We would like to think that we can eliminate COVID-19, but doing so is far from certain. The medical system has not been successful in eliminating HIV/AIDS or influenza; the situation with COVID-19 may be similar.
We are discovering that people with COVID-19 are extremely hard to identify because a significant share of infections are very mild or completely without symptoms. Testing everyone to find the huge number of hidden cases cannot possibly work worldwide. As long as there is hidden COVID-19 elsewhere in the world, the benefit of identifying everyone with the illness in a particular area is limited. The disease simply bounces back, as soon as there is a reduction in containment efforts.
Figure 1. One-week average new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Israel, Spain, Belgium and Netherlands. Chart made using data as of August 8, 2020 using an Interactive Visualization available at https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ based on Johns Hopkins University CSSE database.
We are also discovering that efforts to contain what is essentially a hidden illness are very damaging to the world economy. Shutdowns in particular lead to many unemployed people and riots. Social distancing requirements can make investments unprofitable. Cutting off air flights leads to a huge loss of tourism and leaves farmers with the problem of how to get their fruit and vegetable crops picked without migrant workers. If COVID-19 is very widespread, contact tracing simply becomes an exercise in frustration.
Trying to identify the many asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 is surprisingly difficult. The cost is far higher than the cost of the testing devices.
At some point, we need to start lowering expectations regarding what can be done. The economy can protect a few members, but not everyone. Instead, emphasis should be on strengthening people’s immune systems. Surprisingly, there seems to be quite a bit that can be done. Higher vitamin D levels seem to be associated with fewer and less severe cases. Better diet, with more fruits and vegetables, is also likely to be helpful from an immunity point of view. Strangely enough, more close social contacts may also be helpful.
In the remainder of this post, I will explain a few pieces of the COVID-19 problem, together with my ideas for modifications to our current strategy.
Recent News About COVID-19 Has Been Disturbingly Bad
It is becoming increasingly clear that COVID-19 is likely to be here for quite some time. The World Health Organization’s director recently warned, “. . . there’s no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be.” A recent Wall Street Journal article is titled, “Early Coronavirus Vaccine Supplies Likely Won’t Be Enough for Everyone at High Risk.” This article relates only to US citizens at high risk. Needless to say, creating enough vaccine for both high and low risk individuals, around the world, is a long way away.
We are also hearing that vaccines may be far less than 100% effective; 50% effective would be considered sufficient at this time. Two doses are likely to be needed; in fact, elderly patients may need three doses. The vaccine may not work for obese individuals. We don’t yet know how long immunity from the vaccines will last; a new round of injections may be needed each year.
A new report confirms that asymptomatic patients with COVID-19 are indeed able to spread the disease to others.
Furthermore, the financial sector is increasingly struggling with the adverse impact shutdowns are having on the economy. If it becomes necessary to completely “write off” the tourism industry, economies around the world will struggle with permanent job loss and debt defaults.
Shutdowns Don’t Work for Businesses and the Financial System
There are many issues involved:
(a) Shutdowns tend to lead to huge job loss. Riots follow, as soon as people have a chance to express their unhappiness with the situation.
(b) If countries stop importing migrant workers, there is likely to be a major loss of fruits and vegetables that farmers have planted. No matter how much money is printed, it does not replace these lost fruits and vegetables.
(c) Manufacturing supply lines don’t work if raw materials and parts are not available when needed. Because of this, a shutdown in one part of the world tends to have a ripple effect around the world.
(d) Social distancing requirements for businesses are problematic because they lead to less efficient use of available space. Businesses can serve fewer customers, so total revenue is likely to fall. Employees may need to be laid off. Fixed costs, such as debt, become more difficult to pay, making defaults more likely.
Shutdowns cause a major problem for the economy, because, with many people out of the workforce, the total amount of finished goods and services produced by the economy falls. Broken supply lines and reduced efficiency tend to make the problem worse. World GDP is the total amount of goods and services produced. Thus, by definition, total world GDP is reduced by shutdowns.
Governments can institute benefit programs for citizens to try to redistribute what goods and services are available, but this will not fix the underlying problem of many fewer goods and services actually being produced. Citizens will find that some shelves in stores are empty, and that many airline seats are unavailable. They will find that some goods are still unaffordable, even with government subsidies.
Governments can try to give loans to businesses to help them through the financial problems caused by new rules, such as social distancing, but it is doubtful this approach will lead to new investment. For example, if social distancing requirements mean that new buildings and vehicles can only be used in an inefficient manner, there will be little incentive for businesses to invest in new buildings and vehicles, even if low-interest loans are available.
Furthermore, even if there might be opportunities for new, more efficient businesses to be added, the subsidization of old inefficient businesses operating at far below capacity will tend to crowd out these new businesses.
People of Many Ages Soon Become Unhappy with Shutdowns
Young people expect hands-on learning experiences at universities. They also expect to be able to meet possible future marriage partners in social settings. They become increasingly unhappy, as shutdowns drag on.
The elderly need to be protected from COVID-19, but they also need to be able to see their families. Without social interaction, their overall health tends to decline.
We Are Kidding Ourselves if We Think a Vaccine Will Make the Worldwide COVID-19 Problem Disappear
Finding a vaccine that works for 100% of the world’s population seems extremely unlikely. Even if we do find a vaccine or drug treatment that works, being able to extend this solution to poor countries around the world is likely to be a slow process.
If we look back historically, pretty much all of the improvement in the US crude death rate (number of deaths divided by total population) has come from conquering infectious diseases.
Figure 2. Crude mortality rates in the United States in chart from Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century, Armstrong et al., JAMA, 1999.
The catch is that since 1960, there hasn’t been an improvement in infectious disease mortality in the United States, according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Society. As progress has been made on some longstanding diseases such as hepatitis, new infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS have arisen. Also, the biggest category of infectious disease remaining is “influenza and pneumonia,” and little progress has been made in reducing its death rate in the United States. Figure 3 shows one chart from the article.
Figure 3. Mortality due to influenza or HIV/AIDS, in chart from Infectious Disease Mortality Trends in the United States, 1980-2014 by Hansen et al., JAMA, 2016.
With respect to HIV/AIDS, it took from the early 1980s until 1997 to start to get the mortality rate down through drugs. A suitable vaccine has not yet been created.
Furthermore, even when the US was able to reduce the mortality from HIV/AIDS, this ability did not immediately spread to poor areas of the world, such as Sub-Saharan Africa. In Figure 4, we can see the bulge in Sub-Saharan Africa’s crude death rates (where HIV/AIDS was prevalent), relative to death rates in India, where HIV/AIDS was less of a problem.
Figure 4. Crude death rates for Sub-Saharan Africa, India, the United States, and the World from 1960 through 2018, based on World Bank data.
While the medical system was able to start reducing the mortality of HIV/AIDS in the United States about 1996-1997 (Figure 3, above), a 2016 article says that it was still very prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2013. Major issues included difficulty patients had in traveling to health care sites and a lack of trained personnel to administer the medication. We can expect these issues to continue if a vaccine is developed for COVID-19, especially if the new vaccine requires more than one injection, every year.
Another example is polio. A vaccine for polio was developed in 1955; the disease was eliminated in the US and other high income countries in about the next 25 years. The disease has still not been eliminated worldwide, however. Poor countries tend to use an oral form of the vaccine that can be easily administered by anyone. The problem with this oral vaccine is that it uses live viruses which themselves can cause outbreaks of polio. Cases not caused by the vaccine are still found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
These examples suggest that even if a vaccine or fairly effective treatment for COVID-19 is discovered, we are kidding ourselves if we think the treatment will quickly transfer around the world. To transfer around the world, it will need to be extremely inexpensive and easy to administer. Even with these characteristics, the eradication of COVID-19 is likely to take a decade or more, unless the virus somehow disappears on its own.
The fact that COVID-19 transmits easily by people who show no symptoms means that even if COVID-19 is eradicated from the high-income world, it can return from the developing world, unless a large share of people in these advanced countries are immune to the disease. We seem to be far from that situation now. Perhaps this will change in a few years, but we cannot count on widespread immunity any time soon.
Containment Efforts for a Disease with Many Hidden Carriers Is Likely to Be Vastly More Expensive than One in Which Infected People Are Easily Identifiable
It is easy to misunderstand how expensive finding the many asymptomatic carriers of a disease is. The cost is far higher than the cost of the tests themselves, because the situation is quite different. If people have serious symptoms, they will want to stay home. They will want to give out the names of others, if they can see that doing so might prevent someone else from catching a serious illness.
We have the opposite situation, if we are trying to find people without symptoms, who might infect others. We need to:
- Identify all of these people who feel well but might infect others.
- Persuade these people who feel well to stay away from work or other activities.
- Somehow compensate these people for lost wages and perhaps extra living expenses, while they are in quarantine.
- Pay for all of the tests to find these individuals.
- Convince these well individuals to name those whom they have had contact with (often their friends), so that they can be tested and perhaps quarantined as well.
Perhaps a few draconian governments, such as China, can handle these problems by fiat, and not really compensate workers for being unable to work. In other countries, all of these costs are likely to be a problem. Because of inadequate compensation, exclusion from work is not likely to be well received. Quarantined people will not want to report which friends they have seen recently, if the friends are likely also to lose wages. In poor countries, the loss of income may mean the loss of the ability to feed a person’s family.
Another issue is that “quick tests” are likely to be used for contact tracing, since “PCR tests,” which tend to be more accurate, often require a week or more for laboratory processing. Unfortunately, quick tests for COVID-19 are not very accurate. (Also a CNN report.) If there are a lot of “false positives,” many people may be needlessly taken out of work. If there are a lot of “false negatives,” all of this testing will still miss a lot of carriers of COVID-19.
A Major Benefit of Rising Energy Consumption Seems to Be Better Control Over Infectious Diseases and a Falling Crude Death Rate
I often write about how the world’s self-organizing economy works. The growth in the world’s energy consumption since the advent of fossil fuels has been extremely important.
Figure 5. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects, together with BP Statistical Data on 1965 and subsequent
The growth in world energy consumption coincided with a virtual explosion in human population.
Figure 6. World Population Growth Through History. Chart by SUSPS.
One of the ways that fossil fuel energy is helpful for population growth is through drugs to fight epidemics. Another way is by making modern sanitation easy. A third way is by ramping up food supplies, so that more people can be fed.
Economic shutdowns lead to reduced energy consumption, partly because energy prices tend to fall too low for producers. They cut back on production because of unprofitability.
Figure 7. Weekly average spot oil prices for Brent, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.
Given this connection between energy supply and population, we should not be surprised if shutdowns tend to lead to an overall falling world population, even if COVID-19 by itself is expected to have a small mortality rate (perhaps 1% of those infected). Poor countries, especially, will find that laid off workers cannot afford adequate food supplies. This makes poor members of those economies more susceptible to diseases of many kinds and to starvation.
Epidemiologists Based Their Models on Diseases Which Are Easily Identifiable and Have High Mortality Rates
It is clear that an easily identifiable illness with a high mortality rate can be easily contained. A difficult-to-identify disease, which has a very low mortality rate for many segments of the population, is very different. Members of segments of the population who usually get only a light case of the disease are likely to become more and more unhappy as containment efforts drag on. Models based on very different types of pandemics are likely to be misleading.
We Need to Somehow Change Course
The message that has been disseminated has been, “With containment efforts plus vaccine, we can stop this disease.” In fact, this is unlikely for the foreseeable future. Continuing in the same direction that has not been working is a lot like banging one’s head against a wall. It cannot be expected to work.
Somehow, expectations need to be lowered regarding what containment efforts can do. The economy can perhaps protect a few high-risk people, but it cannot protect everyone. Unless COVID-19 stops by itself, a significant share of the world’s population can be expected to catch COVID-19. In fact, some people may get the disease multiple times over their lifetimes.
If we are forced to live with some level of COVID-19 (just as we are forced to live with some level of forest fires), we need to make this situation as painless as possible. For example,
- We need to find ways to make COVID-19 as asymptomatic as possible by easy changes to diet and lifestyle.
- We also need to find inexpensive treatments, especially ones that can be used outside of a hospital setting.
- We need to keep the world economy operating as best as possible, if we want to stay away from a world population crash for as long as possible.
We cannot continue to post articles which seem to say that a spike in COVID-19 cases is necessarily “bad.” It is simply the way the situation has to be, if we don’t really have an effective way of containing the coronavirus. The fact that young adults build up immunity, at least for a while, needs to be viewed as a plus.
Some Ideas Regarding Looking at the Situation Differently
(1) The Vitamin D Issue
There has been little publicity about the fact that people with higher vitamin D levels seem to have lighter cases of COVID-19. In fact, whole nations with higher vitamin D levels seem to have lower levels of deaths. Vitamin D strengthens the immune system. Sunlight raises vitamin D levels; fish liver oils and the flesh of fatty fishes also raise vitamin D levels.
Figure 8 shows cumulative deaths per million in a few low and high vitamin D level areas. The death rates are strikingly lower in the high vitamin D level countries.
Figure 8. COVID-19 deaths per million as of August 8, 2020 for selected countries, based on data from Johns Hopkins CSSE database.
The vitamin D issue may explain why dark skinned people (such as those from Southeast Asia and Africa) tend to get more severe cases of COVID-19 when they move to a low sunlight area such as the UK. Skin color is an adaptation to different levels of the sun’s rays in different parts of the world. People with darker skin color have more melanin in their skin. This makes the production of vitamin D less efficient, since equatorial regions receive more sunlight. The larger amount of melanin works well when dark-skinned people live in equatorial regions, but less well away from the equator. Vitamin D supplements might mitigate this difference.
It should be noted that the benefit of sunlight and vitamin D in protecting the immune system has long been known, especially with respect to flu-like diseases. In fact, the use of sunlight seems to have been helpful in mitigating the effects of the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918-1919, over 100 years ago!
One concern might be whether increased sunlight raises the risk of melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. I have not researched this extensively, but a 2016 study indicates that that sensible sun exposure, without getting sunburn, may decrease a person’s risk of melanoma, as well as provide protection against many other types of diseases. Non-melanoma skin cancers may increase, but the mortality risk of these skin cancers is very low. On balance, the study concludes that the public should be advised to work on getting blood levels of at least 30 ng/ml.
(2) Other Issues
Clearly, better health in general is helpful. Eating a diet with a lot of fruits and vegetables is helpful, as is getting plenty of exercise and sunshine. Losing weight will be helpful for many.
Having social contact with other people tends to be helpful for longevity in general. In fact, several studies indicate that church-goers tend to have better longevity than others. Churchgoers and those with many social contacts would seem to have more contact with microbes than others.
