1G7S_ZekAToAUvg
If there ever is an end to this scamdemic, will unemployed tenants suddenly get jobs with enough income to support their living expenses AND pay their past-due rent? If not, will they be driven further into debt slavery to get by? Or will they be saved by the government through a Universal Basic Income program?
Doesn’t seem like it, does it?
“Tenants now have up to 6 months after the moratorium expires or terminates to repay at least 50% of the past-due rent…”
so this is what they have “planned”:
tenants will start paying their rent again in September, will not pay a dime of the past-due rent, and will move out within 6 months.
2021 could be even messier than 2020.
If tenants attempt to do this, they will have zero funds for anything else. We can expect a big drop in used auto purchases. We can expect a big drop in any kind of discretionary expenditures.
If the Dems take both houses and presidency there could be UBI, reparations, bailout of irresponsible cities and states,and a large infrastructure program. Their economist guru of MMT fame(Dr Kelton) says just print and print . it’s not a problem until it is.
Good update from the very good Wolf Richter on “The Great American Oil Bust started in mid-2014, when the price of crude-oil benchmark WTI began its long decline from over $100 a barrel to, briefly, minus -$37 a barrel in April 2020.”
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/07/10/the-great-american-shale-oil-gas-massacre-bankruptcies-defaulted-debts-worthless-shares-collapsed-prices-of-oil-and-natural-gas/
Yes, that is a very fine post of Wolf Richter. I notice that he show a chart of natural gas prices. This indicates that they are at the lowest level in recent memory in 2020. He also comments on the many bankruptcies of coal companies. The low price problem exists for all fossil fuels, not just oil.
I keep coming back to demographics, the link is to an animated map of median age in various global regions. Of interest is the age during the wonderful 30’s from 1946 to 1976 in the Western World. Compare that to the median age in China from say 1980 on, it appears about 10 years younger than NA in a similar period. In NA America from 1960 to 1980 it was somewhat less than 30. This was also a period of minimal transfer payments from the young to the old. Median age NA in 2020 is now 39, 1/3 higher.
In Europe median age is now 43 – hopeless for retirement, elderly income declines as vitality declines. Those with notional have claims only until exercised, they need younger people to actualize those claims. E. g. a farm is just mud without someone to work it, even with modern machinery it is hard work at times, long hours and danger of fatigue induced injuries.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-age-changes-since-1950/
As we age our energy and physical levels decline. In WWII fighter pilots in their late twenties were more likely to be killed than those in their early 20’s, the older were more skilled, less fit, biology. Mathematicians do their best work in their early twenties.
Those rebelling are the young, against the old, against what is old.
I submit those who advocate reduced birth rates are looking at the wrong end, there is also increased death rates over a certain age – that seems to be what we are seeing with Covid-19.
Dennis L.
I agree with you: An economy cannot operate without young people. In fact, it almost requires an expanding number of young people to care for all of the old people, plus to do the necessary work otherwise.
The whole idea of government provided pensions was based on the assumption that the number of young people would be growing at least as quickly as the number of retirees. If this isn’t the case, it becomes impossible to fund the program. It seems like governments are going to have to start dealing with this issue in a different way than simply letting more immigrants in.
Nobel prize winning economist Paul Samuelson made exactly that point:
“The beauty of social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. Everyone who reaches retirement age is given benefit privileges that far exceed anything he has paid in — exceed his payments by more than ten times (or five times counting employer payments)!
How is it possible? It stems from the fact that the national product is growing at a compound interest rate and can be expected to do so for as far ahead as the eye cannot see. Always there are more youths than old folks in a growing population. More important, with real income going up at 3% per year, the taxable base on which benefits rest is always much greater than the taxes paid historically by the generation now retired.
…A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi game ever contrived.”
Proving once again that if you want the words economic advice on the planet, go to a nobel prize winner.
Sorry, sorry “worst economic advice”. Cognitive dissonance strikes again.
Needless to say, a politician who puts in place social insurance for the elderly will be extremely popular, especially if older people vote in large numbers.
Working in the insurance industry (although not in the pension industry itself), I could see the precisely the problem Paul Samuelson describes. This is why I became interested in the “Finite World” issue back in 2005. I started writing articles in 2006, but realized that doing this was problematic, if I continued to work for a company that did pension consulting. I left consulting in 2007 and started writing blog posts on OurFiniteWorld.com in 2007.
“An economy cannot operate without young people.”
Young people are the ones we typically send off to fight our wars.
If (conventional) war were to break out, I’m sure young people would be called up once again to do the dirty work. If lots of them die, one wonders what that means for all the oldies who are expecting to be cared for by the young…
I had another thought on war (my, I’m in a violent / murderous mood these days!) and how it is inevitable, but I think I’ll post that thought as a new comment and see what discourse it wrangles up…
Cheers,
-GBV
“There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.”
LOL!
This doesn’t augur well for recovery (from the UK’s Office for National Statistics):
“Lockdown restrictions have been gradually lifting across the UK, prompting the question whether people would take a holiday; just 9% said they were likely or very likely to go on holiday abroad this summer.
“With the easing of restrictions on eating out, 21% of those asked said they would be comfortable or very comfortable to eat indoors at a restaurant compared to 6 in 10 (60%) who said they would be uncomfortable or very uncomfortable…
“People were also asked how comfortable they would be to visit the cinema and 13% said they would be comfortable or very comfortable to visit the cinema, compared to 70% who said they would be uncomfortable or very uncomfortable.”
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandwellbeing/bulletins/coronavirusandthesocialimpactsongreatbritain/10july2020
Exactly the problem! It is especially those who are older or in poor health who do not want to venture Even some of the younger ones aren’t venturing out. There finances are in too bad shape, if nothing else.
“Again, recent spikes in COVID-19 around much of the country and the scheduled expiration of expanded unemployment benefits both represent significant uncertainty for the weeks ahead.”
Reality always “Trumps” ideology
Duncan,
Life has never been easy, never been safe; I do not understand the last sentence and how it connects to the first paragraph.
Dennis L.
Hint:
We are just at the start of a mass pandemic, the first one from 1918 on.
All the governments of the planet are not into mass delusion.
This is not 1968.
The delusion of Trump is ideological (well, maybe just being a sociopath).
Reality is the pandemic.
Comprende?
What should the US Government do? What should an individual do?
What would be an example of “The delusion of Trump?”
Reality is the pandemic? Reality seems to be much more to an individual, and perhaps more serious. Cancer deaths this year in the US are estimated to be > 600K, they have been on going for many years. Deaths from Covid-19 are to date about 130K more than 40% are of an aged population with many comorbidities. Health reality is very individual.
So again, what course of action would you recommend? I don’t have a clue, there is no sarcasm in this post.
Dennis L.
Reality is the pandemic.
In your humble opinion. 🙂
Pandemic, Scamdemic, what does it matter? As long as the sheep are scared enough to stay in their pens?
>>It is especially those who are older or in poor health
The biggest issue I see here is that it is the elderly, sick and overweight that seem to be most likely to be affected by covid-19, and they should know it given covid-19 is never off the news. Problem is that in the UK the elderly, sick and overweight is most of the population. Especially the overweight group. The statistics suggest that if you are below about 65 y.o. you should be ok, but that is probably not how Joe Average sees it.
You hit the nail on the head about personal finances – many people either out of work or in furlough and fearing losing their job, about half the population in the UK.
I agree, and obesity does seems to be pretty much the norm among anyone below the middle class in the UK, certainly by 30.
The only people who regularly jog and bike to work from this village are middle class, mostly academics come to that.
They – the fatties – are also the lazy buggers who park on their front gardens rather than walk just a few yards up the garden path to the front door. But who needs a pretty front garden when you are inside watching TV when at home?
The levels of drinking and drug taking is Britain is something incredible.
Partially right but money isn’t wealth. The store or value is the tricky bit. Wealth is a product of society. It’s the value of the personal productivity of the population as a whole. This is facilitated by energy leveraging up production and transport.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/09/money-true-wealth-part.html
People think money is a store of value but unless it can be exchanged for something it’s worthless. Bill Gates is a pretty rich guy but how rich will he be if the population around isn’t solvent or productive? For example I’m sure he has a private jet. Will he be flying if the major commercial airlines fail? No the airports will be closed and not maintained. There will be no fuel because economy of scale collapsed making the unit price unaffordable at any price. For Bill Gates to stay wealthy requires prosperity of the entire country. If he exchanged all his dollars for gold it wouldn’t change matters.
Rome used gold still collapsed.
From another perspective money as we know it (fiat) declines in value because of inflation. The value of that function has to be viewed in the right perspective. Money is a product of legislation plan and simple. If you what a complex society you need government. It has to be paid for. Governments determine what currency will be used to settle taxes and that becomes money and a means of exchange. Top down not bottom up. So for governments the central bank fiat currency is the best choice. It allows the population to perceive that money is a store of value because they can receive interest on their savings. So it simply must be. In reality the money is lent into existence and inflated away. This function gives governments the access to capital without direct taxation which is unacceptable. The result is fraudulent system and people love it that way. Particularly if they can participate by having access to debt which gives them access tax free money or so it seems. Maybe that is the real opium for the people.
https://missingmoney.solari.com/missing-money-update-may-2020/
To that end how might the value of the dollar be maintained ? The above link shows that the treasury is servicing not $22trillion but more likely $123trillion in debt based on repurchase and reissue volumes. Catherine Austin Fitts also notes that there has been at least $21trillion of unaccounted adjustments in the DOD and HUD. So what’s going on? The illusion of value the belief that money is a store of value is what keeps people working. Rather then trying to figure the mechanism that achieved these figures let’s look at the value to the dollar which seems counterintuitive.
