A suddenly popular hobby for the statistically minded is the modeling of the coronavirus pandemic that threatens to sweep the West. The statistician to the stars, William M. Briggs, has been modeling things like the utility of testing. Steve Sailer has been promoting a person blogging under the name “Arguably Wrong”, who has been modeling the cost of different containment strategies. Of course, the CDC is taking this opportunity to whip up a panic with their models.
The right word is panic, as we have hoarding of useless supplies like toilet tissue and bottled water. Starting this weekend, tens of millions of America will be sheltering in place and self-isolating over fears of the plague. Schools are closing and will remain closed for six weeks. Entertainment like sporting events and public gatherings has been canceled indefinitely. America is about to go into an unprecedented shut down of the economy and civic life based on what could happen.
That is a very important variable. The numbers thus far are trivial, in terms of infections and deaths from this virus. Italy has the highest per capita infection rate. That infection rate for Italy in the chart below means there are currently twice as many dwarfs in Italy as there are virus victims. In the United States, almost as many people have been struck by lightning this year as have contracted the virus. More people have committed suicide this year in China than have died from this virus.
Now, the experts all say these numbers will explode in the near term. Just as the flu or the common cold starts small, person to person contact causes the infected population to grow quickly. Currently, the claim is the infected population will double every five days, with no end in sight. Italy, for example, could have 200,000 cases by the end of the month, if that prediction is correct. By May a little under one third of the population would have the virus and by June everyone is infected.
This is, of course, exactly what did not happen in China. In fact, we have no reason to think this will happen at all. We have examples of prior infections, some very serious like the Spanish Flu. We even have a good sense of the infection rate from the Black Death in the middle ages. As far as we know, there has never been a virus with an infection rate like what is being predicted. Maybe this is different. Maybe modern urban life makes us unusually susceptible to a pandemic. Maybe.
Further, we don’t know as much about pandemics as the army of experts in the media would have us believe. Most of the model makers are assuming the experts on this stuff have their facts right, but there is no evidence to support that claim. For example, the Spanish Flu remains a mystery. We know the strain of H1N1 and we have some sense of where it started, but we have no idea why it ended. We know it ended long before it reached the infection rates predicted for this virus.
In the fall of 1918, 4,597 people died in Philadelphia in the week ending October 16th from the Spanish Flu. By November, deaths dropped to zero and by mid-month the flu had disappeared from the city. No one knows why. Maybe it mutated into something very mild. Maybe it simply ran out of victims. Maybe limiting social contact finally stopped the spread. No one knows. That’s an important thing to keep in mind about these predictive models. They as yet cannot predict the past.
This is something that must be plugged into any model for this virus and models for predicting potential outcomes. The models being used will all be wrong and wrong in ways no one can predict. For example, what if there really is an ethnic component to these infection rates. The part of Italy being hit with the virus has a lot of Han Chinese for all the reasons we have non-Europeans in the West. The city of Prato Italy, population 200,000, has been overrun by Han Chinese.
Could there be an ethnic element here that would explain the numbers in China, Italy, Iran and the reaction by Israel? The Chinese seem to think they are particularly vulnerable to this virus. They have been studying coronavirus for some time, because they have suffered more than any country from it. Lance Welton at VDare has been cataloging the studies on this topic. The media experts dismiss this stuff, but that’s mostly because of the fear of being called racist, which is worse than death.
The point is the models that are driving the great shutdown of the West are based on assumptions that are most likely wrong. That means the models themselves will turn out to be wrong. Modeling the wrongness may turn out to be the most important project over the next several months. Right now, the public is grudgingly giving public officials the benefit of the doubt. The people have little trust in them, so when things are not as predicted, those public officials better have answers ready.
For example, what happens if we learn that the outbreak in Italy is centered in their large Chinese community? That’s going to have an effect on public policy, because it will have an effect on public attitudes. Even if lots of actual Italians gets sick, people are going to wonder why this fact was not made clear straight away. They may also wonder why there is a Chinese community in Italy. A whole range of prior assumptions are going to come under new scrutiny with new information.
How about something simple like the great spread of the virus does not materialize over the next few weeks? Public officials will no doubt claim that the lock down was a success, but that’s like claiming the reason there are no giraffes in your garden is due to installing a garden gnome. Very few people are going to buy it and the more so-called experts push it, the more the people will reject it. The already low faith in public officials will fall even further. There will need a better answer.
It may not even take a few weeks for the public to grow both weary and skeptical of the state of emergency. A very large chunk of society thinks this is a hoax. Young people are calling it the “Boomer Remover” while taking advantage of cheap airfares. Short of more data to fuel the panic, the public could get tired of this by next week. This approach to the virus can only work with public cooperation, so public officials should assume great public resistance within the next week.
There’s also the idiot factor. The fact is, America has rounded up most of its imbeciles and put them on government payrolls. Under normal conditions, they do a limited about of harm this way. Under these conditions, they can do a lot of damage. Red Flag laws have already embolden imbeciles on the local police forces to randomly open fire on people in their homes. The staggering incompetence of public safety units must be part of any model predicting what comes next with the lock down.
That’s the thing about a public emergency. Societies are systems with lots of hard to define inputs and sub-processes. The outbreak is one input that has set off a range of other inputs, which in turn has altered the behavior of many sub-systems. These sub-systems interact with one another, so the system we see, what we call daily life, is changing in unpredictable ways. All of these linear models violate the basic rule of models in that they assume things about the world that are false.
Life in human societies does not happen sequentially. Instead it is millions of lives operating in both parallel and in series. It’s very complicated. We see that with how public officials in America have reacted to the virus. When it was a Chinese problem, public official ignored it. When it became an Italian problem, suddenly it resonated with Americans, because we are familiar with Italians. It turns out that the input value of one dead Italian is exponentially more important than one Asian.
Over the next few weeks, public officials better be ready for being wrong about all the things they have been saying. Trump’s first instinct, like most Americans, was to dismiss the alarmists. The reason is they have cried wolf so often, only a fool would believe the alarmists at this point. If this turns out to be a big to-do about nothing, we suddenly live in a world where 300 million people feel like they were taken for a ride. There will be a price to be paid for being that wrong about something this big.
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The discussion seems to be boiling down to “hoax” or “not-a-hoax”. Z’s essay postulates “modeling-failure,” with various “stakeholders” (as the parasites like to say) jostling for advantage. However, modeling-failure doesn’t eliminate hoax (some are agitating for panic even while knowing of the modeling-failure), and it doesn’t eliminate not-hoax (as well-intended people push for preemptive action and real preparedness for what they see as the real possibility of a real mass-death pandemic).
What many are not seeing is the beneficial effects of the panic (the panic, not the Chinese virus itself), whether based on reality or not: Globalism, for instance, may die in its worst incarnations as countries prophylactically seal their borders with support from their (panicked) populations (i.e. impermeable “national borders” suddenly become important again). Another aspect of globalism, outsourcing of the production of important resources to third-world sweatshop countries (e.g. medicine, steel, actual “factories”), is also taking a bad hit as the American population is informed that China—China!—has a choke-hold on medicines that keep many (Boomers?) alive, and that they’ve openly threatened to USE that weapon(!). There are plenty of other examples, and while it is clear that many of our elite overlords are giddy with excitement that this unfolding event will enhance their wealth and power…the fact is that it’s going to seriously curtail—and may END—their most cherished globalist one-world plans.
Finally, there is this: The Wuhan virus pandemic—hoax or not—is going to guarantee the re-election of Trump, not lessen it (as the overlords, oligarchs and their MSM so devoutly hope). His touted, growing border fence; his open embrace of “America first”; his insistence on “bringing back jobs”; his emphasis on “buy American”? It all works in favor of his re-election. And what’s not to like about that, given the alternatives?
Bill! Get a grip! What part of the phrase “in its worst incarnations” mystifies you? No one is suggesting disentangling “the economies of the developed world.” Rather, “what I want” is for “the worst incarnations of globalism” to be disrupted and/or destroyed by the Wuhan virus pandemic. Do you see any problem with globalism as it has been presented to us and practiced for the past, say, 50 years? Anything there we might be better off without? Any aspect of it you might want to modify?
This panic is the inevitable result of the “if it saves only one life it’s worth it” culture the government-media have created.
I saw what is, I believe, a hopeful sign yesterday (Saturday, 3/14) when the wife and I did our weekly Sams/Walmart grocery run (Don’t know how we’d get along if Sam Walton had never decided to go into retail). The hopeful sign, you ask? The parking lots were full. Oh there was nary a roll of toilet paper (or paper towels for that matter) or a bottle of water to be had in either place and people were queued up at the back corner of Sam’s hoping to get a package of TP or water if they had any in the back. But the parking lots looked pretty like normal for a Saturday. Despite Friday morning’s announcement by local authorities that the first “travel related” case of Covid-19 had been identified here in San Antonio, people do not appear to be “bunkering up and hunkering down”. And that’s a good thing, don’t you think?