A recent article says, Common colds train the immune system to recognize COVID-19. Social distancing tends to eliminate common colds as well as COVID-19. Quite possibly social distancing is counterproductive, in terms of disease severity. Epidemiologists have likely never considered this issue, since they tend to consider only very brief social distancing requirements.
A person wonders how well the immune systems of elderly people who have been cut off from sharing microbes with others for months will work. Will these people now die when exposed to even very minor illnesses? Perhaps a slow transition is needed to bring families back into closer contact with their loved ones.
People’s immune systems can protect them from small influxes of viruses causing COVID-19, but not from large influxes of these viruses. Masks tend to protect against large influxes of the virus, and thus protect the wearer to a surprising extent. Models suggest that clear face shields also provide a considerable amount of this benefit. People with a high risk of very severe illness may want to wear both of these devices in settings they consider risky. Such a combination might protect them fairly well, even if others are not wearing masks.
Conclusions – What We Really Should Be Doing
Back at the time we first became aware of COVID-19, following the recommendations of epidemiologists probably made sense. Now that more information is unfolding, our approach to COVID-19 needs to change.
I have already laid out many of the things I think need to be done. One area that has been severely overlooked is raising vitamin D levels. This is being discussed in the medical literature, but it doesn’t seem to get into the popular press. Even though the connection is not 100% proven, and there are many details to be worked out, it would seem like people should start raising their vitamin D levels. There seems to be little problem with overdosing on vitamin D, except that sunburns are not good. Until we know more, a level of 30 ng/ml (equivalent to 75 nmol/L) might be a reasonable level to aim for. This is a little above the mean vitamin D level of Norway, Finland, and Denmark.
Social distancing requirements probably need to be phased out. A concern might be temporarily excessive patient loads for hospitals. Large group meetings may need to be limited for a time, until this problem can be overcome.
2016 children’s film “Hedgehogs'” plot involves a global pandemic, widespread mask-wearing and a vaccine solution:
Predictive programming.
By the time Bill Gates is through with us, we will all have as many needles stuck into our hides as the average hedgehog.
And mankind is so dumb, they will probably be competing to have the latest fashion in needles and implants.
Hey, take care. The hedgehog is our family totem; disrespect it and we will prickle you to death. For a more positive view of the creature, I refer you to Kaitou Tenshi, “Twin Angels”, which features a magical hedgehog and two intrepid fighters against evil. (Who also of course happen to be middle school girls with rather skimpy battle costumes, but hey, that’s anime)
But before you do ride one last big wave! Trump and munchkin are holding a lot of cash and are going to try and buy the https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-will-borrow-estimated-2-trillion-in-second-half-of-2020-treasurysays-11596482647
According to the WSJ:
At some point, something will go wrong. We don’t know the details yet, however.
What could go wrong! Trump is a great business man he knows what he is doing. It’s not like he is a wreck less businessman who has gone broke.
“Exxon Mobil, which joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1928, is being removed from the blue-chip stock market index. Its replacement: enterprise software company Salesforce. com.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dow-jones-exxon-mobil-pfizer-raytheon-replaced-salesforce-amgen-honeywell/#app
Stocks only go up! I still argue that we were crashing before Covid you can’t have so many baby boomers retire and pull their money out without replacing. Prices are going to 0
The ConTheo of crashing the stock market to buy up everything on the cheap for some players (musical chairs) has been baffeling me for a whie. But if you think this through: When the markets crashed and “one player” would buy up everithing, the prices of the stocks must go up again.
To which levels, @Gail ?
The price can actually go to 0 if the assets behind stocks go worthless. But a company with a machinery park can switch to bicycles or horse carts or what have you. Value of 0 is very unlikely. A permanent deflationary decrease might be possible, as people owning the assets must liquify them for “consumption”. Is there a buyer? A buyer of last resort : Price up…
Without supply lines from around the world, I expect the value of some of these companies will really be very close to zero. How will electric car makers make cars, if they cannot import the minerals needed to make batteries, for example? They also will need supply lines for things such as paint and tires.
Who need energy, when you have complex sales software?
I heard that it is possible to order take-out lunch on Salesforce software (among many other things).
Any stock that looks like it might go down is taken out and replaced with one which seems to have better prospects. Strange!
It seems strange to me to categorize Salesforce as “industrial”. That in itself may well be an indicator as to the health of the industrial system.
Don’t know if this has been posted regarding the rolling blackouts in California
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-8-16-h7249j4l4p0o64aod9n6qltzirnm6i?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0bf8722d78-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_08_17_01_15_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-0bf8722d78-20144013&mc_cid=0bf8722d78&mc_eid=4961da7cb1
This is a very good article. The result is pretty much expected, with California’s use of renewables, without enough fossil fuel backup. According to the article,
The article mentions that the news media invariably mentions the problem as a “heat wave.” Often, “climate change” is given as the reason as well. This problem was easy to foresee. (Their many forest fires were another problem that was easy to foresee, as well.) As they sow, so shall they reap.
I personally am finding CHS a clear and clean thinker without apparent political theater. His latest general blog is here:
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/08/how-nations-collapse-disunity.html
“Or they may just opt out of the whole insane charade and stop paying the mountains of debt and stop trying to prop up the deranging pretense of middle-class snobbery in favor of an honest, low-cost mode of living that dispenses with servitude to self-serving, greedy elites and their corporate-plantation technocrat overlords.”
The blog references a number of points but my main takeaway was “shared sacrifice.” To me that does not mean I have and you get to take, it means that in some measure those receiving make sacrifices as well. When I was at UW in the sixties upon snow fall men with grain shovels would be out removing snow, not machines. They gave something for whatever wages they received. At the other end taxes were much more progressive, now they are hugely regressive. In MN at the lowest Federal Tax rate(22%?) the total tax take is north of 40% for the self employed which includes FICA and including deducting the “employer” part of FICA.
Kenosha seems to be burning.
Dylan from the sixties, “Like a Rolling Stone.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lCnfbp2nGM
“Like a Rolling Stone: When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. ”
I lack the wonderful classical education of Robert, Madison in the sixties was a different world, Dylan is the best I can do.
Dennis L.
I too thought that passage by CHA stood out What’s a fall man?
snowfall, sorry about that.
Dennis L.
There seems to be a lot of disunity everywhere. It is related to “not enough energy to go around.” Also, it is related to “too much wage and wealth disparity.” The US is becoming fractured, but there are many other fracture lines arising as elsewhere too.
That sort of responsibility becomes harder and harder to argue the more we have devolved into socialist structures. When my Italian husband moved to Boston, he was indignant that it was incumbent upon each property owner to clear snow from the sidewalk in front of the building within a certain window of time. Why? “The state should be doing it.” And he is not even left-wing!
Another issue is just how intentionally and unintentionally fragmented our society has become: people moving frequently, lost in screens, not knowing or connecting with neighbors, “diversity”… In rural NE, your neighbor might snowblow your driveway if he’s already out, and you might do the same, but that only works for certain demographics. You’ll support the local grocer if that’s where you get your food, but what if you get your food from Amazon and Vitacost? I met a couple that lived in rural Maine and managed to be vegans through the tender ministrations of Vitacost. People these days apparently don’t even like being American; the trending politics is one of resentment, not of pitching in.
Way back when, everyone shopped at the same nearby grocery stores. Within the grocery store, variety was fairly limited as well. Size of container was the big variable. There was no such thing as organic. Restaurants were few and far between. Clothing stores were pretty limited as well, unless people bought clothes from the catalogs of Sears or Montgomery Wards.
If the town was small enough, people knew quite a few others in the town. They all went to the same handful of churches, and the children went to the same public schools (or perhaps some went to the town’s parochial school). There was a good chance that parents would know their children’s teachers from church or neighborhood activities.
When everyone knew many others, neighborliness was easy. I expect this started going away when the Interstate Highway System was built, allowing people to easily drive to a bigger community nearby. This was built between 1956 and 1992 in the US, according to Wikipedia.
“Way back when, everyone shopped at the same nearby grocery stores. Within the grocery store, variety was fairly limited as well. Size of container was the big variable.”
That is exactly how I live now. The whole village shops at one grocery store, eats at one pub, and visits one hairdresser. And yes, I recently discovered the huge box of rice krispies, which keeps me in cereal for two weeks or more. But the fresh vegetables have come from perhaps two km away, rather than two thousand. And there are no freeways, but almost no traffic, and the motor traffic there is respects pedestrians.
Those promoting highly-divisive identity politics (gender, race, etc) don’t realise that it will come back and bit them nastily once all the social glue has been dissolved.
You can’t insult whole groups of people all day long, whine and complain and persecute, and expect them to lend a hand when you are in need.
Interesting about the snow: of course, In long-civilised countries like Italy the municipal authorities have always been responsible for that kind of street maintenance, so it isn’t really a ‘socialist’ attitude at all.
The US understanding of ‘socialist’ is slightly surreal from our perspective, the result of decades of ultra-capitalist brainwashing and misinformation.
“Who rides the tiger finds it difficult to dismount.” (骑虎难下)
Easier said than done. Here’s a challenge for you. Try getting rid of your car/truck at the first step. Get a bicycle and apply Velominati Rule #5 whenever you feel a little whiny and weak while cranking.
https://www.bikes.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/winter-cycling.jpg
Little elitist and lazy primate yahoo, now go out cycling and enjoy the splendor of complexity.
The Aliens nods in agreement.
https://un-wiredtv.com/images/uploads/Alien-768x516_copy.jpg
Dr Eric W Davis, employed by Pentagons Aerospace Corporation, is saying that it is the phenomenon that is now behind the UFO disclosure.
The phenomenon is ready for the next phase.
We are not in control. We do not control our airspace. They are in control.
Eric W Davis has been ordered by the Pentagon to be silent after he appeared in the NYT talking about the phenomenon.
Things are just getting weirder by the day….
? what phenomenon?
I found some links to Eric W. Davis’ comments with respect to UFOs.
https://nerdist.com/article/pentagon-identified-ufos/
July 24, 2020: Pentagon Physicist Says Identified UFOs Can’t Be Man-Made
This seems to be an interview with him, from June 6, 2020:
CNN published a story on August 13 about pentagon plans for a UFO task force.
According to the CNN story:
Aug 17: Navy Tapped to Lead UFO Task Force
No comment on this, we want to believe which is not a bad trait.
The link below is a possible explanation for a NASA propulsion unit that seemed impossible. Haven’t followed current research on this idea.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/05/nasa-emdrive-impossible-physics-independent-tests-magnetic-space-science/#close
Dennis L.
Our problem is?
A inferior intelligence can not understand a superior intelligence.
We do not understand what we are dealing with?
Considering the mass psychosis evident in the Corona and BLM spheres.. why not a belief in aliens, too?
It’s possible that too much reality can break people’s brains. There are still Raelians.
“Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.”
T S Eliot, Four Quartets #1, Burnt Norton.
What makes them think they’re alien, as opposed to, I dunno, time travelers from the future, or from a parallel timeline?
“We couldn’t make [the materials] ourselves”
Therefore, space aliens made them? Well, you can’t make Roman concrete yourselves. You can’t make Minoan bronze yourselves. You can’t make the drills that carved out Pharaoh Khufu’s granite sarcophagus yourselves. But of course, all that was also done by space aliens. Spare us the von Daniken drivel.
Esteemed Earthlings!
Allow me to clarify. We do not wish to control your airspace; we are mere observers. But we do seek to curtail manned space flight, which at your present state of development (level 2a, aggressive primitive) would be a threat to the Harmony of the Worlds. That, after all, is why our agent “von Braun” (you didn’t believe it was the real von Braun now, did you?) persuaded you to fake the supposed Moon landings. And why selected other agents are planting disinformation to make manned space flight seem impossibly risky, when of course we do it all the time.
Asset Robert, thank you for your cooperation. Yours, Aton XVI.
I recently got a folding bike and unfortunately it’s taking too much room in the apt. Darn it, if only I could fold it up like they did with the rover.
lobsterman, when you do get your bike to fold, you can take it to Antarctica and ride around collecting moon rocks. Just as the Apollo program did in 1967. And you will be using green energy, too.
Not sure if someone posted this before, but Klaus Schwab published his book: Covid-19 the great reset.
You can read it on Amazon Kindle (free).
The book is co-written with Thierry Malleret, former director of WEF. From the first pages there are very relevant informations about what to expect, like this one :”the containment of the coronavirus pandemic will necessitate a global surveillance network capable of identifying new outbreaks as soon as they arise”.
Wow!
Thanks. I first looked up the WEF, to see exactly who they are:
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an NGO, based in Switzerland, founded in 1971. The WEF’s mission is cited as “committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas”.
I found the (sort of) free Kindle book. You have to sign up for an account.
Prof. Klaus Shwab is the first author listed. He is Founder and Executive Chair of the WEF. His latest books are The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We can guess where he is coming from. Thierry Malleret heads the Global Risk Network at WEF.
Their view on COVID (page 42) seems to be, “Do whatever it takes to stamp out COVID. Otherwise, economic recovery will not be possible.”
Page 18: [After the plague] the possibility for change and the resulting new order are now unlimited and only bound by our imagination for better or worse. (This is only true if you don’t understand the role of energy consumption!) The authors list examples of situations such that things got better, after plagues. Basically, more resources per capita, later.
He’s a Dreamer. We only have to dream, that’s all…….
He is not a dreamer at all. He perfectly understands what is going on. It’s a piece of propaganda but reading between the lines there are some some hidden messages.
I have read already almost 100 pages and this is really interesting. I will sumarize the best quotes soon!
They love totalitarianism don’t they?
Zerohedge (Russian intelligence) is posting Gail’s articles.
EU used Gail’s ideas in their oil crisis report.
Chinese intelligence is following Gail’s blog? It wouldn’t surprise me.
Gail is a super cool girl.
I keep getting notes from ResearchGate that my academic articles have more citations, too. An organization called Academia.edu sends me somewhat similar notices.
The mainstream is late to the show.
Finally some data on renewable energy and a means of increasing a reliable supply of such energy.
“What’s The Solution?
For California, the solution could include scaling battery storage capacity, not shutting down the Diablo Canyon – the state’s last nuclear power plant – as planned in 2024, and counting nuclear power as part of California’s renewable generation target of 60 percent renewable electricity by 2030, analysts told Los Angeles Times’ Sammy Roth.”
We can count nuclear as renewable and the problems with intermittency will be solved.
And of course, we can increase battery banks:
“Commenting on California’s outages, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a non-profit advocating for a transition to clean energy, said that more batteries would contribute to meeting evening peak demand.
The planned battery capacity increase to 923 MW by the end of the year “could have played an important role in preventing these outages and are poised to play a growing role in the diverse portfolio of resources that is needed to maintain reliability,” RMI said, dismissing the idea that renewables were to blame:
“Such speculation is premature, incomplete, and almost certainly incorrect.””