Obviously someone is holding the debt that is maturing so there is a demand for it. Who would be demanding it? Anyone who needs to invest for fixed income. So retirement funds insurance companies sovereign states etc. What would happen if the demand for US treasuries couldn’t be met? Logically the money would have to go somewhere else. Some other currencies perhaps, gold perhaps, Wall Street? That amount of money is hard to hide. Bubbles would form and burst all over the world. People would lose faith not just in a currency but in the system. Meaning Free Market Capitalism. The entire premise is Slave For Me In You Youth and You’ll Be Rewarded inYour Retirement. Similar to the gate at Auschwitz.
So to maintain the illusion of wealth the US treasury must satisfy the demand but they have to keep it off the books because if the published the true debt the demand would cease. The whole world not to mention the US public would declare the US insolvent.
How do you get rid of 5trillion a year? War. The US has maintained a war the whole time. The Army that has a $120 billion budget can not account for $6.5trillion dollars. In 9/10/2001 Rumsfeld admitted that the Pentagon had lost $2.1trillion dollars.
There are 1000 US military bases around the world and a lot of friendly Governments that need looking after. Not to mention a domestic housing market that needs propping up to keep the piggy bank full so US citizens can maintain a lifestyle they can’t afford. And people like it that way. Just like wine collectors who know that part of their collection are fakes and probably the best part. They don’t want to know the specific ones because then they have to realize the loss.
Gold won’t fix anything.
quite correct in pointing out that gates is a rich person sitting on top of a pyramid of less rich persons.
if they cease to be there, then his wealth will collapse
unfortunately that bit of population geometry applies to everyone else, unless you’re at the bottom of the heap already
Children
What is the value in joules of a burning Picasso?
Meanwhile, in another part of the insane asylum that used to be a functioning university system, almost six hundred academia nuts, most of them canny linguists by all accounts, have signed what they’re calling “an open letter by members of the linguistics community” to the Linguistic Society of America that calls for” the removal of Dr. Steven Pinker from both our list of distinguished academic fellows and our list of media experts” The consensus among the signers is that “Dr. Pinker’s behavior as a public academic is not befitting of a representative of our professional organization, that the LSA’s own stated goals make such a conclusion inevitable, and that the LSA should publicly reaffirm its position and distance itself from Dr. Pinker.”
Strong stuff indeed. Poor old Pinker. What has he done to deserve such disapprobation apart from being old, white and male? And will Dawkins or Diamond be next? I think the mob is basically intent on toppling senior professors the way they do confederate statues in the hope that some of them will be able to climb onto the vacant pedestals, what with academic tenure being so difficult to come by these days.
But with the situation among the teaching staff at higher institutions of learning growing so miserably Stalinist/Maoist/Robespierrean (take your pick), who would want to sign their dog, let alone their children, up for an undergraduate course these days. It can’t be very long before the universities go bankrupt en masse and this particular cadre of overpaid and overprivileged useless eaters are forced to get proper jobs that require them to do the W word.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/07/09/harvard-professor-under-fire-in-latest-attack-on-free-speech/#more-159863
I am afraid I have not followed Steven Pinker. He sounds like yet another person who imagines that people who can get better and better, if they just try harder (no influence of growing energy supply). In Wikipedia , I read:
He also wrote, The Blank Slate. This would all seem to be part of the liberal thinking of today. He doesn’t sound like someone people would now want to pull down.
Pinker is a bit complex, but agree with your analysis.
A good writer, just be aware of the delusions.
I never read Pinker, but he sounds like a priest of a religion called Democracy. A most naive person I would venture, if he believes the source of human happiness and prosperity and fraternity forever depends of human reasonable choices. Democracy as the ultimate panacea! If it were so simple.
Gail, the name of that book was The Blank Slate.
I haven’t read it but I think I’ll buy a copy to help cheer Mr. Pinker up a bit in his hour of misery.
Oops! I went back and fixed my earlier comment. I sometimes have a problem with words that don’t come out as planned.
What has Steven Pinker done? He has told the truth as he sees it. Which of course is a revolutionary act.
Since overpopulation is so completely ignored now by both the masses and the masters, here’s an old cartoon by Nina Paley, childfree-by-choice population activist. She even throws in a jab at religion for good measure.
https://blog.ninapaley.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/NA_SheepSouls_raw_960.png
The problem is not overpopulation, it’s a massive misallocation of resources. When the world’s wealthiest 20 people have more than 3.5 billion of the world’s poorest, that is a problem.
There is a misunderstanding of the wealth of the wealthiest 20 people. It is nearly all paper wealth.
When it comes to food, the wealthiest 20 people individually cannot eat much more than the poorest 3.5 billion can. In fact, if they sit around all day, while the poorest 3.5 are out doing physical work, they may require fewer calories.
The wealthiest 20 people cannot sleep in more than one place at a time. Without transportation (such as air flights) they are pretty much limited to one bed or mat to sleep on, in one home. The value of their additional homes disappears without readily available transportation. Nearly all of this is oil based. Even electric cars depend on roads put in place using oil products. If the roads are made of asphalt or concrete, they are built using fossil fuels.
If the paper wealth of the wealthiest 20 people were transferred to the 3.5 billion poorest people, it wouldn’t fix anything. The paper wealth is pseudo wealth. It only has value, if it has value to a new owner, later, or if it can produce profits for the new owner. The problem now is a lack of profits, and debt which will almost certainly be defaulted on.
which is why people are pouring money into gold
gold has returned 7% pa average over the last 10 years.
there are not my resting places for money that can show that kind of return now
Once the fossil fuels have gone, sometime this century, probably sooner rather than later, how will we produce and transport all the food currently produced by the green revolution? Egypt, population 100 M and growing, for example imports huge amounts of wheat, from around the globe. No wheat imports = famine.
not to worry
uk isopening an new airfrieght hub
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-53350272
You have to wonder – what are we going to be exporting, and who is going to buy it?
On a similar note (wasting huge amounts of money on dead-end projects), the Aberdeen bypass was completed just over a year ago. Originally budgeted at £250 M in the end we were told it cost over £1000 M. For a city with a popn of about 200,000. I have never been on it, no need, but I have crossed over it a few times and the traffic is always very quiet. But not as quiet as it will be as collapse begins to bite.
Fossil fuels disappear when the price stays too low for too long. Probably this is soon. Sometime this decade, perhaps in the next year or two. The academic world is full of models that have been put together, assuming that what we can see in the ground, we can extract. This is utter and complete nonsense. Peak oilers have tended to follow the same wrong reasoning.
Thanks to Magic Money Tree economics, I assume governments think they will be able to fund loss-making FF extraction in much the same way that they currently fund many other loss-making ventures from welfare to the military to new bypasses around Aberdeen at a billion pounds a shot. It looks like we won’t have too long to find out how well that will work.
“Magic Money Tree Economics” is another good name for many of today’s models.
Learned the hard way NOT to bring up the topic of OVERSHOOT to anyone I come in contact with UNLESS they do so first and have the mindset that we are indeed in it.
Otherwise, you are in for either an unpleasant exchange, or an apathetic look.
Gail, from what I recall, feels population control is not in the cards, which I agree
Herbie, Nina Paley gave up years ago on trying to spread the overpopulation message since she saw the writing on the wall: first-world humans need that ego kick from having their own DNA clones. Adoption? Forget it.
The overpopulation issue is an issue on the other side of the globe, not in first world economies. Places like Africa, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan. The “solution” our academics favor is educating the mothers. This doesn’t work. Stop sending subsidies to Israel. The other countries have figured out the governments cannot provide long term care for the aging adults. The first world countries are living under the illusion that governments will provide stipends and medical care for aging adults, indefinitely. This cannot happen, as far as I can see.
Gail, anyone remotely educated is aware of second- and third-world population issues. Nina’s point is that despite the first-world’s access to reliable birth control, sterilization, and abortion, natalist attitudes are still promoted, e.g., the tax codes, religion, etc.
Here is a great blog post by Tim Murray, who obviously chose not to have kids, explaining first-world issues:
Quote:
Hi there! We’re the Percapitas.
We’ve cut per capita consumption and our per capita waste. We compost, we conserve, we re-use and we recycle. And we’re going to teach our three carbon footprints—-Mark, David and Robert—to do the same.
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2011/07/meet-percapitas.html
Australia, a ‘first’ world country is overpopulated when you consider the amount of food such a dry, poor soil country can grow. We import most of our food. We export wheat, livestock, etc. only when we are not in drought. Recently, Australia had to import wheat from Canada.
Australia also has a high birth rate and imports hundred of thousands of immigrants each year, who also reproduce. We keep about one month’s supply of oil in reserve and we have no oil of our own.
https://population.org.au/all
Uh, Israel is pretty first-world. Palestine is a mixed bag.
There seems to be a population contest going on between Israel and Palestine. Israel doesn’t want the population of Palestine to outnumber them. They could be outvoted then.
Israel also is getting financial help from abroad, helping the country support more people.
Losers let their DNA go extinct by bucking nature and doing perverse (in a natural sense) things like delaying pregnancy until their 30s/40s or joining “child-free” movements.