P.S. ZMan, where did you find those numbers? That far right column is, to me especially hopeful. Mortality rates, in most countries, below 1% are a good thing and indicate that this is simply your usual coronavirus. But I’d love to know where you got those numbers. Wanna send them to a couple of people I know.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
I just did the math on the dead divided by the undead.
Surely someone can reveal whether those Italian hospitals that are full are full of Chinamen or not.
Expect massive waves of bankruptcies, with big banks vacuuming up companies at firesale prices.
I’m a truck driver and this is what I’m seeing so far… https://governmentslaves.news/2020/03/14/im-a-truck-driver-and-this-is-what-im-seeing-so-far/
“Since retiring from the military 10 years ago I started driving a truck over the road.
While a slow down after the holidays is typical, I’ve never seen anything like this before. We should be up to full operating capacity by now.
My dedicated lane has all but vanished. Instead of 12-13 loads coming out of the shipper per day, we are down to 1-3.
Proctor & Gamble distributors have lines of trucks waiting for product. Some of those trucks have been waiting for days as P&G can’t meet production levels due to a shortage of raw materials.
Back hauls are so random it’s becoming ridiculous. Our usual customers aren’t shipping products.
The truck stops are full of trucks that can’t find loads.
My dispatchers are starting to panic with load boards being empty.
Amazon warehouses are nearly empty, when at this same time last year they were at capacity and using trailers on their lots for storage.
The supply chain is broken and only getting worse by the day.”
So you truckers are still willing to run but the suppliers (like P&G) are not “supplying”. {scratching head} Reckon what’s causing that? Is it that way across the board or only certain types of products? Especially, what about FOOD?? Are you guys still getting loads of food to haul? Cities only have – AT MOST – three days’ worth of food on hand in the stores. If you 18-wheelers stop running then we’re going to see food riots shortly.
Bill,
The title of the article is “I’m a truck driver and this is what I’m seeing so far… ” —- I am a school teacher in a private school and can’t legally drive a big rig. Never even been in one.
I find what he is saying to be informative. He does not pretend to know why things are as they are — he is just reporting what he is seeing.
The Italians are dying because they have the second larges demographic of people over 65, second only to Japan.
Difference I believe is the Japanese have always worn masks to avoid sharing their colds with other people and have strict public hygiene rules (no spitting on the sidewalks).
The Chinese spit and blow their noses openly and on everything with no concept of public hygiene. They only wear masks to protect themselves.
Northern Europeans (north of the Italian border) are closer to the Japanese in terms of public hygiene, but no European wears a mask and we are big into mass public transpiration; e.g. buses and trains which is helping to spread the virus, especially since we now know it can live on surfaces for upwards 48-hours.
Also you may not be aware that Chinese were blocked early on from flying into Italy. But they got around it by flying into Germany and then got into Italy using domestic transportation.
“The fact is, America has rounded up most of its imbeciles and put them on government payrolls.”
I’ve been saying for years now that FederalGovCo is basically just a jobs program for minorities who are too stupid, shiftless, and/or incompetent to hold down a real job.
Imagine crime rates if the FGC weren’t hiring. People would look forward to Corona.
We’ve all been “saying” it, just not nearly as funny as Zman can.
FDA approves all drugs. Also has the power to shut down the CDC. The CDCs new enhanced guidelines from the FDA require the CDC to test all COVID samples twice. Thats taking time and using reagents twice while we still have a shortage of testing kits. – Pro Publica
This seemed so obstructionist to me I went looking, and discovered their ongoing lobbying efforts to become an Independent Agency.
Yes Dears meet your real government.
Squalid yes, imbecilic? Not really.
Being The Fed for Pharma and like The Fed untouchable; think of the Power, the Money that would flow.
This is also in line with the governments policy of making sectors of the economy public utilities. See Finance, and the rest of Healthcare.
They’re not Imbeciles Z .
At present, we are.
“And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”
Barry Goldwater, 1964
A Jewish libertarian.
Now I know I’ve crossed the line.
Careful! I’m holding a live Murray Rothbard, and I ain’t afraid to use it!
I don’t get why Z and others are making fun of stocking up on toilet paper and bottled water. Z seems to have real beef with toilet paper. It’s concerning. What does he mean by, “it’s not going to help you if you have Covid?” Does he think Covid equals death?
It’s not a cure for Covid. It’s a means to wipe your ass. You gotta problem with that? As with bottled water, people are buying it up because they’re worried about a shortage.
And for all you “look at all the dumb people” crusties; just because many store shelves are empty does not mean the populous is “panicking”. They’re being reasonable and prudent in response to the info they’re presented with.
Because the early shopping raiders who scooped up packages and packages of TP and cases and cases of bottled water have created an inconvenient shortage for others in the “community” that you’re always talking about here. And if you didn’t buy any food, you’re not gonna need to wipe that ass.
The FDA is lobbying to become an Independent Agency.
Like the Fed.
I was wondering why the FDA was being so obstructionist.
What do they want?
Turns out FDA has been lobbying since at least January to become an Independent Agency; like the FED, FCC, CIA.
This means they’d be well, like the Fed.
Yes this certainly plays into the mix. This is how bureaucracies get their way, or play spoiler when they don’t.
See Jerry Bremer in Iraq for another great example.
Yes Dears this is the squalid and banal truth.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20190312.542301/full/
In a sane country, there would be a price to be paid regarding being wrong about something like this. We don’t live in a sane country. There will be NO price to be paid by those making the calls right now. In fact, the exact opposite will happen. Those who made the incorrect predictions will be given medals and be lauded by the media, government and academia. The biggest losers through all of this, casual and part-time workers who base their employment around their family situations who will not get paid during this nonsense will be told that they were wrong. Come tax time or when bills are due, Corona will be down the memory hole and banks, the Fed and landlords will shrug their shoulders and say “Well, that was then and this is now…”
If mentioned before, sorry, I don’t need the CUH-reddit.
Google factories in Italy, look at the google map with the red markers
Then google heat map of virus in Italy
A little dim sum to think about.
I disagree here, although I agree w rejecting panic. The thing I most disagree with are death rate comparisons to other things. First off that is the argument multiculti morons often use w terrorism, ‘your chance of being struck by lightning or have a random brick fall on you, is greater than being blown up by Mohammad…’ And then idiots who say that go right on to warn you that in 60 years you will drown b/c of rising sea levels, showing why they should not be in charge of anything bigger than a hotdog stand.
But most importantly, the danger from an epidemic is like the danger from nuclear weapons. It is the potential to completely blow up, even though nukes have killed very few people since 1945, mostly from radiation exposure. That does not mean that nukes are not insanely dangerous. An unchecked epidemic of a significantly lethal airborne disease is similar, it has an inherent potential out of all proportion to what it may currently be doing.
I have a friend in Northern Italy, he says things are pretty hairy there. Hospitals in Lombardy, around Milan, are balancing on the edge of collapse according to him. The Chinese, cynical if ever there was a cynical government on this planet, and those who know this virus best, tried to talk soothingly. And acted as though the black death had returned. Panic, like anxiety or choking, is a mind frame, an emotional state. It should be rejected. But this should be treated as something pretty serious. Based on the information available, not based on what official morons say.
No doubt Boomer Fear of Mortality is feeding the panic, just as Millennial/Zoomer resentment of Boomer Privilege is feeding the skepticism. Another thing feeding the panic is widespread distrust of government at all levels.
Here’s a personal example. You mentioned the large Chinese population in northern Italy where their outbreak is concentrated, and I immediately thought of the virus outbreak in Seattle, where one of if not the largest Chinese populations in this country lives.
A little searching led me to this map of the Chinese population in the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Americans#/media/File:Chinese_Population_USA.jpg
Compare this to a map of the virus cases in the US:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Kind of look similar, right? California, New York and Washington are the big winners.
Now go find the breakdown of cases by race ethnicity. I’ll wait… How’s that search going? Got the number yet? Of course not. Instead, you found something like this:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/reducing-stigma.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fabout%2Frelated-stigma.html
To be clear, I’m not saying I know ANYTHING about the numbers, but I KNOW that the government has those numbers, and they are NOT sharing them, just like the kept telling us that heterosexuals (i.e., normal people) were going to get AIDS just as often as sodomites who would go into bathhouses and have scores of other sodomites sodomize them got it.
Our government is beyond trust. Buy toilet paper and Fabreze air freshener!
I’m already tired and skeptical. It reminds me too much of what happens when a snowflake hits or is even predicted in Atlanta.