RMI might be thought by some to be hand waving, but note the portfolio will be “diverse.”
We are playing with the lives of hundreds of millions should all this go wrong, CA is a large economy yet, somewhere there is a tipping point. Policy is no substitute for reality.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/californias-renewable-energy-conundrum
Dennis L.
Dennis, here is some more data on renewable energy. It is from a program called “Incredible Engineering Blunders”, an episode oe which was shown today. I’d seen it before, but this time I took notes.
The segment was about some huge wind turbines out in the North Sea, off the West coast of Denmark. These things are stuck on tall poles, and of course they are very top heavy. The problem was that they were at risk of being blown over by … the wind. And the reason was that the poles had been badly built.
They needed to be examined regularly, itself an expensive and hazardous task, and if any were found close to the edge, so to speak, they would have to be repaired, lest they fall over, splat.
Here are the numbers. There are 80 of these turbines in the farm, which the program said could power 2000 homes. That’s 25 homes per turbine, is it not. But the repair would cost over $1,000,000 per turbine. That works out at $40,000 per home: not to make the turbines, not to erect them, not to connect them to the grid, not to provide some way of coping with intermittency, but simply to keep them from falling over.
Would you pay $40,000 simply to keep the electricity running in your home? And do you still think green energy is affordable?
You can check it out on Discovery Channel, Episode 5.
Any engineer worth his salt rolls his eyes while watching the natgas racket erect those phallic structures of corruption and decadence.
As Reagan would have stated:
Tear down those turbines.
Greentech Media has an article, California’s Shift From Natural Gas to Solar Is Playing a Role in Rolling Blackouts
Perhaps the Rocky Mountain Institute would care to explain how the production of batteries can be done with clean energy? Or perhaps dirty energy, and massive pollution, don’t count if they happen in another country. And presumably the massive pollution from spent nuclear fuel doesn’t count anywhere.
“A former economy minister of Lebanon has coined a word for it: “Libazeula.” Nasser Saidi, who ran the economy at the turn of the century and was also No. 2 in the Banque du Liban, the country’s central bank, says Lebanon faces a scenario that could see it reduced to the chaotic impoverishment of Venezuela, once the richest state in Latin America but now a byword for political, economic and humanitarian failure.
“Without urgent action by Lebanon’s discredited ruling elite, and the international financial powers that have the means to resuscitate the country’s economy, the threat is dire.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1724021/business-economy
“Three weeks after a catastrophic explosion ripped through Beirut, killing nearly 200 people and rendering thousands homeless, the change many hoped for is nowhere in sight. Instead, activists said they are back to square one…
“In fact, the tools that the ruling elite have used to ensure a lock on power the past 30 years are only more powerful.”
https://apnews.com/a12c89e7dbac893e5c12ebb9f05956c0
Venezuela and Lebanon may be examples of the world to come.
one can only hope it is only that bad; when all the countries go I think it will be much worse….
“Cody Waymack and his wife are struggling to survive with their two children after the extra $600 a week in federal unemployment benefits expired in late July. Now the family is living off each of their weekly state unemployment checks: $96 and $48.”
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/08/25/unemployment-benefits-americans-struggle-with-delayed-300-unemployment-coronavirus-stimulus/3411294001/
“Long-term unemployment helped define the Great Recession. Countless networks, relationships and skills that bound employee to employer were ripped apart in the global financial crisis. It took about eight years for the unemployment rate to recover from that brutal dislocation.
“Now economists fear it’s happening all over again.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/25/permanent-economic-damage-piles-up-covid-crisis-is-looking-more-like-great-recession/
Unfortunately, the same problem is happening all over again.
“As Powell this week prepares to address the Fed’s annual central bankers’ conference – usually held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but being conducted virtually this year because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic – uncertainty and the threat it poses to economic growth looms larger than ever.
“Everything is up in the air now…”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-jacksonhole/as-uncertainty-threatens-u-s-growth-fed-seeks-more-firepower-idUKKBN25L14G
“The Great Inflation Debate Is Heating Up With Trillions at Stake.
“Pandemic cash will pump up prices, says the monetarist camp. Skeptics point to scarce jobs, idle plants, cautious consumers.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-25/the-great-inflation-debate-is-heating-up-with-trillions-at-stake
“The large increase in corporate debt could lead to a financial crisis if several corporations risk defaulting on their debt obligations. This might be averted if the Fed bails them out in time…
“If that happens, then the result would be a large number of “zombie” companies dotting the economic landscape. With a large amount of debt still existing and “zombie companies” continuing operation, the economy will be more inefficient, and growth will be stunted.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4370458-next-crisis-corporate-debt
Pandemic funds seem mostly to make their way into the stock market.
“Norway’s gross domestic product (GDP) contracted in the second quarter at the fastest pace ever recorded as efforts to contain the coronavirus plunged the economy into a deep recession…”
https://www.dailysabah.com/business/economy/norway-in-recession-as-2nd-quarter-gdp-falls-at-record-pace
“The German economy contracted by a record 9.7% in the second quarter as consumer spending, company investments and exports all collapsed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the statistics office said on Tuesday.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-economy-gdp/german-economy-contracts-at-record-pace-recovery-hinges-on-consumers-idUKKBN25L0IW
“The coronavirus crisis will cause long lasting damage to the Dutch economy, even if the virus is completely under control soon, according to central planning office CPB.”
https://nltimes.nl/2020/08/25/dutch-economy-will-take-years-recover-covid-19-crisis-planning-office
“Banks in the eurozone are so awash with cheap cash from the European Central Bank that they no longer want to borrow from each other…
“…some analysts think the glut of liquidity masks lingering weaknesses in some corners of the banking sector.
““There’s a concern that what the ECB has done is artificially compress credit risk premia, without any of this cash necessarily finding its way into the real economy,” said Peter Chatwell, head of multi-asset strategy at Mizuho.”
https://www.ft.com/content/0484b0d3-f94a-47a0-bd63-663a97a793a1
Getting the available credit to the right places is always the big problem.
Perhaps the damage could be mitigated by abolishing the “central planning office”. Localisation should begin at home.
Dear Norwegian, German, and Dutch planners. The virus will never be completely under control. Write that at the top of your whiteboard in big black letters, and then plan accordingly.
Germany was able to do relatively less in the way of restrictions than many other countries, and it still had problems.
Of course, when the efforts to contain the coronavirus were let up in Norway, the number of cases rose again, as happens everywhere.
Too much..
FEDERAL RESERVE
Powell set to deliver ‘profoundly consequential’ speech, changing how the Fed views inflation
PUBLISHED MON, AUG 24 2020 4:06 PM EDT
UPDATED MON, AUG 24 2020 6:02 PM EDT
Jeff Cox
@JEFFCOXCNBCCOM
KEY POINTS
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will speak Thursday during a virtual version of the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming, conference.
He is expected to outline what could be the central bank’s most active efforts ever to spur inflation back to a healthy level.
“Average inflation” targeting means the Fed will allow inflation to run higher than normal for a period of time.
The effort will be the reverse of former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker’s rate hikes instituted to quash inflation in the 1980s.
Boy, the BS gets deeper and deeper…whatever it takes for the Pony show to continue…like the line “to spur inflation back to a healthy level”
George Orwell is smiling
We need higher energy and food prices, or the producers go out of business. This is a huge problem. Instead of economies of scale, we are experiencing the reverse: “Diseconomies of lack of scale.”
The new normal…MMT Theory Policy…More Money Today!
Sure 😃 they will do it only for a “period of time”…They got this…
Just like eliminating the Payroll tax and funding Social Security by “bonding it”!
It’s different this time, we got a handle on it!
The Federal Reserve is FLAT OUT … BALLS TO THE WALL…they boxed themselves to a no choice outcome…
Sing it boys,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B_3TlrZLpQ0
Herbie, inflation is caused by an increase in the quantity of money; deflation is caused by a fall in the velocity of money. The former cannot correct the latter. Jackson Hole: men and bits of paper, blown by the cold wind.
“UK retail employment balance dropped to lowest since 2009.”
https://www.actionforex.com/live-comments/321499-uk-retail-employment-balance-dropped-to-lowest-since-2009/
“Vanishing Jobs and Empty Offices Plague Britain’s Retailers.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-25/uk-retailers-plagued-by-vanishing-jobs-empty-offices
“The UK’s nightclub industry is begging the Government for support and warning that if nightspots are not allowed to reopen soon it will put 754,000 jobs at risk.”
https://www.business-live.co.uk/enterprise/government-warned-nightclub-industry-brink-18821462
Xabier, this is a bleak news even for 2020, obviously. Where on earth will you go to “throw your shapes”?
“Local authorities in England and Wales can once again use bailiffs to collect outstanding debts from today, after a five-month suspension because of coronavirus.”
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/08/bailiffs-return-to-debt-collecting-after-a-five-month-suspension/
“UK Credit card borrowers looking to consolidate their debts or take advantage of interest-free deals have seen their choice severely diminished in recent months.
“The number of interest-free balance transfer deals has fallen to a record low, with experts warning the market was in a worse state than during the 2008 financial crisis.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/credit-cards/credit-card-market-hits-record-low-interest-free-deals-vanish/
Indeed. I was so looking forward to the riotous post-Lock-down orgies, too.
I shall be left a solitary figure, dancing the Jota ( my performances have been described as ‘memorable’ and even ‘unrepeatable’) with the dog cowering under the table, bemused and unnerved.
I’m sure that Norman is feeling similarly let-down…..
Xabier, be of good cheer. The oldest profession flourished long before there were fossil fuels, and it will no doubt flourish long after they are gone, Only the venue will change. And perhaps the courting plumage you have to wear.
A big part of the problem is this:
This is the same problem that New York City has. Cities require a lot of concentrated energy. I am afraid that as less energy is available, the central areas will have the biggest problems.
Demolishing derelict ugly buildings like in Detroit and cutting back on sewage lines and other services.
Basically shrinking the city.
This article appeared in the September/October 2020 edition with the headline “The End of Oil
This article was funded by the Sierra Club Foundation
The End of Oil Is Near
The pandemic may send the petroleum industry to the grave
August 24, 2020
Antonia Juhasz
THIS PAST SPRING, coastlines around the globe took on the feel of an enemy invasion as hundreds of massive oil tankers overwhelmed seaports from South Africa to Singapore. Locals and industry analysts alike used the word armada—typically applied to fleets of warships—to describe scenes such as when a group of tankers left Saudi Arabia en masse and another descended on China. One distressed news article proclaimed that a “floating hoard” of oil sat in tankers anchored across the North Sea, “everywhere from the UK to France and the Netherlands.” In April, the US Coast Guard shared an alarming video that showed dozens of tankers spread out for miles along California’s coast.
On May 12, Greenpeace activists sailed into San Francisco Bay to issue a challenge to the public. In front of the giant Amazon Falcon oil tanker—which had been docked in the bay for weeks, loaded up with Chevron oil—they unfurled a banner reading, “Oil Is Over! The Future Is Up to You.”
The oil industry has turned the oceans into aquatic parking lots—floating storage facilities holding, at their highest levels in early May, some 390 million barrels of crude oil and refined products like gasoline. Between March and May, the amount of oil “stored” at sea nearly tripled, and it has yet to abate in many parts of the world.
…….
Today, the global oil industry is in a tailspin. Demand has cratered, prices have collapsed, and profits are shrinking. The oil majors (giant global corporations including BP, Chevron, and Shell) are taking billions of dollars in losses while cutting tens of thousands of jobs. Smaller companies are declaring bankruptcy, and investors are looking elsewhere for returns. Significant changes to when, where, and how much oil will be produced, and by whom, are already underway. It is clear that the oil industry will not recover from COVID-19 and return to its former self. What form it ultimately takes, or whether it will even survive, is now very much an open question.
……..
THE OIL INDUSTRY is in such dire straits today because of the multiple crises it has faced since well before the pandemic. These upheavals are largely the result of the decades of organizing that have cast a dark shadow over the industry and exposed the harms associated with oil. This advocacy has helped to shut down and delay fossil fuel projects through direct-action protest, bring about current and expected policies to cut demand and production, make sustainable transportation and renewable energy more accessible and affordable, and reduce the political and economic benefits of supporting the oil industry. The result of the organizing and advocacy is death by a thousand cuts, leaving behind an industry producing too much of a commodity that is of shrinking value.
…..Even as investors were abandoning oil company stocks, a flood of cheap money and easy credit had been keeping the industry afloat. During the past decade, the US fracking industry lost $300 billion yet was able to continue producing, thanks to the financial backing of government subsidies, banks, hedge funds, and other investors. But well before the pandemic arrived, the private-capital flows were weakening. In addition, every major Democratic candidate for president pledged to end government subsidies for fossil fuels. Painting an ominous picture for the Wall Street Journal in 2019, Raoul LeBlanc of IHS Markit said that oil companies “don’t have the ability to borrow anymore.
Rather long article essay and this is the version the Green Deal Makers would like us all to believe about oil….the actual is much more bleak as Gail has pointed out….
The whole article is here
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2020-5-september-october/feature/end-oil-near?amp
Unfortunately, population will drop dramatically without the fossil fuel industry. This is the big problem.
Will not be surprised at increasing outbreaks of Bubonic plague.
Since its the least destructive compared to other ways of population reduction.
More on Sweden – it seems to work better than some and worse than others.
“Leading Swedish health experts claim the country has a falling coronavirus infection rate because it was one of the few that didn’t go into lockdown and has rejected the need for masks.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sweden-has-developed-herd-immunity-after-refusing-to-lock-down-experts-claim-its-coronavirus-infection-rate-is-falling-2020-08-24
On the economic effects on the US economy:
“Dr. Mina and his team have designed a method of reopening based on frequency of contacts and vulnerability to COVID-19 based on five demographic groups and 66 economic sectors. Businesses would reopen and adhere to guidelines on social distancing, working from home, and hygiene. Schools would reopen, masks are required, and large gatherings such as religious services, indoor sports and bars would stay closed.
According to McKinsey & Co., if schools don’t reopen until next January, the lost year of education will set back low-income children with a 4% reduction in lifetime earnings.”
“We’re on the cusp of an economic catastrophe,” according to Harvard economist James Stock, who is working with Dr. Mina on models which would avoid a surge in deaths without engaging in an economically devastating lockdown. “We can avoid the worst of that catastrophe by being disciplined.”
“Emphasize the reopening of the highest economic benefit, lowest risk endeavors,” he continued, adding “Economic shutdowns are a blunt and very costly tool.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/swedens-covid-19-measures-hint-herd-immunity-us-experts-rethink-lockdown-strategies
Dennis L.
