A $1.9 trillion stimulus package was recently signed into law in the United States. Can such a stimulus bill, plus packages passed in other countries, really pull the world economy out of the downturn it has been in since 2020? I don’t think so.
The economy runs on energy, far more than it operates on growing debt. Our energy problems don’t appear to be fixable in the near term, such as six months or a year. Instead, the economy seems to be headed for a collapse of its debt bubble. Eventually, we may see a reset of the world financial system leading to fewer interchangeable currencies, far less international trade and falling production of goods and services. Some governments may collapse.
[1] What Is Debt?
I understand debt to be an indirect promise for future goods and services. These future goods and services can only be created if there are adequate supplies of the right kinds of energy and other materials, in the right places, to make these future goods and services.
I think of debt as being a time-shifting device. Indirectly, it is a promise that the economy will be able to provide as many, or more, goods and services in the future compared to what it does at the time the loan is taken out.
Common sense suggests that it is much easier to repay debt with interest in a growing economy than in a shrinking economy. Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff unexpectedly ran across this phenomenon in their 2008 working paper, This Time Is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises. They reported (p. 15), “It is notable that the non-defaulters, by and large, are all hugely successful growth stories.” In other words, their analysis of 800 years of governmental debt showed that default was almost inevitable if a country stopped growing or started shrinking.
The IMF estimates that the world economy shrank by 3.5% in 2020. There are many areas with even worse indications: Euro Area, -7.2%; United Kingdom, -10.0%; India, -8.0%; Mexico, -8.5%; and South Africa, -7.5%. If these situations cannot be turned around quickly, we should expect to see collapsing debt bubbles. Even the US, which shrank by 3.4%, needs a rapid return to growth if it is to keep its debt bubble inflated.
[2] The Inter-Relationship Among (a) Growing Debt, (b) Growing Energy Consumption and a (c) Growing Economy
When we are far from energy limits, growing debt seems to pull the economy along. This is a graphic I put together in 2018, explaining the situation. A small amount of debt is helpful to the system. But, if there gets to be too much debt, both oil prices and interest rates rise, bringing the braking system into action. The bicycle/economy rapidly slows.
Just as a two-wheeled bicycle needs to be going fast enough to stay upright, the economy needs to be growing rapidly enough for debt to do what it is intended to do. It takes energy supply to create the goods and services that the economy depends on.
If oil and other energy products are cheap to produce, their benefit will be widely available. Employers will be able to add more efficient machines, such as bigger tractors. These more efficient machines will act to leverage the human labor of the workers. The economy can grow rapidly, without the use of much debt. Figure 2 shows that the world oil price was $20 per barrel in 2020$, or even less, prior to 1974.
Figure 3 below shows the historical relationship between the growth in US energy consumption (red line) and the dollar increase in US debt growth required to add a dollar increase in GDP (blue line). This chart calculates ratios for five-year periods because ratios for individual years are unstable.
Based on Figure 3, the US average annual growth in energy consumption (red line) generally fell between 1951 and 2020. The quantity of debt that needed to be added to create an additional $1 dollar of GDP (blue line) has generally been rising.
According to Investopedia, Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period. Notice that there is no mention of debt in this definition. If businesses or governments can find a way to make large amounts of credit available to borrowers who are not very credit worthy, it becomes easy to sell cars, motorcycles or homes to buyers who may never repay that debt. If the economy hits turbulence, these marginal buyers are likely to default, causing a collapse in a debt bubble.
[3] Analyzing Energy Consumption Growth, Debt Growth and Economic Growth for Broader Groupings of Years
To get a better idea what is happening with respect to energy growth, debt growth, and GDP growth, I created some broader groupings of years, based primarily on patterns in Figure 2, showing inflation-adjusted oil prices. The following groupings of years were chosen:
- 1950-1973
- 1974-1980
- 1981-2000
- 2001-2014
- 2015-2020
Using these groupings of years, I put together charts in which it is easier to see trends.
Figure 4 shows that for the US, there has been a general downward trend in the annual growth of energy consumption. At same time, real (that is, inflation-adjusted) GDP has been trending downward, but not quite as quickly.
We would expect that lower energy consumption would lead to lower growth in real GDP because it takes energy of the appropriate kinds to make goods and services. For example, it takes oil to ship most goods. It takes electricity to operate computers and keep the lights on. According to the World Coal Association, large quantities of coal are used in producing cement and steel. These are important for construction, such as is planned in stimulus projects around the world.
Also, on Figure 4, the period 1981 to 2000 shows an uptick in both energy consumption growth and real GDP growth. This period corresponds to a period of relatively low oil prices (Figure 2). With lower oil prices, businesses found it affordable to add new devices to leverage human labor, making workers more productive. The growing productivity of workers is at least part of what led to the increased growth in real GDP.
Figure 5, above, is disturbing. It strongly suggests that the US economy (and probably a lot of other economies) has needed to add an increasing amount of debt to add $1 of GDP in recent years. This pattern started long before President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package in 2021.
To make matters worse, GDP growth in Figure 5 has not been reduced to remove the impact of inflation. On average, removing the impact of inflation reduces the above GDP growth by about half. In the period 2015 to 2020, it took about $4.35 of additional debt to add one dollar of GDP growth, including inflation. It would take about double that amount, or $8.70 worth of debt, to create $1.00 worth of inflation-adjusted growth. With such a low return on added debt, it seems unlikely that the $1.9 trillion stimulus package will increase the growth of the economy very much.
[4] Falling interest rates (Figure 6) are a major part of what allowed the rapid growth in debt after 1981 shown in Figure 5.
Clearly, debt is more affordable if the interest rate is lower. For example, auto loans and home mortgages have lower monthly payments if the interest rate is lower. It is also clear that governments need to spend less of their tax revenue on interest rate payments if interest rates are lower. Changes made by US President Ronald Reagan when he took office 1981 also encouraged the use of more debt.
A major concern with respect to today’s debt bubble is the fact that interest rates are about as low as they can go without going negative. In fact, the interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds is now 1.72%, which is higher than the February 2021 average rate shown on the chart. As interest rates rise, it becomes more costly to add more debt. As interest rates rise, businesses will be less likely to take on debt in order to expand and hire more workers.
[5] Interest expense is a major expense of governments, businesses, and homeowners everywhere. Energy costs are another major expense of governments, businesses, and homeowners. It makes sense that falling interest rates can partly hide rising energy prices.
A trend toward lower interest rates was needed starting in 1981 because the US could no longer produce large amounts of crude oil that were profitable to sell at less than $20 per barrel, in inflation-adjusted prices. Lower interest rates made adding debt more feasible. This added debt could smooth the transition to an economy that was less dependent on oil, now that it was high-priced. The lower interest rates helped all segments of the economy adjust to the new higher cost of oil and other fuels.
[6] The US experience shows precisely how helpful having a rapidly growing supply of inexpensive to produce oil could be to an economy.
US oil production, excluding Alaska (blue “remainder” in Figure 7), rose rapidly after 1945 but began to decline not long after hitting a peak in 1970. This growing oil production had temporarily provided a huge boost to the US economy.
Up until almost 1970, US oil production was rising rapidly. Figure 8 shows that during this period, incomes of both the bottom 90% of workers and the top 10% of workers increased rapidly. Over a period of about 20 years, incomes for both groups grew by about 80%, after adjusting for inflation. On average, workers were about 4% better off each year, with the rapid growth in very inexpensive-to-produce oil, all of which stayed in the US (rather than being exported). US imports of inexpensive-to-produce oil also grew during this period.
Once oil prices were higher, income growth for both the lower 90% and the top 10% slowed. With the changes made starting in 1981, wage disparities quickly started to grow. There suddenly became a need for new, high-tech approaches that used less oil. But these changes were more helpful to the managers and highly educated workers than the bottom 90% of workers.
[7] Most of the world’s cheap-to-extract oil sources have now been exhausted. Our problem is that the world market cannot get prices to rise high enough for producers to cover all of their expenses, including taxes.
Based on my analysis, the world price of oil would need to be at least $120 per barrel to cover all of the costs it needs to cover. The costs that need to be covered include more items than an oil company would normally include in its costs estimates. The company needs to develop new fields to compensate for the ones that are being exhausted. It needs to pay interest on its debt. It also needs to pay dividends to its shareholders. In the case of shale producers, the price needs to be high enough that production outside of “sweet spots” can be carried on profitably.
For oil exporters, it is especially important that the sales price be high enough so that the government of the oil exporting country can collect adequate tax revenue. Otherwise, the exporting country will not be able to maintain food subsidy programs that the population depends on and public works programs that provide jobs.
[8] The world can add more debt, but it is difficult to see how the debt bubble that is created will really pull the world economy forward rapidly enough to keep the debt bubble from collapsing in the next year or two.
Many models are based on the assumption that the economy can easily go back to the growth rate it had, prior to COVID-19. There are several reasons why this seems unlikely:
- Many parts of the world economy weren’t really growing very rapidly prior to the pandemic. For example, shopping malls were doing poorly. Many airlines were in financial difficulty. Private passenger auto sales in China reached a peak in 2017 and have declined every year since.
- At the low oil prices prior to the pandemic, many oil producers (including the US) would need to reduce their production. The 2019 peak in shale production (shown in Figure 7) may prove to be the peak in US oil production because of low prices.
- Once people became accustomed to working from home, many of them really do not want to go back to a long commute.
- It is not clear that the pandemic is really going away, now that we have kept it around this long. New mutations keep appearing. Vaccines aren’t 100% effective.
- As I showed in Figure 5, adding more debt seems to be a very inefficient way of digging the economy out of a hole. What is really needed is a growing supply of oil that can be produced and sold profitably for less than $20 per barrel. Other types of energy need to be similarly inexpensive.
I should note that intermittent wind and solar energy is not an adequate substitute for oil. It is not even an adequate substitute for “dispatchable” electricity production. It is simply an energy product that has been sufficiently subsidized that it can often make money for its producers. It also sounds good, if it is referred to as “clean energy.” Unfortunately, its true value is lower than its cost of production.
[9] What’s Ahead?
I expect that oil prices will rise a bit, but not enough to raise prices to the level producers require. Interest rates will continue to rise as governments around the world attempt more stimulus. With these higher interest rates and higher oil prices, businesses will do less and less well. This will slow the economy enough that debt defaults become a major problem. Within a few months to a year, the worldwide debt bubble will start to collapse, bringing oil prices down by more than 50%. Stock market prices and prices of buildings of all kinds will fall in inflation-adjusted dollars. Many bonds will prove to be worthless. There will be problems with empty shelves in stores and gasoline stations with no products to sell.
People will start to see that while debt is a promise for the equivalent of future goods and services, it is not necessarily the case that those who make the promises will be able to stand behind these promises. Paper wealth generally can be expected to lose its value.
I can imagine a situation, not too many years from now, when countries everywhere will establish new currencies that are not as easily interchangeable with other currencies as today’s currencies are. International trade will dramatically fall. The standard of living of most people will fall precipitously.
I doubt that the new currencies will be electronic currencies. Keeping the electricity on is a difficult task in economies that increasingly need to rely solely on local resources. Electricity may be out for months at a time after an equipment failure or a storm. Having a currency that depends on electricity alone would be a poor idea.
“Will a collapse trigger global meltdown?
“…In ways remarkably analogous to the unfolding global financial crisis of today, world credit had been built after 1919 on a pyramid of increasingly dubious debts, with the house of Morgan and Wall Street financial firms sitting at the peak of the pyramid.”
https://www.newagebd.net/article/133890/will-a-collapse-trigger-global-meltdown
“A global population crash is coming – global depopulation is the looming existential threat that no one is talking about.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-29/global-fertility-rate-a-population-crash-is-coming
Quote from the article
“There is some evidence that shrinking populations are bad for the global economy. To me, however, the greater tragedy would be a failure to take full advantage of the planet’s capacity to sustain human life. No kind of family policy should be mandatory. But there should be policies that make larger families a more appealing option, both economically and otherwise”
H-we’re failing to take full advantage- onwards and upwards. We finite worlders must be wrong.
Of course from an environmental standpoint more humans is absolutely the last thing we need but such are the contradictions inherent in our infinite growth paradigm.
If you stop and think about it, having a shrinking population is terrible for an economy. The economy can no longer benefit from economies of scale. Instead, governments and all kinds of current investment are overbuilt, relative to the new smaller number of citizens. Fewer teachers are needed. Fewer schools are needed. Probably the same number of roads are needed, but the upkeep on these roads will be just as high. The cost of the roads needs to be spread over fewer citizens, making it higher per person. Fewer stores and homes are needed. The big business becomes taking down unneeded homes, instead of building new ones. Taking down old homes can be done cheaply, however.
The article, “Will a collapse trigger global meltdown?” is a William Engdahl article about China’s real estate bubble. The Chinese government is trying to somewhat let the air out of the bubble by providing lending for stimulus of other kinds, and reducing real estate loans, even though many of these loans are rolling over. He says that the Bank of China is anything but safe. A worldwide debt crisis could start from China.
That will only happen if the CEP fails…. the CBs will surely be able to hold this together until the CEP is completed…
The key is that they keep oil consumption at a reduced rate … they have shown that it is possible to pay people to do nothing… shut businesses down for extended periods… without blowing up the economy…
Debt is irrelevant — that can be papered over… what cannot be papered over is a massive mismatch on the supply – demand side of oil.
Oil makes the world go around… the world go around…
“UN chief warns of coming debt crisis for developing world:
“The world faces severe problems of debt sustainability in the wake of the coronavirus crisis that have not been properly understood or addressed, and which threaten to tip developing countries into a rising wave of hunger, poverty, social unrest and conflict, António Guterres, secretary-general of the UN, has warned.”
https://www.ft.com/content/abcd97d3-fb65-47e5-973a-598514f1fd5a
“Four-fifths of Sudan’s £861m debt to UK is interest:
“Sudan, ruled by an unelected military-led transitional government after longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir was deposed in 2019, owes the UK almost £900m. But the Observer can reveal that almost 80% of that was accrued from interest, leading to calls for an unconditional debt amnesty.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/28/four-fifths-of-sudans-861m-debt-to-uk-is-interest
They come out like figures on an old town hall clock, uttering the same obvious warnings,ringing the bell; then disappear, nothing changed.
Xabier, they do. I’ve lost count of the times spokespeople for the UN, the IMF, The World Bank, the IMF etc. have popped up over the past few years to warn that debt is on a dangerously unsustainable trajectory.