Tired? Now I gave JR52 grief about apocalypse cosplay- even though he’s actually right about that, even quite funny- but nah, not tired.
Just getting wound up. Good lord, what the fudge is it going to take?
I rode on C.Fred too- c’mon, people, time to raise some he!! with this!
Later:
(Might’ve been a bit hasty. Mea culpa.
Miffed at missing an opprtunity to miss an opportunity.)
Apologies, credit to Dobson for Mad Max cosplay.
I’m flustered and making a fool of myself, y’all got that right. Par for the course.
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2014-01/enhanced/webdr06/29/13/original-31532-1391021411-23.jpg
Snowmagaddeon 2014!
“ There will be a price to be paid for being that wrong about something this big.”
The media downplayed it first, accusing anyone who cared of racism. Then they went all in on it once they thought they had a way to needle Trump on it. Boomers nearing retirement who lost 20-30% of their 401k are going to remember this nothingburger at the voting booth this November. A more charismatic Democrat nominee might find a way to spin it but instead they got America’s Creepy Uncle.
any president will get blamed for a declining stock market no matter the reason for it, by a lot of people.
this is the reason media is screeching about fraudvirus so much.
with an election decided by a couple percentage points, media will hype this to crash the market for as long as they can.
The thing is, people saw their account values drop by one-quarter in three weeks if they were aggressive investors. A big wake up call about complacency there, too. People need to get more squared away about a lot of things, and we are in “square you away with a two-by-four to the side of the head” time.
Yes
JR52, my liberal BFF called me to say this was all Trump’s fault.
This and the rising sea levels too.
Trump’s fault. Not kidding.
Yep. Trump has been a lucky man in most instances and drawing Biden was a gift from God. Sanders actually would be better situated to oppose Trump since he isn’t a globalist in the sense of outsourcing. Biden is.
Bernie is sentient, too.
The Biden clips are so painful, yet oddly comical, on so many levels.
That Biden is a seriously offered candidate for president is such an indictment of our culture.
At this point, I think the Democrats all realize that their voting base is definitely going to be voting for who the other person on the ticket is with sleepy Joe. After all, it’s that person who will resume power once Joe resigns from the job. Besides which, the day Joe gets sworn in if that day should ever come, Obama’s team is back in the White House.
“Our” culture- not. But I think that’s becoming apparent, thankfully. Too bad that’s what the rest get to see.
“America has rounded up most of its imbeciles and put them on government payrolls. Under normal conditions, they do a limited about of harm this way. Under these conditions, they can do a lot of damage. ”
reminds me that apparently the Catholic church has rounded up most of the homosexuals, and put them in charge of everything.
machiavelli’s advice “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” taken to the Nth degree, in both cases. It’s one thing to keep an eye on them, another to let them control everything.
Z, thank you so much for this rational, factual, and historical way of viewing the current pathetic state of America.
My wife is frightened beyond words about this virus. She made a great salary and has a great pension from being a life long university teacher and it is off limits to talk to her about demographics, borders, PC, etc. even though our children, especially sons, are suffering for our sins.
I will try to sneak a little of your post to her to calm her down although can’t send the entire post because you discussed race…er, reality….or “somebody did something.”
Thanks again.
Ex, your wife seems not alone. I just went out to the supermarket to buy dinner stuff with wife. I was in same store Thursday. Nothing out of ordinary. Today…well today was panic. Never saw so much commotion aside from say, Xmas eve or before Thanksgiving. But this was different, not a happy rush for last minute dinner fixings or fresh apple pies from the bakery.
So what was *not* there. I can’t list all. Never in my life have I walked into a grocery store that had *complete aisles empty* yes empty. No paper products, except diapers. No rice, no beans—some cans of Hormel Chile, shrinking by the minute. Certain areas of the meat dept, empty. I did not stop to examine what was sold in those areas. Even the chip section was heavily drained. Who the hell stocks up on potato chips as a must have staple. I guess fat Americans.
My apologies for all previously said in postings today. I perhaps underestimated just how crazy and panicked a people we are. Whatever the President is saying, he should perhaps stop and take a break. All it seems to do is incite more panic. Mind you, there are no reported cases of COVID-19 in this city!
I am not alone. A man standing next to me picked up on my comments to wife wrt something being seriously wrong here. He was irate as well. Not that there was a lack of groceries, but simply at the mood of the crowd. If the damn utilities quit, we are in for a hell of a time. God help those in the city centers in our more vibrant communities
Sir Compsci— WOW. Tell me about it. Just left Dollar Stores, TJs, Costco, etc. And my general area is upper middle class.
Empty shelves period. Except for diapers???
I have X amount of stuff stored up but….
I am 60 plus and have never seen this type of panic. Keep safe.
I must confess, I stared at the diapers and tried to figure out if they could be used (with some cutting up) as toilet paper. 😉
How about keeping those large phone books in case you run out. Here in Cedar City, this afternoon I helped a large fat arthritic wheel chair bound girlfriend by picking up her prescriptions at Walmart. Store was 2/3 empty of people and stuff. According to staff, the tidal wave of people hit early and hard and had cleared out. Had what I wanted. People staying home, traffic very light. Then went to another grocery store, same thing only 1/3 the people and stripped shelves. Lots of yummy meat for The Range. Easy to shop and get around.
Sharing some prepping info with you:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/last-minute-coronavirus-quarantine-supplies/
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/covid-19-lockdown-quarantine-pattern/
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/media-preppers-stocking-up-selfish-hoarders/
Some of us are prepared and NOT hoarders. In The Range household, we’ve been prepped for years and there was no scramble with this pandemic. The reality is, shit will eventually happen, and if it doesn’t happen in your lifetime, it will happen in your kids.
What’s that old business phrase….oh yea what I say to the world right now…..”A lack of proper planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency for me.” It’s never too late to plan and prep. My first prepping 15 years ago was Costco’s 25#Pinto beans, 25# rice, case of green beans. Katrina wouldn’t have been a mess if the “residents” of Nawlons had 3 qts water and 3 cans of beans each and didn’t freak. Some people by nature, “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!” People now enjoy big emotional drama and there is little cultivating restraint, calm and thinking things through.
Range–Good luck and God bless.
The thing that concerns me most is how many females we have one our side.
If we don’t have the numbers then our cause is gone.
To be honest I am not sure how to talk to females these days. Males and females have their own strengths and weaknesses.
I am glad you post on this site.
I’m chuckling because I’m not much better at talking with women than you do! And I am one. A few of us have a gift of seeing and understanding that men and women are hardwired literally differently, and the ability to notice male patterns and female patterns. In my experience more men notice female hard wiring and understand than women understand men. Z gave a perfect example in his podcast about Pelosi Hating Trump and it is personal, she can’t let it go and rational decision making is out the door.
So you are correct…..be careful how you talk with women. The fever swamp could open up and down you go!
Godspeed, ExNative.
Ex…”The thing that concerns me most is how many females we have one our side.”
Too few or too many? Assuming we have too few. Not surprising. Thurber’s new action battle of the sexes played out en masse. Now we have the great divide betwix men and women. When the world turns to crap, whenever that is, and women can’t build or engineer their world or fix the car, women will walk on their lips through busted glass to crawl back to you men. It’s a coming.
CTH has an interesting piece on the nuts-and-bolts of the limits of grocery store stocking and restocking. Just-in-time and just-enough create the landscape for the freak out.
I stopped by the stores today and was astonished by how much had been stripped. All were utterly denuded of any fresh meat or poultry. Cleared out of all frozen veggies. No flour, pasta, tuna, peanut butter, cooking oil (evo in good supply), milk, eggs, etc. People have gone absolutely nuts. We’re fine for at least 4-6 weeks (far longer in extremis – always keep lots of peanut butter and protein powder on hand!); my only concern is how badly this will affect restocking given the panic buying is nation wide.
The day people stop hoarding, the stores will start filling up again. Did a foray to the Albertson’s in Temecula this evening. The milk, eggs, and many veggies were gone, along with the TP, frozen food, and soup and beans. All the soda and sweets you could want. Temecula is a nice community IYKWIM. Good to see that people are stocking up on healthy stuff up there, not junk. Not too busy either, and the freeway traffic around SoCal was light all around today. People are starting to hunker down. Heck, drove by the in-n-out in Temecula at sundown, and there wasn’t one car in the drive through. That’s a first.
Trump relaxed the restrictions on delivery, so we’ll get those shelves re-stocked by this weekend and next week.
Yes. I went to a Walmart this afternoon to pick up a prescription and some milk. Shocked. I expected the TP to be gone but laundry detergent was almost gone as was meat. Virtually no bread. Ice cream was picked over. They were bringing in bottled water by the pallets. No potatoes. It is strange.