The WSJ has recently been saying something similar. Yesterday it published, New Thinking on Covid Lockdowns: They’re Overly Blunt and Costly
Blanket business shutdowns—which the U.S. never tried before this pandemic—led to a deep recession. Economists and health experts say there may be a better way.
The article mention’s Sweden’s approach. Also masks. And reopening schools.
This is what collapse looks like
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1237808
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Political celebrities and cable news stars were supposed to fill the streets. Hotels thought they would hit capacity. Rooftop bars expected to book up with late-night parties, and nearby restaurants anticipated an endless crush of customers. There were plans for live music concerts and fireworks.
Instead, uptown Charlotte, the official home of the 2020 Republican National Convention, was nearly deserted as the meeting to formally nominate President Donald Trump as the GOP presidential nominee kicked off Monday morning.
On the eve of the convention, restaurants around the Charlotte Convention Center remained closed. Street signs and storefronts, which would normally be covered in RNC signage, displayed social distancing guidelines. A truck with an anti-Trump billboard in its bed drove around the uptown area, but aside from a few reporters and police officers, no one was there to see it. A few scattered demonstrations took place around the city ahead of the event — but as Republicans arrived in the uptown area, there were no protesters in sight.
“It’s empty. Even the locals aren’t around,” said Vinay Patel, principal at SREE Hotels, which includes 12 hotels in the Charlotte area, two of which are within minutes of the Charlotte Convention Center, where Republicans gathered.
“It is a very eerie feeling,” Patel said, adding that all 12 of his Charlotte hotels had been contracted with the RNC.
The DNC could nominate Anthony Weiner as President and still win
Timing is everything….do not buy when you give the World the bug
Bloomberg) — Chinese buyers have not only stopped snapping up iconic overseas assets, the coronavirus pandemic is ravaging the targets of deals that defined a headier era.
Whereas some prolific acquirers such as HNA Group Co. and Anbang Insurance Group Co. began falling into disarray before the recent crisis, the impact on investments in sectors hit hardest by the outbreak means healthier owners are now feeling the pain.
Conglomerate Fosun International Ltd. could soon see its 2015 investment in Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group wiped out, while PizzaExpress, owned by private equity firm Hony Capital, said this month it’s likely to hand control of the British chain to creditors. Baggage handler Swissport International AG is also negotiating with investors over a rescue that could see HNA exit the cash-strapped firm it bought in 2015, Bloomberg News has reported.
https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/podcasts/episodes/06-09-2020-steve-strongin.html
Steve Strongin says there will be a lot of business failures in “The Great Reset: A Framework for Investing After COVID-19.” But people have learned to do things differently.
Four themes-
1. Resilience as investment. Need to find supply lines that are more resilient. Need excess hospital capacity to deal with emergencies. Specialty firms might do better than trying to do everything yourself. Need redundancy built in. Helps specialty vendors, who have the scale to do this. Financial sector held up.
2. Sticky learning. Learning usually slows things down. We learned lots of things no one cared to learn. We learned that lots of people can work from home. Telemedicine can work. May not do this forever. Where it works, but where it doesn’t (dentists, physical therapists). More work from home in the future. Change the way we use real estate.
3. Risk based market segmentation – People will sort themselves into two groups, (1) Life is too short, and (2) How do I hide from risk in the future. China, youth themed restaurants are open and full. Restaurants for older people won’t even be open yet. Cowded classrooms, but faculty want to stay away because of fear of risk. Vaccines will work better on young people than older people. Make the split worse.
4. Regulartory reset. Hospital regulators will look at hospital differently. Drug regulators will want to be more concerned about getting new drugs approved, than preventing anything that can go wrong. Ventilation in office buildings.
Empty space is not a theme. Will be filled by new restaurants or other businesses. Part of the natural dynamism of the economy.
Outcome is not a theme. Incredible mixing of themes. People want to move. Some businesses will need more spaces, others will need less. Re-suburbanization of suburbs. Cities always repopulate, in his view.
Early on, try to preserve existing businesses. Later on, some consolidation toward the “winners.” Too much attention, probably. Eventually learn how to innovate in the new way things work.
——
My comments: Yes, this would be a reasonable analysis, if we had plenty of cheap energy and we weren’t reaching Limits to Growth. What we are seeing has a lot more inherent problems than Steve Strongin from Goldman Sachs recognizes.
Fifty years ago, this would have been excellent advice. Now, far too late. As you say, Gail, the surplus energy to make this happen no longer exists.
But if he believes “cities always repopulate”, he is delusional. The world is full of abandoned cities; I have visited quite a few of them, from Mycenae to Ephesus and Thebes, not to mention Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, and Teotihuacan. And in my own country, Corinium Dobunnorum.
“They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshýd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahrám, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass
Stamps o’er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.”
Some comment suggest that these approaches need more energy to work. Is the problem, though, that they need all that extra energy in order to work along centralized lines? Could they work as principles within a radically decentralized civilization?
Trying to spread out people for social distancing just doesn’t work. If people could simply wear masks and be as close as ever, there would be much less problem. Office spaces and school spaces would work. Factories could have as many workers as ever. Church meetings and conferences would not be a problem. Trying to do this would destroy the usefulness of the buildings which have already been built. We don’t have the energy or space to build a huge number of increasingly inefficiently used spaces.
I am not sure restaurants can be made to work, because masks can’t be used while eating.
A radically decentralized civilization presumably has many fewer people. I don’t know how it could be made to work. It would almost have to start from scratch.
“A radically decentralized civilization presumably has many fewer people.”
Different cultural groups can have very different lifestyles. Undocumented Mexican immigrants can live 15 or 20 to an apartment. Blacks and whites cannot. I guess if immigrants (who might dwindle in numbers with time) can somehow work where they live, and work and live entirely in the same group, social distancing without masks wouldn’t be mandatory. Meanwhile, blacks and whites would need to live in very small private spaces, with a chance to mingle elsewhere with masks. Maybe they’d be best suited to do whatever travel is needed for work. The existing buildings would have to be subdivided or opened up depending. More attention would have to be given to planning and modification-design within the existing built environment.
Masks, no, but face shields could work. They’re not as effective but would help.
The trouble with relying on face masks, instead of physical distancing, is that so many people seem to be unaware of how and when to where face masks, politicians included.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
gee, the daily covid data does not readily appear as headlines lately.
US daily cases were 38,000 yesterday, below the 7 day moving average of 43,000, and way below the July peak of about 70,000.
why is this not big headline news?
the pandemic is _____
The flow of CV19 is from New York State and then outward. It is not a second wave it is the first wave arriving in the south and west, Florida, Texas, California that is creating a delayed, second, peak in the total case numbers. It is a second peak temporally not spatially. That is New York has one peak, early, Florida has one peak late. The one odd exception is the state of Louisiana that does indeed have both an early peak, right up there with New York State, and a late peak with Florida, no idea why.
i believe it is all part of the propaganda drive to maintain the con game so that when everyone’s personal vaccine or life shortener comes due we will be forced to take it by our incompetent delusional governments . A neat trick by the elders how else could BAU lite or THE GREAT RESET work we may get a lovely staircase collapse for ever.
don’t forget the vote-by-mail chaos certain people are depending on…
NOLA had Mardi Gras on February 25, so there you go.
I agree that this is all the first wave, and the stats are showing a steady decrease in daily cases which are down from about 66,000 to 44,000 in one month, late July to late August.
fun with numbers:
based on that rate, cases will be near zero by late October.
of course, there surely are various reasons to think that “that rate” will slow its decline or even reverse.
a true second wave this Winter is a possibility.
for now, the numbers are showing good news, so I wonder why these numbers are failing to be highly publicized.
There is an article up by TheMarshallProject.org called, COVID-19’s Toll on People of Color Is Worse Than We Knew.
This is a chart shown:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/us-deaths-above-normal-by-race_marshall-project.png
In fact, the article shows charts for each state, and they all look very similar. In fact, the UK reported a very similar pattern, in an analysis done there as well.
These charts remind me of some charts I recently saw in a WSJ article called, Covid-19 Deaths Skew Younger Among Minorities
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/covid-death-rate-by-race-and-age-range-wsj.png
Also, I showed this chart earlier, with respect to vitamin D ratios in the United States:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/vitamin-d-status-of-3-us-ethnic-groups.png
It looks more and more like the problem we have is a disease that is far worse in dark-skinned groups that tend to be vitamin D deficient. In light skinned populations, the deaths by age look like they are not high until the 85+ range, according to the WSJ chart. We should be encouraging more use of vitamin D supplementation, even if we are not 100% certain this is the problem. Aim for at least 30 ng/ml, perhaps more.
Gail, evidence suggests that 100 ng/ml is a naturally optimal level of vitamin D. Check out this 5 minute video which makes a good case for this level.
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-optimal-dose-of-vitamin-d-based-on-natural-levels/
D3G
Transcribed from the video.
“The target level of 75 only sounds high compared to average levels today. But in modern times, we practice unnatural activities, like working at a desk job, or, sometimes, even wearing clothes. We evolved running around naked in equatorial Africa, getting sun all day long.”
“If you measure vitamin D levels in those living traditional lives in the cradle of humanity, a normal vitamin D level would be over 100. So, maybe that should be the starting point, until proven otherwise; a concept, regrettably, many guidelines committees seem to have ignored.”
Vitamin D is more important than we think. Now, after August 15th, when the most intensive sunshine is over in the Northern Hemisphere, it is time to take more of it there.
This is a very good video. The thing you have to be aware of is that different reports use different units, and the measurements are confusingly similar.
This video is quoting units of nmol/L. I was quoting units of ng/ml. The units of nmol/L are 2.5 times as high as the units of ng/ml. At the end of my post, I said,
“Until we know more, a level of 30 ng/ml (equivalent to 75 nmol/L) might be a reasonable level to aim for.”
From the video, I think you could make a case for 100 to 125 nmol/L. This would be equivalent to 40 ng/ml to 50 ng/ml.
I am currently taking 2000 IU per day, trying to get my Vitamin D level up. I would take more, but I am taking some type of hormone for my bones, and I am afraid of interfering with it. Once I am off the hormone, I will raise my vitamin D level more, if my blood level of vitamin D is still not high enough. It was about 25 ng/ml when I last had it checked.
I suspect that I wouldn’t have had the osteoporosis problems, if my vitamin D level had been higher.
Worth taking vitamin k2 with your D3 it will help pull calcium out of soft tissue and into bones.
Perhaps we evolve and adapt to where we are born and live. In The Villages, Fl, there seem to be a great many dermatology clinics – some residents make YouTube videos. have very light skin and report skin cancer. Not a good sample to be sure but some of my relatives who were exposed to bright sunlight on the river as children and while their current lifestyle is indoors, they have had skin cancer. they are fair skinned.
The Inuit are dark skinned, seem to be an exception.
Dennis L.
Vitamin D is fat-soluble. The Inuit have historically eaten a lot of marine mammal fat, so they need much less sun exposure.
Sun burn seems to be the big issue. Without it, there seems to be less problem with melanoma, if I understood the one article correctly.
Also, melanoma is the skin cancer to be afraid of. The other types are more common but not life threatening.
Actually i had a friend die last year from a Squamous Cell Caricinoma. Should always be diligent.
Homeless are the problem child for the rebound in tourism in Los Angeles ….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mlIDn-LFoXA
Perhaps the City can make them an Attraction of some sort?
Herbie, they are not homeless, they are “nomads”. And they are doing what nomads have always done: steal, pilfer, loot, pillage, rape and murder. Until they have turned the city into a desert and it is time to up stakes and move on. That is why cities had walls, and guards at the gates. It is why they had curfews, so that anyone still on the streets could be picked up and summarily thrown out. But the fashion today is to respect the “rights” of those who respect nothing. It will not end well.
I picked up a hitch hiker in Hawaii once. He said he was a hunter-gatherer living on the beach. That’s a nice way to say homeless.
All around the outer walls of the Columbia University campus the windows have massive steel bars and the entryways have massive steel gates. During winter break all the entries are closed leaving only a small gate beside the massive primary gate which is guarded full time.
http://wwwapp.cc.columbia.edu/files/columbia/content/columbia-main-gate.jpg
small secondary gate
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BBFJ27/usa-new-york-city-columbia-university-and-barnard-college-BBFJ27.jpg
here we see the importance of adding razor wire to the first floor grates
https://i1.wp.com/itsartlaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/25d4c-2783090134_c61f85453e_o-300×195.jpg?resize=400%2C260
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRilyyMLJsvzYYvoOijEkwIxpr8SOoeIF5kfg&usqp=CAU
Have seen the gates, the castles with the moats, slits in walls for what I assume were crossbows in travels – it seems to be very common. Photographs of Afghanistan show homes and villages with walls around them.
To be charitable, much modern media and woke thinking does not seem to recognize what works and what does not. Those who get it and act accordingly will survive, those who don’t may face joining the nomad lifestyle. A case where one can do everything “right” and and not have it “work.”
When I went to Puerto Rico years ago, it seems like there were walls around every nice home. I understand that is the case many places in the world. Or at least big bars on the lower story windows of apartment buildings.
The first tribal law is pretty much : ‘If they are not kith and kin, do as you will with them.’
More or less our default setting as humans.
Duh!
Stop already, too much entertainment…
USA TODAY
Louisiana protesters call for Lafayette mayor-president to resign after police shooting
Andrew Capps, Lafayette Daily Advertiser
August 24, 2020, 7:09 AM EDT
LAFAYETTE, La. — Nearly 200 protesters gathered Sunday evening for the second night in Lafayette, this time in front of City Hall to criticize Mayor-President Josh Guillory’s response to a Black man killed by police.
The peaceful demonstration in front of City Hall led to a group from there leaving to join others along a parkway, where they blocked traffic near a mall for over an hour.
Other groups traveled to other parts of the city later Sunday, including an intersection where Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s deputies in riot gear dispersed the crowd.
Later Sunday night, a smaller group of a couple of dozen protesters returned to the Shell gas station where police shot and killed 31-year-old Trayford Pellerin on Friday.
The Sunday protest began at City Hall with speakers criticizing Guillory’s response to Pellerin’s death and calling for Guillory’s resignation.
Lafayette police killed Pellerin Friday night after officers approached him at a gas station. Officers responding to a disturbance call about a man carrying a knife shot Pellerin after they tasered him and he continued to walk away from them.
USA Today
Wow, why are we seeing all these now all at once?
What number of protestors are not news worthy? 5 protestors demand mayor resign!
Jeff snider
Making sense podcast. This sheds some light i
On this
I know that commenter GBV has posted links to some of Jeff Snider’s discussions.