“And nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before…”
Oh, I put the IMF in twice. I meant to reference the BIS, as they take the prize for doomiest prognosticator of all.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/09/22/bis-warns-lehman-era-excesses-building-global-debt-markets/
Harry, I spent a few weeks after the 2007-2009 debacle reading recent BIS white-papers dealing with Counter-Party Clearing of Derivative Contracts. I’d print them out and yellow highlight all the ambiguous words like: perhaps, may, projected, assumed, if, could, probable and a dozen others. Each page had so many highlights it was ridiculous. Having some sense of the function BIS serves, I wouldn’t shop their used-banking lot for a low-mileage deal. One knowledgeable fellow on a blog I frequented quipped at my puzzlement – “what makes you think they want to fix anything”?
The poorest countries are definitely the most vulnerable. The cutback in purchases from rich countries are a huge issue.
Quite a few of the poor countries owe money to China, and China is not interested in cancelling their debt.
“Investors are fretting over inflation. Scores of US companies are saying they are right to.
“A growing list of businesses are warning that supply-chain bottlenecks, increasing raw material costs and higher labour expenses are beginning to bite.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f0bbed31-bea8-4542-b953-096762d2e59f
“M1 has been soaring but is not having any effect on short-term interest rates because they are zero percent. It is making the current economic and financial environment more fragile than in the past…
“Business and consumers respond to the price of money. What they see is rising interest rates. This perception and reality are a form of tightening because it discourages borrowing. The Fed cannot do anything about it.”
https://www.fxempire.com/forecasts/article/the-bond-market-is-tightening-the-fed-is-in-a-box-the-economy-will-pay-714186
Rising interest rates encourage more saving and faster repayment of debt. This is a good thing, as every classical economist will tell you.
“China Moves Forward on Credit Rating Rules as Defaults Climb… China’s ratings firms have long been criticized for issuing inflated grades…
“About 96% of onshore credit scores are the equivalent of investment grade. What’s more, a recent report by industry watchdogs showed that a higher proportion of higher-quality borrowers defaulted compared to lower-rated firms.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-28/china-seeks-feedback-on-rules-to-improve-credit-rating-industry
“China’s daily yuan fixing is once again drawing attention.
“The currency is set for its biggest monthly slide since last March, spurring traders to look closely at the reference rate again to scour for policy signals.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-28/china-s-yuan-fixing-once-again-draws-attention-as-rally-falters
“Nearly a yearlong bull run among industrial metals is faltering this month as the unwinding of a massive stimulus in China slows demand, underscoring the increasingly pivotal role its state-led economy plays in global commodity booms.”
https://www.livemint.com/auto-news/china-helped-rev-up-and-then-slow-down-the-global-commodities-boom-11616996720537.html
We depend on China to pull the world economy forward! If China slows down its stimulus, the world economy tends to falter. China’s sliding currency could reflect this problem as well.
Ratings are somewhat worse than useless!
They just never give up…
How many times have the MSM trotted out one (of the very few) cases that involve a young healthy person? As they attempt to convince the CovIDIOTS that covid is not only a danger to old people…
Here we go again with more lies aimed at convincing parents to protect their children by getting them vaccinated (even though almost no children have died and the vaccines do not stop you from contracting Covid).
Actually the headline is meant to shock – the person is not particularly young nor healthy – she looks like a semi obese middle aged hag…..
‘A miracle I survived’: Younger Brazilians hit by COVID surge
Experts say younger patients are developing severe COVID-19 symptoms and dying, as hospitals are pushed to the brink.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/28/miracle-i-survived-younger-brazilians-hit-covid-surge
We are in unprecedented times. Not because of the deadliest virus known to mankind, but because we have never been attacked with such ferocious psychological methods as is deliberately being done today by our UK and Scottish governments; measures to coerce us, manipulate us, to scare us, to shame us, and to make us shame other people for not following orders pertaining to COVID–19 measures.
We have been warned previously by many who suffered totalitarian communism in Eastern Europe. We were warned for many decades that such a moment would come to the West if we were not vigilant enough; unfortunately, it seems that our watchfulness has failed and our liberty has been stolen.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/psychological-attack-uk
In my last article, ‘The psychological attack on the UK’, I outlined why the applied behavioural psychology of SPI-B and the UK government is breaking the ethical and practice guidelines of the British Psychological Society and their regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council.
I showed why the tactics and dictates of SPI-B (i.e., deliberately making people fearful and creating a culture of shaming for not following the COVID-19 rules) were akin to the psychological abuse that occurs in domestic abuse scenarios, albeit with the Government as abuser and the population as a victim.
The seriousness of what is occurring regarding the manipulation and coercion by SPI-B and the UK government of the UK population is something that is rarely given mention in the mainstream media. However, let us consider a psychotherapy based on the same tactics of SPI-B at an individual level, compared to a more ethical approach to psychotherapy.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/ethical-psychotherapy-versus-unethical-applied-psychology-spi-b-and-uk-government
“You may be in an abusive relationship if they:
• 1. Stop you seeing friends and family
• 2. Won’t let you go out without permission
• 3. Tell you what to wear
• 4. Monitor your phone or e-mail
• 5. Control the finances, or won’t let you work
• 6. Control what you read, watch, and say
• 7. Monitor everything you do
• 8. Punish you for breaking the rules, but the rules keep changing
• 9. Tell you it is for your own good, and that they know better
• 10. Don’t allow you to question it
• 11. Tell you you’re crazy, and no-one agrees with you
• 12. Call you names, or shame you for being stupid or selfish
• 13. Gaslight you, challenge your memory of events, make you doubt yourself
• 14. Dismiss your opinions
• 15. Play the victim. If things go wrong, it’s all your fault.”
https://westernrifleshooters.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/abusive-relationship-larger-789×1024.jpg
Climate of ‘fear’ prevents experts from questioning the handling of the pandemic
A CLIMATE of fear is preventing experts from questioning the handling of the pandemic, with reputations smeared, jobs lost and even families threatened.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1415896/climate-fear-handling-pandemic-experts-jobs-lost-families-threats
Peter Williams interview with Jane – border worker from New Zealand
It would be good if we at least knew what percentage of those getting the vaccine get serious side effects. Of course, so many people have other conditions as well, it is hard to tell what is the vaccine’s effect and what is another condition.
Lack of accurate follow-up and reporting seems to be by design.
I remember reading they were even allowing people to mix and match doses of different vaxes.
Another article says providers face fines if they tell people which brand of vax they are getting!
====
“The guidelines bar them from revealing ‘the tradename and/or active ingredient of the specific vaccine or other information that might enable consumers to identify the particular vaccine or the manufacturer of the vaccine’.
“… if convicted, a court could impose fines of up to $880,000 or five years, or both. …
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/tga-bans-pharmacies-from-revealing-which-covid19-vaccine-they-offer/news-story/8bcf3dea974537050600d7f87eb8e13c
Mix and match lethal injections that only differ in that they dont have the same brand labels…… no wonder they are recommending this
MSC: More Disruption Expected in the Global Supply Chain in the Coming Months
In a note released over the weekend, Caroline Becquart, Senior Vice President and head of Asia & 2M service network, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company said the following:
“There’s no doubt that the current Suez Canal blockage is going to result in one of the biggest disruptions to global trade in recent years and we are working around the clock to manage our fleet and services so we can keep cargo moving and keep trade flowing as best we can under the circumstances.
Sailing around the Cape of Good Hope is an option on some routes, while in other cases it’s more about working closely with our customers to see what other solutions we can devise. Unfortunately, even when the canal re-opens for the huge backlog of ships waiting at anchorage this will lead to a surge in arrivals at certain ports and we may experience fresh congestion problems.
We envisage the second quarter of 2021 being more disrupted than the first three months, and perhaps even more challenging than it was at the end of last year. Companies should expect the Suez blockage to lead to a constriction in shipping capacity and equipment, and consequently, some deterioration in supply chain reliability issues over the coming months.
MSC, as a container carrier and service provider, will exhaust all possible options to remedy the situation.”
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/msc-more-disruption-expected-in-the-global-supply-chain-in-the-coming-months/
Yes––Fresh congestion problems from the Suez Canal Shutdown
“More Disruption Expected in the Global Supply Chain in the Coming Months”
no doubt.
there has been severe disruption since early 2020, so this just adds to it.
predicting future disruption is very much like “predicting the past”.
Covid 21
Right on schedule.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpnRmtJXYAAAVkM?format=jpg&name=medium
The third wave is here and it’s a disaster in the making
The variants now constitute an estimated 57 per cent of Ontario’s exponentially increasing cases, and have not been controlled at any point of the pandemic. And they are more dangerous.
“It’s roughly a doubling of the ICU admissions in age-adjusted (chances), and about a 60 per cent increase in hospital admissions, and about a 60 per cent increase in deaths,” says Juni, confirming a report from the CBC’s Lauren Pelley about an upcoming Science Table brief.
“If age structure and the number of cases are the same as the second wave, then the number of ICU admissions will double. And we are at the stage of the pandemic, in the third wave, where young people are infected more frequently, because of their behaviour, but we know that this will eventually spill over into all age groups. And only the 80-plus people, long-term care and retirement home residents are protected, and the rest will struggle.
“Last week, 47 per cent of ICU admissions for COVID-19 were people my age or younger. I am 53, so below 60.”
“When you see exponential growth, you have to do something to stop it at some point,” says Dr. Brooks Fallis, former medical director at Osler Health Systems. “So do you decide to wait until you run out of resources to limit it? Running out of resources is happening already.”
So now we wait. Maybe the province will eventually use the new so-called Shutdown level, which between chief medical officer of health Dr. David Williams and local medical officers of health theoretically return a region to the stay-at-home-level lockdown that finally drove Ontario’s cases down after it was imposed Jan. 6. The question is whether the province has the stomach left to actually shut things down.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/03/26/the-third-wave-is-here-and-its-a-disaster-in-the-making.html
“If age structure and the number of cases are the same as the second wave, then the number of ICU admissions will double.”
that’s an if/then statement. I also see the word “will” a few times, as if this article is a prediction.
the science usually concludes that variants are less deadly, though often more contagious.
IF so, THEN future covid will not be “more dangerous”.
we “will” see perhaps in a month or two.
Liar liar pants on fire! No doubt this retraction is buried deep in the BBC … so parents will be left believing their little monsters are at-risk of dying from covid .. and rush to get them lethally injected.
Doctors have sought to reassure parents that there has been no increase in the severity of Covid-19 cases among children because of the new variant.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) said children’s wards are not seeing any “significant pressure” from Covid-19.
It comes after a London hospital matron told BBC Radio 5 Live of having a ward full of children with coronavirus.
Laura Duffel said the surge in cases was “much scarier” than the first wave.
Ms Duffel, who has been working on Covid wards since the beginning of the UK’s epidemic and specialises in children’s intensive care, told 5 Live’s Chiles on Friday show that people were “wrong” to say busy hospitals were merely a reflection of normal winter pressures on the NHS.
“This wave has just hit us so fast. It’s literally in the space of a week that this has gotten so bad,” she said.
“It’s very different and I think that’s what makes it so much scarier for us. We have children who are coming in. It was minimally affecting children in the first wave – [but now] we have a whole ward of children here [and] 20- and 30-year-olds with no underlying conditions are coming in.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55518248
“Doctors have sought to reassure parents that there has been no increase in the severity of Covid-19 cases among children because of the new variant.”
this is consistent with most scientific reporting.
the variants are not more dangerous, and that also is consistent with the history of viruses and their mutations, where the mutations are usually not more deadly though sometimes more contagious.
time will tell if this virus breaks from past patterns.
I doubt it will.
Covid vaccine could be rolled out to children by autumn https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n723
Anyone wanna take a bet that children will be required to be vaccinated or they will be banned from attending school….
It’s already happening at the university level.
Rutgers may be one of the first large universities to mandate Covid-19 vaccinations, if not the first, and other colleges are likely to follow.
“I’m just starting to hear discussion about mandating vaccines, and everyone I’ve talked to has said that they are leaning in the direction of mandating vaccines not just with the students, but with faculty and staff, as well,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/colleges-consider-requiring-covid-vaccinations-students-young-adults-drive-rise-n1262094
“the variants are not more dangerous, and that also is consistent with the history of viruses and their mutations, where the mutations are usually not more deadly though sometimes more contagious.
time will tell if this virus breaks from past patterns.
I doubt it will.”
You would be true if the virus was natural, but it’s not. Since then they can do almost anything in a Lab. Even release new variants we haven’t seen yet.
Their game is well hidden. The first virus was not as lethal as I believed first. Then we thought the vaccines were supposed to kill us. Or maybe the variants.
What’s the trick? I don’t know and obviously nobody does! We can just enjoy the show as it is and eat our popcorn.
My Great Barrington contact suggests that the variants are unlikely to be more dangerous… as does Yeadon
However they base that on past outcomes… as you point out this virus was genetically engineered… so who the hell knows what it is capable of…
Then we have multiple vaccines developed and released in literally months — I call BULLSHIT on that…
They would NEVER in a million years pump an untested vaccine into 8B people when they know the virus is basically as dangerous as a bad flu… the world is NOT at risk from Covid — but putting an experiment into 8B most definitely risks civilization — imagine if 5% of recipients died or got terribly ill… that would destroy the health care systems of the world but more importantly some of those people will be in key positions in businesses and cannot be replaced.
So there is the question of what these vaccines are engineered to do as well…
Based on the desire to put it into children and pregnant women (let along healthy people) … and the endless lies … assume the worst
“It comes after a London hospital matron told BBC Radio 5 Live …”
In other words, it’s a damned lie.
A new, more contagious and potentially more deadly variant of the coronavirus is spreading across the US, and health officials are worried.
But vaccines appear to protect well against B.1.1.7 and treatments such as monoclonal antibodies also appear to work against this particular variant, Fauci said.
That makes it more important than ever to get people vaccinated quickly, he said.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/20/health/variant-b117-vaccines-work/index.html
HURRY and get your vaccine … step right up we’ve got vaccines .. plenty of vaccines…
Make sure to bring the kids along because this variant is much more deadly and loves to eat children’s brains…
Step right up …
Congress, in a Five-Hour Hearing, Demands Tech CEOs Censor the Internet Even More Aggressively
The repressive objective of the Democratic-controlled Congress is to transfer the power to police and censor political discourse from these tech giants to themselves.
Over the course of five-plus hours on Thursday, a House Committee along with two subcommittees badgered three tech CEOs, repeatedly demanding that they censor more political content from their platforms and vowing legislative retaliation if they fail to comply. The hearing — convened by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Chair Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and the two Chairs of its Subcommittees, Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) — was one of the most stunning displays of the growing authoritarian effort in Congress to commandeer the control which these companies wield over political discourse for their own political interests and purposes.
As I noted when I reported last month on the scheduling of this hearing, this was “the third time in less than five months that the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms.” The bulk of Thursday’s lengthy hearing consisted of one Democratic member after the next complaining that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have failed in their duties to censor political voices and ideological content that these elected officials regard as adversarial or harmful, accompanied by threats that legislative punishment (including possible revocation of Section 230 immunity) is imminent in order to force compliance (Section 230 is the provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that shields internet companies from liability for content posted by their users).