The weird thing? The wine and beer aisles were full. Now listen: If this really is as bad as it could be and people have to stay inside for a couple of weeks, you are going to need a lot more than bottled water to see you through.
Yes!
Focusing on case date rate, like the media is going, grossly exaggerates the danger. True, 4.6% of those who caught the bug died in Wuhan, and 4.6% sounds scary.
But you first have to catch the bug to die, and only about 0.26% – 0.45% (depending on what counts as the population of Wuhan) caught the damned thing.
Many more died of the swine flu than are likely to die of COVID-19, but somehow this one caught everybody’s attention. Twitter availability?
The real modeling challenge is in projecting panics
It really is quite a thing. It’s as if much of the country and the ruling class are playing a real life role playing game called pandemic.
Noted in my last posting. Shear panic.
From manufactured consent to manufactured panic.
A financial Meltdown and Reset.
Classic Cloward-Piven, except the idiots opened Pandora’s Box. This was supposed to remain a routine SARS or H1N1 level panic.
They’ve been pulling this leg since AIDS and ozone/AGW entered the party together.
A sandwich.
Does anybody recognize a Journolista “practice, practice, practice” playbook?
A headline, and a comment from elsewhere.
https://humansarefree.com/2020/01/bill-gates-world-economic-forum-ran-coronavirus-outbreak-simulation-just-6-weeks-before-the-real-outbreak.html
“I believe something is being “orchestrated” because of the Gates-Hopkins simulation in October. I think it is a desperate attempt to hold onto global power at any cost.”
Comments from the latest Kunstler, I think.
I haven’t read the “article” yet. “humansarefree” is a ridiculous title, and I have to get to work.
Darn right I’m looking for confirmation bias- I am biased as all get-out.
This s**t stinks.
(I note that the comments in the good Mr. Briggs original link- thank you, Z-audience- also seem fairly divided.)
https://www.gamesmen.com.au/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/a/pandemic_board_game_7_.jpg
Yes, It’s made by ZMAN Games.
Covid-19 is not a threat to most people unless their immune system is shot or messed up cardio-pulmonary. That is still man millions of people. That fatty on a rascal is one. So is the chain smoker, the diabetic, the cancer patient, those with COPD, etc. That’s a lot of people.
That said, thinking this is all big fat joke is beyond stupid. It just shows how dumb the DR is. This virus got out of China’s only level 4 lab. And it got out earlier than most people realize – last Nov. That’s when Italian virologists detected it The Gooks sat on it for 3 months before saying squat. These people are beyond reckless.
Look the gooks are punching way above their pay grade in this department and it should worry people. What escapes next from their lab, a Elbola or Measles variant?
These people are crooks, frauds and cheats, they built their entire empire on ripping off the West. They’ve proven they can’t handle bio-tech anymore responsibly than a Mexican meth addict can handle money.
Consider this event a wake up call. But most won’t because they think they the party will go on forever.
RWC….always appreciate your contribution. You’ve been places and know things. Take care out there.
What jumped out at me is that only about 25% of the people on the Coronavirus Princess cruise ship, teeming with virus, got infected, as far as anyone knows (the rest have dispersed).
you may end up very incorrect. time will tell. but buying up tp is a prudent measure to avoid inflation…
Pick;
Don’t know about TP as an inflation hedge, but creating a reserve inventory of non-perishable stuff that you’ll use anyway doesn’t seem like a terrible idea in times of uncertainty. The only exception I can think of would be if you were paying Credit Card open balance interest rates to finance said inventory.
Besides this, it seems like you’d be taking some initiative for you and your family’s protection instead of just hoping that our beloved govt. doesn’t screw the situation up more. Frankly, I don’t see how people talking about how incompetent our rulers are can be making sport of people who take them at their word and stock up.
Al, the situation is how much to stock and when. A week or so ago I made a run to Costco for some regular staples. I noticed on a normally dead afternoon, lines through the isles. One person next to me have four or so of those big bundles of TP. Really, enough to last until X-mas or so. It was then I began to figure something amiss. In a normal circumstance, there would be TP for all, if that person—and the dozen after them—bought a single bundle (enough to last a month or two).
Lovely Daughter mentioned that she would like to have a significant supply of food and necessities on hand at all times, but it is “too expensive”. I pointed out that once she has the supply (a one-time extra cost up front), she adds as she uses, and the ongoing cost is the same.
Heh! pick, you scoundrel.
You think women have lost it! The state of Utah is run by soft globalist pansy “men’ virtue signaling this state to death. Whatever you think about Mormons, those old ancestors that pulled handcarts across the country were some tough SOB’s and are now rolling over and over in their 6 feet under homes in sheer shock and frustration.
Yesterday Gov. Herbert (globalist) shut the schools minimum of 2 weeks BUT schools will be open to had out gib food to dirt people kids because parents can’t be bothered to be responsible enough to feed-clothe-discipline or most anything else their snowflake kids. Think On That! Schools are closed but open! If our ruling overlords believe these pandemic control methods, why are the schools still open!! But closed! But open!
Now imagine 8% White Los Angeles Unified.
RFF—In a few weeks I am planning to visit a couple of old friends who escaped with their families to a highly Mormon area in the Rockies from Cali.
They are beyond livid at the current crop of Mormon leaders. But it should show us that there is no place to run and hide. There may be a place for us to run and fight but I am not counting on it.
Cheers.
As the Kingfish (Amos and Andy) would proclaim, “I am Regusted!
Seriously, ExNative, thanks for sharing that your Rocky Mt friends are Regusted with the church leadership. The last few years it dawned on me too that there is no place to run no place to hide. And the Mormons are now just as pussified as the rest of the country. Just handing Utah over to the dominant culture and our globalist overlords. Best regards and take care!
Same in Washington State. The first priority of the schools seems to be passing out goodies to the indigent.
I mean, they *did* fall for the continued failed prophecies of a madman… so…
We won’t really know how dangerous the Coronavirus is until it is described as The Virus of Peace.
Beautiful, just beautiful.
If it could testify against Hillary it would be dead by now.
And right on cue, DeBlasio wants to “Nationalize” the health sector so as to not rely on China for health care products.
He should have voted for Trump, our clairvoyant.
I respectfully disagree with this take. The cold-hearted bastards who run China didn’t shut down their entire economy and lose face before the world for nothing. Those ICU’s in Italy aren’t filling up with mirages. Yeah, maybe it will turn out to be nothing – I sincerely hope so. Yes, the Media/Industrial Complex is full of sh*t. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and if the cost of avoiding an (admittedly unlikely) potential outcome where several million Americans die is a few useless (or worse than useless) universities closing and a few months without sportsball, it’s a price I’m willing to pay. Just listening to the lefties scream at the loss of their beloved trips to Europe and hearing Trump say “Chinese Virus” is well worth a few days of working from home.
“Just listening to the lefties scream at the loss of their beloved trips to Europe and hearing Trump say “Chinese Virus” is well worth a few days of working from home.”
That made me laugh. It’s a good attitude to have while working from home for the next few weeks.
I just went 10 weeks without a paycheck, because I could, but I fear for all my bros who can’t.
We think of the Chinese govt as some sort of borg that always does everything for a reason, but it is just as capable of freaking out and doing stupid shit as any other government. Chinese govt officials are social media addicts like everyone and it makes them retarded in similar ways, so they run out and weld people into their homes. That same dumb panic won’t lead to the same thing happening in the US, but it will fuck up our economy and be just as absurd.
especially if you’re under 50, the virus is literally nothing. but the overreaction is like global collapse tier shit itself at this point. like at this rate people aren’t going to be allowed to do anything that requires leaving the house and the human population is going to be stuck indoors living on hoarded food until we’re all in the clear. farmers and grocery store employees can’t work from home.
http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4468428&mc=48&forum_id=2#39743806
As I said, I honestly hope that you guys are right. You may very well be. But remember, three weeks ago, the dingbats of the liberal media were saying that this was all racism, and would amount to nothing. The leftist media isn’t even useful as a compass pointing south. If this does turn out to be nothing, they will be screaming that Trump over-reacted and did too much. Don’t take your cues from them, even in a negative way.
The problem is that Trump rested the legitimacy of his presidency on the performance of the stock market (instead of on putting libs on trains as I was hoping he would). Because of this early and repeated miscalculation, if the stock market continues to go down before the election, he loses, and we end up with shitlib lunacy in power and all that it brings. I would have been happy for him to argue “Coronavirus is what happens when we have open borders, we need to close borders and build the wall and deport illegals”, but that of course would result in a stock market fall, and a subsequent drop in Trump’s legitimacy. So we are stuck arguing that Coronavirus is a fraud (which I do think it is anyway).
Nobody panics like Asians, especially Chinese, panic. I fear for the population of exotic creature that ‘Traditional Chinese Medicine’ has identified as protective of this terrible aliment.