This is one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67NPdXO7GA
One observation Jeff Snider has made is “It isn’t a liquidity crisis but a collateral crisis.” It is possible to offer more loans to businesses, but if the underlying assets aren’t worth much (no one wants to rent the office building, or social distancing reduces the number of workers in the space), that is when the real problem happens.
“collateral crisis” could be a good blog topic.
Right! The collateral that really isn’t there.
“A Hong Kong man who recovered from COVID-19 was infected again four-and-a-half months later in the first documented instance of human re-infection, researchers at the University of Hong Kong said on Monday.
“The findings indicate the disease, which has killed more than 800,000 people worldwide, may continue to spread amongst the global population despite herd immunity, they said.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-hongkong-reinfecti/hong-kong-researchers-report-first-documented-coronavirus-re-infection-idUKKBN25K1PS?il=0
I see:
So it is not just the same infection coming back. And the fact that they have identified the virus stain indicates it is not just a false positive.
I see that with the second infection he “remained asymptomatic”.
that’s big.
You are right, but wee need more examples to see if this remains the case. A lot of people “remain asymptomatic” with COVID-19. Maybe it is the effect of the prior illness, but maybe not.
The reinfection was with a slightly different strain of the virus, so not an old illness.
and yet he remained asymptomatic.
In NYS
“Not only has dancing been outlawed, but pool, darts, cornhole, and karaoke are also off-limits. How much longer do the dictators in charge really think they can keep this up? I never thought I’d see the day when Democrats became pulpit-pounding puritans keeping the kids from dancing, but here we are.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/footloose-comes-life-new-york-governor-cuomo-bans-dancing
Death daily death rate in NYS 0.3 per million. A factor of 100 lower than the peak. Can’t wait for the election to be over.
A person might think that a fairly significant share of the population would vote against the party in power, with this type of restriction going on and on. Maybe it depends on the age group. Also, the fact that young people tend not to vote works against their views being heard.
as a citizen of the british empire, and unfamiliar with the quaint old traditions of the colonies
i am dying to know what cornhole is
Norman, It’s a game.
DescriptionCornhole is a lawn game in which players take turns throwing 16 ounce bags of corn kernels at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. A bag in the hole scores 3 points, while one on the board scores 1 point. Wikipedia
Endless fun. Does one get to take the Corn Dolly home as the prize?
For an excellent portrayal of a Corn Dolly, check out Dakota Fanning in Hounddog. However, it does not come with English subtitles, so listen carefully.
Oh thank God.
A beanbag game with a rude name. I’ve mostly lived in the original colonies (New England) and I never heard of it until about five years ago.
thank you Lidia
I wouldnt want to get caught doing something I shouldn’t (again)
The question remains can market manipulation by the FED and the Treasury in the states just continue forever. I know that you have said everything is tied to energy but it appears that it is now tied to market manipulation. Since they are not transparent with what they are doing maybe they can keep this thing going for a long time.
At some point, “something” breaks. Exactly what it is isn’t clear. Perhaps there isn’t enough food to go around. Perhaps California’s problems become too difficult to overcome. Perhaps the US encounters a financial problem, say with derivatives. In fact, financial problems might come in steps. Because we are dealing with a complex system, we can’t really predict what will break, where.
“Fury as academics and musicians brand Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory ‘racist imperial propaganda’ as they call for them to be BANNED from Last Night of the Proms for ‘celebrating the British Empire'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8657909/Academics-demand-Rule-Britannia-Land-Hope-Glory-BANNED-Night-Proms.html
It seems possible to locate BLM within a pattern of historical social reactions to pandemics. In the Middle Ages, pandemics tended to be accompanied by hostility to ‘outsiders’. Europe was RCC at the time and religious minorities tended to bear the brunt along with any dissenters. Pandemics were understood to be a divine punishment for ‘sins’, and the RCC liturgy had prayers ‘in times of pestilence’ that spoke of the wrath of God for our sins. Anyway, the history is well documented. Thus, pandemics were occasions in which citizenship and conformity were re-imposed by the TPTB with the help of a frightened, hysterical citizenry that blamed ‘sin’ and religious non-conformity, ‘outsiders’ for the pandemic.
BLM UK may seem to be the opposite, the assertion of minorities against narrower perceptions of citizenry and belonging. But it is important to understand that European countries are now in post-imperialist material conditions in which they have lost their colonies, with their labour pools, and they very much rely on inward bound workers to expand the labour force, grow GDP and to maintain the profit- and debt-based capitalist system. Thus citizenship has changed, it is diversified. Such a pandemic effort by TPTB to confirm citizenship and conformity now takes on a new form, even the inclusion of minorities and a clamping down on old ideological forms regarding citizenship and belonging.
Citizenship and ideology reflect the economic base, as Marx described it, and they have in some senses reversed as material conditions have reversed with the loss of empires and colonies. Thus the pattern of social confirmation has reversed, from exclusivity to inclusivity. So BLM may appear to be the opposite to what happened in previous pandemics, but at a deeper level it is the same phenomenon, the ideological confirmation of citizenship according to the status quo.
UK is struggling with the continued existence of imperialist and colonialist ideological forms beyond the imperialist era and into the present day. BBC was set up by racists and imperialists and it operated the BBC Empire Service to broadcast pro-imperialist propaganda throughout the British Empire to reinforce support for colonialism and imperialism, both among the colonialists and the colonised. Britain lost its Empire in and after WWII as it emerged from the war massively indebted and it could no longer afford to maintain it. The post-war UK governments blew their share of the Marshall Plan funds, USA loans to rebuild Europe, on attempts to maintain the Empire but it proved inadequate and failed. Other countries like Germany spent their share on economic reconstruction and the modernisation of industry, which is why UK industry fell behind the continent by the late 50s and never regained competitiveness.
UK now has a post-imperialist economic base and an attendant post-imperialist capitalist ideology of anti-racism that facilitates the needs of the economic base in the new material conditions, the need for expanded domestic labour to allow for the further accumulation of capital in lieu of the lost colonial labour pools. C19 has provided the pandemic conditions in which UK has its BLM moment, massively promoted by BBC and other state controlled media, as the occasion in which to reinforce citizenship and a normality of ideology. BBC as the chief propaganda broadcaster of the British capitalist state promotes the ideology that currently suits the needs of organised British capital. And now it is to roll out its centre piece of the c19 lock down – a renewed last night of the Proms.
Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia are traditional set pieces of a jingoistic last night and there is much sentimental and nostalgic attachment to them among broad sections of UK citizens. However they have been correctly identified as colonialist and imperialist, and by extension, racist propaganda. They reflect an imperialist ideology that reflected an imperialist economic base. British capital has moved on, reluctantly, from imperialism and the songs are now offensive with the context of post-imperialist capitalist ideology and citizenship. From the perspective of historical materialism and its understanding of ideology as historically and materially grounded, located and limited, BBC is quite right to take the opportunity of the BLM moment to dump those songs but it is highly controversial and fraught with angst.
Anti-racism has been successfully promoted among the masses but the British state itself has never really been open and critical about its own racist and imperialist past. It still promotes racists and imperialist like Winston Churchill as national heroes. Broad sections of the UK citizenry are deeply unhappy about what they perceive as an assault on their historical sense of nationhood. It is one thing to say that racism is bad, in the new material-ideological conditions, but it is another to revise perceptions of the British state itself and its past. Some citizens identify with the British state and its past and it is sort like a personal assault for them to have the British state criticised. They really do not like the idea that the British state itself is ‘guilty’ of crimes of racism.
Of course this is all due to changed material circumstances. Ideology and ‘morality’ are relative to material conditions and the change in the latter necessitates a change in the former. But no state likes to admit to historical, moral relativism. States like to control populations and it does so through moral absolutes. But if morals are absolute then it follows that the British state itself was ‘guilty’ of violations of morality. It is quite the dilemma. Thus it is in the interests of the state to charge itself as guilty, so as to maintain an absolutism of morals and social control. It has to be ‘consistent’, even in the face of its own historical inconsistency.
But the state does not want to overdo the self-accusation, it wants to maintain its loyalty from both the modern conformists and the nostalgic and sentimental patriots. It is a difficult situation for the state. The Tory Party tries to distance itself from all of this, and to spin it as the influence of ‘lefties’ but it is clearly an effort of the state itself and its institutions and for its own material interests. Thus the state can ride both horses, address contradictions in the ideological structure and keep the loyalty of dissidents. It is interesting to watch the situation unfold and the manoeuvres of the state.
Anyway, I thought that it might be interesting to pose the Proms news story as an ideological event within the context of c19 and the historical tendency of states to use pandemics as occasions to reinforce citizenship and belonging, to impose ideological orthodoxy and to clamp down on, and eradicate, contrary ideology. It is a much more confused episode than they used to be due to the relatively recent shift in the economic base and the reversal of ideology, ‘morality’ and patterns of citizenship and belonging – but it is, at base, the same historical phenomenon.
They might obtain ‘citizenship’, but they will never, ever be even slightly British.
Sorry.
And the BBC has become a laughing stock.
X, you seem to be thinking of citizenship as an ethnic construct rather than as an historical, economic construct. Modern Western capitalist states are not ethno states, they economic states that have the need to maintain and to expand the labour force in order to maintain capital accumulation and to repay the national debt to which they are structurally committed over several decades. They were never really ethno states but it suited the rulers to use ‘patriotism’ to maintain the loyalty and docility of citizens. WWII put an end to such illusions, both in the ideological reaction to Germany and in the loss of empires.
Spain is a good example to explain the material situation. Women born in Spain have a fertility rate of 1.3 kids per woman, which is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 in modern, developed societies. Thus the number of births would almost half per generation in Spain did inward bound citizens not offset the population collapse. Residents born abroad now make up 10% of the population and about 25% of kids born in Spain are now of another background, up from 4.5% in 1996. The situation is similar in UK, and women born here have a fertility rate of 1.57. 34% of primary school kids are now of another background and that increases at about 1% per year.
It is quite fair to say that incomers are not of ‘indigenous’ stock but that is not how citizenship is understood and ‘British’ and ‘Spanish’ denote citizenship and not just ethnicity. Thus it is true that under different aspects, those terms both do and do not apply to them due to the ambiguity of the terms. However it is entirely incorrect to say that the terms simply do not apply under any aspect, they do apply and indeed they apply in the sense with which modern states are concerned, citizenship. Thus it is just not on to say that they simply are not British, they are, and they do not have to be ethnically British in order to be so. That is just how the societies function and there is nothing especially revelatory about that.
It is a tragedy that countries with declining populations are not allowed to lower their numbers. The rent collectors need their slums filled, their sweat shops peopled.
Well, a reduction in population might well be congruent with environmental demands but not with those of the economy, which are always going to have overall priority in capitalist societies that need to grow GDP in order for the economy to survive at all.
It would be a mistake to think that incoming workers are less productive or impoverished. Their wage structure in UK is similar to that of longer established workers. As such they contribute trillions to the private sector over a lifetime.
Population maintenance is driven by structural economic needs and private interest, so Western states will have to try to square population growth with green commitments.
Productivity growth has converged toward zero since 1970s in ‘mature’ economies and it now flatlines, so that will not countervail population decline to maintain GDP growth. Population growth is inevitable under ‘mature’ capitalist conditions.
We have a fight between the interests of the owning class and the “common good”. Will the ultra rich of Davos side with the “common good” new green deal?
Ed,
It is the long tail that is an issue, those who age become less productive, contribute less and require more. One child cannot support two parents and its own children. Stories abound of generations in the middle trying to support both ends psychologically and burning out to say nothing of financial strains.
The main progenitors of growth are perhaps the elderly themselves – historically they have voted more than other groups, through “moral” arguments they carry the day abetted by care providers of various groups, physicians, nursing homes, etc. They need the young, they need additional producers to account for their diminishing productivity.
We seem to be living too long, that is the balance that is upset. Also, we have the challenge of too many less than ideal births with subsequent long term costs.In both cases costs can be absorbed by a growing population, going the other way is not that easy. The moral issues are very troubling with no obvious solutions.
Never fear, it is a self organizing system and all will be well with the universe just as it has always been.
Dennis L.
Dennis, low productivity parents are having many children whilst the most productive ones none. Darwin would surely have something to say about the outcome for the UK of encouraging this practice.
We believe that the government can take care of all of our problems. But it really cannot, as we deviate further and further from the ways of nature.
Erdles, Darwin did not say the highly productive will have the most surviving children. He said those that have the most surviving children are the best adapted to the environment. The government is setup to promote the low productive.
About 10 years ago, maybe longer, the population of Scotland started falling, to below 5 M, and the economists, followed by the politicians and MSM, started predicting economic catastrophe if population did not start increasing again. The population did increase soon enough, it is about 5.5 M now. Can’t see that lasting much longer.
Oh Dear- have a look at Anthony Smith’s ‘ethnies’- each nation state is indeed built around an ethnic core, and many European nations still hold to jus sanguinis citizenship laws.
Xabier, many of the the immigrants are from the former empire and are more British than the incumbents. What people don’t seem to understand is that much of what might be considered British culture actually comes from the Empire: our taste in food, judicial structure, military culture, corporate governance, naval traditions, language etc.
There are no British, only English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. Only our passports are British, and the Johnny-come-latelys who weren’t born here. Will there still even be a Britain or United Kingdom by the end of this decade? I doubt it.
We here in the US call on the oppressed Scots and Welsh to raise up and throw off your chains, breathe free.
SLM!
(Scottish Lives Matter)
reparations for the Scots!
‘SLM! (Scottish Lives Matter) reparations for the Scots!’
Very few Scots speak Gaelic these days. As an Englishman, I propose taxing the Scots for speaking English – a penny for every English word they speak, hear, read, write or think. It’s only fair. We English are not adequately recompensed for the many benefits we have brought to the world.
ELM!
Ah, by that you mean they should throw off the incompetent and parasitic nationalist career politicians who infest their countries and get back to a normal, less divisive life?
A recent poll showed that half of voters in England support English independence, including a majority of TP and LP voters. And that is without any serious campaign on the matter. We could easily get that into a clear majority.
The trouble is that the two-party, FPTP ‘representative’ Westminster system gives voters no real influence over the future of our society. Neither TP nor LP would ever countenance giving any consideration to the break up of UK. With no party to vote for, we might as well forget it.
The best way to secure English independence is to support Scottish independence and Irish unity. Literally, go on the SNP website and make donations. Or even sign up to membership and set up a standing order. It does not matter whether you like SNP. Scottish independence and Irish unity amount to English independence.
Scottish independence is English independence – up the SNP!
The last six polls have all shown growing majority support for Scottish independence and SNP is set to take a clear majority of seats at the Holyrood elections in May 2021 on a platform of IndyRef2. Scottish independence is looking inevitable now – and so is English independence whether TP and LP like it or not.