Winners follow nature’s lead by having lots of children and engaging in violence / war / murder / genocide to ensure the future of their DNA.
Perhaps it’s just time that we all embrace our more murderous inner nature and start playing the game of Life for keeps, rather than for virtue signaling / smug intellectualism / religious morality / etc.
Cheers,
-GBV
A winners’ live is too stressful and tiring, and boring. If to win you have to occupy your precious time with lots of silly or ugly things or spent it with uninteresting or brutal people, better to get away from all that, i think. Better to choose some combination of poverty and liberty, and refuse the appeal of reproduction.
Personally, when I began to understand the brutality and insanity of the human world, around the age of 18, I decided that I would never have children. So, if my DNA had plans for me, they didn’t work. I won. My DNA is a sore looser!
Children are beautiful and family life is wonderful. The meaning of life is to be close to other people and to love them.
But of course, those with no interest in children need not have them. There are certainly plenty of people who (in my opinion) should not, yet do.
If you find meaning in having children, good for you. I never did, since i found this world a putrid place. and life itself more a burden than a blessing.
But i value and love family life: my wife, my two siblings and their spouses, my parents, my dog, the cats… I’m very pleased with that arrangment.
JMS, have you heard the one about the three sages who walked into a bar……? Or was it a vinegar brewery?
The Buddha frowned and found the vinegar bitter.
Confucius, with a look of distain, pronounced it sour.
Lao Tsu, the possibly mythical founder to Taoism, on the other hand, loved the vinegar,
He laughed, smiled, danced around a bit, and screamed, “Oh what sweet wine we’re drinking?”
Same vinegar, different reactions.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DaRRxneXUAIonzq.jpg
I always loved Lao Tsu and taoism and Zen and all the philosophy and literature of that corner of the world. Could talk probably 2 hours and 12 minutes about that passioning subject.
I’m deeply atuned to walking in life with the attitude of accepting what the day brings advocated by the likes of Lao Tsu or Diogenes. If life brings you vinegar, use it to clean everything around, or make a salad. If you can fix a problem, do it, if you can’t, forget it and drink a glass of wine instead. Anywise, be happy with what you get. This attitude however is not a virtue but only an effect of my natural laziness and lassitude. I believe effort only makes sense when there is a strong interest, or passion. And I’m affraid I’m a fairly dispassionate guy now. If i never worried about the future, it’s too late now to start with that.
I also do not understand the reasoning of the “child free”. Is it supposed to be a moral position? Is it that the goal is to reduce your consumption imprint by not selfishly having children? If that is the goal, wouldn’t it be even more useful if you just committed suicide?
Don’t want to kill yourself? Okay, so let’s say the reason why one doesn’t commit suicide is some kind of egalitarian argument like “As a human, I am entitled to have my life”. That is, it is a matter of equity.
Well, as procreation is also part of being human, doesn’t that mean that as a human I have an egalitarian right to have children? I mean, as my share of global resources.
And then there is the simply pragmatic or economic question. If you don’t have children, won’t other people simply see that as an opportunity to use up your unconsumed share of the world’s resources?
The whole idea has so many holes, it is just ridiculous.
If people don’t like kids and so on, I get it. But to try to use it for virtue signaling and as a put-down of people who do have children as somehow “selfish”? That is just wierd.
I can only answer for myself. My argument for not having children is not moral, far from that. If I chose not to have children, is also in part because I am too selfish and jealous of my time, which in some ways is an “imoral” position. I always saw children as a lifelong burden. To support a proper family I would have to become a wage slave, and and I didn’t think I needed that. People who chose to have children are not “selfish”, on the contrary, since they are willing to dedicate much of their lives to others. I am selfish. So. no virtual-signalling here.
I wonder if (when?) we’ll get back to the point where it’s virtue signaling to kill other people’s kids…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1iS1CU9h1Q
Cheers,
-GBV
Keith Larkin, thanks for the cartoon! However, surprisingly enough, you’re not going to find many so-called doomers who take kindly to discussing overbreeding, ha ha!
It’s also interesting that there are so few environmentally aware folks with any kind of professional/public gravitas who actually considered refraining from having kids. For educated people, the Club of Rome’s 1972 book, “The Limits to Growth,” should have made more of an impact, but the human ego will not be curtailed.
Here is a depressingly short list of those who have walked the talk : Richard Heinberg [born in 1950]; Alice Friedemann [born in mid-1950s]; Dennis and Donella Meadows [born in 1942 and 1941]; Terry Tempest Williams [born in 1955]; and Chris Packham [born in 1961].
Paul Ehrlich [born in 1932] had only one daughter, born in 1955, but that was years before his 1968 book, “The Population Bomb.” Unfortunately, she went on to have three daughters herself and numerous grandchildren.
My wife, who taught biology to high-school students for 20 years, tried to get the word out and possibly influenced a handful of kids. She had decided not to have children in 1971 at the age of 14 because of an outstanding science teacher she had at the time.
Prof. Charles Hall of EROEI fame has no biological children. He married a woman who had one child by an earlier marriage.
Thank you for your list of “environmentally aware” people, and one presumes also intelligent, thoughtful, and prudent people, who have refrained from having children. As a professional gadfly, however, I wonder by how much those decisions have degraded our species.
Of course nothing will be done concerning human reproduction, first-world and otherwise.
In 1970, Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Throughout his career, he hammered home the importance of population within the context of food production. He’s just another brilliant mind who was completely ignored where it really counts. He lived to 95; I can’t imagine his disappointment in the “rational” human being.
Quote from his acceptance speech:
The Green Revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades.But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise, the success of the Green Revolution will be ephemeral only.
Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the “Population Monster”. . . Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth.
When Borlaug was mentioned in my education, his stance on population was simply never mentioned, yet he was amply rewarded by the System, which completely ignored him. I suppose it was the masters’ way of pretending to “do” something in the public eye. This reminds me of Paul Ehrlich and his very cushy treatment: many awards, much money, easy Stanford job for life, complete disregard by those in control.
Two other truth-tellers rewarded and ignored:
“Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable, and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.” James Lovelock, scientist/environmentalist, who will turn 101 at the end of this month and has seen it all
“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population locally, nationally, or globally?” Albert Bartlett, physicist/population activist, who lived to 90 and had seen it all
You are right! Our world problem is to a significant extent a population problem. It has now become an immigrant problem, because countries realize that there is a problem with inadequate jobs already. More immigrants leads to a higher unemployment rate.
Without the Green Revolution, probably 2 billion of 3 billion would have died. With the Green revolution, about 7 billion of 8 billion will die. That, I fear, will be Norman Borlaug’s legacy. Another wise fool who believed in human rationality.
This is as yet unconfirmed:
> Unknown pneumonia deadlier than coronavirus’ is sweeping across Kazakhstan, Chinese embassy claims as video emerges of families queuing to collect bodies from morgue
Kazakhstan’s Health Ministry said it has recorded more than 32,000 cases of pneumonia between June 29 and July 5 alone, along with 451 deaths. By comparison, the official number of coronavirus cases in Kazakhstan stands at 53,021, with 296 confirmed deaths from the disease.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8508129/Unknown-pneumonia-said-deadlier-coronavirus-sweeping-Kazakhstan.html
Perhaps it is a different mutation of the virus that causes COVID-19. I imagine someone will look at this shortly.
Appalling situation just now in Mali, where traditional farmers and herders are being slaughtered by ‘militias’. They can farm an ever smaller area of land due to the murders and can’t really fight back. Ethnic and religious divisions play a part .
Who, one wonders, is paying and feeding those militias?
It all rather sinks the idea in some Collapse circles of ‘If I’m a noble farmer they won’t kill me because they, too, need to eat, and drink the beer I brew ‘ etc.
But it does support my thesis that simple farmers are apt to be among the most wretched and oppressed people on earth. History teaches us that lesson, repeatedly.
Just imagine their lives now in Mali – this struck me:
‘A farmer who goes too far and gets caught, will be killed, beheaded and the body flayed.’ Maybe for fun sometimes they flay him while he is still alive, who knows -often happened in history.
From the old chronicles I know that this happened, too, in Dark Age Europe when royal power collapsed in France – Kidnapping, torture, murder and enslavement of farmers.
Their ‘simpler, extremely localised’ lives are notably lacking in meaning and beauty, I would say…..
It reminds me of the policy of the father of Alexander the Great, Phillip of Macedon, who taught the herders at the edge of his kingdom who were being raided by barbarian neighbours to fight as soldiers, organised in armies and using modern weapons.
Good king + more complex organisation and a higher level of civilisation = safety and success.
In the end, the killing becomes more Maoized or Stalinized, you know, more centralized. Just another aspect of control.
That is a good observation. It also seems to have been the problem in the past.
The only thing that worked was having a defensible area for workers, inside strong walls.
Either the Farmers take up arms themselves or they feed a warrior class to defend them.;
Exactly!
$ and £ are currencies not money. Indeed all they are is someone else’s debt.
To be money you need to be 1/ a unit of account, 2/ a means of exchange and 3/ a store of value. Given the the £ has declined in purchasing power since the 1950 by 99% it is hardly the latter.
The point of holding gold IMO is not to survive the apocalypse but to store savings against declining fiat currencies. This it has done remarkably well over millennia.