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congress-in-a-five-hour-hearing-demands-0cf
This kind of control is all very strange to me! I suppose people can be controlled better if they only hear one narrative.
Of course, the universities and others who want people to believe that a “happily ever after” ending to our problems is possible are pushing this narrative. This makes it “science.”
@Gail said: “This kind of control is all very strange to me!”
Why is that? The commies and the nazis did it. Not to mention China, Saudi Arabia and many other “successful” countries.
I look at it as a desperate measure – only when the propaganda in media, schools and workplace fails then the govts need to put their foot down.
It is a sign of collapse but I am not too happy about it – the end result is mass imprisonment, mass graves and people saying “I just followed orders”.
Dr. Fauci warns parents about children playing together without masks
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday warned that vaccinated parents still need to worry about their children becoming infected while playing with other kids.
“The children can clearly wind up getting infected,” Fauci told CBS anchor Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” when asked about the risk of kids playing in groups.
The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said while adults inoculated against COVID-19 don’t always have to wear masks around each other, children — who are not yet eligible for the jab — should wear them around each other.
“When the children go out into the community, you want them to continue to wear masks when they’re interacting with groups or multiple households,” he said.
But when asked whether kids can return to camp or playgrounds this summer, Fauci said it was “conceivable that will be possible.”
https://nypost.com/2021/03/28/fauci-warns-parents-about-children-playing-together-without-masks/?utm_medium=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow
Tony Fauci seems to be the person in charge of scaring people.
In the future, these masks will be more emblematic of government and Deep State tyranny than those conical masks worn by the body collectors during the Black Death.
Suez stuck ship latest: soil experts on site. Ship still stuck.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExmRmN4XIAAizfG?format=jpg&name=900×900
Suez Canal Crisis Sends Shipping Lines Scrambling for Alternatives
Shipping companies rerouted vessels, refused to take on new customers and forecast long delays—and longer-term port congestion around the world—raising the global trade and economic stakes of the grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal.
Shipping executives said even if the vessel is removed imminently, a backlog of ships waiting to pass through the canal would linger for days, and diversions of cargo could wreak havoc on port traffic around the world for weeks, upsetting the usually carefully orchestrated management of the world’s containers. The canal connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas and accounts for as much as 13% of seaborne trade and about 10% of maritime shipments of oil.
Allianz, the German insurance giant, estimated the blockage could reduce global trade by as much as $10 billion a week. It figured for every week the canal was immobilized, it could shave 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points off annual trade growth.
Caroline Becquart, senior vice president at Mediterranean Shipping Co., one of the world’s largest container lines, said the blockage “is going to result in one of the biggest disruptions to global trade in recent years.” Amid super-tight capacity that started building late last year and has lingered through this year, the accident means that companies should expect “a constriction in shipping capacity and equipment.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/suez-canal-crisis-sends-shipping-lines-scrambling-for-alternatives-11616951891?reflink=share_mobilewebshare
Biden, companies working to develop ‘vaccine passports.’ It won’t be easy
The passports are expected to be free and available through smartphone apps, which could display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass
By Dan Diamond, Lena H. Sun, Isaac Stanley-Becker
Washington Post
March 28, 2021 9:22 AM PT
The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials – often referred to as “vaccine passports” – that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen.
The effort has gained momentum amid President Joe Biden’s pledge that the nation will start to regain normalcy this summer and with a growing number of companies – from cruise lines to sports teams – saying they will require proof of vaccination before opening their doors again.
The administration’s initiative has been driven largely by arms of the Department of Health and Human Services, including an office devoted to health information technology, said five officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the effort. The White House this month took on a bigger role coordinating government agencies involved in the work, led by coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients, with a goal of announcing updates in coming days, said one official.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2021-03-28/biden-companies-working-to-develop-vaccine-passports-it-wont-be-easy
Feeling unsettled, anxious? Maybe you have COVID-19 vaccine envy
The pandemic has taught us a lot about ourselves — how we handle fear of the unknown, cope with isolation, and respond to the deep inequities that the coronavirus laid bare.
And as more people across the country joyfully announce they have received that long-awaited shot in the arm, many who are still eagerly awaiting their turn are also confronting their own feelings of envy.
“I like to say that envy is a universal emotion that nobody seems to have,” said Josh Gressel, author of the book “Embracing Envy: Finding the Spiritual Treasure in our Most Shameful Emotion.” “It’s the one emotion that everyone is ashamed to admit.”
And yet some people are admitting it.
“My vaccine envy is such that I’m questioning if I’m really a good person after all,” David Wagoner of Virginia tweeted Thursday.
Bei Deng, a 24-year-old with no underlying health issues who lives in Koreatown, said she’ll probably mute friends who post photos flaunting their vaccinations on social media to keep her anxiety down until she too gets the shot.
And Kat Sambor, 36, an event planner in Echo Park, acknowledged that seeing friends and acquaintances getting vaccinated ahead of her was emotionally confusing.
“I’m super happy for every person who said they got it — I want everyone to get it, I want my loved ones to be safe,” she said. “I know every person who gets vaccinated gets us closer to the end of the pandemic, but at the same time there’s that duality with jealousy.”
Californians who are struggling with vaccine envy can take solace in the fact that it‘s a temporary phenomenon. State officials said last week that residents 50 years and older will be eligible to get a vaccine starting April 1. Everyone 16 and up will be eligible starting April 15.
At last, Jacobsen’s long wait of not knowing when he will be eligible to get the shot is over. (At 64, he was just one year shy of qualifying earlier.) But it will still be weeks before full immunity kicks in and he’ll feel safe enough to corner a friend in a Trader Joe’s to gush about his own newfound freedom.
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-03-27/vaccine-envy-what-you-can-do-about-it
Chicago Stats for 2020 = 4,174 shot and 792 murdered
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi7JIHEIrK4
Keep up-to-date @ https://heyjackass.com/
That leak sure is looking accurate:
‘Stronger’ measures needed across Canada to suppress COVID-19 resurgence: Tam
OTTAWA — Canada’s chief public health officer warned Saturday that current health orders are not enough to stop rapid growth of COVID-19, as provinces push ahead with plans to reopen their economies.
Longer-range forecast models predict a resurgence of COVID-19 infections unless public health measures are enhanced and strictly followed, Dr. Theresa Tam said in a written statement.
“With increasing circulation of highly contagious variants, the threat of uncontrolled epidemic growth is significantly elevated,” she said.
Tam said public health orders across Canada need to be stronger, stricter and sustained long enough to control the rise of variants of concern.
High infection rates in the most populous provinces are driving up the country’s average daily case counts, she said.
Quebec reported more than 1,000 new infections on Saturday for the first time since mid-February, a day after the province reopened gyms and spas in red zones, including Montreal.
The province’s government-mandated public health institute also warned on Friday that more transmissible variants would represent the majority of infections in Quebec by the first week of April.
Premier Francois Legault told reporters he wasn’t ready to reverse decisions to reopen gyms or to allow places of worship to welcome up to 250 people.
In Ontario, new cases topped 2,400 for the first time since January.
The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario released a statement Saturday urging Premier Doug Ford to scale back reopening plans, including the scheduled reopening of personal care services, such as hair salons, on April 12 in regions of the province that are in “grey-lockdown” zones.
The province’s own modelling projections indicate highly contagious variants could see daily case counts balloon, while COVID-19 patients are already occupying Ontario’s intensive care beds at levels “well above the threshold at which hospitals say they can cope,” the statement said.
TRUDEAU ADMITS VARIANTS ARE BEING DEVELOPED
https://www.bitchute.com/video/uLStFKAw8Okm/
This seems to be where the story is from:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/stronger-measures-needed-across-canada-to-suppress-covid-19-resurgence-tam-1.5365144
Oops forgot the link:
https://winnipegsun.com/news/national/stronger-measures-needed-across-canada-to-suppress-covid-19-resurgence-tam/wcm/26495ba6-1489-4279-b13a-ada57b9d912a
“That leak sure is looking accurate:
‘Stronger’ measures needed across Canada to suppress COVID-19 resurgence: Tam
OTTAWA — Canada’s chief public health officer warned Saturday that current health orders are not enough to stop rapid growth of COVID-19, as provinces push ahead with plans to reopen their economies.”
as provinces push ahead with plans to reopen their economies.
as provinces push ahead with plans to reopen their economies.
as provinces push ahead with plans to reopen their economies.
as provinces push ahead with plans to reopen their economies.
There’s always that token carrot put out there… we are pushing to reopen (that creates hope)… but in the meantime the variants are prevent us from doing this….
It’s not our fault – we want to return to normal… but it’s that bloody variants!!!
This is the PR Team working with their psychologists to break the masses and make them so desperate that they will put an experiment into their bodies… including their children.
This is not haphazard… clinical experiments have been done to test out various strategies aimed at creating fear and compliance….
Not only control through false hope, but also sadism.
Himmler would have gone into ecstasies over this beautiful plan.
I wonder whether I would have been broken morally by now, if unemployed in a small apartment, listening to the MSM: the bastards know just what they doing.
I much agree Xabier, I see a very elaborated kind of mental torture.
Not surprising you think of Himmler since the nazis continued their experiments on human beings in the US (and elsewhere) after WWII, right?
Their job is almost over now, how lucky we are to live this!
We still don’t know for sure whether this is a depop plan (short term acute one – perhaps with delayed effect) or “merely” plan for tighter pop control (dissent, movement, UBI-rations, ..).
Suez Canal logjam: More than 320 ships waiting, further clogging up trade
Crude tankers carrying around 26 million barrels blocked
Interesting post on a forum:
At this point in time, almost everyone downplays the Suez Canal blockage, by simply stating that ships can just go around Africa, and the extra-costs are not that big of a deal.
Sure, mathematically speaking (and I will give 2 examples here), they are right.
One tanker transporting 1 million barrels from Saudi Arabia to Holland, taking the trip around Africa, will see an extra cost of roughly $350,000 (extra fuel, wages, etc.)
Per barrel, that is an extra 35 cents in transport costs.
One barrel is 42 gallons or 159 liters.
Overall, the extra cost per gallon of oil will be 0.8 cents or 0.22 cents per litre.
A container ship with 10,000 containers, with 20 tonnes of goods each, will add an extra $350,000, when taking the trip around Africa.
The extra costs will be $35 per container, or $1.75 per tonne, or 0.17 cents per kilo of goods.
So, it doesn’t seem that it’s a big deal, right? I mean, 0.22 cents per litre of oil or 0.17 cents per kilo of goods is basically nothing.
If this would be the only thing that will happen if the Suez Canal closes, nobody will give a shit.
The reality is that if that ship isn’t out today or tomorrow (with the help of the tide), they will have to start unloading containers, and that will take weeks (they say), but more likely over a month.
I won’t go into technical details, because we have no idea what is going on with that ship.
I only want to tell you guys what will happen if the Suez Canal is going to be closed for next 4 weeks, and realize that those saying that going around Africa will only see a price increase that is irrelevant, and maybe some minor delays, with some clogging in the destinations ports, that will last for mere days.
According to statistical data, 90% of the global trade is done by sea.
12% of that trade is done through Suez Canal, and pretty much the ENTIRE traffic is between Europe and Asian countries, including China (you know, the guys who make all the shit we need in Europe to build stuff, from cars, to parts, to clothes, to shoes, to drugs, to food).
Since 90% of the world trade is done by sea, it is safely to say that 90% of trade between Europe and Asia is also done by sea…THROUGH Suez Canal, basically.
Now, while the costs for the trip around Africa are insignificant, this is not WHY the prices will SKYROCKET (and that is the least issue) if the Suez Canal will stay close for just ONE month.
Think about the world we live in. Everything is working like a clock. Ports are ALWAYS fully working. Businesses do not stock up, and the did 30-40 years ago. There are NO ALTERNATIVES to sea shipping.
A single container ship, like Ever Given, with 20,000 containers, is the equivalent of 20,000 RAILROAD CARS.
We have no rail stations able to load/unload JUST the equivalent of Ever Given. Europe is receiving, on a DAILY basis, through Suez Canal, 12-13 container ships and 6-7 oil tankers.
That is AT LEAST 200,000 containers and 6-7 million barrels…A DAY.
There is no way in hell that Europe-Asia can be done by railroad, even if we disregard all the costs (which are about 4 times bigger then sea).
Now, since we excluded every alternative, except going around Africa, let’s see the impact, the REAL IMPACT, of ships going around Africa, instead Suez Canal.
If we consider one month of Suez Canal being closed, and assume that ALL the ships that were crossing it will simply go around Africa, Europe will see MASSIVE SHORTAGES of … everything : oil, gasoline, liquefied gas, textiles, food additives, cereals, chemicals for industry and agriculture, etc.
If we want to put a number on how big those shortages will be, that number is between 40 to 60% LESS stuff coming into Europe, stuff NEEDED for Europe to function AND trade with the rest of the world, for at last one month.
Currently, from the Horn of Africa to Rotterdam, a ship needs 14 days, going through Suez canal.
From the same point, going around Africa, a ship needs 24 days.
That is a 10 days DELAY in trip, which is about 40% of 14 days if the ship would go through Suez Canal.
Now, since we live in a world that works like a clock (well, less in the last year, but still), and there aren’t ships just doing nothing…the trade between Europe and Asia will NEED, and this is a FACT, an EXTRA 40% shipping capacity, if the trade volume is to remain unchanged, and everything will keep functioning, in the ENTIRE WORLD, as it was before Suez Canal got blocked by the Ever Given.
If a tanker transports 1 million barrels every 14 days, from Horn of Africa to Rotterdam, the same tanker will transport the same 1 million barrels, in 24 days.
The thing is, Europe needs that 1 million barrels EVERY 14 DAYS, not every 24 days.
For Europe to get 1 million barrels of oil every 14 days, but tankers go around Africa…well, Europe needs 2 tankers, instead one, or a bigger tanker, with 1.4 million barrels, not 1 million.
Same for everything.
So you see, since the world, TODAY, is working as it is, if the Suez Canal will be closed for next 4 weeks, the raise in prices will be the LAST THING that will matter.
Imagine a business in Europe that NEEDS some crap from Asia, to function, and all of a sudden, it only gets 60% of what it needs.
That business will have to close, at least temporarily.
On top of that, Europe will get only 60% of the oil, and gasoline that is needed by industry, agriculture, trucks, buses, cars, planes…
What will happen, in Europe, when what it needs to function, all of a sudden, is 40% LESS?
What will happen to Asian countries that need shit from Europe, when that is going to be 40% less?
There will be a massive snowball effect, all over the world, if the Suez Canal won’t open for another month.
We have no additional ships to cover the deficit, over night. Sea lanes are LONG, ships are contracted for months and YEARS in advance, and NOBODY will just start building ships just because the Suez Canal is closed for a month.