Campaigning may also move opinions the other way. And English independence doesn’t just require Scottish independence, it also requires Welsh and Northern Irish independence.
My Scottish ancestors were invaded by Vikings, so I am asking for reparations from Norway.
But I have ancestors who came over on the Mayflower too. Been here 400 years. How long does it take for it to become my land? Or do I owe reparations to the Native Americans?
So hard to keep track.
Agreed 100%. Scots and Welsh, throw off your dependence on annual billions of England’s money, and make your own way in the world. And give us back England’s parliament, England’s laws, England’s church, and perhaps we can then put an Englishman on England’s throne, for the first time since 1485.
An Englishman on the throne of England? Anglo-Saxon without a dash of Celt, Norse, or Teuton? That would be something to see.
We’ll have to thoroughly check out his thoroughbred pedigree, of course, but, formalities aside, meet your new Royal Family.
https://images.celebfamily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/David-Beckham-Children.jpg
Xabier, the first generation immigrants that were imported to do unskilled work are now importing a new generation of immigrants whom they are working as slaves. When slavery was declared unlawful in England in 1772 there were about 12,000 slaves in the whole country. In the city of Leicester today there are about 100,000 slaves. So much for “ethnicity” being unimportant.
All too true: horrible reports in the UK about slum landlords exploiting immigrants, as well of course as in factories.
Something which, for some reason, the Progressive MSM doesn’t care to investigate in any detail.
More Public Entertainment!
Associated Press
Protest erupts after Wisconsin police shoot man from behind
August 24, 2020, 3:47 AM EDT
In this image made from video, protesters gather near the site of a police shooting, Sunday, Aug. 23 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Officers deployed tear gas early Monday in an effort to disperse hundreds of people who took to the streets following a police shooting in Kenosha that also drew a harsh rebuke from the governor after a video posted on social media appeared to show officers shoot at a Black man’s back seven times as he leaned into a vehicle. (WDJT-TV via AP)
In this image made from video, protesters gather near the site of a police shooting, Sunday, Aug. 23 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Officers deployed tear gas early Monday in an effort to disperse hundreds of people who took to the streets following a police shooting in Kenosha that also drew a harsh rebuke from the governor after a video posted on social media appeared to show officers shoot at a Black man’s back seven times as he leaned into a vehicle. (WDJT-TV via AP)
More
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Officers deployed tear gas early Monday to disperse hundreds of people who took to the streets following a police shooting in Kenosha that also drew a harsh rebuke from the governor after a video posted on social media appeared to show officers shoot at a Black man’s back seven times as he leaned into a vehicle.
A person was hospitalized in serious condition following a shooting by officers about 5 p.m. Sunday as officers were responding to a “domestic incident,” the Kenosha Police Department said in a news release. Police in the city, which is in the southeastern corner of Wisconsin about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Milwaukee and 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Chicago, did not provide details about what led to the shooting,
No details yet folks by the Police….
If you are going to shoot someone, why not do it in the safest possible way?
Most casualties in battle were killed either running away or in cold blood, disarmed, after being captured.
Life, so unfair.
Ah, but the streets of the US are not a battle zone!
Are they not? From over here they look rather like one.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=seHKtHmCo3w
Some video NBC
the streets of many D controlled big cities do seem to be quite unsafe.
most everywhere else in the USA, there is much more peace and safety.
https://www.metafilter.com/187515/Architecture-of-Oppression-Racism-and-Bias-in-Community-Planning
The usual stuff. An article called “architecture of ugliness” would be more to the point, since that is what these self righteous nobodies have systematically perpetrated all across the US and most of the world. And rampant ugliness in the built environment oppresses all of us.
But I did like the idea of “inclusive” parks. Lucky Houstonians; they will soon enjoy the wonderful experience of being mugged, raped and murdered on their afternoon stroll. There are good reasons people segregate themselves, and the crime statistics speak volumes about those reasons.
These are very good points. The worst crime is ugliness. As to segregating, I glanced at an article that seemed to be saying the administration passed a law (or adapted a law) so as to make it easier to segregate in community planning. People without community pride interpret that in only one way. Those with lower status are deprived of their right to integrate into places of higher status. They don’t see that it enables them to segregate too, and increase their numbers so as to make THEIR people more powerful
https://youtu.be/gtT9XtKM-5U
Violent criminal history, resists arrest, reaches into vehicle…
He clearly was not following Chris Rock’s simple rules:
Thank you Lidia for shedding some light on the true nature of that felon, and also for providing those excellent guidelines. Although the video didn’t mention the obvious golden rule…That was probably left out for political correctness.
It will surely save a lot of people from a lot of troubles, including being shot seven times in the back.
“The amount paid out by big companies to their investors plummeted between April and June as firms cancelled or cut their dividends to conserve cash during the coronavirus pandemic crisis.
“Total shareholder payouts made globally slumped by $108.1bn (£82.6bn) to $382.2bn, a fall of 22%.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/24/global-dividends-plunge-by-108bn-during-covid-19-crisis
“The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson famously quipped that the stock market has predicted nine of the past five recessions. What he meant is that the stock market is a poor guide to the state of an economy. Today, we can say there is a complete divorce between markets and the state of the global economy.”
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3098456/stock-markets-are-divorced-state-global-economy
“Dun & Bradstreet’s Global Business Impact score for Q3 2020 shows that the risks confronting businesses remain at the record-high first experienced in Q2.”
https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/as-we-enter-a-global-recession-business-risk-has-never-been-so-high/
The article keeps talking about COVID outbreaks in different areas “requiring another round of lockdowns.” As long as this belief system holds, the economy will necessarily do very poorly.
Where my family live in N Spain they are talking about putting a whole town back into the extreme ‘confinement’ lock-down of March, after a piffling number of deaths – absurd!
As though they truly wish finally to hammer smaller businesses into bankruptcy, and the inhabitants into lunacy (or even greater lunacy in the case of my relations.)
Dividend cuts especially hurt pension plans. They, of course, hurt other holders as well.
“Despite Thailand’s public debt approaching its limit of sustainability, the Finance Ministry denies the country is on the brink of bankruptcy and will take a further Bt48 billion loan from the Asian Development Bank late this month.
“Local media are speculating that the government is facing financial collapse…”
https://www.nationthailand.com/business/30393287?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral
Indonesia’s QE hitting headwinds:
“Indonesia’s bond and currency markets, risk benchmarks that tend to move in tandem, are diverging in signs that the nation’s pandemic response is deterring global funds…
“That dynamic started changing as massive borrowings by the government to fund pandemic-recovery stimulus spurred Bank Indonesia to take the unusual step of monetizing debt.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-24/massive-borrowing-sparks-rare-divergence-in-indonesia-bonds-fx
“If the recent spike up in U.S. inflation numbers is a sign of things to come for global markets, that could prove especially bad news for investors in Indian, Russian and Mexican bonds.
“The fixed-income securities of the three countries appear the most vulnerable to any surge in consumer prices…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-24/inflation-shock-will-hit-bonds-hardest-in-india-russia-mexico
Monetising the debt is completely counterproductive unless you can get a third party to accept the money. That is what the US has done successfully for the past fifty years, but it is not a course of action open to smaller countries.
Maybe massive borrowing by less developed countries is not really the way to go. International markets behave too badly.
Australian banks are exposed to residential mortgages, owner-occupied, and investment class, to the tune of 65%. That’s twice that of U.S. banks. Australia also has the highest personal debt to GDP of any country in the world on the back of the longest-running property bubble in history. This place is headed for a world of hurt in 2021, as the enormous stimulus of the past quarter evaporates to a trickle. The reckoning IS coming…
https://images.ratecity.com.au/large/20200811/shot-of-a-young-woman-looking-stressed-while-using-a-laptop-OCQXub0Jo.jpg
Mortgage stress affecting 40% of households, despite property market aflush with stimulus
Billions of dollars’ worth of government and bank support has failed to put a lid on mortgage stress, soaring to its highest level ever.
Out of every 2.5 owner-occupied households, one is experiencing mortgage stress, Digital Finance Analytics’ (DFA) rolling survey of 52,000 households found.
That figure crept up by 1.1 percentage points to 40.2 per cent in the month to July, and is equivalent to more than 1.5 million households who live in their own home.
Victoria had the highest number of owner-occupiers in mortgage stress, at about 430,000…
A person would think that property prices have to fall.
“Yet for some reason,” he added, “renewable energy companies seem drawn to development on Joshua tree woodlands like moths to flame.”
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-08-18/renewable-energy-fights-endangered-species-protection-for-joshua-trees
I wonder how prone to fires these lands are. Are these places where new renewable energy plants will burn, the next time fires come along?
Gail, in two words: very prone. Fires were Nature’s way of clearing the underbrush, returning potash to the soil, and in some cases (redwood trees in particular) releasing the seeds to allow the trees to propagate.
Then came humans, who decided to “manage” the forests, and did so very badly indeed. Then came socialist policies, that subsidised home insurance for people who built on flood zones, earthquake zones, forest fire zones, and so on. And now people are fleeing homes that should never have been built.
Governments often provide insurance of the types you mention themselves, because insurance companies rebel, saying, “Providing this insurance only encourages bad behavior. The insurance takes away the foreseeable outcome of bad behavior.”
Or governments make rules for insurance companies, requiring them to spread the costs more widely than common sense would suggest. This way people who build in safer areas are penalized for the bad behavior of those who build in areas clearly at risk.
Even health insurance has some of this problem. People feel like someone else will fix their problems. Why worry about eating right and exercising?
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/northkorea-kimjongun-coma/2020/08/23/id/983546/
“North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is in a coma, a former aide to South Korea’s late president Kim Dae-jung has told South Korean media…”
again?
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/kim-jong-un-could-already-22565578
“Amid swirling rumours that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is gravely ill and could be in a coma, one expert on the region has claimed that the dictator could already be dead.”
again.
Al Jazeera is saying,
Kim Jong Un gives unusually candid warning on North Korea economy
NBC says,
Perhaps Kim Jong Un simply needs more help, after sacking the premier, with all of the country’s difficulties. This is the real reason he is giving his sister more power.
korean kim has finally been forced to admit that his country is going down the pan because 95% of the population is starving so that his military fantasies can be paid for.
Not too much of a stretch of the imagination to see N Korea as a dress rehearsal for the rest of us
You may be right.
This story now getting picked up by the MSM in the USA, India and the UK. Seems like Kim Jong Un is at least in a coma, allegedly.
kim does this on a regular basis
‘dies’ every so often, then pops up and says—”fooled ya”–again
Today’s system provides more and more stuff and less and less energy.
Cutting the costs provides cheaper products, but, in the end, there is no one to buy them.
This gap is widening and it is filled with the creation of more and more money to secure the functioning of this rising complexity.
In the end, there is not much to buy with the money, except for the dead stuff. The consumption of the energy collapses, as such world full of the dead stuff requires more and more energy, the supply of which, in the end, is not possible to be secured due to the rising costs of the energy.
The final stage of this quest for energy efficiency is too many energy saving devices vs. too little energy.
That way we will have a surplus of power plants, be it nuclear, wind or solar etc.
Too much stuff vs. too little energy.
The human system is cooling down, despite of the rising temperatures on the Earth.
The wind, solar and hydro power plants are in fact energy saving devices, they do not create new energy in the environment, they just transform the present energy.
The change can be brought only by creating new energy that expands the system. That is why we have a significantly colder summer in Europe this year, because the heating of the environment by the fossil fuels is reduced.
The heat in USA during this summer was confined to the South and the urban areas:
“That’s partially owed to the urban heat island effect, or the tendency for pavement and cement to trap heat.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/08/08/northeast-record-hot-july/
The changes in the activity of the Sun have the real impact on the temperature of the environment.
That way we have limits in overheating the system, which would mean the suffocation of the living organisms on the Earth by the lack of oxygen.
This summer proved that with the reduction of fossil fuel use, the economy, i.e. the human system, cools down.
There is no such thing as “cold energy”, there is only a lack of heat, enough heat or overheating.
Urban areas could avoid the overheating problem simply by putting mirrors on all the roofs and painting the freeways pale cream and yellow. A whole lot cheaper than air conditioning everything in sight. But too obvious, I guess.
Psychologically, perhaps, push-button a/c gives that sense of control that is so dear human beings.
And a total absence of discomfort that they seem to like, too.
Mirrors? Maybe when there are no planes in the sky, you would do it. Even then, not sure that’s a good idea for birds or insects.
The more reasonable would be green grass and/or little trees on the flat rooves. but then you need water. There is no easy solution to fix problems the same way everywhere…
Thierry, thank you. But in my experience (and in Africa one gets a lot of experience with flying insects), flying creatures do not fly into mirrors. They fly into plain windows, and of course lamps, which they revolve around in the belief the lamp is at infinity. But I would certainly support grass roofs, except, as you say, their maintenance might be a problem.
We need more and more “demand” for energy products to keep the economy growing.
In fact, the growing demand must be great enough to make up for the rising difficulty of extracting the energy resources and shipping those resources to their point of use. The rising demand must also make up for other inefficiencies creeping into the system, such as less of the spending dollar getting back to the worker. Shutting the economy down for the pandemic works in precisely the opposite direction of the need for more demand for energy products.
Sweden has recorded its highest death toll since a famine swept through the country 150 years ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-sweden-highest-death-toll-150-years-lockdown-herd-immunity-2020-8
This is an absolute count comparison, not a percentage comparison. The article says,
If the comparison was made on a 10% basis, I am sure that a lot of years would have been worse than 2020. I notice that the United States is reported to be at an increase of 11% over expected deaths, for the period February 1, 2020, to present.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm
HIV and Covid-19 are different animals. Retroviruses, such as HIV, have an enzyme called reverse transcriptase that is required for their propagation. Retroviruses integrate their genome into a host cell, but because they are RNA viruses and our genome uses DNA, they cannot do this without an extra step. Reverse transcriptase transcribes their RNA genome into DNA so it can be integrated into the host’s genome with another enzyme called integrase.
While coronaviruses are also RNA viruses, because of their lack of reverse-transcriptase and other proteins used by retroviruses, they are fundamentally different and thus are classified differently.
Is there such a thing as HIV? Seems as though no one can really point to it. That may be true of Covid, as well.
Excellent, fascinating video. Almost two hours long but worth watching the whole lot. I have not come across this scam before (HIV causes AIDS), but it looks like a very successful test-run for COVID-19. The similarities are mind-boggling.
One name crops up throughout the video, which was made in 1997 – Anthony Fauci. And so, here we are again, history repeating itself.
Want to know how the covid-19 story turns out? Watch this video.