Agatha Christie’s story Nemesis was set in or about the year 1950. Early into the story, we find the following delightful exchange between the late Mr Raphael’s solicitor and Miss Marple:
“As you no doubt realise, he died a very rich man. The provisions of his Will are on the whole fairly simple. He had already made dispositions of his fortune some time before his death. Trusts and other bene-ficiary arrangements.”
“That is, I believe, very usual procedure nowadays,” said Miss Marple, “though I am not at all cognisant of financial matters myself.”
“The purpose of this appointment,” said Mr. llroadribb, “is that I am instructed to tell you that a sum of money has been laid aside to become yours absolutely at the end of one year, but conditional on your accepting a certain proposition, with which I am to make you acquainted.”
He took from the table in front of him a long envelope. It was sealed. He passed it across the table to her.
“It would be better, I think, that you should read for yourself of what this consists. There is no hurry. Take your time.”
Miss Marple took her time. She availed herself of a small paper knife which Mr. Broadribb handed to her, slit up the envelope, took out the enclosure, one sheet of typewriting, and read it. She folded it up again, then re-read it and looked at Mr. Broadribb.
“This is hardly very definite. Is there no more definite elucidation of any kind ?”
“Not so far as I am concerned. I was to hand you this, and tell you the amount of the legacy. The sum in question is twenty thousand pounds free of legacy duty.”
Miss Marple sat looking at him. Surprise had rendered her speechless. Mr. Broad-ribb said no more for the moment. He was watching her closely. There was no doubt of her surprise. It was obviously the last thing Miss Marple had expected to hear. Mr. Broadribb wondered what her first words would be. She looked at him with the directness, the severity that one of his own aunts might have done. When she spoke it was almost accusingly.
“That is a very large sum of money,’ said Miss Marple.
“Not quite so large as it used to be,” said Mr. Broadribb (and just restrained himself from saying, “Mere
chicken feed nowadays”).
“I must admit,” said Miss Marple, “that I am amazed. Frankly, quite amazed.”
In 1950 a troy ounce of gold was worth about USD 35, and one pound stirling was worth $2.80. Therefore, 20,000 pounds would buy 1600 troy ounces of gold.
It has worked when there have been goods to buy. It didn’t work during the US Depression, when gold coins were called back in.
Only called in in the USA not the rest of the world.
Using gold as a store of value should be considered a multi-generational plan, in my opinion. Realistically, starting from today, will an individual gold hoarder be able to:
1. Live long enough to see the next global financial collapse period
2. Live long enough to see the end of next global financial collapse period
3. Live long enough to see the establishment of a new financial system following the collapse period
Depending on your age today, and depending on the timing of the three stages listed above, owning gold may be a strategy for ensuring the future wealth of your children, your grandchildren or your great grandchildren rather than for yourself.
Assuming that these generations live through the coming bottleneck.
Think of all those people who buried their gold – or more usually silver -when Rome collapsed…. lovely gift to us when we find it.
The only wealth I see is our children, healthy, intelligent, hard working and lucky. Give me these and if I can escape to a better land/opportunity, the gold will come and hopefully some grandchildren.
Dennis L.
Good view to have!
“as the coronavirus-hit global economy seen the worst of the crisis? It’s too early to tell.
“Not only are investors mistaking the rebound in activity for a sustainable recovery, they are also conflating the easing of lockdowns with a greater willingness to consume and hire…
“…the sharp improvement in economic data has done little to reduce the uncertainty faced by companies and investors. While the benchmark S&P 500 index just had its best quarter since 1998, a staggering 80 per cent of the index’s members failed to provide guidance on their earnings last quarter, data from Bloomberg shows.
“Analysts’ own forecasts, moreover, are resoundingly bleak.”
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3092431/has-coronavirus-hit-global-economy-seen-worst-crisis-its-too-early
Thanks Harry. Or should I call you Panopticon?
I couldn’t possibly comment, lol. And you are welcome, Flipper.
Eye of Sauron, perhaps? 🙂
Yes, indeed. Although perhaps marginally less malevolent on my better days.
“Covid-19 threatens to push tens of millions of people in emerging markets back into poverty. It also risks exacerbating inequality and triggering a fresh wave of social unrest, giving a fresh boost to anti-incumbent populists… as virus-induced recessions hit emerging markets with full force, budget deficits will blow out, triggering a wave of downgrades by ratings agencies and scaring away investors.
“A stress test by Absolute Strategy, a London research firm, found that up to 37 per cent of the benchmark JP Morgan emerging market bond index could be at risk of default over the next year or so.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ddfe663e-c1df-11ea-9b66-39ae33ea12cb
“…unemployment in the region [Latin America and the Caribbean] is expected to rise to 13.5% from 8.1% last year, affecting more than 44 million people, compared to over 18 million in 2019. The poverty rate is expected to rise to 37.2% from 30.2%, meaning 230 million people will be affected compared to 185 million last year, it said.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/un-says-latin-america-and-caribbean-are-covid-19-hot-spot/2020/07/09/77cf517c-c23c-11ea-8908-68a2b9eae9e0_story.html
“Philippine trade data for May showed both imports and exports cratering, down by 40.6% and 35.6% respectively. The narrowing of the trade deficit means should be supportive of the strong-peso for now, but it also highlights that the economy is headed for a protracted slump.”
https://think.ing.com/snaps/philippines-trade-data-continues-to-point-to-drawn-out-economic-slump/
“Turkey’s lira this week slipped to its weakest level since hitting a record low in early May after inflation for the month of June was reported at 12.6%, a figure that topped economists’ expectations. With rapidly shrinking foreign reserves to prop up the currency, inflation and currency devaluation are showing no signs of a turnaround, analysts say.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/08/turkey-faces-prospect-of-another-currency-crisis-as-inflation-jumps.html
What is happening to the poor countries around the world is important to the rest of the world.
37% of the bonds are at risk of default! I wonder who is going to bail out all of these investors!
Well I guess this is going to leave a mark.
The coronavirus pandemic could result in some 28 million Americans being evicted, one expert said.
By comparison, 10 million people lost their homes in the Great Recession.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/looming-evictions-may-soon-make-28-million-homeless-in-us-expert-says/ar-BB16Ao6Q?li=BBnb7Kz
“It looks like China will not meet its Phase One trade deal promise to import more U.S. fuel products, including LNG, market watchers are now saying. Maybe that analysis is too easy to make at this point.
“China has as good excuse as any: the economy is climbing out of a pandemic sized hole…”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/07/09/china-unlikely-to-meet-phase-one-demand-for-us-oil-gas/#2beafb437152
“Chinese state lenders are revamping contingency plans in anticipation of U.S. legislation that could penalise banks for serving officials who implement the new national security law for Hong Kong, sources at five state financial institutions said.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-banks-usa-sanctions-exclusive/exclusive-chinese-banks-prepare-contingency-plans-over-threat-of-u-s-sanctions-sources-idUKKBN24A1IR
“China has imposed limits on businesses and individuals in the Hebei province for withdrawing large amounts of cash without prior approval… This two-year programme will be expanded to the provinces of Zhejiang and Shenzhen later this year. According to another report, 586 banks and financing firms were classified as “highly risky” by the authorities.
“China’s banks are failing because the country has been fueling its growth with debt and years of borrowing has made the banks hollow.”
https://www.wionews.com/world/will-chinas-bad-loan-crisis-lead-to-the-collapse-of-its-economy-312044
It does sound like China has a problem!
If you need “prior approval” to access your own money, you no longer have any money. It has already been stolen.
This is already the case in the UK, one can’t just show up and withdraw one’s cash – limits, a notice period, etc, even for a current account.
Yes, in effect ‘stolen.’
In fact, to prevent COVID-19 cases, many US banks require an appointment for any kind of transaction other than a withdrawal or deposit. The withdrawal can be done though a drive through (at certain specified hours) or using machines (more hours, lower limits).
“On the second anniversary of Washington unleashing its first trade war tariffs on Beijing, tensions continue to flare over issues ranging from Hong Kong to technology, with observers in both countries agreed that the superpower relationship between China and the United States is at its lowest ebb in decades.
“The motivation for US President Donald Trump was to close America’s trade deficit with China, and it has narrowed. China continues to purchase American farm goods, seen as crucial to Trump’s plans to win re-election in November, but these are widely viewed as sticking plasters on ties that otherwise appear on the verge of collapse.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3092534/us-china-trade-war-reaches-second-anniversary-superpower
““China has been very obstructionist” in blocking requests for access to its audit records, Silvers said.
““There is a growing sense of frustration with China, and now with the trade wars and the Covid-19 outbreak there is a growing appetite to pick a fight with China. There is a change in the geopolitical climate.””
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/09/a-financial-war-with-china-could-be-brewing-on-top-of-the-trade-war.html
Ultimately, hiding a problem of not enough to go around. Also, many bankrupt banks in China.
“Thousands of Greeks protest against a government bill setting new restrictions on street protests. Clashes erupted, with protesters hurling petrol bombs and police using tear gas to disperse them.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/clashes-break-out-in-athens-over-tighter-demonstration-rules/vi-BB16yFZn
“Serbian authorities have banned gatherings of more than 10 people in the capital, Belgrade, after two nights of violent clashes between police and thousands of demonstrators protesting coronavirus lockdown measures.
“Thousands, however, defied the ban.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/serbia-bans-mass-gatherings-virus-lockdown-protests-200709194114942.html
Not everyone will put up with more government regulations!