I won’t go into other aspects, just this simple one :
IF the trip around Africa is 40% LONGER, the DEFICIT in goods, oil, energy, chemicals, etc. that are NEEDED in Europe and Asian countries that trade with Europe (China mainly) will also be 40%.
Unless we have couple thousands of empty ships, sitting around, doing nothing, ready to pick up this deficit, the shortages will be massive, prices will skyrocket and a TON of businesses will close.
Not only in Europe…but all over the world.
The impact of Suez Canal being closed for ONE MONTH ONLY, will be MASSIVE.
I would presume the workers on the ship need to be paid for the longer time on the ship, also. There aren’t necessarily that many extra sailors around either, in the right places, to take up the slack. There are all kinds of things that go wrong. Europe, especially, would seem to come out behind if the situation doesn’t get resolved quickly.
Or perhaps the people with the intermittent wind and solar electricity have some views of how they could help. How would this be done? In what time frame? In the next 50 years?
More:
I do not know what are real issues on the ground, why that ship wasn’t back afloat already.
What I know is that it’s a very sensitive operation, from all pov’s, not just time, and you can’t rush it.
The engineering involved in the operation are clearly not by the book, and up until today, all attempts made by conventional means have failed.
They hope the tide will help. I also hope so, but I don’t think a 30 cm tide is going to matter. Might even make things worse, if the engineers didn’t perfectly calculated all the torsion forces involved, once the tide reaches max level.
We don’t know how much of that ship is stuck, in what is stuck, the density of the sand banks, on both ends of the ship (since the ship is stuck on land on BOTH ENDS).
The bow is impaled, and the stern is sitting. The ship have it’s ends on land, and the middle on water.
Even the smallest miscalculation will led to a disaster.
I have no idea (nobody have) how the real situation is.
All I know, and that is for sure, is that the canal must be opened ASAP, but in safe conditions.
One crack in the hull, and it’s game over. It will take water and break in two, or capsize.
And that is the worst case scenario, because if this happens, the canal will close for a year.
One has to wonder if this not another piece of the puzzle and an orchestrated event aimed at fulfilling on the prophesy of supply chain collapse.
Given the enormous implications of this situation .. surely they would have brought in dozens of helicopters and started unloading the containers by now…
I’d like to see a big gushing hole in that ships hull. Let’s make it into a year of disruption in the canal.
Where is the Iranians with those hypersonic missiles when you need them?
But oh noes, Stuttgart can’t produce crap people can’t afford anymore. No parts and no microchips. What’s next? No food for the workforce?
I wonder who’s the scapegoat this time? A re-run of blaming the Jews perhaps? Hitler 2.0? I know, the fscking immigrants did it.
Nuke the ship and canal from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Nice post.
Canada leak says supply chain issues latter part Q2.
Perhaps the shortages start with Europe then the knock on hits north america a little later…
Perhaps this is all orchestrated…
Although I cannot quite work out why…. given the CEP is all about convincing 8B to get the lethal injection…. maybe supply chain issues justify full on martial law as a response to this massive crisis…
Let’s examine what this might look like … huge numbers vaccinated within Q2…. shortages of everything so maximum desperation .. pretext for martial law as this is an emergency situation … then Devil Covid appears… another reason for total lockdown…
People are now trapped in their homes frightened… the variants are ‘out there’… the supply chain is choked…. governments will do their best to get you a little pig slop (Uber Eats shares will go through the roof as they are declared one of very few essential businesses at this point)….
Sorry folks — we want to deliver more pig slop but the system unravelling and it’s just logistically getting difficult….
Perhaps there is no Devil Covid… but the spectre of these variants creates the fear the generates lockdown compliance? End game is — as I initially suggested months ago — one of starvation…
Our final days are spent cowering in fear of Devil Covid — waiting for pig slop (and happy to get it) because the supply chain is busted (because a giant ship has been suck in a canal!!! hahahaha)
And then we die.
This would make one hell of a book!
I don’t doubt for one moment that the plan is to starve many of us, and eliminate by various other means, but it seems too early by far: targeted extermination most likely once they have clamped the completed Digital Prison over us, digital currencies are in place and automation is more extensive.
The Suez blockage just adds to the general disorder, which they love – so disruptively creative!
It will destroy innumerable small and medium businesses, just as they desire. If it wasn’t planned, it was a happy accident from their point of view.
Got to keep the cauldron on the boil in Hell, after all.
Amateur hour single point of failure.
Imagine the Iranians sinking one of these behemoths in the canal.
About time to build those rail lines to Asia and open up the northern passage, no?
How about building moar shit locally, no?
I’m tired of these colonial relics.
Nuke it from orbit and be done with both that boat and canal.
Trucking is for amateurs, shipping for professionals and rail for masters.
🤔
Michael, excellent analysis.. thanks.
‘You and your family are going to regret’ not getting COVID shot: Canadian doctor
WINNIPEG, Manitoba, March 26, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Individuals and families in Winnipeg that delay taking the COVID vaccine and then test positive for the coronavirus will “regret” having failed to be injected, threatened Dr. Anand Kumar, who works at two major hospitals in the city.
“Believe me, if you turn out to be one of those people who delays getting the vaccine and then gets COVID and then end up in my ICU, you and your family are going to regret it,” Kumar told Global News on March 22.
Dr. Anand Kumar, a supporter of euthanasia, is a faculty member at the University of Manitoba. At the university, he is also the Director of Research for Critical Care Medicine. As an “infectious disease expert,” Kumar studied the treatment of septic shock using antimicrobial therapy. He works in the ICU at both St. Boniface Hospital and Concordia Hospital in Winnipeg.
He essentially told the province’s population to simply trust the experts, saying, “Let the people who do this for a living figure it out and those of us who do this for a living would say that all these vaccines are highly effective.”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/you-and-your-family-are-going-to-regret-not-getting-covid-shot-canadian-doctor?utm_source=top_news&utm_campaign=standard
The story is two-sided. It says,
It gives a link to the Vaccine Adverse Event Rporting System.
https://medalerts.org/vaersdb/index.php
It seems to be pretty easy to use. The only problem is that if a person received two shots, and there were two reports filed for adverse events, you will get a double count, unless somehow you back out the doubles.
When I did a search on deaths, I received a count that was 149% of the total number, indicating that about half had double reports.
The Mengele Gold Medal for the kind-hearted Dr Kumar!
Not only a euthanasia advocate, and intent on coercing people into a medical experiment, but happy to make direct threats of harm to future patients.
Make that medal First Class!
Dr. Anand Kumar, a supporter of euthanasia….
He would most definitely be on board and willing to promote the CEP…. because it’s all about ending life to end suffering.
Not the suffering of the poor though; just to avert the potential suffering of the very rich.
The lifeboat is very small and easily tipped over,and it’s theirs…..
“Celebrating Palm Sunday Mass for a second time in the pandemic without crowds of faithful, Pope Francis said while shock dominated the first year of the COVID-19 health emergency, now people are more weary, with the economic crisis growing heavier.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pope-on-pandemics-second-year-weariness-economic-hardship-covid-vatican-city-st-peters-square-italy-people-b1823554.html
PF has got his own problems. He decided that he would get ‘all judgey’ after all (who am I to judge) and ruled that gays are ‘living in sin’ and their relationships cannot be ‘blessed’ in the churches. That has increased the likelihood that the RCC in Germany will go into schism (formal or otherwise). They are having their own two year ‘synod’ to strike a path forward over women clergy, married priests, divorce, contraception, abortion etc. to get somewhere at least close to the 21st c.
> Vatican Rules Out Blessings for Same-Sex Relationships, Despite Calls for Liberalization
ROME – The Vatican on Monday forbade blessings of same-sex relationships, contradicting calls for the practice by progressive bishops in Germany and elsewhere, and setting a limit to the conciliatory approach to gay people that has marked Pope Francis’ pontificate.
Such blessings are wrong, the Vatican said on Monday, because they would seem “to approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognized as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God,” adding that God “does not and cannot bless sin.”
Monday’s reaffirmation of traditional teaching is likely to disappoint progressive Catholics hoping for further change and cheer conservatives, as did the pope’s decision last February not to make it easier to ordain married men to the priesthood.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/vatican-forbids-blessings-for-same-sex-couples-despite-calls-for-liberalization-11615808319
As Gail reminds us, religions are human-made means for the survival of given groups. I would evaluate PF’s edicts on how they deal with collective survival.
Indeed, and it is hard to see how this ‘edict’ helps the RCC in Germany. 100s of thousands are formally cancelling their membership each year (they have to, or 10% of their income still goes to the church), and a recent poll indicated that 1/3 of RC there are thinking of doing the same. They are frustrated by the ‘out of touch’ dogmas and the clergy abuse cover ups. The local church is doing a synod to try to do what is best for them and this ‘edict’ will only increase the determination.
Neither is the ‘edict’ suited to contemporary life. Morality is ‘functional’, it is aimed at the good of the people in their life circumstances. Thus it is given to change as circumstances change. It is ‘good’ to put the heating on in winter but not in the summer. It is good to eat when one is hungry but not when one is full. The good is always conditional on the circumstances, it is contingent and fluid, like all in this world of change. As Solomon says, ‘there is a time for everything under the sun’ (by far my favourite book in the Bible.)
The circumstances of the life-cycle have radically changed. It may have made sense to try to maximise the number of kids, to keep women in the home and to ban contraception, divorce etc. when infant morality was high and the society needed to maintain its numbers. But infant morality is very low now, lower than ever, and the human population is massive and stressing the planet. And the bourgeois state can always get more workers from outside anyway. That situation allows other ‘goods’ to come to the fore, like careers, personal happiness and fulfilment. The idea that society needs even gays to produce kids these days is frankly laughable.
So, we would have to say that PF is simply ‘wrong’ and deeply wrong, he sadly fails to understand what morality is and what its purpose is. The idea of a never changing morality may be useful in indoctrination in certain prolonged circumstances – but these are not those. People are not naïve today. And we all know that polygamy was allowed in the OT. This ‘verdict’ will ‘harm’ the RCC, more will leave, its ‘authority’ will weaken even further, and it may split in Germany. PF could have just kept his mouth shut. First he says that he is no one to ‘judge’ and then he comes out with this ‘edict’ (eejit?).
It will be interesting to see whether PF goes ‘full on’ when the Synod is completed, and ‘verdict’ against divorce and contraception. Presumably the church cannot ‘bless’ those relationships either. RC in Germany have the same divorce rate, fertility rate etc. as everyone else. Only a minority undertake a marriage (or partnership) on the understanding that it is for life and never use contraception. It would seem to be ‘mean’ if PF is just picking out a vulnerable minority for attack while hypocritically ignoring what the majority is doing. Anyway, it will be entertaining to see what happens and for that at least we can thank him, for the entertainment.
> Come and get your love
For sure it is relatively easy to force the northern savage into the church creating devotees only in the abstract, but the pagan mindset prevails over any dogmas in all practical senses, it is coded into the DNA. The pagan can play along until the church inevitable becomes irrelevant. A true hun and pagan secretly cringes at the sanctimonious hypocrisy.
Picture this; a bunch of Laplanders congregating once a year to learn that they are sinners, a property of some newfangled religious BS from a land far away, sitting in uncomfortable wooden benches, while being forced to ‘dress up’, a day before the millennia old business and boozing commences. Oh boy, would I long to head back home to wash my soul clean with plenty of fishing, hunting and strong beverages, while trying to stay awake from the pompous cringe.
Do we observe rampant nihilism in north Europe where the church is by far the weakest, apart for the regular boozing and occasional frivolous sexual encounters? Morality from higher deities; now that’s an oxymoron for lineages living under the dictates of Jack Frost, beloved son of Mother Earth.
It is about time for the Abrahamic religions, the garbage leftovers from the warmongering Sumerians, to pack their shit up and head back home. We got science, paganism and Buddhism offering truth, nothingness and human like, flawed deities, when the void and search for truth isn’t sufficient as a ‘guide’ in life.
Apparently pundits think that Sweden is the Japan of Europe. I wonder why?
Valhalla any day compared with the pearly gates.
🥴🍻🥴 🥳👯♀️👯♀️👯♀️🎉🎸🥁🎶🎼🎵🤘
🤣👍
Ironically, the English word ‘sin’ is derived from the Proto-Germanic ‘sunjaz’ (true, real) from the Proto-Indo-European ‘h₁sónts’ (being, to be) and cognate with the Sanskit ‘sat’ (being, living, enduring, real, actual – that which is good, real or true).
Like I always say, everything ‘just is’.
It is sad that the basic IE word for ‘being, real, true’ got twisted into ‘sin’ at some point. One could almost think that there is a hostility to reality and to life going on there somewhere – as if there is supposed to be some ‘other, real, true world’ apart from this one. The real world loses its reality and is ‘condemned’.
‘Sin’ – an aversion, a condemnation, a denial, an ‘escape’ – from reality? The denial of the will to life and its goods? Death rather than life? Hatred and slander of the world and of life and its instincts. The will to nothingness. ‘Sin’ as nihilism, a nihilistic evaluation of reality? A revolt against ‘to be’ (h₁sónts).
– morality as nihilism.
Yes, Northern savages: being in the woods with an axe and saw does more for my soul -for what it’s worth – than any church or mosque I have ever been in, or any irrelevant sermon.
And the fairy music is great if you are ever lucky enough to hear it……
Mirror,
“The will to nothingness.”
Right, the urgency to leave behind the only thing that differentiates from being mere mineral.
What a denial of the universe. Christianity is a death cult.
Perhaps it had some place for a little time. You know: Stop causing self injury by excessive drinking and recklessness.
As the very universe is the will to life itself, thou shall therefore not waste away time filtering out that which is everything and nothing at the same time.
But at this point in time, it is somewhat past its best before date.
Everyone needs an almost happily-ever-after solution. Religion, whether true or not, provides this. Wind turbines and solar panels do as well. We are going to save the universe, though the use of ever more concrete, steel and other materials used to build these devices.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/resources/images/8002762.png
Saving the FF intoxicated sinners one EV and battery pack at a time.
🤣👍
I think you are overestimating how much ordinary Catholics care what their hierarchy thinks.
There are certainly many other religious groups that bless gay unions and marry gay people who are interested in marriage.
The Pope seems to have lots of company in trying to figure out what to do.