So the HIV test is looking for antibodies against HIV? If those antibodies are there, then the antibodies have likely already done the work of getting rid of the HIV infection. The movie is indicating (as point 1 out of 10) that it doesn’t make sense for these antibodies to be causing a problem, if I understood things right. I haven’t gotten through the entire two hours, but I can see that there might be a problem.
The second half of the video discusses what might actually cause AIDS.
HIV seems to be an old virus that goes back at least centuries. Many people with HIV never get AIDS and many with AIDS don’t have HIV. If someone has AIDS-like symptoms but don’t have HIV then they officially don’t have AIDS.
The rise of AIDS in the USA and other industrialised countries (1980 – 1997, when the video was made) coincided with a dramatic rise in recreational drug use, particularly within the gay community (they back this up with research data). The video shows an extensive list of drugs that gained popularity, many of which I have not heard of before. The video asserts that one of the drugs most likely to result in AIDS symptoms is AZT, at the time (1997) the main drug given to AIDS patients to treat them, or as the video states, to treat them when they were diagnosed with HIV but not AIDS, thus ensuring they got AIDS.
The cause of AIDS in Africa is believed to be related to principally poor diet, but the video focused on drug abuse in the USA.
AIDS is not related to a specific disease, and the list gets longer with time (or it did up to 1997). The video lists over 30 diseases associated with AIDS. Which disease you get seems to depend on which drug/s you are taking, amongst other things, but HIV is not one of them. A few scientists in the video applied for govt funds to do detailed research on this, but all applications were turned down.
Somewhere in the video it stated that AZT cost $5 a portion to make but it sold for $500.
How do we know what we think we know?
” Does HIV exist? I’ve read an number of articles ranging from highly technical and scientific to simple language that have me thinking HIV hasn’t been shown to exist.”
“Dear Dave, This is a very controversial question, even among AIDS rethinkers. I’ll let Dr. Ettiene de Harven, the first scientist to isolate and produce an electron micrograph (photo) of a retrovirus, respond with expert technical information first. Dr. de Harven is Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University of Toronto, and achieved the above mentioned isolation while serving as a researcher at Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute in New York. He is also a member of Alive & Well’s Advisory Board.
“Dr. de Harven writes:
“‘No, I do not think that HIV exists because I have never seen any acceptable scientific proof of its existence, especially in AIDS patients. All the claims to the contrary are opinions based on identification of so-called markers for HIV, all of which have been found to be non-specific to HIV. These non-specific markers include the enzyme reverse transcriptase (RT) and the antigen p24 which are commonly believed to be HIV specific but are in fact not.
“‘Moreover, since so-called HIV has never been purified (even according to HIV’s original discoverer, Dr. Luc Montagnier), its specific RNA has never been actually identified nor sequenced. ‘Viral loads’ measured after PCR amplification are therefore not scientifically acceptable as the RNA or DNA they measure is only assumed to be specific genetic components of HIV, but have never been properly identified as such.
“‘Of course, I am quite familiar with the many reports on electron microscope (EM) pictures of ‘HIV particles.’ Indeed, these photos show particles which could very well be taken as retroviruses on the basis of their ultrastructure alone. But all these particles have only been found in complex cell cultures [blood added to culture dishes containing cancer cells and stimulated with various chemical agents], never in an AIDS patient.
“‘Even if there were an acceptable EM of an HIV isolate, it is not possible through EM to distinguish between exogenous and endogenous retroviruses [EXOGENOUS means derived or developed from external sources, having a cause external to the body; ENDOGENOUS means produced from within, originating within an organ or part]. HIV is believed to be an exogenous retrovirus, something that has yet to proved. It could very well be that these hyper-stimulated cell cultures release endogenous particles which have little, if anything, to do with the ‘infection’ of these cultures by an HIV positive patient’s plasma or cells.
“‘Finally, it should be stressed that no researcher has ever succeeded in observing retroviral-looking particles in the plasma of HIV positive patients supposedly presenting with a high ‘viral load’ according to PCR measurements. “It is important to understand that electron microscopy is of practically no use to demonstrate the pathogenicity of HIV or other viruses, however, when the preliminary question is to find out whether a virus is present or absent, EM is probably the best method we have available, especially if appropriate methods for virus concentration and purification are used.
“‘The key question of whether retroviral particles are present in the blood plasma of positive patients presenting with high ‘viral loads’ can be answered by EM research. If, in spite of adequate concentration attempts, the answer is no (actual virus particles are not present), this would carry important implications. If the answer is yes (virus particles are demonstrated to be present), then other non-EM methods would still have to be used to establish a possible pathogenic role for that virus.'”
http://www.aliveandwell.org/html/a_closer_look/faq_doesexist.html
Remember, at one point the cutting edge of science was phlogiston.
It would seem like someone could point to a specific virus. But it does seem to be contagious, suggesting that there is some pathogen that causes it.
Of course, we also have autism, which researchers keep looking for a cause for. When parents started asking questions whether giving large amount of vaccines to babies could be part of the problem, they were told, “Of course not.”
We also have Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It seemed to disappear (or almost disappear) during the lockdown, when few vaccines were given to babies.
I believe that poor diet can lead to autism. I’m sure that there are a large number of people who have a poor diet. Check out the gut and psychology syndrome (GAPS) book which is pretty good at explaining it.
We may believe that watching too much teehee or playing too many video games or inhaling too much cyanide from exhaust gasoline and diesel made from fracked petroleum or fluoride in drinking water can cause autism. But what we believe is neither here nor there. And even if the above beliefs were true, it wouldn’t preclude poor diet or vaccination or glyphosate or microwave radiation from also being causes.
The question is that we don’t know what’s causing autism to skyrocket and the problem is that governments, health agencies, suspected culprit industries and normies like Norman and Duncan have zero interest in finding out.
I didn’t mean “believe” in faith terms but as “understand”. The book that I alluded to (by a doctor who has treated many cases of autism) seems to make a lot of sense. We are what we eat (or ingest) and that is something which I used to think of as a nonsense slogan but it’s hard to think why it would be nonsense.
Gail, I have an interesting theory about what autism is, and why it’s very possible vaccine’s increase the chances of a young child becoming autistic. My theory is evolution has two layers; the 1st being the Darwinian, physical, DNA evolution of a species and the 2nd layer is an energy field, a consciousness or soul using the body to ascend to higher thought levels during the life of that organism. Both the DNA to support a thought level and the consciousness are always at the same thought level, but as one increases the other matches that new higher thought level, then at the death of the body the balance is completely broken and the consciousness completely breaks free.
This is for all life forms including people. But with human consciousness there is a danger of an imbalance between the two layers, namely with the DNA not matching the higher consciousness thought level to the point where part of the consciousness breaks free of the body to be partially outside the body. Still one consciousness, but after part is outside the body, the person’s ability to connect with other people is diminished.
Defined: “The severity of autism is proportional to the percentage of consciousness not fully connected to the body.” How autism could occur with an inoculation with a mercury base for a child at a young age, is the mercury could temporarily reduce the thought level of the mind, and that could cause a large enough imbalance for some of the consciousness to break to the outside of the body.
My deceased Father who was born in 1927 could not make eye contact as a young child, so they took him to a doctor who forced him to make eye contact and after numerous treatments, he could. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean he was cured of autism, but many autistic children cannot make eye contact. And that method is sometimes used to try and improve or cure autism. How it could help is by drawing more of the consciousness back into the body. The danger is if its not done right after symptoms show it may not be possible to fully reconnect the consciousness in the body/mind.
Now someone might ask why the universe would have another form of energy that is ascending to higher thought levels in successive lives and in more evolved species? What’s the purpose, especially since we only observe life on Earth so far? If Stars are releasing thermal energy, while consciousness in lifeforms is ascending to higher thought levels, i.e. higher energy levels, then that suggests we may live in a universe with an energy exchange (if there is enough planets with life). Very hard to prove, but that’s the idea. It’s also notable that doctors have still not yet pinpointed where consciousness is in the mind/body.
Chrome Mags, thank you for a most thought provoking post. There is quite a lot of evidence for a “higher consciousness”: social insects have it, party due to chemical communication by exchange of pheromones, and partly due to some other communication we have not analysed. How, for example, do bees keep the hive cool, with a well established rota of “fanners” at the entrances. How did that rota come about and how is it sustained?
Birds exhibit similar phenomena: how do the avoid collision when they fly beak to tail and wingtip to wingtip? How can a whole flock turn simultaneously? We know that birds can interact with the Earth’s magnetic field, and hence by magnetic induction probably with each other, but the details elude us. Well, the details have never been properly investigated.
Which brings me to humans. And the supposed “paranormal phenomena”. I believe they exist, for the simple reason that I repeated J W Dunne’s dream experiments and obtained the same result he did: dreams contain elements of both past and future experiences. And I know dowsing works because I have seen it happen. But what is the explanation? Nobody seems to want to find out; it’s all dismissed as non science, which when you think about it is a very unscientific attitude.
Extra human communication, however, is one I do discount. There are no Ascended Masters, Atom Essences, or whatever, because they all seem to talk unmitigated drivel. Why did none of them, for example, predict Hale Bopp? Or, for that matter, Covid? Again, more food for thought.
Keep up the good work.
Of much the same mind.
Once one has had ‘paranormal’ experiences they fall perfectly into place and there is nothing to be debated about them.
‘He who tastes, knows’.
‘Extra human communication, however, is one I do discount.’
Depends if Gail will let this one pass. The entities have – allegedly – been warning about catastrophe and glow ball war [Vase] Ming since the 1950s. 🙁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xwtNpjWuEw
Just wondering, are you German originally, Robert?
been saying that all along
every species can communicate with its own,but we are putting all those species in danger, who lived more or less in harmony until we came along
the earth senses an infestation that endangers itself, so why shouldn’t the earth possess the means to cleanse itself?
For Malcopian: no, I am a mongrel. Partly Anglo Saxon (you will find my surname in Beowulf), partly Norman, and a little Celtic. That’s the DNA; culturally I regard myself as a European. My children have, in order, a Renaissance Italian name, a Norman French name, a Mediaeval Frankish name, a Roman name, and a German name. And in spirit I am a refugee from the Hellenistic Age, the greatest civilisation the world has ever seen.
Autism increases when the parents age increases. As we push the child birthing age back we will get more kids with autism.
I know its not socially acceptable, but teens and 20 year olds generally have the healthiest babies.
Ive watched mothers collecting their ‘mentally challenged’ adult kids from our local daycare centre
those mothers are almost invariably elderly.
But it’s not elderly mothers who are the problem, it’s elderly fathers.
Mothers get an egg-stock at birth, fathers make sperm as required
When those mothers die, their kids will need constant care
It’s both. The risk of a firstborn with an autism spectrum disorder triples after a mother turns 35 and a father reaches 40.
Its been common knowledge that down syndrome increases as the age of the mother increases.
Everything goes down hill with age…
My son with autism was born when my husband and I were 31, so I we were not very old.
One theory has been that Vitamin D deficiency is involved. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4302541/
“The apparent increase in the prevalence of autism over the last 20 years corresponds with increasing medical advice to avoid the sun, advice that has probably lowered Vitamin D levels and would theoretically greatly lower activated Vitamin D (calcitriol) levels in developing brains.”
I don’t think a whole lot of work has been done in this area. No one can make money recommending Vitamin D supplements.
@Gail. Yes, there are no guarantees for a 100% healthy child at any age. But even early 30s is late compared to historical norms. No judgement from me, we had our 2 sons when we were early 30s.
My step-sister was born with downs when her parents were in their early 20s.
But I think the statistics show having children later increase the likelihood of complication, combine that with poor diets and lack of sunshine.
Sure 😸, Just because of some report….that found chemicals and a bad heart….no, not that these reports haven’t been doctored in the past to make things justified. Should be interesting none the less 😉, after the verdict is announced in the courtroom and IF they
are set FREE!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qko065dR4pE
Take cover….
A group claiming to be ET started posting coded messages in Oct 2019. Most of the messages have been decoded.
On Nov 5 2019 they posted a coded message in which they said that they have released a virus in China.
The initial work by the virus is now 99% completed. A storm will soon hit us that will wipe out most of humanity.
Maybe this is just nonsense…maybe a intelligence psyop…I don’t know.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfhSTg9WsAEnNfO?format=jpg&name=small
https://twitter.com/i/status/1294834013069164545
I assumed that c19 is a plot hatched by Anarchy 99 from the XXX movie with Vin Diesel come to save us. Vin, where are you? Likely mucking about with snow boards and trial bikes.
Do you know anything more about this group?
Have you got a poofy, glittery dress, Gail?
I haven’t been a movie watcher, not even the movie E.T.
Gail, this is real. I mean, it’s a documentary about a real-life cult whose leader claimed to receive messages from space. And seemed to like strapping young men. And dressed like a drag queen on LSD.
I found a Wikipedia article about the Archangel Uriel. The archangel is mentioned in the apocrypha and venerated by some branches of Judaism and Christianity. I had never heard of Archangel Uriel.
You can buy a (used) CD of the movie for $12.00 at this Amazon site.
https://www.amazon.com/Children-Stars-Bill-Perrine/dp/B008X0TP32
Oh sure, Uriel as the name of an angel goes way back. This woman also identified her friend as Lucifer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udfkKPYQA5A
Uriel is mentioned often in the Book of Enoch. In some Christian traditions, four archangels guard the four cardinal points: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel.
The name means “God is my light”, and it became the motto of the University of Oxford: “Dominus illuminatio mea”.
Gabriel before me
Raphael behind me
Michael to my right
Uriel on my left side
In the circle of fire
This is from the lyrics to Kate Bush’s song Lily.
https://youtu.be/MWaqPOnR5wU
The only other thing that I know is that they are pushing for a crypto currency called XRP.
Crypto currencies are basically Chinese intelligence controlled scams, from what I have read.
If you go to their Twitter account you will see SWIFT written in their green background plate.
They are targeting SWIFT and the dollar.
“Births in Japan and the U.S. are forecast to fall next year as the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic prompts young people to think twice about getting married and having children.
“In Japan, which saw its population decline for the 11th consecutive year in 2019, births will drop about 10% in 2021… Even before COVID-19, Asia’s worst aging fears were beginning to come true.”
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/Births-set-to-drop-10-in-Japan-and-US-in-COVID-baby-bust
Japan is bringing its population down to a sustainable level. This is great good news.
Yep, going in the right direction.
Homo Sapiens need to get back to their historical population of 1-10 million.
7.7 billion in a collapsing ecosystem is suicide.
I volunteer the boomers…
Wow this is the first time someone has put up a number smaller than mine. Duncan, you maybe right.
Japan won’t need many more schools or teachers.
“…former Reserve Bank Governor D Subbarao says India’s short and medium term growth prospects continue to remain grim and the government should not read too much into the economic activity coming back from the depressed base of lockdown.”