Greek protests are a sort of theater or ritual. Both sides (protesters and police) understand that there are bounds they must not cross, even if it looks chaotic to outsiders.
Greece has never had many Covid cases. Its problem all along has been not enough employment for its people. Cancelling vacation trips from the US cannot have helped the country.
“U.S. companies are preparing to open their books on a quarter that is set to show the biggest earnings fall since the financial crisis, leaving investors looking for light at the end of the tunnel.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-earnings-outlook/disaster-u-s-earnings-loom-but-investors-try-and-look-beyond-idUKKBN24A1BR
“Hertz’s demise has drawn attention to the relentless build-up in corporate debt in the US, where companies now owe a record $10tn — equivalent to 49 per cent of economic output. When other forms of business debt are added in, including to partnerships and small businesses, that already extraordinary figure increases to $17tn.
“Even before the pandemic, the level of corporate leverage was beginning to cause alarm.”
https://www.ft.com/content/c732fded-5252-4333-a3f8-80b767508bbc
“Nearly 14 million children in the United States went hungry in June, as the economic fallout from the pandemic continued to batter families.
“That’s an increase of more than 10 million since 2018, and nearly three times the number of children who went hungry during the Great Recession, according to an analysis of Census data released by the Hamilton Project on Thursday.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/14-million-us-children-are-going-hungry-due-to-the-covid-crisis_uk_5f081730c5b63a72c33fcb8f
“U.S. producer prices unexpectedly fell in June as the economy battles depressed demand amid the Covid-19 pandemic.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/producer-price-index-june-2020.html
Depressed commodity prices. Too little demand, worldwide!
Wow! That is close to the annual US GDP, especially after decline due to the impact of COVID-19. A huge share of these companies are using money.
“A new “unknown pneumonia” that is potentially deadlier than the novel coronavirus has reportedly killed more than 1,700 people this year in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan, according to a warning issued by Chinese officials Thursday.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/10/asia/kazakhstan-pneumonia-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html
“Outbreaks of deadly African swine fever are surging in some parts of southern China following heavy rains, analysts and industry sources said, in what could be a big setback for Beijing’s goal of replenishing pork supplies.”
https://www.investing.com/news/commodities-news/china-floods-blamed-for-fresh-african-swine-fever-outbreaks-2225586
Oh dear! Goes with the 30% drop in world food supplies the CCP was forecasting.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-billionaire-jack-dorsey-just-215800428.html
more on makes plans for a UBI experiment:
“Billionaire Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Twitter, is spending millions to experiment with universal basic income.
Dorsey’s experiment is part of a larger initiative called Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. On Thursday, the group announced the program could impact as many as 7 million Americans across 14 different cities… The coalition behind the experiment says giving people a guaranteed income could lift people out of poverty and cushion the economic and career blows of the coronavirus crisis.”
can this be done with MMT… Magic Money Tree?
UBI/MMT is merely yet another form of:
‘There’s a tiger in the is forest stalking me, but if I shut my eyes and whistle a happy tune I shan’t see or hear it.’
That which is going to pounce and eat you up is still there.
UBI cannot create viable profitable enterprises for people to work in. At best, for a brief while, it may avert destitution, that’s all.
We can put all hopeful, but vacuous, talk about Green Recovery, radical changes in human nature, the virtues of a new Collectivism, and Transition, etc, in the same waste bin of fantasy speculation.
Collapse is the tiger stalking us.
Speaking of being stalked by a tiger, Charlotte Joko Beck used to recount awell-known Buddhist parable (which is recorded in her book Everyday Zen) on that very subject:
A man was being chased by a tiger. In his desperation he dove over the side of a cliff and grabbed a vine. As the tiger was pawing away above him he looked below and saw another tiger at the base of the cliff, waiting for him to fall.
To top it off two mice were gnawing away at the vine. At that moment he spotted a luscious strawberry and, holding the vine with one hand, he picked the strawberry and ate it. It was delicious! What finally happened to the man? We know, of course. Is what happened to him a tragedy?
Notice that the man being chased by a tiger didn’t lie down and say, Oh, you beautiful creature. We are one. Please eat me. The story is not about being foolish even though on one level, the man and the tiger are one. The man did his best to protect himself, as we all should.
Nevertheless, if we’re left hanging on that vine, we can either waste that last moment of life or we can appreciate it. And isn’t every moment the last moment? There is no moment other than this. The man being chased by the tiger is finally eaten. No problem.”
https://masteringtoday.me/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/1509-Monk_Tigers.jpg
“‘There’s a tiger in the is forest stalking me, but if I shut my eyes and whistle a happy tune I shan’t see or hear it.’”
That’s the precautionary principle right there …..
When you get rid of the trees, “they” want you to prove a negative, and that cannot be done.
Collapse will likely come quicker as more and more decide to take UBI. So, I say take it, and do your part to help usher in a collapse that has been delayed for far too long.
Cheers,
-GBV
I hope that the people of Africa and India and the rest of Asia are included as well.
https://www.thefarside.com/
new stuff, and old stuff.
but too bad he doesn’t do economics.
https://www.oann.com/u-s-weekly-jobless-claims-stay-elevated-labor-market-improvement-stalling/
“Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 99,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.314 million for the week ended July 4. The 14th straight weekly decline pushed claims to their lowest level since mid-March…”
initial jobless claims have declined for 14 straight weeks.
BUT the latest number is 1.3 million.
to put that in perspective, before March the number was usually in the 0.3 million range (that’s 300,000).
so the weekly(!) number continues to be one million more than before March.
the ocean water has receded far from shore, and the tsunami is on the way.
“the ocean water has receded far from shore, and the tsunami is on the way.”
I am afraid that is the problem.
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/it-begins-psychologists-push-to-classify-individuals-resisting-coronavirus-edicts-as-mentally-ill/
that was a month ago on June 10th.
no massive push in this direction that I can see.
one study by one dude, who very much stated that his study has major flaws.
I see most every activity is reopening by now, so if there is a winner here, it is those who were “resisting” and want to get back to doing stuff.
To try to soothe my own psychological problems, I have been perusing the fictional literature of saner times today. This snippet seems apposite.
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.’
I do believe we’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole.
When we are born, yes.
Although one might say that the madness starts with the fools who conceive us….
https://therightscoop.com/watch-city-of-seattle-holds-training-session-for-white-employees-on-why-being-white-is-bad/
At the beginning of the session, the trainers explain that white people have internalized a sense of racial superiority, which has made them unable to access their “humanity” and caused “harm and violence” to people of color. The trainers claim that “individualism,” “perfectionism,” “intellectualization,” and “objectivity” are all vestiges of this internalized racial oppression and must be abandoned in favor of social-justice principles.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So the program goal is for whites to learn to stop being perfectionists who value intellect, individuality and objectivity.
Instead, they should commit to doing a half-assed job and to valuing stupidity, groupthink, and solipsism.
Sounds about right.
When an SJW asks you to confess your white male privilege, tell them that while you feel it is indeed a privilege to be a white man, it is also a huge burden as it comes with the responsibility of building and maintaining civilization.
It will drive them crazy.
Strange!
Even funnier, I saw ‘Stoicism’ as a an unhelpful, patriarchal, trait and ideal.
But then Stoics wouldn’t burn down burger joints or pull statues down and spray graffiti everywhere, still less regard gangster criminals as victims and heroes……
And who was the most famous of Stoics? Marcus Aurelius, a white imperialist!
Oh the Evil!
It’s Revolution as the exaltation of emotion and anti-intellectuality.
Which of course would lead to a kind of urban barbarism.
“Which of course would lead to a kind of urban barbarism.”
Which is exactly what it did lead to, in Hellenistic Alexandria, after the Christian mobs took over.
Two deaths huh?
https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/diabetes/diabetes-snapshot/contents/deaths-from-diabetes
Diabetes contributed in over 17,000 deaths in 2017 (11% of all deaths) according to AIHW analysis of the National Mortality Database. Diabetes was the underlying cause of death in around 4,800 deaths (28% of diabetes deaths). It was an associated cause of death in a further 12,200 deaths (72% of diabetes deaths).
Yet our instuitional “carers” still push a food pyramid that emphasizes high carbs and “lean meat” and small proportions of “healthy” oils (which means seed oils produced by the big supermarket suppliers.)
https://nutritionaustralia.org/fact-sheets/healthy-eating-pyramid/
Here is what the “fact” sheet says about the fats and oils one should consume:
The top layer refers to healthy fats because we need small amounts every day to support heart health and brain function. We should choose foods that contain healthy fats instead of foods that contain saturated fats and trans fats.
Choose unrefined polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats from plant sources, such as extra virgin olive oil, nut and seed oils. Limit the amount of saturated fat you consume and avoid trans fats.
[No butter? No lard? No coconut oil? Because coconut oil is a saturated fat. What is wrong with that? Why fats and oils “from plant sources”? I can’t eat a roast? I can’t eat the marrow from a shin? I have to cut the fat off my steak? Why “seed oils”? Because this advice is propaganda for Bayer and Monsanto, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and Big Medicine/Illness Management that has made a bonanza out of the “high cholesterol” scam selling statin drugs that leave you sicker then when you started – Kim]
We also get healthy fats from foods in the other food groups, such as avocados, nuts, seeds and fish, so we only need a little bit extra from oils and spreads each day.
So the white labcoat authorties are telling us to get our calories from carbs, i.e., eat a high-carb diet while people are dropping like flies from diabetes-related ilnesses. But two people die from the flu and they close the economy?