China does not allow gay marriage, although it is sort of moving in that direction. https://www.economist.com/china/2020/01/23/chinas-government-finds-surprising-support-for-same-sex-marriage
Until this week, same sex marriages were not allowed in Japan. An NPR story says: In Landmark Ruling, Court Says Japan’s Ban On Same-Sex Marriage Is Unconstitutional
Regarding Islam, https://www.hrc.org/resources/stances-of-faiths-on-lgbt-issues-islam
“At least 114 people have been killed across Myanmar after security forces opened fire on protesters, according to local media reports… A five-year-old is reported to be among those killed.”
https://news.sky.com/story/myanmar-at-least-50-protesters-shot-dead-by-security-forces-reports-12258013
“‘Five killed, dozens wounded’ in anti-Modi protests in Bangladesh… Hundreds of students clash with police and border troops in eastern Brahmanbaria district, as Indian prime minister wraps up visit.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/27/five-killed-dozens-injured-in-anti-modi-protests-in-bangladesh
“Thousands of the Hirak movement returned to the streets of the Algerian capital on Friday as they demanded significant changes to the country’s government and political system — chanting slogans such as “let the system fall.””
https://www.africanews.com/2021/03/27/algerians-protest-against-government-in-new-hirak-demonstration/
All that is needed is a whole lot more cheap energy. Then wages could be higher, and the system could work better. Protests won’t fix this.
That would be the “raise the bridge” alternative to the “lower the water” one.
“Tensions on the border between Colombia and Venezuela continued to escalate on Thursday, amid military operations that sent thousands of Venezuelans fleeing to Colombia from their homes located along the border.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/25/thousands-of-venezuelans-flee-to-colombia-amid-border-operations
“Colombia’s central bank rejected arguments for more stimulus to boost the weak economy on concern that investors might react by pulling money out of the country.
“The bank on Friday held its key interest rate at a record low of 1.75% for a sixth straight month…”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/colombia-holds-key-rate-at-1-75-on-concern-of-investor-backlash-1.1583028
I had a passport expire in Colombia, and the US would not issue me a new one (I had a colorful political past).
I was there quite a while, and had to escape the country passport free.
Then it got exciting.
I once lost my passport having too much fun in Amsterdam as a teenager.
Escaping The Netherlands and returning to my temporary home in Germany was trivial due to the Schengen Agreement but I did get a surprisingly stiff telling off from the woman at the British consulate in Düsseldorf when I explained my plight.
During the Great Depression the Soviet Union placed ads in newspapers encouraging out of work Americans to immigrate to the Workers Paradise and all trades were needed to build the future social state!
Guess what they really wanted?! American US Passports!
They were taken upon arrival and the poor souls signed an document renouncing their US Citizenship..
Mist eventually ended up in the work camps since Stalin was suspicious of foreigners.
The US consulate was powerless to help them since they unwisely renounced their citizenship.
A good book read on the story somewhere out there, forgot the title. Would make a good movie
Maybe this one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forsaken:_An_American_Tragedy_in_Stalin%27s_Russia
That sounds like the one I read and need to reread it again… horrifying tale.
Made me cry ….heartbreaking to read a father of a family that saw what happened to them all by him taking them to Russia….kept on pleading for forgiveness and his sorrow
It sounds like there are too many displaced people from Venezuela, and nearly not enough resources for everyone. Columbia seems to be more than generous:
“Colombia said last month it would grant 10-year protected status to some 1.7 million Venezuelans.”
“Australia on Sunday ended a pandemic wage subsidy scheme despite official warnings that up to 150,000 people could lose their jobs as a result…
“Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the programme had been an “economic lifeline” that has achieved the aim “of saving lives and saving livelihoods” over the past year.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/australia-ends-pandemic-wage-subsidy-030757023.html
“In the last quarter of 2020, Australia exported nearly $14bn less than it had a year earlier – a 12% fall… there really is one thing that is keeping our trade surplus going – iron ore. Over the past year, iron ore made up 41% of our total goods exports.
“While everything – including coal and gas exports – fell, the demand for iron ore kept on keeping on… it means Australia’s economic base has become very narrow – we are incredibly reliant upon iron ore exports to power growth.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2021/mar/25/australias-economy-is-more-reliant-on-iron-ore-than-ever
“Protesters have chained themselves to machinery and buildings, blocked intersections with coffins and clashed with police in a series of rallies across Australia which have caused peak-hour chaos.”
https://7news.com.au/weather/climate-change/chaos-as-extinction-rebellion-protesters-hit-the-streets-across-australia-once-again–c-2448841
Hahaha…. are these the same clowns who are protesting against lockdowns and the restrictions that don’t allow them to get on a flight to Bali for a holiday?
Did they drive to the protests? hahaha… priceless
MORE Ons.
As long as other countries stimulate their economies by building structures of steel, it will help keep Australia’s export revenue up. Working on the other side is Brazil, and its iron ore exports. I see that its recent iron ore exports are up. https://www.metalbulletin.com/Article/3977495/Brazil-iron-ore-exports-up-109-in-February-after-Vale-boosts-output.html
Brazil iron ore exports up 10.9% in February after Vale boosts output
I wouldn’t like my economy to be so narrowly focused.
This sounds like a worrisome situation.
The population of Australia is only about 26 million, so in terms of impact on the world is perhaps not huge. It population is a little less than the population of Texas, with about 30 million.
The population of Yemen is also about 30 million. Australia’s population is close to that of North Korea (25.7 million). Of course, Yemen and North Korea couldn’t prop up the earnings of their people to begin with. There are lots of people around the world with problems.
Concerns in UK over potential introduction of Israel-style vaccine Green Pass
PM Johnson says he’s ‘thinking very deeply’ about the matter; unsourced report says British ministers to consult with Israeli counterparts on matter
As the UK weighs the introduction of a vaccine passport to allow entrance to some venues, with consultations reportedly set to take place between British ministers and their Israeli counterparts, some have started to express concerns about the potential program.
Israel has established a domestic “Green Pass” system that allows people who have been vaccinated or recovered from the coronavirus to participate in various activities, including indoor dining, shows and sports events.
And now the UK government is studying proposals for “coronavirus status certificates” and says it will lay out its plans next month.
According to an unsourced report in the Mail on Sunday, British ministers will discuss the matter with their Israeli counterparts, although it is expected that they will not adopt the Israeli technology used in the scheme.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/concerns-in-uk-over-potential-introduction-of-israel-style-vaccine-green-pass/
We will find out how well/long these vaccine passes work in practice. I would expect that there would be so many illnesses that the vaccines don’t catch that they don’t last very long.
I doubt the passes are intended to function as advertised.
Vaccine passports for holidays will just become domestic ID to live at all, even leave one’s home.
The decision was made long ago… this is all just pretence
This is how you herd stooopid beasts…
“The Bank of England flagged instances of illiquidity as a broader risk to the financial system after a rout in some government bond markets pushed yields higher…
“Bonds have sold off around the globe in recent weeks, pushing U.K. yields to the highest levels since before the pandemic.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-26/boe-flags-risk-of-illiquidity-in-fragile-governent-bond-markets
“The Bank of England has urged banks to keep credit flowing to businesses once the government-backed Covid-19 loan schemes end this month over fears of a cliff-edge fall in lending that could choke the economy.”
https://www.ft.com/content/dffe2944-0e5c-40cb-9baa-68093f4293f5
“Britain’s fertility rate has fallen to an all-time low as the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the country…
“…the fertility rate in England and Wales slumped to a fresh low of 1.6 children per woman last year. This was below the previous nadir of 1.63 recorded in 2001.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-uk-fertility-rate-falls-to-lowest-level-on-record-111733015.html
“Nine police officers were injured during an anti-lockdown protest in Bradford, police said…
“Police arrested 13 people for public order offences and issued 19 fines for breaching Covid regulations.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-56554835
“Protest laws move UK towards paramilitary policing, says former chief.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/28/protest-laws-move-uk-towards-paramilitary-policing-says-former-chief
It sounds like the loan scheme is one of many UK schemes. With respect to wages, a March 20, 2021 article says:
What could go wrong? It is hard to see that businesses will need loans, if the government is willing to pay 80% of wages.
Higher yields? Just add more debt to attempt to repay the interest as well as the loan. What could go wrong?
Right, nobody remembers a coward. The EU is going bonkers. No wonder there’s a shortage of chips when the world is going wild with AI and supercompute.
https://www.pcgamer.com/eu-destine-supercomputer-20000-gpus/
“The EU wants 20,000 GPUs to run a simulated digital twin of Earth.”
Apparently the plan is to blow through crazy amounts of fossil fuels to make numerology of how the glow ball warmongering and Earth itself “works”. How ironic.
Why not just be upfront with it and say: “We also want to run the hottest AI coding sequences that exists. Let it make some outrageous guesses of how our goddamn planet works as a silly side project.”
Here’s my prediction: It doesn’t care. That’s how the “earth” works. Most shit happens without causes, the more causes we try to impinge on effects, the more ridiculous it gets.
As a test of why effects exist without causes, I point at the drama and comedy of the universe. Unreasonable shit sometimes exists and happens without causes, that makes sense within our macroscopic myopic context.
Once we got good enough knowledge of a system, we already have changed it. It is the measurement paradox. Here’s the real deal; smaller mouths, less thinking and bigger ears. Let the universe do the explicit thinking. Our ears should be on the ground collecting data and implicit experiences/inferences. Now is there a red strand in there? Obviously there must be. That’s because your existence and hallucinations is part of the weave in objective reality.
The real deal is doing much with little thinking. Eons of time, obscene amounts of resources and abysmal amounts of intellect, add liberal amounts of trial and mostly error. Sort of like… Evolution. It just flows effortlessly with the sands of time.
Wu Wei.
☯️
AI doesn’t know how resource limits affect the economy. They likely figure out what happened in the recent past, and project that forward. This approach isn’t too different from what most everyone else uses. It is just not correct.
“New Suez crisis: a global economy creaking under the strain… there are strains everywhere. The blockage in the Suez Canal follows a cascade of events that have jeopardised the smooth running of global trade…
“It is difficult for consumers to appreciate the complexity of the networks that bring goods to their shops or doorsteps.”
https://www.ft.com/content/87cb4674-6db7-41cf-a82e-44b83eaa436c
“Global shipping was in chaos even before the Suez blockage. Shortages and higher prices loom… disruptions are adding billions of dollars to supply chain costs…
“These expenses could soon mean higher prices for consumers, adding upward pressure to rising inflation — a nightmare scenario for Wall Street, which is already fearful that a spike in prices could force the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates sooner than expected.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/26/business/global-shipping-supply-chains/index.html
“Up to $4 Trillion in Revenue May Have Evaporated in Supply Chain Disruptions.”
https://www.mhlnews.com/global-supply-chain/article/21159294/up-to-4-trillion-in-revenue-may-have-evaporated-in-supply-chain-disruptions
“With a drop to less than 78 million units sold, the global auto sector faced “its worst crisis ever,” the president of the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, Fu Bingfeng, said in a statement…
“The full-year figure was “equivalent to 2010’s sales levels,” it added while Fu said: “The 2020 results wipes off all the growth made over the last 10 years.””
https://www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/2020-global-vehicle-production-plunged-in-worst-crisis-ever-c75c11cd-4c72-4adb-a6f9-39cac5a7689d
It is striking how the drop in auto sales broke out. The US had -20%; Europe, -21%; South America -30%; Asia, -10%.
I looked up some other breaks. Auto sales in Australia -14%; New Zealand, -23%; Japan, -11%;
This is a weird time, sales may be down, prices are up.
Housing prices are up, almost nothing for sale around here.
Dennis L.
Consumers can’t imagine how important keeping these supply chains working really is.
The WTI is back below the line of resistance. A false breakout? Oil prices can’t be manipulated?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExLwbYaUUAgNsJd?format=jpg&name=large
The price I am seeing now is $60.72, so it seems to have bounced back up.
“UK ministers have turned down a plea from metals tycoon Sanjeev Gupta for an emergency loan to prevent his group from collapsing as it searches for rescue financing…
“Unions have urged the government to consider all options to help protect the 5,000 jobs at risk in the UK.”
https://www.ft.com/content/d81769e0-a9c9-4384-9c33-32dd19d8a78b
“…supply chain finance [is] a traditional form of lending in the business world.
“But Mr. Greensill added an extra layer of complexity. He took the supplier invoices, turned them into short-term assets and put them into funds, similar to money market funds, that investors could buy. The funds were sold through Credit Suisse, the big Swiss lender, and a Swiss asset management firm called GAM. The money from investors helped to pay back suppliers.
“Greensill turned a mundane finance practice into an ultra-lucrative business in part because it was able to shuffle around the risk, pushing some of it onto insurance companies and other financial firms. It has echoes of the asset-backed securitization that was at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/business/greensill-capital-collapse.html
The Greensill Insolvency looks like it could turn into a major financial mess. The article mentions that with its international operations, it is not clear that any money provided would really save UK jobs. The money the company is asking for is 170 million pounds, which isn’t a huge amount. The problem is that it isn’t clear that this will fix its problems. It is just a temporary patch, until it can obtain long term financing.
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2021/03/22/606391.htm
According to an insurance journal article, Greensill misrepresented what its technology could do:
So the company may have gotten itself in much more trouble than people have figured out today.
“How China is prepping for global financial meltdown…
“…With interest rates still near the lowest levels in history and stock market valuations at all-time record highs, according to some indicators, it’s understandable why there are such high levels of concern in China that it may all come crashing down one day.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/how-china-is-prepping-for-global-financial-meltdown/YJAYXETW3NQKWO4Y6JZG532OKA/
“Multiple-whammy: China’s looming crises… Since when did China start acknowledging its challenges? Something serious is afoot.”
https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/multiple-whammy-chinas-looming-crises
“…there have been surreptitious and clandestine moves by central banks to shore up their gold reserves to serve as buffers and a hedge against inflation and currency devaluation.”
https://nairametrics.com/2021/03/27/resolving-the-global-debt-and-liquidity-crises-issues-and-possible-solutions/
The Sunday Guardian Live article says,
“Reputed experts estimate China’s debt to be over USD 40 trillion, three times its GDP. So Chinese banks have drastically reduced lending for the doomed Bilk and Rob Initiative (BRI).”
Total debt of three tines GDP is awfully high. The “doomed “Bilk and Rob Initiative (BRI)'” no doubt refers pejoratively to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The poor countries that have been lured into these infrastructure deals will never be able to repay the debt. This is part of China’s debt problem.
Some Caribbean countries gifted China large amounts of land as collateral for the loans.
It sounds like I am not the only one worried about a financial meltdown. The pandemic isn’t necessarily going away, and markets are very high. The article quotes Michael Burry:
The current situation looks too much like this.
The captain of Ever Given drew a masterful penis in the Red Sea before the ship entered the Suez canal and got stuck.
https://m.jpost.com/omg/ever-given-drew-a-penis-in-the-water-before-blocking-suez-canal-663379/amp?__twitter_impression=true
“European tourism: ‘With another lost summer, many businesses will disappear’…
“…southern Europe’s tourist industry — a large part of the region’s economy — has been left in limbo as the slow rollout of vaccinations and the latest rise in cases make a second lost summer increasingly likely.”..