I have lost of a lot of respect for other dissident bloggers (some with links on the Zman’s homepage) that are mindlessly repeating infection rates and mortality rates without considering any other variables, such as, population density, ethnicity, testing facilities, individual health, age, etc., and etc. Raise these objections and you are an idiot because it’s the end of the world!
It’s not exclusively government and politicians that will see a backlash if this is a nothingburger.
I agree with this. I’m a little shocked by some people. Again, I think the Boomer fear of mortality may be driving a lot of it. Things are going to get weird as 20% of the population realizes that no one lives forever and they are now the most vulnerable.
“Boomer Mortality Fear” of “BMF” may be the primary driver, but I also get the feeling that some significant minority want Mad Max. That troubles me.
They want the cosplay of Mad Max, not the real thing. They are getting to appear in “The Walking Dead,” for gosh’s sake!
Agreed about those in the Dissident Right who have bought into this hoax. Trump realizes it’s an op but is constrained in what he can say or do about it, at least for now. The aftermath of this fraud will force the people who fanned the flames of panic to explain themselves…at least to those who didn’t particularly want a bit part in a zombie flick. That will be the fun part.
“Don’t ask questions! It’s still Morning in America!”
“Trump realizes it’s an op but is constrained”
Now that is 100% on point. Very well said.
Hysterics like myself panic, know why?
Because, think- think for just a tiny little bit, a mere treacle of over-capacitied brain power-think of what the ability to pull such an op means. Of what has been done, and is intended.
Of what “they” are still yet capable of.
Cosplay would be the rehearsal before the show. You’re darn tootin’ some would like a big show.
Spot on. Those who ran this op literally will do anything, and killing us all would be a routine day at the office for them.
Thanks, Mr. Dobson, we are in accord, we are of one mind.
We are monkeys who want to be on tv, aren’t we? You are a blessed balm, a relief.
They think they want Mad Max, but once the real thing bites them in the ass, they’ll change their tune fast, at which point it will be too late.
I lived in NYC during the Koch/Dinkins years, and most soft, middle Americans ain’t ready for that kinda zoo.
Also, the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. No power, not even cell phones. Dinner by candle light in your cold apartment. Total darkness on the streets. Police can’t be contacted, and only made one pass on each street in their cars every few hours.
I heard gunshots every night until power was restored. Street fights in total darkness.
It wasn’t like the movies.
I remember all that too.
Reality tends to focus the mind. The most based Boomers I know were bused to schools in the Seventies where vibrants were numerous. Those people don’t get the tingly feelz about blacks and Hispanics.
Ooks. Dave, I stand a bit corrected.
A tad. Serco, the Balkan survivalist, isn’t my idea of a successful outcome.
re: Hurricane Sandy-
my friend in Staten Island spent the night on the roof of her house; i called FDNY (not thru 911 — i had phone number direct to the station house) they couldn’t drive their trucks thru 13 feet deep water to get to her; besides there were hundreds of other people in her neighborhood in the same position. Spent the next day w/600 others in the high school gym. Sometimes nothing can be done until conditions improve.
If you liked eddie and dinksie , you’ll love warren wilhelm.
“That troubles me.”
It really shouldn’t. These people share a perverse commonality with your rulers in that they don’t care about a suitable outcome for you or yours. But yeah, the collapse bros have been having a field day with Covid.
Big agreement here — some well-known podcasters, too who seem to have suddenly become quite credulous when it comes to this issue. As if standardized, reliable testing exists and is being uniformly applied across different countries, whose authorities are doing so and counting and reporting the numbers they find accurately and honestly. As if cause of death is accurately and truthfully assigned in all cases. And etc., etc.
Yes. I would love to see see accurate counting and reliable testing, but I would settle for a glimpse of the raw data.
Part of the problem is there’s no such thing as ‘accurate counting’. Medical data was and *always has been* very poor quality, for the simple reason that disease is incredibly complex and *everybody* presents and reacts differently. We live in a world of complexity, and our brains are designed to filter it all out and simplify as best we can. Oversimplificaiton leads directly to over-certainty.
I’ll name names. Steve Sailer has totally gone around the bend. He must be putting up at least two hysterical “We’re all gonna’ die” posts an hour over at VDare. He always likes to claim he’s a numbers guy, but I’m really starting to wonder if he’s all that good of one.
For that matter too, the Derb has always had a bizarre obsession with pandemics. If you read his back catalogue, you’ll see him always making the claim that the Black Death is waiting in the wings to kill us all off at any moment. Maybe germaphobia is a requirement to get hired over at VDare.
Everybody has that “thing” that gets them all up and bothered. For some, it is disease. Interesting that Trump, a germophobe who has been exposed to the virus, is taking very rational positions on this thing. Control of the emotions. He says he has been tested and the results will be known in two or three days. My understanding is that results are very fast, but there are a lot of false positives, and the appropriate response to a positive test result is to wait a couple of days and test again. Hmmm.
A positive test result for the President would really bring out the inner ugly in a lot of people, IYKWIM. Surviving an infection, on Trump’s part, would change a lot of people’s understandings about the guy (overcoming hardship, when he is perceived as a home run artist that got started on third base). Were the disease to take him, that would affect quite a few things as well. The next few days could be interesting.
And the test comes negative, cross that potential crisis off the list, that’s good all around.
Dittmar, what will it take to clean the swamp?
If they get to whip up the masses, then we get to whip up the masses.
I think it’s a terrible, terrible idea for VDare in particular to blow this all out of proportion. They can make the most common sense point ever about illegal immigration – that throwing the borders completely open to whosoever wants to walk across exposes us to all sorts of diseases. There were some stories in the new not too long ago that polio was being seen in the U.S. again because of open borders. If Sailer keeps sh**ing his pants over Coronavirus however and nothing really happens, then a lot of people can reasonably conclude that open borders are no big deal since this was no big deal.
I’ve always questioned his math, mostly because he uses a lot of (in my opinion) poor statistical methods (substituting probability with relative frequency, to start with). I’m not saying that the general DR ideas around things like intelligence are wrong, but that the over-quantification can quickly lead to jumping way out to conclusions that aren’t supported by the evidence.
I don’t want to be too hard on him. I think he’s a former marketing analytics guy and I know some of them and a lot of them know their statistics pretty well. He’s just gotten way way way over his skies about this Coronavirus though and he’s going to end up falling hard on his face.
The clampdown is to stop hospitals from being overrun. America spends the treasure in its coffers on Israel and Jewish passion projects (black scholarships, Mexican housing, Asian education).
It has the bed capacity of a small, 2nd world Eastern European Country (like Croatia), at 900,000 hospital beds.
It has the 3rd largest population in the world.
This is going to be a bloodbath on the healthcare system side.
By stopping spread now, we give time to update our current model (which is a Shylock Casino model) into what I call the Vintage Americana model (I.e. no more paperwork, hotels being converted into beds, you know, white Americans using their brains and brawn to solve problems instead of asking Shlomo for permission to get funding for a marble floored suite).
Jim;
The critical shortage, if there is one, is likely to be ventilators, not beds.
So far as I know from the stats presented, ‘only’ ~20% of those infected are serious cases. But, most of those require extended hospitalization *on a ventilator*. Adding a basic bed is pretty easy. Cots, as you say, could do in a pinch: Ventilators, not so much.
As important is the staff to run them. Having the medical staff out sick, even though they recover later, is also a bottleneck.
Bed is my shorthand term for the required suite to deal with a patient for the medically illiterate. This suite includes intubation tubes of different diameters and their respective bougies, trained ED personnel who can intubate, macs, millers, Philips Vents and dumb vents, BiPaps, pulse oxes, negative pressure installations, cannulas, O2 tanks and wall spigots, RRT teams, nebulizers, ICU telemetry units, pressors, fentanyl and other palliative breathing treatments and the critical care doctors who can administer them, nurses who can do Q checks on clinical signs of adequate respiration, and IV teams and ABG meters.
Yes I am aware they are triaging tubes and vents in Italy. Yes I am aware that the bronchial plugging associated with the ACR receptor rich spike proteins on the Coronavirus make the rate of respiratory complications 10x worse than flu.
Between 5-10% of hospital beds are ICU ready or convertible.
When I say beds, it’s shorthand for the medically illiterate. Don’t be a snobby dick.
2-20 million Americans will be hospitalized from coronavirus during the next 12 months. Consult UCSF expert panel and not Fauci for accurate statistics on what a bloodbath this will be.
A woman named Jim?
A Nigger named Nick Digger?
It’ll be okay, sweetheart. It isn’t the ease with which you use fancy and irrelevant medical terms that betrayed you; it’s the typical effeminate hysterics in your numbers.