It is IMPOSSIBLE for a person to get his head fully around to what degree oligarchical interests, public “servants”, time serving feather-bedders, scheming sociopaths and cretins now have full control of the levers of our societies.
It really is no longer possible to be too cynical about public life.
Well summarised.
As per Twain … sort of…’ If you don’t listen to the experts you are uninformed. If you do you are misinformed’.
There are plenty of people hereabouts on multiple pills per day. Nobody can possibly understand the effects of such combinations. Yet prescribe away the experts do. Useful idi…
Those who follow the latest nutritional advice and fads mostly run the risk of making themselves very ill indeed.
Ditto with the ‘everyone over 55 needs to take this drug’ propaganda.
One dreads the day when the ‘perfect’ nutritional and medication regime is imposed by law by these people and there is no escape.
We can be quite sure it would only benefit some corporations.
And that day seems close.
I have come to the conclusion that one of the most important facets of a good diet is eating as few calories as you can get away with. Not anorexic-like, just good shape. Anyhow, I came across this TED talk on YT earlier this week, another video that appeared in my YT recommendation list out of the blue at a suspiciously convenient time (18 min).
Reversing Type 2 diabetes starts with ignoring the guidelines | Sarah Hallberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1vvigy5tQ
It is a very convincing talk, and the two main themes for getting rid of type 2 diabetes via diet are:
1/ Eat as few grains, potatoes and sugar as possible
2/ Do eat fat. See video for details.
I find it very odd that my teenage children refuse to eat the tasty fat on meat (especially roasts) because ‘it isn’t healthy’, but have no problems consuming the fat in biscuits, cakes and other snacks. Not that they eat a lot of snacks.
I eat a diet that includes quite a few nuts and some cheese, yogurt, and fish. But it doesn’t include much meat or fats in general.
If a person walks a lot, every hour, a fairly high carbohydrate diet works, if these carbohydrates are in their original form–with skins on, for example. Cooked rice works, but not white bread.
The diet that works may depend on the individual.
Gail, when I was 17 my paternal grandmother dies from diabetes. In those days, there was no effective treatment (insulin had not yet been synthesised) and she had been bedridden for several years. Given that there was a 50% probability I carried the gene, I gave up refined sugar. Well, not quite: it was two years plus before I had deconditioned my body from feeling the cravings. But from that day, no sweets and no desserts. (Except perhaps twice a year on very special occasions.)
Later, no saturated fats: olive oil for western cooking, sesame oil for Asian cooking. Very little red meat; a little pork, chicken, and fish. And very few refined carbohydrates, so no white bread, only cereals with no added sugar, and, of course, only soft drinks free from both sugar and artificial sweeteners. That was 58 years ago, and I’m still here, and still diabetes free as of my last blood test.
But recall, I was then still living in Africa, and one of the (many) things I learned from the locals is that you take responsibility for your own health, because nobody else will.
Submitted for your approval (does that ever date me) consider viewing this video for a comparison. It was the path I eventually chose, after exhausting every other possibility. It has made all the difference in my health. I will never go back to my old ways.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tAiXvrIMIIE
Cheers, D3G
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/09/anthony-fauci-says-political-divide-has-weakened-coronavirus-response/5409322002/
‘Dr. Anthony Fauci says extreme partisanship has made it harder for US to respond to coronavirus’
“I mean, you have to be having blindfolders on and covering your ears to think that we don’t live in a very divisive society now from a political standpoint. I mean, it’s just unfortunate, but it is what it is,” Fauci said in an interview with FiveThirtyEight’s “PODCAST-19” released Thursday.
I thought when the virus was spreading in the US it was unlikely that something like a virus that responds to opportunity to infect new hosts, having nothing to do with political or religious persuasions, we could get on the same page, but that didn’t happen.
And Chinese collaborator and propagandist Fauci has done more than his fair share of spreading partisanship. Trump should have fired him months ago.
Someone should have come out and said that what he is saying is simply propaganda for the vaccine manufacturers. He knows nothing about the world economy.
Amen Robert.
So this is what collapse looks like. We’re in it right now, not waiting for it to happen one day.
As Gail said in a previous article, when things get tough, people go nuts (aka squabble over resources). It’s nobody’s fault in particular, it’s our socio-genetic programming and why every society/civilisation tracks more-or-less the same trajectory.
As an example of crazy, Aust has recorded 2 COVID deaths in the last 4 weeks, but an increase in cases, so states have locked down their borders again. 2 deaths = an increase of 0.016% in the normal, ongoing death rate.
If you want to understand some of the machinations behind the faked pandemic, here’s a useful article: Undercover Nurse Exposes COVID-19 NY Hospital Nightmare https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/06/27/elmhurst-hospital-coronavirus.aspx?cid_source=wnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art2HL&cid=20200709Z2&et_cid=DM586763&et_rid=911936350
Even those details don’t matter though, as Gail says resource depletion and too many people are at the heart of everything, which is why a lot of people are going to die one way or another.
New York had a particularly bad experience before. It didn’t really understand how to treat the patients, so it did a whole lot of wrong things. It was a nightmare. You would hope it would do better now.
People don’t understand they do by closing down borders. New York’s 14-day quarantine requirements for many out-ot-staters are definitely a problem now.
Medical Triage will become more and more normal. Those who are Elderly or Male(Since Men are more likely to die) will be back of the line.
That would probably suit most old women, as they are never that unhappy to lose their husbands as far as I have observed.
All the old married men I know lead rather miserable lives, afraid of being divorced!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0zXajYDnprQ
Cheers,
-GBV
Gail, I rather think the New York politicians did understand what they were doing. That is why, before sending thousands to the death camps (masquerading as nursing homes) they first passed a law shielding everyone owning, managing, or running the death camps from all civil and criminal liability. Josef Mengele would have approved.
Robert, yes exactly. They killed off some costly useless eaters. Now, Cuomo wants the Dem nomination for president.
A must read!
https://www.google.no/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/06/putins-people-by-catherine-belton-review-a-groundbreaking-study-that-follows-the-money
Oh no, another go at this old trope!
It has all the usual hallmarks.
We have govt, they have regime.
‘Western led global integration’; give me a break!
‘Insider intelligence’; yeah right
‘Vast sums’; hmmm, Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas I believe?
etc etc.
Attention is being diverted …. again … and the useful idiots will write new tales to scapegoat the ‘other’.
This is a ‘Western Capitalist Model’ that is failing, one from which Russia has been increasingly excluded/did not integrate into.
Grade; C minus, not worth the toilet paper it is written on
Strange that you could’t find anything interesting about Putins way to power and his powerbase?
Nothing new here. Putin bad. Orange man bad. China bad. We know, we know. Ok already.
People should look closer to home for their scapegoats.
A Clunton exposay perhaps, money in academia, corrupt private public partnerships, the GFC convictions…oh thats right, there were none.
This Putin dude has been shut out of the halls of power.
Those halls are in London, Washington, Brussels.
This is a diversion is all.
No Mercedes Benz for you…so funny, we can practice “Socialism” all we like here in USA, but not YOU All South of the Border..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qev-i9-VKlY
Miami Herald
Federal agents seize more than 80 luxury cars at Port Everglades bound for Venezuela
Jay Weaver
July 8, 2020, 7:00 AM
Port Everglades is looking like an auto dealership these days, with rows of high-end vehicles on display, including a Mercedes Biturbo SUV worth a whopping $150,000, and even a few low-end cars, such as a Toyota Corolla valued at a meager $20,000.
There are 81 cars lined up, with a collective retail price of $3.2 million. And the feds have confiscated them all, with plans to seize a lot more.
Homeland Security Investigations says the new vehicles have been seized because a ring backed by a notorious Venezuelan billionaire and his associates tried to smuggle them out of South Florida to Venezuela, in violation of U.S. export laws and sanctions against the Latin American nation’s socialist government.
Man. Can’t we give the ruling class Commies are break!?🤑
Only saw Joplin perform once (with Hendrix).
A loss of both.
We shall see, as Venezuela was to collapse 5 years ago.
With a different economic model, simple capitalism fails in its analysis.
However physical reality doesn’t.
We were assured that Russia was ‘on the brink of collapse’ about 5 years ago.
A Russian friend told me that he;d never seen Moscovites so cheerful and positive as they were then. ….
high oil prices until the plunge in the second half of 2014.
the shine probably faded gradually since then.
Quite right, but the propaganda then was that the Russians were boiling with discontent and about to rise up against Putin, he could only hold out ‘for a few more months’, etc, – utter drivel!
It must be wonderful churning out that crap and getting paid for it -no connection to reality, impossible to judge by results.
And moreover, did Jimmy H re-emerge as Cornel West?
I believe we have a match here!
https://pieceofmind.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/hendrix-west-4.png?w=379&h=484&zoom=2
Did Janice Joplin. retire and then resurface as Amy Goodman?
Moreover, were the Janice role and the Amy role both played by the same set of twins?
https://pieceofmind.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/goodman-amy-1.png?w=222&h=347&zoom=2
I can no longer watch Democracy Now without imagining Janice screaming “Take another little piece of my heart now baby!”
https://pieceofmind.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/goodman-joplin.png?w=566&h=638&zoom=2
“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade…” Once again, Ayn Rand was prescient.
Hey, I liked Rand when I was 16.
Being a total azz is cool when you are 16.