“Although Spain is the centre of the crisis, the sector accounts for 11 per cent of southern European economic output and one in six jobs in southern European nations, including France.”
https://www.ft.com/content/8b0f0347-d715-4bab-bc55-a07ad4bcac49
“Italy’s economy suffers as tourist gems are becoming ‘dead cities’… The collapse in the number of tourists to Italy was jaw-dropping last year, with only 25.5 million foreign visitors spending at least one night in the peninsula, versus 65 million in 2019 – a drop of more than 60 percent…
““The situation is really dramatic and everything must be done to revive a sector so vital for our country,” said the president of the Italian Union of Chambers of Commerce, Carlo Sangalli.”
https://www.thelocal.it/20210328/covid-19-italys-economy-suffers-as-tourist-gems-are-becoming-dead-cities/
“Spain’s tourism minister Reyes Maroto has said her government plans to have its vaccine passport system ready for tourists by June, although negative PCR tests will still be accepted to enter the country.”
https://www.thelocal.es/20210326/spain-to-have-vaccine-passport-system-ready-by-june-tourism-minister/
[Cyprus] Tourism optimism fading rapidly… The Paphos Hoteliers Association on Thursday expressed its “intense concern” over report after report coming out of the UK that Brits may not be allowed to travel for leisure for several more months…
“Added to that was the imposition of a fine of 5,000 pounds for anyone who tried to leave England without an essential reason.”
https://cyprus-mail.com/2021/03/28/tourism-optimism-fading-rapidly/
“Eurostar is in emergency talks with its lenders to avoid collapse as the deadline for the repayment of its £400m debt pile nears.
“Passenger numbers on the Eurostar have plummeted 95 per cent since March…”
https://www.cityam.com/eurostar-in-crunch-talks-with-lenders-over-400m-debt-pile/
Wikipedia says, “Eurostar is an international high-speed rail service connecting the United Kingdom with France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Most Eurostar trains travel through the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France.”
If its passenger numbers have plummeted by 95%, it becomes very difficult to maintain its operation. It is in the same business as airlines. One article I saw said that it wasn’t necessarily cheaper than airlines, but that it could be faster and connect up with other trains better.
I am afraid that it cannot be subsidized sufficiently for the long term.
Thanks Harry,
so this Spanish example could be suggesting that this summer there will be a brief period for PCR tests – certificates only before the full e-passport mandatory thingy goes live across the continent..
Hm, ~Q3-Q4 and beyond looks like the final end of freedom of movement at least for the EU area..
I know that one tour company is advertising tours of the “stan” countries of Asia to Americans. They are not nearly as fussy about COVID-19 status. Mexico and Peru are other countries that are actively seeking travelers, without vaccinations.
Europe without tourism has a major financial problem, I am afraid.
Bright Green Lies
Came across this book launch last week
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781948626392
It’s great they they are young people writing and talking about this
Looking forward to the forthcoming movie
I bought a copy. I read the first part of it, and liked it. Points out that the environmental movement has moved from saving the environment, to saving civilization. Checked out the ending, and it comes to a “happily ever after” scenario by destroying industrial civilization. Not sure about this. Need to take time to read the middle.
Being green now is just a colour of hypocrisy.
You can use it to start a fire and roast rats later this year
JHK did an interview last month.
https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-341-yakking-with-derrick-jensen-about-bright-green-lies/
Sounds like garbage…
And Chris Hedges is a ignorant clown… I would breed him with Amy Goodman to produce premium snowflakes and sell them in the Sunday Market … but Amy is an old goat and past the Window of Opportunity.
Interesting
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExeyKpEW8AEDAdg?format=jpg&name=large
Sweden Saw Lower Mortality Rate Than Most of Europe in 2020, Despite No Lockdown
New data from Europe suggest Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the pandemic was far from catastrophic.
Few people in 2020 came under more heat than Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top epidemiologist.
But the man who forged Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to COVID-19 early in the pandemic says new international data reveal a hard truth about government lockdowns.
“I think people will probably think very carefully about these total shutdowns, how good they really were,” Tegnell told Reuters in a recent interview. “They may have had an effect in the short term, but when you look at it throughout the pandemic, you become more and more doubtful.”
Tegnell was referring to data published by Reuters that show Sweden, which shunned the strict lockdowns embraced by most nations around the world, experienced a smaller increase in its mortality rate than most European countries in 2020.
https://fee.org/articles/sweden-saw-lower-mortality-rate-than-most-of-europe-in-2020-despite-no-lockdown
According to the report,
Don’t forget Sweden is populated by Swedes. They probably do a better job of masking and distancing that many happy-go-lucky European cultures do with a formal lock-down.
Nice propaganda you have there pal!
Every time lockdowns don’t work, you blame the people. When countries without lockdown do better (like Japan or Sweden) you somehow find an excuse.
Are you parroting the propaganda because it makes you feel like you belong or what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJfwgUGg4z4
If you just look at the numbers, isn’t it amazing that Norway had no excess deaths? What kind of pandemic is this? The whole world had to stop why?
Amazing how CovIDIOTS will make up various ridiculous excuses with respect to Sweden.. rather than FACE THE FACTS.
Lockdowns are useless. Futile. Stooopid. Moronic.
Sweden is not even in the top 20 in terms of deaths per capita.
What part of this do you NOT understand? Do I need to beat it into your thick head with a hammer?????
There is stooopidity … then there is stooopidity + moreonism + re tar dashun = CovIDIOT.
As for masks…. https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/cloth-masks-are-useless-against-covid-19
If masks worked then why did Fauci say they didn’t later year then change his mind?
When it’s flu season in past years (we dont have the flu anymore…) do you remember any calls for the elderly to wear masks? I do not.
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Depopulation Hugo Talks #lockdown
Hugo is angry, and justifiably so. It’s good to hear somebody this passionate about what’s going on in the UK. And on, and on, and on.
Ever heard of ethylene oxide? This is what the “Schwabs” they plan to stick up schoolchildren7s noses twice a week forever are soaked in. This was new to me. Also, Hugo mentions Mike Yeadon’s recent revelations.
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/depopulation-hugo-talks-lockdown_ylyM58zRFRRGkTi.html
Let’s assume for a second without further outrage that the pandemic will lead to a reduction of world population. What will be the consequence?
1. resources per capita will raise
2. GDP will fall
3. GDP per capita will fall but less
4. crash of the financial industry as promises were calculated as a linear forward projection
5. industries will be contracting
6. scalling effects in mass production will disappear
7. production processes must be simpler, less complex and more regional
8. living standards will fall but people will reuse what is left by the people gone
It is possible to make a living without fossile fuels, simply because our ancesters were doing so, though population was about a quarter of todays. The alternative to crash might be shrinking. In a shrinking process we need a high consent of all group members. Else parts would try to live at the expense of the others.
Is it possible for a small group to keep up high living standards including a higher technology while others fall back into bronze age cultures? Our approved historical knowledge says no, but we have hunter-gatherers today and we had developed civilisations in the past, a parallel existence seems to be possible.
Would they be able to
1. keep up engineering knowledge
2. steel-production
3. production of plastics
4. exploration of fossiles
5. productions of semi-conductors
6. a few superiour cities, where all comes together?
This is in a way what Hitler and a few other alikes aimed to establish. The fall of the Roman Empire took more than 300 years. There might be room of an interregnum based on small fossile consumption. How could such a superiour culture look like?
1. keeping up cheap production of fossiles
2. use fossiles for production not for shopping butter in entertaining environments
3. selling productions for resources or agricultural production
4. keeping up military superiority
Such a culture depends on cheap to explore fossiles, as in Russia and Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, sufficient engineering tradition and social stability. While China and India can provide great knowledge, they need fossiles to provide their own masses and keep stability. Saudi Arabia is occupied with a highly unflexible religion. There are little areas left.
I doubt it is possible to ship fossile resources from a failing society. Prices would have to include military costs. I also doubt a strategy of oppression based on the internet as an infrastructure of electricity, cell phone towers, semi-conductors and spacecraft technology must be kept. I dont know how far plans of future satellite connectivity are developed but cell phone towers and electricity are easy targets of unsatisfied people.
If we look to Henry Ford or the Marshall plan it seems necessary to have masses that can buy. Looking to the French revolution and the national movements after WW1 a huge wealth disparity and power disbalance within a society leads to instability.
Personally, I prefer a broad agreement on restriction, one-child-politics, self-sustainability and the development of simple technologies. We could start this for people on a voluntary basis, if we contain the consequences of today markets and regulations from them. For example gardens today have real estate prices, regulations have to be fullfilled that do not allow a change of technology.
All friends I discuss this with say, they would be convincible but they doubt others are. Generally, I think, it could work as there is a lot of European memory about living without fossiles.
Norway had, before the 19th century, a custom which helped to keep population within limits: no one married until they had done their military service or were no longer liable to call-up.
Malthus greatly approved of it. This was unfortunately abolished, and led to the population pressures which forced so many Norwegians to leave their homeland rather than starve.
It was a completely humane way to observe limits – unlike the Great Re-set plans for secret sterilisation, destruction of natural human relations, and quite blatant murder.
It is just normal that a populace takes its resources into account. Didnt know the Norwegian example, thanks.
If we had a one-child-policy it would take two generations to be one quarter. I dont see any advantage in getting offspring and euthanase them then.
Of course economies would crash, and that’s perhaps the real impediment.
I was fifteen when one of my schoolmasters advocated a very similar one child policy. After his enthusiastic talk, I asked khm a question:
“Sir, if the intelligent, thoughtful and prudent people limit their numbers, while the stupid and thoughtless do not, what will happen to the quality of our species?”
He responded with an unanswerable refutation: he called me a fascist. But I submit that the question still stands.
I’m not sure about you Robert, have you watched the human shenanigans lately? It surely appears that the world is overpopulated and run by morons?
Have only observed a one child policy in one country – China. So your hypothesis might be a bit flawed.
So why reproduce when the dumb asses have “won”? I got zero children…
So long and thanks for the oil. 🐟🐬
🤣👍
Kowalainen, I agree that the world is overpopulated and run by morons. Because health care, government subsidies, and welfare states have encouraged the morons to breed, while many of the non morons limited their children to a number they could effectively support. Hence our current situation, and it is rapidly getting worse.
Here’s a living memory of that. Small scale living, eating mostly plants and self powered transportation.
Sure I got electricity and a few computers too many, but that’s just my appreciation of technology and IC.
I guess my footprint is about two orders of magnitude less than the regular dope in the US.
Of course it can be done. Not only can it be done. It HAS to be done. Either by “market” forces, VAXX and pandemics or your own respect for the biosphere.
Pick your poison. The party is over.
🤣👍
Looking through meta region / blocks viewpoint it makes sense who is on the chopping block now.. it could be quite counter intuitive for some..
The US has the largest preponderance for violence both domestic and projecting power abroad, however they ran out of easy targets and can’t nowadays directly confront China, Russia, Iran, .. and much of their selected spheres of influence.
The EU has most potential for further energy savings, e.g. existing fast rail network could be strengthened and upgraded with last mile e-bicycles while most of frivolous flying to be easily abandoned.
Unfortunately acquired prominence in NPPs waned, build up of renewables was expensive, time consuming, self inflicting wound.
Also large parts of W Europe are now on the abyss of sectarian insurrection (via “new inhabitants” karmic blow back? of past colonial eras) – and overall elites are completely compromised by the globalist agenda. In short it’s the easiest target to be torn apart either by US or “Asians”.
China absorbed most of the available last gen hi tech, it can’t grow further exponentially but probably can stabilize for a while at some level.
Russia upgraded defenses and opened up some last fossil energy frontiers – it can power up itself and selected allies for a while.
..
So, we are clearly near very abrupt shift, and those locked in the weak position and or with the worst management are going to pay big time aka go first down the rapid implosion phase.. More directly if you happen to be ~middle class European and smell blood in the air, well open your eyes and look around you are sitting on the sacrificial chopping block already, you are going out first (well apart from obvious situation in the 2.5-3rd world). Still, the US could speed up and outperform, implode first, but I’d not bet on it as the European desire for self inflicting wounds is stronger.
Well said
in reference to:
“Still, the US could speed up and outperform, implode first, but I’d not bet on it as the European desire for self inflicting wounds is stronger.”
http://jameslafond.com/article.php?id=12975
QUOTES
“As Rosenberg had earlier demonstrated, the struggles of such as the Arians against the strict religious hierarchy of Dark Age, Rome, and he closed Love and Honor with a strident declaration that Masons, with their humanitarian deism, and the disciples of Paulinism, Jersuitism, were waging war on the soul individually and collectively.”
“He examines Eckehart’s sermons and teachings as at once an upwelling of Aryan spirit against the corruption and materialism of Rome, Africa [He means Egypt here] and the Middle East, in line with the great religious thinkers Thomas Aquinas and Emmanuel Kant, only superior. He also offers an alternative to the descent into the ideals of mercantilism, Masonicism, Jesuitism, and the squalor of “Dostoyevskian man” which he saw as a logical fate befalling a society wedded to the ‘abstract good of Sokrates.”
“He describes Eckehart’s mission as a heroic doctrinal mysticism:,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,”
“I must state that I have attended many Protestant Baptist sermons in the past year which agree wholeheartedly that Eckehart’s view is profoundly non-Christian, th[at] he claimed a deeper Christianity that was not dependent on a violent hierarchy. I attended a sermon two weeks ago in which children were declared wicked at birth, and yesterday in which the same pastor preached the necessity of beating children.”
“Rosenberg, like Eckehart 600 years before him, engaged in the hopeless task of separating the religion of peace from its hierarchies of violence, which include, in scripture and gospel, hundreds of excuses for and justifications of slavery. And in the end, Rosenberg himself will preach that Marcus Aurelius was weak because he saw slavery as wrong and that the world should be divided into masters and slaves.”
“His entire theory is riddled with such brilliant, heretical observations and witless contradictions.”
Prosperity (oil powered IC) arrived quite late in the pagan lands (north EU) as compared with the Anglo sphere. Poverty and misery is still very much alive in the gene pool, I guess. Prosperity hasn’t quite yet killed off the sense of urgency toward the dictates of Mother Earth and Jack Frost. Religion exist mostly in the abstract over here. Nature have always been a harsh mistress with our entitled rear ends and that sort of sets the mentality (psychologically) rather than dealing with people (aggression, churches and sanctimony) in denser populated areas.
For sure we got plenty of despicable folly in our present and history extending for at least half a millennia into the past. I have been trashing that BS in quite a few posts.
However, we haven’t for sure been in the drivers seat as compared with the Anglo/Franco sphere and Germans, more acted as ruthless opportunists in the craze of an era, which is sort of despicable, with the upside of no bombs being dropped on Sweden, actually no bombs has ever been intentionally dropped on Sweden.