I’m so sorry sweetheart, it’s not your snark that betrayed you as a Jewish woman, it’s your teleological arguments and unironic use of the Oxford comma.
are you suggesting women use fancy terms? In my experience women know less fancy terms and are less articulate than men, because they do not have the verbolinguistic IQ of men. Maybe as a woman you believe women to be fancy. I am under the impression that they are menstruating and capricious with low verbal aptitude. I guess your vagina biases you.
Now, now, no need to bring women into your tiff.
Jim, please don’t call Al something like that.
Unbecoming, and undeserved.
Impressive, but if you’d kindly retract the “s. d.” part, I’d really appreciate it.
Gentlemen should act like it- as d’North does, abundantly.
I can’t retract it as it won’t let me edit this.
I verbally retract my statement in the following way:
Dear Al From The North,
I am sorry. Have a beer, walk it off.
Sincerely,
Jim
You go have the beer. Thanks for your reply.
Jim, I addressed the bed controversy yesterday. I’ll reiterate. The statistic you brought up is meaningless. If beds equals some sort of proxy for effectiveness of the medical system, then we must be the healthiest society out there since we need so few beds. We are not, if anything we use more health care.
Rather, we use our expensive hospitals to their most effective (and cheapest) ends. We treat, stabilize, then send folk to lessor facilities that specialize in whatever after care is needed.
Case in point. I have a friend who has lived 6 years with lung cancer via our “limited”, “poor”, healthcare system—obviously, he’d be better off in Croatia. 😉 Anyway, he took a turn for the worse and a spread of cancer jumped to other organs. More operation, chemo, radiation, etc. Long time in (expensive) hospital. Once stable however, he was presented a choice: Hospice or Rehab facility. He choose Rehab facility.
This rehab facility is a large and in every visible way, identical to a small hospital—beds, rooms, oxygen, etc. These facilities are not counted in your figures, but available to the public at large, as are hospice facilities if commandeered. So too are our military facilities—which equal in total size to the rest of the free world combined, or are MASH tents and cots too basic?
In short, if bed space is what you are addressing, it is a non problem. Perhaps you might figure out a solution for potential respirator shortages and trained personnel in ventilation technique. Perhaps we fly some temp’s from Croatia?
You are both wrong because you are misinterpreting the term “bed” and don’t understand the terms you are using.
Google “hospice” and learn what it means. 90% of hospice care in America is provided to patients In their own homes. Hospice is a philosophy of care whereby you have bedside nursing and limited means of basic care (such as 02 masks and IVs) administered primarily by nurses.
Most hospice and specialized nursing facilities are not capable of providing adequate care for a person in respiratory distress or respiratory failure. The patients in t be hospital will be textbook: they will have O2 saturation of 92% or lower, they will need frequent suctioning of sputum to maintain a patent airway, they will need to be monitored hourly or more frequently for signs of hypoxia. A hospice facility or care program will be unable to provide this.
An ICU or at least Medicine trained physician and surrogates (NP and PA) will be needed to adjust medications such as epinephrine or fentanyl, prednisone and albuterol to assist breathing without causing electrolyte abnormalities or paradoxically leading the patient to become to sedated where they stop breathing.
Vents are only as valuable as the manager, which can be a respiratory therapist, pulmonologist, ICU doctor or savvy Medicine and ED doctor. associated surrogates can also be reliably trusted. If PEEP, TV, %O2 of the vents are only slightly off the patient can develop paradoxical barotrauma or respiratory distress, lung collapse or pneumonia.
Adequate breathing often requires lying the patient face down, called proning, as well as drying the patient with diuretics which are dangerous when administered with breathing medication.
To assume that most patients need an oxygen mask and can be sufficiently monitored in a Specialized Nursing Facility, Hospice, Rehab facility is simply incorrect.
Patients who are hospitalized are in the hospital based on admission criteria. This is mainly going to be poor respiration, elevated or low pressures, septic markers or tachy and bradycardia. Patients who fit this criteria can not be managed in any of the facilities you mention.
America has more mattresses, cots, sleeping bags and hammocks than any country on earth. My comment was not that we are running out of mattress frames. It was that we are running out of adequate bed space in required ICU convertible units.
The numbers I mention are meaningless? According to which ID doctor? According to you? Read about the doubling time of this virus and contagion variables of coronavirus. The US is guaranteed to have over 100 million cases by then end of 12. Sober estimates put this at 200 million.
Is your disagreement on the meaning of bed? When we talk about healthcare suites we say “bed,” we don’t say vent capable ICU unit.
Is your argument that vents matter more a literal mattress pad on a bed? Lol, I agree bro.
Is your argument that the number of presumed cases is meaningless? Lol, sick optimism bro.
Specifically what are you disputing, and why should we believe you? Please reference
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/13/1927193/-UCSF-COVID-19-Panel-Notes
Also I just read your silly example of your unfortunate friend. Terminal patients are not treated the same way as somebody who has an acute and presumably resolvable problem. Hospice and rehab are offered as a pathway to comfort care in terminal patients.
Again, a totally different case from a person acutely coding from clogged lungs due to a passing infection.
Medically different, philosophically different.
But that’s not how you initially described our current situation. You simply compared Croatian number of beds to US number of beds as “proof” of our lacking facilities and I assume imply the better preparation of Croatia to meet such contingencies. Utter nonsense. Bed count is not related to therapeutic ability or treatment options, and you were called on such. We have more ability to handle the current pandemic than any country in the world. It may not be to your satisfaction, but it is better than all others. And is getting better as the disease spreads.
Per our resources we are incredibly unprepared, because we do not have enough VENT CAPABLE, PHYSICIAN STAFFED, NEGATIVE PRESSURE, ICU CONVERTIBLE HOSPITAL BEDS. I do not give one single FUCK about how many Sleepy’s mattresses, mahogany wood frames, hammocks, rehab, SNF, hospice or personal beds exist in the US versus Croatia. I am merely saying that our health care system is NOT DESIGNED for true medical emergencies because of our pay to play system which has woefully underprepared institutional hospital medicine for mass casualty and hospitalized patients. We lag because we invest in hospital lobby design and marketing and sensitivity training instead of the resources and services that are essential and life sustaining. You faggots are so dense and so stubborn.
and the alternative to “pay to play” is what??
Are you advocating socialized medicine, NHS, or something similar? Because you don’t like the lobby design??
Pay to play has many connotations beyond how healthcare is subsidized. It also includes how powerful interests fund organizations which dictate the priorities of American healthcare (AMA, Pfizer, AZ) and these dictums change hospital design.
The argument over healthcare economics is boring and pointless. As long as the same power structure is in place, American whites will pay exorbitant fees and Mexicans and blacks will get free healthcare.
Getting your panties in a bunch to defend capitalism or socialism vis a vis health coverage is equally moot and misinformed. The problem is deeper than how we lay, but who funds the governing bodies (lobbies) which determine the priorities of what we even pay for.
aaahh, so sorry. i misunderstood what you meant by “pay to play”.
it seems you mean lobbying efforts by big swingin dix, to get public policy in their favor.
“powerful interests fund organizations which dictate the priorities of American healthcare”
the big players do have the right (in my view) to try to influence policy, but gov’ts and other agencies also have the right (nay, the ~obligation~ ) to ignore their pleadings, when it diminishes the rights of ordinary people.
i would be interested to hear your views on what should be done with policy. changing the “power structure” is a different can of beans.
It’s simple. Listen to the gray haired warm hearted sharp as a tack Christian doctors of America and tell the silly hat wearing lobbyists and their third world stooges to beat it when it comes to policy.
Then make everything ancap so the goddamn economics-fags will shut up. Not even because ancap works. Nothing works.
Compsci, to be fair, Jim sounds like a medical professional who has had to deal with “corporate medicine” for a long time.
Easily triggered. Built up frustration.
Understandable, seeing how tight a lid providers have to keep on many outrages.
Jim, dealing with elderly family members in a variety of care environments in recent years, and watching how everything functions in the various types of facilities, my sense is that what you are talking about, as to facilities, equipment availability, and medical skill sets is all true. I think the big unknown is whether the case load of the seriously afflicted, who will need ventilators, skilled and talented practitioners, and constant monitoring and adjustment of treatments, will arrive in sequence, meaning that the resources available can treat them in turn, or instead simultaneously, in which there is little that can be done for most of them. Trying to space out the number of cases, through quarantines and good hygiene, seems the best option at this late date. Even a large case load, if it comes to pass over a period of time, should be somewhat manageable.
As to whether we will see a large case load of the seriously afflicted at all, which is actually the main argument being made in today’s conversation, we will need to wait and see. So far, so good, mostly, but no one can do too much more than take a guess, so far, as to how it goes from here. Locking into the “it’s all a fake-out” argument appears as inappropriate as the “we are all gonna die soon” one. Time will tell, and do the proper preps for you in the meantime.