However, things changed, and reality seeped in.
What I noticed most about “The Fountainhead” at 16 was how much the female protagonist liked to be kissed by force.
Any Rand wanted that Hunk. She was pretty thirsty in her stories. I even think that her Philosophy was just cover for her desire for Chad.
They are as much Romance Novels in their own right.
Gold $1,800…Yeps!
From the Wall Street Journal
So far, signs of inflation from disrupted supply chains or aggressive monetary support have been largely absent. But even if inflation were to tick higher, reducing real yields further, it is difficult to imagine the Fed raising interest rates, given parlous economic conditions generally.
Another factor to consider: Who is buying all this gold? Inflows into gold exchange-traded funds in the first half were the largest ever, and largely from North America. Flows into gold from institutional investors in developed markets have predominated, with emerging-market demand comparatively weak, Goldman Sachs researchers note. They expect a pickup in the latter as consumer demand improves in developing economies later this year.
And while it’s possible developed economies will recover faster than expected, recent surges in U.S. cases show the limits to reopening during a pandemic. Some parts of the world that had kept cases down, like Australia, are experiencing second-wave wobbles.
A negative case for the price of gold would require a much more optimistic economic outlook, or an unlikely shift in focus from major central banks. Without either it’s hard to see gold falling much, and it’s not unreasonable to believe it will reach new highs in the months ahead.
Yeps, US Deficit in the month of JUNE almost equals ALL😥of the year 2019! WSJ🤑
Yo, once in a lifetime opportunity, from MarketWatch
‘I know you’re not supposed to say this, but it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You’re not going to see this again: Where you’ve actually got an economy that’s fine, and you’ve got a Fed pumping trillions of dollars in.’
That’s Marc Lasry, hedge-fund manager and billionaire co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, explaining his stance on the investment landscape in a chat Wednesday on Yahoo Finance.
While stocks should also fare well in the scenario he described, Lasry said it’s debt investors like himself who are poised to do “extremely well” making loans to companies that falter.
His $14-billion Avenue Capital firm has capitalized on such struggling brands as Hertz HTZ , Macy’s M and J.C. Penney JCP .
…..Bankruptcies represent good opportunities to buy from noneconomic sellers or people who need to sell, Lasry told Barron’s in an interview last month. That’s where Avenue Capital comes in.
“If things turn out, I will do exceptionally well. If a company has to liquidate that’s OK, because I’ll make money on the liquidation,” he said at the time.
Lasly also suggested the economy is better positioned to weather the storm brought on by the coronavirus than it was in the face of the collapse in 2008.
https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/the-coronavirus-has-given-investors-a-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-says-hedge-fund-billionaire-2020-07-08
Once man’s financial diaster, is another man’s gold mine…go figure…
Like Clint Eastwood said in the Movie, The Good. The Bad. And the Ugly..
There are those that dig the hole for the grave, and there are those that provide the shovel…
Or words to the same
PS. Very sad post of Mister McGibbs about the Middle Class of Lebanon, now resorting to savaging to survive….
People don’t just buy gold as a hedge against inflation; they buy it as a hedge against the system collapsing, hoping that gold will be tradable, when nothing else is.
The hope is that if the regime becomes too oppressive, or bandits become a problem, a person can “buy” his way out of the problem. In terms of buying a loaf of bread or a piece of meat, gold coins would seem to be overkill. There is a serious question whether they would be useful for paying rent or taxes. Governments tend to confiscate gold, when it is seen as a threat.
Criminals and the desperate would no doubt conclude that a man with one gold coin would have several.
That being so they would probably be intent on liberating the others with extreme prejudice.
I did see the trick of only selling one’s precious ‘one and only’ wedding ring, never to the same buyer of course, as a way of evading such problems – at best one might be expected o have two such rings.
But whoever hoarded only one coin or bar?
Thieves are one big concern, if a person starts using gold coins. If there is one, there must be more!
Silver coins always seem more practical to me, if anything works.
The trick with gold is that the system only semi collapses and parts remain functional. In this case gold really could go to $5,000 or $20,000 an ounce. All of the existing gold stock in the world is 22 cubic meters, so it would basically fit inside of the average home. The gold would weigh around 140,000 tons and cost about $28,800 per pound at current prices = $8 Trillion dollars. A few central banks could easily buy all the gold in existence, pushing prices into the stratosphere. And imagine how strong of hands those holders would be?
So here’s my play. I keep a small amount of physical as insurance but I also am levered to paper assets on the stock market. Gold mining, streaming, and royalty companies trade at a multiple to the price movement of the metal. So when gold moves up 1% in price a gold mining company will often move 3 or 5%. You can further lever this by trading in options contracts as opposed to share of a mining company by another 10 to 1. So when the price of the gold miner moves 1% your option moves 10%.
The next time they announce a stimulus package gold will easily move up 5 or 10%, sending the miners up 20 or 30% and sending the options contracts up 150 or 300%. I’ve already done this several times but am waiting for a moonshot where gold moves up like some of these bankrupt stocks and takes off 20 or 40% in a day.
Good luck on the system semi-collapsing and somehow allowing gold to work as a currency. Presumably you are thinking that you would live in a country whose own system has not collapsed, so markets still work. I am still having a hard time seeing how its price would be bid up so high, though. Presumably, barter is always an option: I will give you apples and peanuts, if you will give me potatoes in return. Then, a person is getting something clearly of value in return.
If food is in short supply, I would expect it would go to someone with a supply of food to exchange, not gold to exchange. Food can be eaten; gold cannot not be eaten.
Well the system is in a state of collapse or degrowth right now and gold is at 9 year highs. So right now my investment is working out splendidly. How long will it hold or how high gold goes before the wheels fall off? Well probably $3,000 an ounce if I had to guess but who really knows. Fingers crossed that things stay glued together for a few more years somehow.
The gold price could reach $3,000. I don’t know. The trick is to figure out when it is at the top, and buy available things with it then.
I read about a form of barter among English farmers in the very hard years of the 1930’s, making deals over grazing, exchanging surpluses of hay, wood, etc, among themselves.
They had a rough idea of the ‘value’ of what they were exchanging, trusted one another but no money changed hands.
There was also a very interesting survival of the gift economy which followed the pig-killings in the winter months. It must have been so common once that no one thought to write about it – in the fairly huge amount of reading I have done on the subject it’s only ever mentioned once.
Once the meat for the family had been set aside, neighbors would be sent gifts of various nice bits -graded according to their merit – as thanks for help over the past year, and also to poorer, sick or elderly people; but only to those with good characters and who were respected. Bad characters, drunks, etc, got nothing.
So the sight of the daughters of the house running about with pork on plates covered with a linen napkin was common at that time of year. It cemented good relations, oiled the wheels of life, and rewarded decency.
This incidentally, shows us where the Welfare State goes very wrong, in keeping people alive and housed whatever bad character they may have, as we see in all cities today…..
The earlier system favoured decent people who were good neighbours and workers.
Of course, this was not a ‘barter economy’, they were still selling what they produced into the market, but a marginal activity that helped survival in times of economic stress and money shortages.
Nor was it a kind of Collectivism, which some idiots now think will be the solution, as it was based on individual and family effort as the basic units.
Xabier, the welfare state is a classic negative filter. Recipients with dignity and a desire to make progress try to find their way out of it and back into the productive economy; the devotees of “gimme” stay where they are and demand ever more benefits. Open your borders and you move to stage two: those who want to work do their best to stay home and work for their own country, or if that fails work abroad to send money home; those who want to sponge go where the sponge is richest, and again demand ever more benefits.
The welfare state is as ruinous now as when the Roman Empire first created “bread and circuses”. (Panem et circenses)
Nicole Foss speaks to how important trust is in economic transactions. It is key. Today, one cannot trust that your currency will maintain value. Trust is every5ing, especially in a barter economy.
Part of the secret of community and family survival was trusting and depending upon your neighbors.
Interesting!
Thank you very much, Xabier, for sharing accounts like this!
That is the option….why do you all think the Central Banks have been repatriating their gold and the Eastern Central Banks have been buying like crazy?
The System is collapsing and the only option is to reset it with gold….if they can even reset anything. More like let it collapse and we will use gold to trade if anyone is left to trade with.
The Gold price will lock out all of the plebes. Who ends up with all the gold…..the same people running the show now…..suckers
I can almost imaging the central banks going back to gold. People on the street, not so much.
And it’s not just central banks hoarding gold, rich people the world are suddenly these last couple of months noticing and they’re buyers. The premiums above the spot price for gold and silver have NEVER been this high. That shows that demand is strong and supply not so much.
True. I saw a chart this morning regarding where the most popular investments have been over time. Now it is gold and cash. At one time, it was investment in Emerging Markets.
I looked on Texas Precious Metals, the online dealer I usually buy from. Golden Buffalo coins are selling for $115 over spot price for a 1 ounce coin, a 6% markup from spot. Silver Eagles are 100% sold out but they were selling at $6 above spot, a 32% markup from the spot price. There prices are always competitive too but these premiums are about triple above historical averages, so there will be other dealers charging more. The fact that some miners haven’t been producing and some refiners haven’t been delivering is exacerbating this supply situation. Anyone with a brain and wealth is going to be looking for gold and silver at the very least to hedge what’s going on, if nothing else.