I guess the thinking must have been if that’s the way TPTB wants it, well, we object and then play the game but behind closed doors laugh at the muppets contort out of nothing combined with ego, high on magic mushrooms and LSD.
However, it is good to see the reasonable guys in the drivers seat for once in a while. Jensen Hung (Nvidia CEO) talking to the CEO of Sweden Inc (Wallenberg), regarding the purchase of a DGX AI supercomputer was indeed “interesting”. Lisa Su (AMD CEO) inviting the Tencent CEO, I think it was, in their latest keynote.
I’m beginning to suspect the vodka belt axis will be formed and driven from the west coast US, extending across the Bering strait into East Asia with compute/IT (Silicon Valley/Arizona fabs), intercontinental fibers, energy (Russia/Alaska), rail and HVDC tech(North/Central/East EU/East Asia mfgs). With the end point in the fjords of Norway.
It is overall a quite sparsely populated area with the exception of East Asia, with plenty of resources and reasonably educated and modest population. Some potatoes, vodka and a few snowmobiles burning Russian oil for shits and giggles should keep the whitey pagans at bay for the foreseeable future.
What is worrisome is the overpopulation in Asia. On the upside, they have been overpopulated well before IC and rice grows like weeds over there. Russian natgas/fertilizer could take care of that no problems.
As for the rest; I guess they gotta sort out their own problems. The Eurasian steppes lineages that migrated northeast out of Göbekli Tepe after the last glacial maxima run the show now, it seems.
/Outrageous and wild speculation off
🤔
There won’t be any “broad agreement” about de-growth since nobody would vote for that. What we will have is increasing inequality, where the “serfs” are slowly priced out of buying new fancy homes, cars, vacations… They will increasingly have to rely on buying old stuff and cheap food. This is how we adapt to lower amount of energy resources. As long as food is available and the electricity stays mostly on, this show can go on for many decades.
yes, this future scenario is seen as probable by some of us.
of course, it will be a difficult task to produce adequate food and electricity.
TPTB/govs/CBs might be able to prevent a serious breakdown in the many complex parts of IC and keep a quasi BAU going for a decade or two more.
food quality and quantity will get worse, and electricity will get less dependable, but that will just make human life more miserable, while still sustaining a high population of more miserable humans.
it will only get worse and worse, until a major dieoff, which could be decades away (or, less likely, any day now).
@Slow Paul and @david, your hypothesis sounds like the best case scenario. I wish it’s true.
But why the sudden acceleration last year? So many changes that make no sense from the perspective of preserving civilization at any cost.
Let me try to translate:
– lockdowns, closed borders, working from home = austerity measures and cutting down on oil consumption, I buy that.
– Forcing all small businesses to close while the giant ones stay open = Wealth transfer to the rich / Destruction of the middle class / More energy savings
– vaccines = ? Why the insistence on vaccinating everybody including infants? Can you explain that? Is it just wealth transfer to the pharma corps? They already have the promise of vaccinating every adult multiple times a year (according to govts).
Thanks!
“But why the sudden acceleration last year?”
so are you seeing a “deceleration” this year?
I am.
all of your other questions: the virus is a real but minor health crisis, and the human response was all over the place with typical illogic and misinformed policy and psychological weakness and advantageous greed.
I would expect more of the same.
Let me fill in, the logical outcome is that it served as an excuse for broader resetting (guided implosion) of the legacy system from the opulent years of energy surplus; law system allows for it in sort of strike of natural catastrophic event. Simply, any future discussion about lower pay or no jobs, crumbling infrastructure, civil liberties, hyperinflation, rationed food & utilities, .. all such concerns will be conveniently referred back to this point, so there is no legal (nor informal – moral) remedy for the little people down the pyramid structure..
It’s essentially big hand washing of the surgeons (and hospital co. stockholders) above the dying corpse of surplus ver of IC.
Entirely so, worldof.
Everything unpleasant will be traced back to the ‘fight against the virus’: the perfect cover for all their plans to demolish whole sectors, crush human and civic rights, digitise and automate.
You are jobless, sick from injections and masks, imprisoned in your tiny apartment, your savings gone, no privacy, suicidal, dying of an untreated condition, your children mentally scarred? ‘It’s all Covid – regrettable, but what could we do?’
This is so convenient – in timing as well – that the contention that it was all planned and engineered barely needs arguing anymore.
The plans have been fully publicised for years, and were not the product of the fevered imaginations of conspiracy theorists hanging out in the woods….
Nomadic
Explanations which refer solely to deep plots and opportunism by the mega-rich, corruption of politicians, energy planners, Big Pharma, etc, fail to account for the intense vaccination drive, as you correctly observe.
The answer is that it is essential not for medical reasons but for the full control of movements, bio-data harvesting, and assimilation and full submission, to the internet and to those who control it. And to whatever controls them.
Hence the essentially phoney ‘pandemic’, coinciding with extensive 5G deployment, enabling the transition to a dispossessed slave population and a Western version of social credit – ‘ESG’.
Once we are maximally digitised, and our lives totally atomised by restrictions, separated from family, friends and even work colleagues. we can be quite easily reduced in numbers as deemed expedient, and made to conform completely.
I can see why people are reluctant to accept this, as it is quite blood-chilling.
There is, quite simply, NO conceivable medical justification for the 100% vaccination drive, even if one were convinced of the efficacy and safety of the ‘vaccines’. Nor lock-downs, nor masks.
And yet this is something upon which all governments and all regulators, ‘independent (but not the real ones like Mike Yeadon) researchers’ etc, now concur.
So why must ask: Why? A ‘Pandemic Panic’ just doesn’t cut it as an explanation.
Thanks Xabier!
Last year when I first started looking into the pandemic brouhaha, what scared me the most was the amount of collaboration and synchronization across the world.
After a year it is quite clear that this (whatever it is) was well planned and carefully executed.
Coming from govts that are notables only by their incompetence, this is frightening.
Professor Jay Bhattacharya is one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration:
Why have the media, politicians and many scientists sought to panic the populace about SARS-CoV-2 far beyond what the evidence would warrant? The incentives include financial motives, political goals, the desire to protect professional reputations and many other factors. The virus is seasonal and late fall/winter is its season. It is very unlikely, given that this is the case, that the virus will spread very widely during the summer months. It is also the case that a large fraction of the UK population has already been infected or vaccinated and is immune, which will greatly reduce hospitalisation and mortality from the virus in coming months. There are tens of thousands of mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They mutate because the replication mechanisms they induce involve very little error checking. Most of the mutations either do not change the virulence of the virus, or weaken it.
There are a few mutations that provide the virus with a selective advantage in infectivity and may increase its lethality very slightly, though the evidence on this latter point is not solid. We should not be particularly concerned about the variants that have arisen to date. First, prior infection with the wild type virus and vaccination provide protection against severe outcomes arising from reinfection with the mutated virus. Second, though the mutants have taken over the few remaining cases, their rise has coincided with a sharp drop in cases and deaths, even in countries where they have come to dominate. Their selective infectivity advantage has not been enough to cause a resurgence in cases. Third, the age gradient in mortality is the same for the mutant and wild-type virus. Thus a focused protection policy is still warranted. If lockdowns could not stop the less infectious wild type virus, why would we expect them to stop the more infectious mutant virus?
[..] “The scientific evidence now strongly suggests that COVID-19 infected individuals who are asymptomatic are more than an order of magnitude less likely to spread the disease to even close contacts than symptomatic COVID-19 patients. A meta-analysis of 54 studies from around the world found that within households – where none of the safeguards that restaurants are required to apply are typically applied – symptomatic patients passed on the disease to household members in 18 per cent of instances, while asymptomatic patients passed on the disease to household members in 0.7 per cent of instances. A separate, smaller meta-analysis similarly found that asymptomatic patients are much less likely to infect others than symptomatic patients.
Asymptomatic individuals are an order of magnitude less likely to infect others than symptomatic individuals, even in intimate settings such as people living in the same household where people are much less likely to follow social distancing and masking practices that they follow outside the household. Spread of the disease in less intimate settings by asymptomatic individuals – including religious services, in-person restaurant visits, gyms, and other public settings – are likely to be even less likely than in the household.
The evidence that mask mandates work to slow the spread of the disease is very weak. The only randomised evaluation of mask efficacy in preventing Covid infection found very small, statistically insignificant effects [Danish mask study]. And masks are deleterious to the social and educational development of children, especially young children. They are not needed to address the epidemic. In Sweden, for instance, children have been in school maskless almost the whole of the epidemic, with no child Covid deaths and teachers contracting Covid at rates that are lower than the average of other workers.”
https://lockdownsceptics.org/risk-of-asymptomatic-spread-minimal-variants-over-hyped-masks-pointless-an-interview-with-professor-jay-bhattacharya/
That is an excellent stat from Sweden to cite to friends and family who seem eager to have their children injected, having been taken in by the fear propaganda and lost all perspective.
I must endeavour to save my niece and nephew from this barbarity, for what it is worth.
According to the National Association of Home Builder’s, the rising cost of lumber (up 180% since April 2020) has increased the cost of a single-family home by more than $24,000.
Pick your poison, in countries not building with plywood aka more into concrete blocks and bricks, while these materials inflated in price only slightly but almost the same inflationary pickup ~150-200% took place on the side of contractors (as fewer co. remained in the biz), .. so if you depend as most people on hired work and won’t risk it with completely untrustworthy cheap crew you have to wait and pay premium for the quality contractors. Obviously, at some further point there won’t be any money left (demand) even for the reduced fewer crews out there, and at that point the price finally crashes.. lolz.. In other words the last ~good window of opportunity to build new structures for ~commoners was ~decade ago.. And if you rode that recent scam market rocket it doesn’t matter much you just simply pay now the highest price (+bonus) and get in the first slot before anybody else looking for contractors..
DIY stores face ‘critical shortage’ amid housing push
Builders are at risk of going under as Mitre 10, Bunnings, and ITM face a dire shortage of building timber after Carter Holt Harvey’s decision to cut its supplies to the three companies because of accelerated house construction.
According to BusinessDesk, Carter Holt Harvey is unable to fulfill supply commitments to the companies, citing “critical supply issues” as demand for new houses spikes.
However, Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) had reportedly maintained its supply relationships with its biggest clients – Placemakers and Carter Building Supplies – industry insiders told BusinessDesk.
Through an internal memo to staff and shareholders, ITM chief executive Darrin Hughes detailed CHH’s decision to no longer supply timber to its roughly 100 stores nationwide.
“This is a massive decision on CHH’s part and one that will have ramifications for years to come,” the memo said.
“We spend almost $34 million with CHH per annum so I know this will have a significant disruptive impact on many of your businesses.”
New Zealand Certified Builders Association chairperson Mike Craig said the move could see some builders go out of business.
“Some of the smaller builders who just do one house at a time and they can’t get product, what do they do with their workers?
“You could see that it’d have a real knock-on effect where workers have got no work, the builders haven’t got cash flow, and they could go under because they haven’t got enough capital.”
Craig said the companies’ ability to service builders’ requests was partly dependent on how much product they had in reserve. He believed timber supply companies had been stockpiling since November, with some branches hiring warehouses to store extra timber.
Craig saw CHH’s decision as emblematic of a global problem whereby increased demand was delaying supply shipments. He referenced the usual 12-14 week wait for windows from Europe had blown out to six months. Domestically, some builders were waiting up to three times longer for product.
“It’s a very, very big problem,” he said.
https://www.odt.co.nz/business/diy-stores-face-critical-shortage-amid-housing-push
Leak Canada:
– Projected supply chain break downs, inventory shortages, large economic instability. Expected late Q2 2021.
Dear Malcolm, I stopped working for the NHS on Tuesday, March 31st, 2020. I had been present at a meeting when every clinician on the orthopaedic team was called to a special meeting with the hospital general manager for the Trauma & Orthopaedic service. All clinicians were advised that patients who died in hospital were to have their deaths ascribed to COVID-19. There was not a single objection raised by the 40 or so clinicians present. This is the fundamental rationale for highly inaccurate COVID-19 fatality statistics.
What was required to gerrymander the statistics for COVID-19 deaths in this manner? Firstly, no hospital management would have dreamed up this scheme on their own. It has to be assumed that some higher authority had requested, nay, ordered it. It is highly illegal to forge death certificates. The forgery and the uttering of death certificates renders the miscreant liable to a 14 year prison sentence under the provisions of the Forgery Act (1913). Secondly, post mortem examinations would have to have been suspended (another illegal act) because the PM findings could not possibly agree with the falsified death certificates.
The number of patient admissions would show an increase in COVID-19 admissions and deaths, which would not reflect all of the other usual emergency reasons for hospital admission. Hospital bed occupancy numbers for normal emergency admissions would not tally with COVID-19 numbers stated as deaths. All of the foregoing aside, with the exception of forging the death certificates, demonstrates a proactive stance taken to increase COVID-19 fatality numbers. We should ask of this same conversation took place with clinicians in other departments in the hospital. We should also ask if that particular hospital was one rogue establishment that sought to help the government in its discomfiture at trying to persuade people that there was really a crisis. Finally, we should ask if other hospitals went rogue and also forged death certificates.
I made representations to my MP (as a member of the serving government) and he stated to me in writing that my allegations were so serious, that he could not look at any of the other questions I had raised regarding the government’s mismanagement of COVID-19. He felt that my allegations had to be attended to first, as a matter of extreme urgency. I provided personnel names, roles, the meeting date and time, the subject matter and thus far… nothing, nada, zilch. It distresses me greatly that the NHS management was able to convince perfectly normal clinicians, whom I had known and worked alongside for my whole NHS career, to commit forgery and fraud. Not one single voice objected and I lost my respect for every clinician present. I left the next day never to return despite being in my early 70s.
The statistics are all based upon blatant lies, supplied by hospital consultant staff. They can and will never lead one to sensible conclusions about COVID-19 case fatality rates.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/03/20/covid19-hidden-figures-and-ooda/
This is from a blog of a Scottish doctor.
There has been a change in how UK COVID deaths are counted. This is a report I found. https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/public-health-england-death-data-revised/
I think it really is necessary to look at “excess deaths” relative to expected, to see the direct and indirect impact of COVID.
Sweden has 5000 extra deaths 2020 (10M people)
The UK has 90,000 (70M people)
If Sweden were to have locked down like the UK has I guess they’d have 35,000 excess deaths.
If the UK had not locked down they’d have 13,000 deaths.
And roughly 60 young healthy people would have died so far https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/28/388-brits-under-60-with-no-underlying-conditions-died-of-covid-in-hospitals-13815524/
This is a farce. Except it’s not. It’s the great psyop in the history of the world. And the Borg is about to kill itself tee hee….
So if my math is correct on those UK death numbers, then there should be riots in the streets of London. 90,000 deaths with a population of 70 million is a death rate of 0.001285% or basically 0.001%. That’s pretty low and probably are in line with the seasonal flu.