A very reasonable post and reminder that uncertainty dogs us like men chase tail.
I am in total agreement. I believe the premise of the clampdown is precisely to prevent a wave of sick to the hospitals.
More medieval distancing and quarantine the more capable our Kosher system will be at handling it.
Our medical system is too kosher, and hopefully after this it will be a little more cowboy.
Jim, you are the one that cites Croatia. A ridiculous comparison. No more needs to be said wrt to your understanding and credibility. At least I cite what I can verify as an illustration of a point. You just spread panic.
Patients need a hospital in case they need a cardiologist for cardiomyopathy and myocarditis from the virus, endocrine for their high rates of diabetes and how that complicates all treatments, surgeons in case they need chest tubes and pleurocentesis, imaging for lung assessment IE CT and XR. How are you such a faggot and fail to understand that a hospice or medical tent cannot provide this.
How does the Army do it then?
They don’t. People who get sick in combat get terrible outcomes and treatment. People with salvageable limbs routinely lose them because they can’t ship them back to the nearest ortho 55 clicks away.
Do you understand what makes a hospital different from an outpatient clinic? Let alone all of the other services that you don’t understand? Do you even know why a hospital exists?
Hospitals exist to provide nursing care.
Lol, and everyone else is just a musty old fart who sits around and does nothing while the BadAss nurses diagnose the patients and treat them, almost like a cool Dr House, except maybe like House RN! Yah! And RRTs are basically just techs…PFFFT all they do is duonebs and fuck around with the PEEP and TV! Lol, any RN can do that. PFFFT. Also, nurses can read CTs, no problem!
Did you know nurses can do root canals too? Dentists are just overpaid assholes.
Compsci – What Jim is saying wrt the various equipment and personnel that are needed to manage the types of patients that Italy is struggling with is accurate. We have no idea at this moment if the distribution of patients we will have will be consistent with the distribution of patients Italy has seen (meaning percentage of patients who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and need no hospitalization vs patients who need hospitalization for symptom management and respiratory support which can range from a little oxygen to full vent support and everything in between). But if our numbers are consistent with Italy’s, we are going to be struggling.
I have been astonished at the number of lay people who have suggested that we should consider training a bunch of people in one or two weeks to manage vents or become critical care nurses. It takes weeks, normally 6-8 weeks, to turn an experienced floor nurse into a critical care nurse. That assumes we have floor nurses who would be available to do that. We don’t. In the event this is really bad, we will need every floor nurse we can get our hands on. I think people are imagining that patients will be either home with no symptoms or in ICUs. No. We will have a spread across the care levels.
There has been an outrageous amount of panic over this virus and in large part I blame the media. But I think some people are insisting that all concern about what may be coming is also panic. It isn’t. Those of us who work in hospitals every day are alarmed for a good reason. I hope that our experience is not as severe as Italy’s has been.
Deana
PS. I wish some of the contributors to these discussions understood that there are normal women who read Zman. We are not lunatic feminists. We agree a great deal with what is written here. Some of the comments above were just ugly.
My apologies Deana, I was nasty. I am truly sorry to you and all of the sweet hearted, logical Christian women who visit this site, (unlike to Al From The North who I wasn’t really that apologetic about).
I should not have laid in so deep with the words I said. The guy called me a woman, I felt triggered. I’m sorry.
Thems was fighting words and eveb though I do speak so harshly in front of my girlfriend and female companions, those that tolerate me knows it is in jest and that I love women and I value women so much. I have defended in the past a woman’s capacity to lead, specifically on a Z man post about how white women teamed up with black men to defeat white men, and I argued it wasn’t white women to blame, but certain rimless hat wearing folk and their culture of critique. I lauded women for their capacity to create life and reminded posters that women rear warriors out of babes. I will find this comment if it is around and reference it. I am sure that it received many dislikes because I made the reply in a particularly sexist thread (a crime which I am not gonna deny being innocent of either btw).
In a time like this when nurses (Mostly female) are so needed, and wise Mothers and Sisters and Daughters and Lovers and Wives are so needed, let me remind myself to STFU and never lay so deep again with the fighting words.
Jim you are batting a 1000 here. I’m a critical care nurse at a major trauma center. Trying hard not to, what are your words?, kill my patients. 😉
It’s ok. I don’t comment often here. I realize it is mostly men here and frankly I think things would be better off if we still had places that were men only. But I love the discussions so I frequent Zman. Men just speak more roughly than I’m often comfortable with.
As for the ICUs – yes. I’m worried. I’ve been a little shocked at how few ppl at the hospital were talking about this until recently. My husband and I have been watching this virus situation develop since January with growing alarm for the simple reason of knowing how little it takes to hinder optimal care of patients. I work mostly with anesthesiologists whom I adore. I pray that we do not reach the point where these people have to make awful decisions. They are good and decent humans who work so very hard to do right for their pts.
Take care.
I’m curious what your medical background is ? A lot of what you say is correct but what is glaringly incorrect is who you assume manages ICU patients. ICU nurses are who manages ICU patients. Doctors answer management questions that arise and sign orders. RTs are little more than vent techs and administer breathing treatments. It’s nurses who care for ICU patients
My background is that I met your mother in a smoky bar on a Saturday night.
Nurses kill patients without Doctors watching from afar. Don’t be so cocky. Oversedation when patients get rowdy, no understanding of complicated pharmacology, poor knowledge of pathophysiology squarely place nurses as the subordinate of doctors and for good reason.
“Doctors answer management questions that arise”
Please, your killing me with the jokes. Didn’t think I’d be dying from jokes, thought the virus would take me.
Are you serious?
Management questions?
You mean how the fuck to diagnose and treat a problem from start to finish?
Yeah, okay bud.
There will indeed be a big price to pay for the economic losses, to say the least. On the other hand, it’ll probably die like the Epstein mystery, the Barr-Durham investigations, and the Schumer censure. All of those events just go into a big freaking black hole and get covered up.
Perhaps this will become a great moment for the Dissidency
Most of the Dissidency seems to be losing its mind with the rest of the crowd. This is unfortunate, because rational conversation had been a hallmark of the Dissident movement.
Correct. This has been a mini wake up call in and of itself. Not only Sailer, but many of the DR have gone all in on the panic, buying into the worst case scenarios without question. Lion of the Blogosphere is inconsolable.
Not a good look to realize some of those you thought so highly of are hysterical bedwetters and pants shitters.
Good grief.
“Not a good look to realize some of those you thought so highly of are hysterical bedwetters and pants shitters.”
this is lol
‘Half Sigma’ (aka ‘Lion of the Blogosphere’) always struck me as a bit off the rails, though his ‘why a career in computer programming sucks’ is still a masterpiece.
Gatekeepers. Smug, sniffy gatekeepers.
Bah, humbug.
It’s not, even though its a media created scam 90% of the dissident right fell for it. Hearing “PANDEMIC VIRUS!!!” short circuited their reasoning abilities which was very surprising to me. I’ve lost a lot of respect for a lot of people the past couple weeks.
Everything is fine. No, really.
Brainstorming is for suckers.
We really, really smart people have this all figured out. Just ask us!
“Our Thng” has had years to recruit more members and continues to screw up.
The DR is a mostly vaporware. They can’t even hold a bake sale for the most part. No recruiting literature, no nothing to get people on board and focused. Their so-called leaders hate anyone who goes after the Conservative Inc like Nick Fuentes.
When someone like Jordan Peterson comes around they are baffled and get insanely jealous that this guy can steal our thunder. Well those crybabies need to HTFU. Peterson addressed a need the DR ignored and continues to.
The DR is not ready to be a legit movement, it lacks the talent to for it. Maybe in another decade or so.
To be fair, Peterson is basically just a guy that ‘sounds smart’, but when you dig in you don’t find much (I bought his Maps of Meaning book. It’s 95% gobbledegook). He had a few good common sense things to say, but those are all things your grandfather (or great grandfather) could have told you. And some on the DR are saying it (like Mr. Z man here).
Fuentes and Casey are doing God’s work with younger folks. I’d love to do something that us early millenals / late Xers could do without seeing our families (many of us have small children) destroyed by doxxing… I know, unwilling to take risks…
THIS. “I’d love to do something that us early millenals / late Xers could do without seeing our families (many of us have small children) destroyed by doxxing… I know, unwilling to take risks…”
BT, let’s start with an outline of the DR mental on-ramp. I need some best practices in many areas, like conversational tests (gauge awareness, state of pilling, possible teammate), in person organization, lifestyle decisions (actually working for the DR movement covertly), etc…. Braindump.