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/don-t-read-too-much-into-green-shoots-it-s-a-mechanical-rebound-subbarao-11598161908461.html
“China’s fragile economic recovery is ushering in a dangerous new phase for the nation’s $4.1 trillion corporate bond market.
“With the economy now strong enough for policy makers to dial back financial support but still too weak to save the most distressed borrowers, some fund managers are bracing for defaults on domestic Chinese debt to hit record highs this year.”
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/china-investors-brace-for-record-defaults-in-risky-end-to-2020/articleshow/77699971.cms
Regarding China, the article says,
A person wonders when this point is reached, in many places in the world.
“The coronavirus recession that began as a short-term shutdown devastating low-wage workers is now bearing down on white-collar America, where employers have been slower to rehire and job losses are more likely to be permanent.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/23/white-collar-unemployment-coronavirus-400130
“…we are still living on the sugar high of free money, and it appears more is on its way. The real economic consequences come when the helicopter money stops.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/08/22/the-economy-is-on-a-sugar-high-with-28-million-unemployed/#6a7d79931c15
“Even before Covid, global markets were drenched with systemic risk. US-China trade wars and/or overpriced corporate junk bonds have long since threatened to spark another 2008-style collapse. Now, though, as valuations spiral upward, against all economic logic, it’s the banking sector that may once again tip us over the edge.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/08/22/a-list-bigwigs-ignoring-impending-disaster/
It is amazing that nothing too major has collapsed, so far.
Presumably the Plunge Protection Team are working around the clock.
The white collar job loss is more of a secondary effect of the shutdown.
“The UK Government is preparing for power outages, economic chaos and public unrest if a second wave of coronavirus coincides with a disorderly no-deal Brexit, according to leaked emergency plans.”
https://metro.co.uk/2020/08/23/water-rationing-food-shortages-second-wave-clashes-no-deal-brexit-13166025/
“Britain’s worst wheat harvest in 40 years is likely to cause a price hike in flour and bread, the industry has warned.
“Only about 40% of the usual amount of wheat crop was planted last October due to heavy rain, while crops being harvested now are very poor quality due to droughts earlier in the season followed by lots of August rain, the National Farmers’ Union said.”
https://news.sky.com/story/worst-uk-wheat-harvest-in-40-years-prompts-flour-price-hike-fears-12054033
Let’s hope there is a very good harvest somewhere in the world. Of course, if restaurants and schools cafeterias are closed, less flour may be needed worldwide.
Canada, Australia and Russia looking good for wheat – Russia is set for its second-biggest crop ever. Not so good in the UK and EU, however.
As they should: but what will the quality of the planning be?
I am not at all confident.
Here we go stockpiling, yet again……
Harry, I doubt this terminally incompetent UK government is “preparing” for any such thing. Rather, they are preparing excuses, hopeless new and improved policies, and absurd initiatives whose sole purpose is to keep people distracted from the ongoing collapse.
One recalls in this context the confidence-inspiring ‘Feed the Nation mode’ the UK govt. referred to in March: and then the supermarkets stated that they had had no conversations with officials at all….. Fortunately, they had their own emergency plans.
It sounds as if the group is expecting outlying parts of the UK, like the Channel Islands, to be hit worst.
“Europe’s banks retreat from commodities lending…
“For the past half-century, a small group of European banks has financed the trade in natural resources, forging a symbiotic relationship with the commodity traders that put them at the heart of an enormous expansion in global commerce…
“…after a string of collapses and scandals that have led to billions of dollars in losses, almost every leading lender is looking again at its presence in the sector.”
https://www.thenational.ae/business/banking/europe-s-banks-retreat-from-commodities-lending-1.1067300
“…banks in Europe were among the most vulnerable institutions as the coronavirus pandemic sent already challenged economies into a tailspin and pushed loan-loss provisions to their highest level in a decade…
““European banks face a profitability crisis,” said Citigroup Inc. banking analyst Ronit Ghose.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facing-a-profitability-crisis-europes-banks-rush-to-restructure-11598184000
“European manufacturing’s bounceback from its pandemic-induced crash this spring is slowing — and in Germany, the region’s industrial heartland, executives worry that the recovery could soon run out of steam, leaving them with years of painful rebuilding ahead…
“One of the hardest hit sectors has been the carmaking industry… IHS Markit forecasts that global car sales will fall from 88m last year to 69m this year.”
https://www.ft.com/content/7a739543-a39e-4301-830d-dddc8a0f503b
A drop from 88 million to 69 million cars sales would be a drop of 22%. Given that some cars will be reaching the ends of their lifetimes, the total number of vehicles on the road may fall. Fuel demand will drop further, unless there is a big rebound in driving.
“Public killing giraffes for food as virus ravages Kenya’s economy and leaves millions hungry:
“In parts of Kenya, the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has been so catastrophic that people have started to kill endangered wildlife for food.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/kenyans-hunting-giraffes-elephants-food-lockdown-leaves-unemployed/
The people who wrung their hands over the fate of poor Africans without lavish health services might reflect on what the lock-downs have done to them.
And the locusts are busy killing endangered humans. Gaia is a harsh mistress.
When limits are reached, it is not just the trees that people cut down for fuel; it is the wild animals that they will eat for food.
This is the most brilliant video I’ve seen in a while.
The first twelve and a half minutes that is.The rap song that follows the speech detracts from its importance IMHO.
Anyway, this lady rocks.
This is a live exercise.
We are being tested.
https://youtu.be/kuO1pnNwH5Y
I have a hard time believing that the pandemic is related to 5-G networks. I think 5-g networks are too expensive relative to what they really can do; trying to push this cost on the population as a whole cannot work; they are already too stressed by all of the other demands on their income.
5G is coming, expensive or not. It’s the linchpin of the fourth industrial revolution that will allow people to control automated factories and warehouses anywhere on earth from a computer anywhere on earth.
Machines are now being built without control panels, although they may still have an ON/OFF switch. In order to get the machine to do what you want it to, you have tell it over the 5G internet via a PC.
Anyway, this is a rollercoaster for high tech companies. City governments will be spending billions on installing and upgrading equipment—and the more they spend, the more efficient they will be—if the tech companies’ PR blurb is anything to go by.
But what if 5G radiation is dangerous or deadly to human health?
Well, never mind that. We’ll just pretend there’s a virus out there doing all the damage.
How does 5G allow this and Fiber Optic does not? Do you even know what 5G is? Its junk that works if you stand right under the antenna. It doesn’t go through walls at all, unless you bind it with a lower frequency channel, which negates the speed gains.
5G is just marketing BS so you’ll upgrade to the latest iPhone.
I thought she and others are saying not that 5-G networks are the cause of the pandemic, but that the amount of radiation coming out of them is an order of magnitude (or whatever, a lot more) greater than the previous Gs, so much so that it is likely to cause very-difficult-to-measure health issues, and which may make people more susceptible to the virus. But we don’t know because the research has not been and possibly will not be done. That us my understanding anyway.
What a load of garbage. Seems that a lot of people are losing their shit these days.
I thought she more or less hit the nail on the head.
I have worked in the wireless industry for 20 years. This 5g fear is just stupid.
Pentagon is now officially studying the UFO phenomenon.
https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2314065/establishment-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-task-force/
E=mc2
If we could turn matter into energy then our energy problems would be over.
I saw two discs as orange lights against a blue sky last summer. They moved silently across the sky. There was no sonic boom.
Maybe they turn the atoms in the atmosphere into energy and move silently in light? Maybe that is also their energy source?
But what force would they use?
Yoshua, we have a yellow light in the sky that turns matter into energy for us. Civilisation worked pretty well (see ‘Great Pyramid’, ‘Library of Alexandria’, ‘Pantheon’, ‘Sistine Chapel’, &c) when we confined ourselves almost entirely to that source of energy.
Why hyperinflation is not a possible scenario for the future?
As the complexity rises, there is an increasing need to inject money into more and more entities that keep the system functioning. We no longer live in a simple world where just food and shelter is needed. We need sophisticated agricultural machines, homes that require a lot of electronics, high-tech medicine etc.
That way hyperinflation is simply NOT POSSIBLE. There are too many poor people who in fact depend on costly infrastructure.
The people do not percieve the rising hidden costs that form the prerequisite of the availability of products, energy etc.
That way hyperinflation means complete unavilability, as the rising number of specialists that keep the system functioning, loses their ability sustain their living.
That way today’s money printing is a way to prop up the rising complexity, so that every part of the system gets what it needs.
The biggest problem of today is the declining consumption with the rising age and poverty of the population.
When money printing stops, we immediately have a terrible deflation, which means that the prices are too low for producers, which stops the production and the system crashes.
Printing money is not printing energy. If energy use is going down then less is being done and made. No money printing will change that.
The big issue is the international exchange of currencies. The central bank of each country can attempt to print more currency, but some countries will be more successful than others. The amount of real goods will not rise, and this is a problem.
I think the big issue is whether the system of interchangability of currency holds up. If there is not enough food to go around, countries will first stop exporting food. Then, all of the currency will not really help improve supply.
There may also be too much of many things, such as electric cars and solar panels. Makers will want to dump them on the world market, making other manufacturers unhappy.
At some point the international trade system will have to change dramatically. Some countries (such as Venezuela and Lebanon) will find themselves left out. Others will find smaller, more local, alliances.
Issuing debt is not printing money. I’d even suggest that monetizing debt isn’t printing money either.
People see debt as money, but it’s not – it’s a money substitute. It can be used like money, but differs in that it must be paid back or defaulted on.
When our central and commercial banks issue oodles of new debt into our economy, talking heads and goldbugs love to scream how hyperinflation is just around the corner. But they fail to point out how more and more of that debt goes bad (defaults), this limiting the extent of inflation, and actually creating a greater ongoing need for debt issuance just to keep the system going.
When governments actually start printing physical dollars and circulating them in the economy (likely after a huge debt collapse and Great Depression 2.0), then hyperinflation will be a risk, as physical currency doesn’t have the ability to be defaulted on like debt does (try defaulting on a $20 bill – short of setting it on fire or eating it, I’m not sure how else you’d go about it). It will continue to circulate, pushing up prices within the economy, each time more physical money is issued.
I think Nicole Foss wrote about it best when she used the term “hyperexpansion”. Hyperinflation is cutting up the wealth pie into smaller and smaller pieces so everyone still can get some (though probably never as much as they need/want); hyperexpansion is keeping the slices of the wealth pie the same, but allowing multiple (debt-based) claims to exist on each piece of the pie (creating the illusion that there is enough pie for everyone) . The latter works a heck of a lot better in terms of price and social stability… until everyone starts reaching for pieces of pie they believed to be theirs, only to find out that someone higher up the credit-food-chain had dibs on it (i.e. they never really owned what they thought they owned).
Cheers,
-GBV
I think you are confusing currency with money, they are not the same.
CHS has a Musings out and it is to me worth a read, summary:
Dollar to remain strong – in the interest of the wealthy and powerful
No hyperinflation – it is in the interest of the wealthy and powerful to keep the people under control, hyperinflation destroys that
Increasing interest rates – banks cannot make money at very low interest rates and society does not function without banks.
He is worth a read, very reasonable in price and out of all the subscriptions I have, it is more or less the go to source. He also links some interesting sites which have nice alternative views of things. One of those sites notes the migration of wealthier people and their children from public schools, some of those commenting have interesting jobs – do as I say, not as I do.
Dennis L.
I am a little confused about which of CHS’s articles you are talking about. This seems to be his most recent one. http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/08/big-tech-monopoly-and-pretense-of.html
I don’t think the subject matter is right, however. He writes an awfully lot.
He has a subscription only entitled “Musings.”
Dennis L.
Thanks! He must work 23 hours per day!
Link to Boston Globe article regarding schools.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/08/metro/families-with-means-leave-public-schools-private-schools-or-learning-pods-raising-concerns-about-worsening-educational-inequality/
Link to Musings subscription:
https://www.oftwominds.com/musings-sample.html
Disclaimer: I have no link to CHS, I have never met him, he has interesting links to other sites and he is looking at alternative economics. Like many here, looking for ideas on what happens going forward.
Thanks for a wonderful site where debate still occurs and civility is the rule.
Dennis L.
I have corresponded with CHS on occasion. I have never met him in person. He has included images from OFW in his posts in the past, on occasion.
I can definitely see the widening difference in educational inequality. The families in which the parents do not themselves speak English are at a definite disadvantage, for example. Parents who can afford it will send their children to private schools that are open, or to some sort of learning pod.
Just as it should be perhaps?
The basis of Western Civilization has been the successful passing that success on to their progeny, in the form of a superior education and opportunities. Seems quite natural to me.
The nobleman of the 17th or 18th century was often the descendant of the capable and canny shepherd, innkeeper or tradesman of the 13th century, replacing the old noble families (c 10th century) which had largely died out by then and were proud of not being able to write properly.
Frankly, we should be all for inequality of outcome, just so long as it has not merely been bought but earned.
So much public education is so useless and 3rd-rate that it’s a pity we have nothing better for the young to do all day.
James Elroy Flecker (yes, the Hassan guy) wrote a short but fascinating prose dialogue about education, entitled “The Grecians”, in 1910. It is unashamedly elitist, but is very much of its time in that it talks only about the education of boys. Pretty much the kind of education I endured, where girls lived on Atlantis or some other fabulous island.
“Increasing interest rates – banks cannot make money at very low interest rates and society does not function without banks.”
I disagree here.
rates must stay near zero, which is the prerequisite for govs and CBs to continue their massive increase in debt as they create money with digits on their computers. With near zero rates, there is no extra burden for them to add to their pile of debt.
and this debt is becoming ever more necessary to prop up the weakening energy economy.
banks?
if banks “cannot make money” at low rates, the govs/CBs will have to bail them out/prop them up, which is easy to do because banks don’t require tangible resources; they just need some of that gov/CB created digital money sent their way.
A higher level of handout.
whether by stealth means or otherwise, the banks will be propped up, because he is correct that we need our banks.
Yes that does make sense banks are here to stay and interest rates will stay on zero for a long time since growth is finished so QE INFINITY seems to be the only trick up central bank sleeves for the time being .The aim for countries will be to avoid hyperinflation.
Banks don’t have to make money off interest rates. They are given a percentage of every Covid loan they distribute, in effect acting as transfer agents. My banker friend says his bank is flush with large profits.
This becomes a trap. If the emergency loan transfer racket is ever removed, the entire banking system (aside from the TBTF banks), goes under. The fed has driven them to insolvency. Also, fed laws put smaller banks in jeopardy since the TBTF banks write all the regulations.
They can create money on their computer screens. As long as they can pay the electric bill for their computers, and someone is repaying a small portion of the debt, they will be in business.