“Airbus SE failed to secure any aircraft orders for a third month this year, as the collapse in global air travel battered demand for new jetliners.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-08/airbus-sales-drought-worsens-with-third-month-of-zero-jet-orders
“More than 3,000 workers have expressed interest in voluntary redundancy at Rolls-Royce across its UK operations… Chief executive Warren East said Covid-19 had “created a historic shock in civil aviation” and volunteers would aim to leave the company by September.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-53346539
We should write a Book titled: “How to Collapse A Global eCONomy in Three Easy Steps”
Must be a good payout and or the UK Gov’t is paying for their redundancy.
I am sure those who volunteer to leave expect to have other sources of income to replace what they are losing, such as pensions or unemployment insurance.
Build new jets? When we have so many sitting around, unused?
It is beginning to look like maybe Airbus and Boeing will not exist in a year’s time. They can hardly wait around a year or several twiddling their thumbs waiting for orders to come in.
What happens to their debt? At some point, extend and pretend don’t work.
I predict extend and pretend until the election, then all hell breaks loose.
A new airline is starting up in Armenia, called “Fly Armenia Airlines.” It plans to primarily serve the Armenian diaspora, but there was talk of adding flights to Beijing and Shanghai later. (The virus situation in Armenia is about as bad as in the USA, considered on a per capita basis.) It couldn’t be very hard to buy a couple of planes.
Maybe we can figure out how to use the leftover planes for other things as well. For example, housing for the homeless. Of course, people expect the economy to soon recover.
“Hunger linked to the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic could kill more people than the disease itself, Oxfam has warned… The bleak scenario is outlined in its report, The Hunger Virus, and equates to as many as 12,000 people dying per day.”
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-pandemic-could-kill-more-through-hunger-than-the-disease-itself-warns-oxfam-12024300
“Sudan began loosening lockdown measures Wednesday in and around the capital after three months of tight restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic…
“The confinement measures have compounded Sudan’s economic crisis, characterised by galloping inflation and foreign currency shortages… On Wednesday, many in local markets complained of dramatic rises in the prices of basic foodstuffs.”
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/374021/World/Region/Sudan-eases-lockdown-measures-as-economic-crisis-e.aspx
“For many of those scavenging for goods in Lebanon, poverty is a new, and bitter, experience… As Lebanon entered a Covid-induced lockdown earlier this year, the destruction of the middle class remained largely out of sight, but now, as it reopens, there’s no escaping the dystopian scenes of desperation repeated across the country.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/08/middleeast/lebanon-economy-crisis-intl/index.html
““Over the past decade, the UN, world leaders and pundits have promoted a self-congratulatory message of impending victory over poverty, but almost all of these accounts rely on the World Bank’s international poverty line, which is utterly unfit for the purpose of tracking such progress,” said Australian academic Philip Alston.
“The expert condemned the near universal reliance on the bank’s line, which he said is deeply flawed and yields a deceptively positive picture.””
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/07/we-squandered-a-decade-world-losing-fight-against-poverty-says-un-academic
From the report: “support for poverty elimination has largely evaporated.” Perhaps because people are finally beginning to realise that poverty eradication is impossible in a world with uncontrolled population growth and steadily diminishing natural resources. But a lot of organisations, public and private, have made immense profits by not eradicating poverty.
There is a long list of countries with huge problems.
Basic underlying problem: not enough to go around.
Gail, I disagree. The problem is too many people competing for what is available. And the only solution is to bring the consumption side back in balance with the production side.
“Gail, I disagree. The problem is too many people competing for what is available.”
That’s another way of saying, ‘not enough to go around’.
Does Gandhi’s point still hold? Is there enough on Earth to meet everyone’s need?
yes, right now there is enough food for everyone, if only it could be evenly distributed.
but soon there won’t be enough net (surplus) energy to produce the amount of food necessary for the growing population.
and if we keep everyone well fed now, the population will increase at an even faster rate, ergo in the long run more will starve.
what did Ghandi say about that conundrum?
and what did he say about the imminent decrease of net (surplus) energy?
I somehow missed his thoughts on those issues.
species
expand range
expand population
until
they
hit
limits
Very modest living, based on vegetarianism plus goat’s milk, traveling third class, and making all one’s own clothes was his basic recipe, if I recall correctly.
I’m sure Greta and Gandhi would have gotten on famously.
Oh, and he was dead against vaccination. His stance makes RFK Jnr. look like a namby-pamby moderate on that issue.
I guess he was ‘for’ millions of kids in screaming agony and crippled with polio
(as no doubt all anti vaxxers are)
I believe the last pockets of it are still to be found on the Indian sub continent
There is quite a distance between getting a vaccine for polio, and giving 12 yr olds vaccines for HPV because they will be sexually active at that age.
Unless the virus morphs into something considerably more deadly, no ‘could’ kill more people about it. Will.
“Hunger linked to the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic could kill more people than the disease itself, Oxfam has warned… The bleak scenario is outlined in its report, The Hunger Virus, and equates to as many as 12,000 people dying per day.”
This is what many, just to name two (Gerald Celente and Martin Armstrong) in the alternative media have been saying. That the stoo-pid, knee jerk response would kill more than the virus itself. Unsurprisingly the Elite are talking another round of lockdowns while they “try to understand” why the eCONomy is coming apart at the scene and why people are losing it and rioting.
Martial Law is next in the USSA and the way the Elite are playing its citizens, they will be begging for it.
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste” – Rahm Emanuel
Most people still don’t see the connection between their personal decision to stay home and buy nothing and the global hunger problem, however.
Hunger and pandemics work hand in hand. One assists the other.
“The rift between the United States and China threatens to become a chasm…. This rapid descent into conflict has taken many by surprise.
“For most of this century, Sino-U.S. competition was moderated by the need to work together on a range of global economic, financial, and geopolitical issues that mandated cooperation. But these cooperative impulses have almost entirely disappeared…”
https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/the-us-china-cold-war-has-already-started/
“The deployment of three US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to the South China Sea have further tested strained relations between China and the United States.
“The US naval exercises represent an enormous aggregation of firepower. Adding to tensions, the US deployment coincides with Chinese war games in the same vicinity.”
https://theconversation.com/naval-exercises-in-south-china-sea-add-to-growing-fractiousness-between-us-and-china-142168
“The director of the FBI has said that acts of espionage and theft by China’s government pose the “greatest long-term threat” to the future of the US…
“He said China had begun targeting Chinese nationals living abroad, coercing their return, and was working to compromise US coronavirus research.
“”The stakes could not be higher,” Mr Wray said.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53329755
A problem of not enough to go around, unfortunately. Reminds a person of the 1930s.
That Crossroads video I posted yesterday suggests there is no threat about it. I might go back and add some more detail of what the video said the CCP plans to do, but it looked to me like they are planning to severe economic links with the USA as much as possible, in due course and be rid of the US dollar.
“Unemployment in the United States has risen to historic highs in recent months due to covid-19. Businesses struggled to stay afloat due to social distancing rules, and livelihoods were lost, much like the 2008 financial crisis. But a new study finds that the current crisis has hit the US economy even harder.”
https://www.livemint.com/news/world/covid-hit-us-jobs-much-more-than-2008-crisis-11594275571759.html
“United Airlines warned employees for months that mass layoffs loomed if travel didn’t rebound, and the airline put a grim face on the expected tally Wednesday.
“In a memo to employees, the Chicago-based airline said 36,000 employees, or 45% of its front-line workers in the USA and more than a third of its overall workforce of 95,000, face layoffs on or around Oct. 1.”
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2020/07/08/united-airlines-layoff-up-36-000-employees-october-coronavorus-fallout/5396857002/
“…housing courts are reopening, and eviction moratoriums are expiring in the coming weeks, if they haven’t already. CARES Act benefits that expanded unemployment are running out. Unless lawmakers intervene, the $600-per-week supplement will expire at the end of July.
““The United States is facing an eviction crisis of biblical proportions,” Aaron Carr, founder and executive director of the Housing Rights Initiative, a nonprofit housing watchdog group, told me.”
https://www.vox.com/21301823/rent-coronavirus-covid-19-housing-eviction-crisis
The inability to pay for housing without wages is a huge problem. Either a lot of people will lose their housing, or a lot of banks and others holding debt, will find impossibly high default rates. Asset values of the underlying structures will likely shrink as well, because no one can afford to buy them.
Good point. But we are still building like mad here in Maryland. Construction work is deemed essential during lockdown.
this complex housing issue may devolve in the near future.
renters who can no longer afford rent perhaps will move in with friends or back home to Mom or Dad’s house.
landlords with half empty buildings may default on their loans.
banks could be left with that bad debt, and/or left owning a half empty apartment building.
apartment buildings could mostly be unprofitable, and so their value as an asset could drop towards zero.
as this devolves, the only solution might be for government to take over all these worthless assets that some people probably still want to live in.
a new type of “public housing” program?
in addition, government will have to send money to the banks, to save them from their position of owning these worthless assets.
or…
let this self-organize through free enterprise.
either way, it’s a mess.
it’s another topic, but I’ll repeat that I expect a sort of similar scenario with the FF industry, where much or all of it might be nationalized.
the government could become the owner of the FF assets which could soon be heading to a similar position as worthless assets.
the banks who are holding the bag on loans to this industry will be “paid”, and the government will produce the FF without any thought of profits and losses.
as the economy devolves, government might be owning lots of apartment buildings and FF companies.
or let it all self-organize, and good luck with that.