Unfortunately, so many people are so cowardly (and so innumerate, and incapable of calculating probabilities) that reading that figure of less than 400 deaths under 60 -even in the MSM – they would tremble at the thought that they could have been one of them, and call for even harder perpetual lock-downs and compulsory injection of ‘Anti-vaxxers’.
The ‘generous’ furlough scheme was very clever, in buying people off – the great tranquiliser and anesthetic while the surgeons got to work on the old legacy economy.
When it ends, they will find out that the operation has left them and their employers in the morgue…..
A woman in the UK goes to a doctor appointment for her heart condition and her doctor gives her the covid-19 vaccine. She suffers neurological damage and now has the convulsions we’ve been seeing in a lot of people.
https://twitter.com/brigade_health/status/1375880761157554180
Right now in Israel, 6 year old children and under can not go to restaurants without vaccination. Medical Apartheid is now common practice and enforced by the government. People are fighting for their freedom, jobs and children.
https://twitter.com/DamoPelham3/status/1375943264038047746
Excellent!!!! Like the part where he says people are willing to stick that shit in their bodies without asking what’s in it….
That’s a testament to the great Covid PR Team
From Zerohedge: Iran & China Sign Massive 25-Year Deal: $400BN Chinese Infrastructure Investment For Oil
The ‘no jab, no job’ for care workers is a start – but the government needs to go even further
I don’t have any close relatives living in a care home; but if I did, I am not sure how I’d feel if I knew that a significant proportion – maybe even a majority – of the workers in that home hadn’t been vaccinated for Covid.
We all might end up in one, and it is hardly comforting to think that a casual sneeze by one of the staff in the day room – or even a raised voice – could amount to a death sentence. It does, though, in the age of Covid.
Of course, vaccination isn’t yet proven to prevent anyone from carrying and thus spreading the disease, symptomatically or asymptomatically; and it isn’t 100 per cent protection effective anyway. Yet it might well do so for some individuals, and would certainly contribute to a Covid-free environment for the nation’s gran and gramps.
It seems entirely reasonable, then; for the government to insist that those applying for jobs in care homes should have to be vaccinated as a condition of employment. Indeed, the move is way overdue, and isn’t that much use for very long until it is made a statutory requirement for the vaccine to be periodically boosted to cope with new, more vicious coronavirus variants as they emerge.
It should, by the same token, be applied to all those currently employed in such settings – the whole range of facilities, from hospitals to sheltered accommodation. A new law should explicitly abrogate any existing employment law, so dismissal would always be lawful; and would impose penalties on workers (including casuals and temps) and employers and agencies alike. It needs to be watertight. Granny deserves nothing less.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/vaccine-covid-pandemic-b1821183.html
Let the market judge, if that is what you want, pay a premium for it.
Dennis L.
Real time PCR tests at the nursing homes (and homes in general) instead of the obnoxious vaxxing and dumb ass lockdowns. Swab you breathing orifice yourself and stick it in the machine. Or why not a “breathalyzer” device scanning for pathogen traces.
Slap some high-tech on the problem and watch it go away.
Why do I have to run the world?
🤔
🤣👍
Another proposal in direct violation of the Nuremberg Code. And also an abrogation of the Hippocratic Oath. I presume these “jabbers” will now be required to take the Mengele Oath? “First, obey the orders of the fascist state”
This certainly does illustrate how people who are not evil in themselves, but simply lacking in the ability to reason and merely conscience-less and compliant tools of an organisation – in this case the NHS – can become the instruments of a very great evil, just as in Nazi Germany.
How did it ever happen in the 1930’s? This is our lesson.
Once criminal activity becomes a part of routine – as is happening – we are truly lost.
If it’s not classified as a crime (quite the contrary!)
and “everbody does it”, then it doesn’t feel like crime,
even if until Dec. 2019 it obviously was!
Illogic? Well, I’d say that human mind craves belonging
and most people loves to follow rules.
And then there’s the money (job) issue.
So… you’re right, we are lost.
If vaccines can stop transmissions is unclear. But they can protect you. So why demand mandatory vaccination for your fellow citizens? Care for yourself!
Vaccines are not very effective and a big risk.
In the test they had to have 20.000 vaccinated to avoid less than 160 positive cases – these were not even ill. The danger of the virus itself seems to be overestimated, it is more a “test pandemic”.
The risk of the mRNA vaccination on the other hand is completely underestimated. The mRNA destroys cells which creates a lot of problems: it boosts blood clotting, reduces the oxygen saturation and harms all organs. It derives from treating cancer – in this case you are willing to take higher risks. The monitoring is still improvable.
We dont know how the vaccine interacts with other medication and we dont know how above problems react on morbid people. If you are healthy you probably can deal with the infection yourself, if you are too weak to fight infection you might not be able to tolerate the vaccine.
I would recommend to wait a bit.
If a person is vaccinated against COVID-19, will they still be able to spread the virus to susceptible people?
An ideal vaccine stops everyone from carrying and passing on the infection as well as protecting them from becoming seriously ill. It is currently unclear whether COVID vaccines only protect against symptomatic and severe disease, or if they can also stop all infection, including asymptomatic infection (i.e. showing no symptoms). If the vaccine is only able to stop the symptoms of the disease, but unable to stop the virus from infecting us and reproducing, then the virus may still be able to be spread.
https://www.immune.org.nz/covid-19-vaccination-general-info-faq
https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/22/synthetic-mrna-covid-vaccines-a-risk-benefit-analysis/
Blood Money
https://ia601405.us.archive.org/25/items/cuomo_20210324/Cuomo.pdf
QUOTE: This is a story that I’ve tried (and failed) to convey several times, and the culmination of a significant amount of research. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it brings to light some information and connections in one of the darkest periods of American history.
Initially this was supposed to be a video that I released earlier in the week. At the end of it, I decided I hated it, and it didn’t convey the research in the way that I’d hope it might.
So instead, I went AWOL for three days (sorry), sat down, and wrote a short book (it’s only 86 pages). I needed to get it all out, in order, and make sense of it in a complete way. For me, and for you. The video is still going to be released. It wasn’t what it should have been, and I need to fix it. It turns out every time I finish a big project, I have a moment of clarity where I realize how I should have approached it from the beginning, so I redo it. I’m working on it, sorry for the disruption in my usually scheduled posting when this happens. I love connecting and talking with you guys, but sometimes I just need to shut up and focus so I get it right. With information this heavy, it’s difficult to not want to try to do it as much justice as I can, and the original production was a dramatic video that ultimately did not make as much sense as it needed to, and did not give justice to the topic it covered.
I want to win the information war, not just fight in it. ENDQUOTE
https://www.somebitchtoldme.com/post/blood-money
What is even more perverse that in case of trying to amend your folks in the care home with supplements, vitamins etc. – chances are the personnel won’t commit to that at all.
I over heard horror stories (actually some on tape) about doctors lying into your eyes what exactly is in the infusions for your family members – e.g. they administer just a bit of magnesium etc. that’s all.. basically a placebo.
It’s just giant brainwashing the conformist attitudes in this field, they can easily provide people with Vit D, C, zinc/selenium, .. just in a precautionary manner.. No, it’s not “scientific consensus” for them.. well and if patient is almost dying only then they pump them up with all these expensive drugs several $grand a piece and fire up the ventilator..
It’s madness and we were not into serious (war like medicine) triage during this outbrake yet. So, it could get only worse..
“it is hardly comforting to think that a casual sneeze by one of the staff in the day room – or even a raised voice – could amount to a death sentence. It does, though, in the age of Covid.”
I never heard that homecare staff was asked to vax against flu, which as we know helps to dispatch millions of old people every year.
In care homes lives old people (~75 is my guesstimate), most of them under medication and with chronic ailments. The fate of such a population was always to meet Mrs. Death in a short / medium term. Sarscov2 didn’t make any big difference here. In fact. even in the age group (+85) with more deaths attributed to the covid, these represent only ~ 14% of the total death causes.
https://www.heritage.org/data-visualizations/public-health/covid-19-deaths-by-age/
New Zealand – Unvaccinated border workers to be barred from frontline roles
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says they can’t force people to take the jab, but nor is it acceptable to have unvaccinated people working in New Zealand’s main protection against the virus ravaging other parts of the world.
He said he would never make immunisation mandatory, as that runs the risk of hardening any anti-vaccination stance.
About 5 percent of the border workforce have refused a vaccine, for a variety of reasons. They have been the first group of New Zealanders to get the vaccine, given their high risk working conditions.
The government has always been reluctant to talk about anti-vaxxers, but prefers to talk about vaccine “hesitancy”.
Whatever the reason, some border staff are refusing to get the jab, as Hipkins explained to Parliament’s health committee.
“There’s a distinction between saying ‘in order to do a particular type of job, you need to be vaccinated’, and saying, ‘if you’re doing that job, you need to be vaccinated’.
“One’s okay, and one’s not,” he told MPs.
Not everyone refuses on moral grounds, he said, giving the example of someone who’s pregnant and may be happy to be vaccinated after her baby is born.
“On the other hand, if there is a small group, and it looks like it’s going to be a very small group, who just say, ‘well, I’m not going to be vaccinated’, then that’s the more difficult conversation – we have to say to them ‘well, you can’t do the job you’ve been doing because you haven’t been vaccinated’.”
Soon no-one without a vaccination would be working on the frontline whatever their reason, Hipkins said, but a “hard and fast” deadline had not been set.
“But there are some things that we’re working through,” he told the committee, “including, if you look across our MIQ [managed isolation and quarantine facilities], some are run by big chains where the redeployment options are plentiful, some are quite small employers, so therefore, we have to sort of think through all of that with them.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/439187/unvaccinated-border-workers-to-be-barred-from-frontline-roles
Well, I used to be vaccine hesitant. But since this COVID business I’ve become a firm anti-vaxer (which my auto-spellchecker is trying to get me to change to anti-taxer or anti-waxer, by the way). I get my dog vaxed against rabies every April, quite unnecessarily since there is no rabies in this country, as because it’s the law of the land. But once he’s gone, I will never take in another canine. Ever notice how the state grabs your God-given freedoms through your dogs and through your kids? In future I’ll stick to newts or gerbils or a parrot or something else that doesn’t require vaccinating or walkies. That will show ’em.
This totalitarianism is going to go on and on until all the sane, sober reasonable people tell all the germaphobic busybody control freak mother hens where they can stick their jabs, their muzzles and their holy water. I fear it could be a long time coming.
I fully agree: except that Holy water might be of no little use in times like these,given the nature of our enemies – and future persecutors for declining injections.
Rather sad not to have another dog, though!
As the Ancient Persians believed, they are on the side of light. Personally, I am grateful to them for their being supremely oblivious to this wholly human nightmare.
Na-zealand? Sounds like it……
SDR proposals could help reset international monetary system
The immediate reason behind the decision on 19 March by the G7 group of industrial nations was to help low- and middle-income countries hit by the pandemic. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, speaking after a finance ministers’ meeting under the UK’s G7 presidency, said the new capital injection ensured that ‘no country is left behind’. Kristalina Georgieva, IMF managing director, said the planned SDR allocation – to be finalised next month – would accompany measures on ‘debt vulnerabilities’ and concessional finance.
The action has wider significance. The US now agrees with using the IMF’s balance sheet to boost world liquidity. One side effect of the pandemic is that the IMF’s accounting unit is advancing beyond its status as an arcane currency basket – and could become an essential part of a future monetary reset.
In 2009, the United Nations suggested a new SDR-based ‘global reserve system’ – ‘feasible, non-inflationary, and … easily implemented, including in ways which mitigate the difficulties caused by asymmetric adjustment between surplus and deficit countries.’ That same year, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, proposed that the SDR could become the pivotal international reserve currency, disconnected from individual nations, as ‘the light in the tunnel for the reform of the international monetary system’.
Now, as a result of Covid-19, the world’s monetary system based on national fiat currencies may be approaching a turning point. With the SDR revival, Zhou’s ‘light in the tunnel’ is shining a little brighter.
https://www.omfif.org/2021/03/sdr-proposals-could-reset-international-monetary-system/
Thanks, that sounds as important can kicking vehicle for the (near)mid term..
UK plans to administer coronavirus vaccine booster shots to elderly
The booster shots are set to begin in September of this year and will be provided to elderly British citizens in an effort to protect them from emerging coronavirus variants, according to The Telegraph.
“Jonathan Van-Tam [the deputy chief medical officer] thinks that if we are going to see a requirement for a booster jab to protect the most vulnerable, [it] would be around September,” Zahawi told the newspaper.
The booster shot will also be provided to social care workers and frontline National Health Service workers, the outlet noted.
The U.K. announced last week that half of all adults in the country have received at least their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
“It’s so important because this vaccine is our way out of this pandemic,” Health Minister Matt Hancock said at the time.
He also encouraged U.K. citizens to take advantage of their opportunity to receive the vaccine.
“So when you get the call, please come forward and get the jab, and join the majority of adults who’ve now been jabbed,” he said.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/545203-uk-plans-to-administer-coronavirus-vaccine-booster-shots-to
‘Join the majority’: the weakest of arguments, when in this life there are always ‘more geese than swans, more fools than wise.’
We don’t know how well the first round of vaccines worked, and we’re already scheduling our next appointment? Neverending vaccines goes hand in hand with neverending lockdowns.
After COVID-19 outbreak in retirement home, families want mandatory vaccines for staff
Even though Susan Asa-Katz’s mother is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the 92-year-old spent last week isolated in her room after unvaccinated staff at her Thornhill, Ont., retirement home contracted the virus.
A variant of concern was detected among two workers, which led to an outbreak at Amica Thornhill in the Toronto area. At the direction of York Region Public Health, all 140 residents were told to isolate in their rooms for two weeks.
“It’s inhumane. We shouldn’t be doing that to people that are in the last years of their lives,” Asa-Katz said.
Now, she and other family members are calling on the Ontario government to mandate long-term care and retirement workers be vaccinated.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/families-want-mandatory-vaccines-after-retirement-home-outbreak-1.5962020
Susan Asa-Katz’s mother is fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
So what’s the problem?
Doesn’t the full vaccine work?
The cognitive dissonance is strong in some people.
If they are so unhappy about the caring regime being provided, then before calling on the Ontario government to override people’s fundamental human rights, shouldn’t Susan Asa-Katz and the other family members consider taking care of her aged mother themselves rather than dumping the old lady on the state to be cared for by strangers?
But of course, that would be inconvenient for them.
Yes it makes no sense. If I m vaccinated but don’t want anyone unvaccinated around because they could give me the virus if they get have it. They should be vaccinated but then they could could get the virus from someone else and still give it to me. Conclusion – the vaccines are not very effective. Natural immunity from virus exposure is likely to be more effective.