One sees little evidence that any price has ever been paid for state alarm being misused by the managerial class. Indeed the great flummox of 2016, from those who believed in the legitimacy of Trump-the-Outsider, was that comeuppance materialized for nobody of any significance. Not even token patsies walked the plank for much worse than closing schools for a period of some weeks. So while it is obvious to the sober minded that virus hysteria is yet-another sign of delusion and opportunism by the administration’s enemies; One must truly wonder why the chief executive of the empire allows such things to go on.
Alternatively, Q and the boomerwaffen are preparing for the all-you-can-eat-buffet putsch.
“One must truly wonder why the chief executive of the empire allows such things to go on.”
He was boxed into a corner. Trump’s instincts are correct that this is a fraud virus (ie mortality rate of the flu with higher contagiousness), but to dismiss it as such gives ammunition to his enemies that he isn’t doing enough to combat the “pandemic” and then for the left wing Jews in corporate America to crash the market to punish him for not “doing enough”.
Most of the right, including the dissident right, fed into the panic because they don’t have experience dealing with the fraud perpetrated by the media on this level.
This is simply the next fraud after impeachment to try to keep trump’s polling down before the election.
“This is simply the next fraud after impeachment to try to keep trump’s polling down before the election.”
Right, and it won’t be the last before November. Trump is still quite likely to win re-election, and it will be interesting to see the effect that has on the ruling class and their Deep State mandarins. My guess is all but the dead-enders will retreat into their shells.
Again, though, this is a golden opportunity to exploit. While the machinations behind the failed coup are hard to explain, a health panic that was ginned up by fraud is going to be readily apparent to the public. The media has very little credibility left, and once that distrust spreads more widely toward government and the banksters they will be cornered rats. This even could produce smoking guns that are obvious to Joe Sixpack.
Most of the media and dissident right know this is a hysteria moment. As I’ve said before, everyone running with the pandemic narrative is doing so because it is politically opportune. Impeachment was not a comparable issue because it didn’t change anyone’s mind and broke down on predictable partisan lines. The “pandemic,” meme is the first big issue where the neoliberal media is enjoying flanking support from dissidents. Trump has a lot more enemies now than in 2016, thanks in large part to his DOJ. Letting all left-wing terrorists walk, pardoning obvious scum like Rubashkin and Blagojevich, and aggressively rounding up dissidents of the right have all put a massive dent in the amount of sympathetic voices he enjoys, even in dissident circles. That is almost certainly bigger news than the virus itself.
So far we we don’t have enough evidence that it’s even as bad as the flu. All we have are (terrible) epidemiological models that predict doom and gloom (which gets the folks that make the models attention).
This nonsense is the perfect example of FDR’s famous quote: “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.” I hadn’t really given it much consideration, until now.
That old WASP commie did say a few good things. This is my take on this thing. I’m more shocked and horrified about what it shows about how mentally fragile people have become than by the virus. I’m saying this as someone who is actually quite sick right now too. I have a bad case of… something. It’s probably flu but my wife did return recently from a trip to NYC that had her going through such filth buckets as the subway and JFK airport. Maybe I have the dreaded virus. There’s nothing much I can do to find out right now since there are no test kits here and going to the hospital would expose everyone there to whatever I have and me to whatever they have. I’m a pretty tough and healthy guy normally but if this is flu and I get Wu-tang flu on top of it, well I don’t know if I’m quite that resilient.
I’m self-quarantining until my symptoms go away at least but if you’re still out and about take note of which people you know who are NOT losing their minds. Make a list of them. These are the kind of sober minded and based people we need in the DR.
May all the gods bless you and keep you, pozymandias, you are a rock.
Thank you for being a voice of sanity and reason amidst all the hysteria. Yeah, if it’s your elderly whatever that dies, too bad so sad. Seriously – my mother is 90, and even if I were close to her (which I am not), she’s lived a long and full life. Instead of being considered a natural part of the life cycle, dying has come to be seen as this terrifying and horrible thing for anyone, ever. Get a grip, people! We aren’t meant to live forever! I really don’t need much in particular, but plan to stop by the store to buy some frozen peas and some fresh fruit/veg after I drop my son at work (otherwise wouldn’t leave the house on a Saturday) – if the lines are like they were the other night, I’m going to abandon my cart and walk out. At least my gym plans a full cleaning in response to the ‘crisis’ – long overdue.
It is difficult to judge the value of life to anyone other than one’s self. Indeed, if I were to murder your mother, the courts would not accept my argument “that she was old and had a good life” as a mitigating circumstance in my sentencing.
Dying comes to us all, but not all of us contemplate an end of life while gasping for breath like a fish out of water—which is what awaits should the end come from lung infection due to COVID-19. I’ve seen such. It’s a horror.
In that thought, she and others can and should promote a response to this disease. At what age does she—or me—lose that right? That is the question you/we need to answer.
I’m not clear on precisely what “right” you are referring to – the presumed right to ‘x’ quantity of medical care? The presumed ‘right’ not to suffer or die? I am not wishing a painful or prolonged death on anyone, but I am decrying this obscene “war on death” we appear to be fighting. And for you to compare that to murder is straw manning in the extreme.
What I am attempting to say is that a war on an epidemic disease is not the same as a war, or denial, of inevitable death. It is quite possible for one to come to terms with their inevitable mortality yet still request that reasonable attempts to combat epidemic disease be attempted in their behalf. We seem, as does Z-man, to presume that those heinous Boomers are again at work promoting dastardly selfishness in combating a disease simply because they (arguably) would most benefit from such. This is the sort of “blood libel” that runs through most all Boomer critiques, ex’s: SSI, Medicare, wealth accumulation, etc
Hard questions, both.
See, kids? This is the adults talking.
I read the interview of the 40-ish guy who was saved by medical intervention. His description is terrifying, of his essentially being on the edge of asphyxiation for an extended period of time.
Link? @dutch
March 10th, Wall Street Journal (it’s paywalled). Marc Thibault, age 48, from Rhode Island, led a school group to Italy. He was in good health but had asthma. His flu turned to pneumonia (that’s the dangerous part of the deal). He speaks of feeling asphyxiated for days on end, as the nurses had to clear his throat of fluids every two hours for him to survive. He is doing better now. Skilled hospital care is the key for cases like his.
Women (fertile/young) and Children First was the mantra of European Civilization for thousands of years. The fact we don’t immediately recognize that as true anymore is a big problem (probably related to the ‘boomers’ starting to realize that they are, in fact, going to die).
Here’s a big old white pill to choke on… Whenever there is a major blizzard, there is a minor baby boom 9 months later. People locked in the house for a couple of weeks can pass a lot of time doing the nasties. Who knows, maybe Dec 2020 and January 2021 will have record white births. I just hope the shutdown causes some of the brown horde to go back home.
Very good essay yet again. My gut tells me this is nothing like the “experts” tell us. It’s going to be one big dud.
But this dud unlike Kavanaugh hearings, the Russian hoax, and the Ukraine nut job hearings will get Americans attention about just how far gone we are. Being led by hysterical people is very damaging to civilization.
The wild card is the oil markets in my opinion the banksters are in trouble. They are printing money and debt like a cat lady bought toilet paper this week.
Some whitepill: the oil glut- brought by those awful overleveraged shale drillers enabled by zero-interest rates- means we have quite a stockpile of energy to see us through a slowdown.
The good news about all that leverage is that the capital equipment still exists. The first guys go bankrupt and the finance guys lose, but someone can come in and buy up the equipment for a song and get it going without all that debt.
I have to admit, I was a little surprised Sailer went all in on the worst case scenarios.
We will only have about 10 to 14 days from now to see if this grows exponentially, but so far, at least here in NYC, there has not been a spike in emergency room visits or hospitalizations. The virus has been floating around NYC for at least a month, and no explosive increase like Italy. Italy and Iran are real outliers, and it will be interesting to see why they dropped of a cliff while Asia stabilized.
There might be a few regional hotspots, but the numbers being pushed by the media are completely unreasonable.
Great to read someone trying to look at this rationally.
People here are being told to stay away for emergency rooms—those are meeting places for the exchange of the disease. 🙁
Comp;
Thing to do as of now is to phone in and ask for the Triage Nurse. She’ll walk you through the screening protocol and advise you accordingly (we can hope). One ought not just show up complaining of a cough. As mentioned, you’d be put into a room full of coughing people, some of whom may even have the virus.
When/if the Google, ‘Do I have COVID-19_?’ Ap is up you will/should be directed to a drive-through testing center. After that you will be advised as to future actions if you test + (and notified if you test – ).
A fair amount of thought has been put into this situation despite a stupidly bureaucratic start. It is well to recognize this and ignore the MSM’s non-factual content. Their school-of-fish sudden turn to worrying about calling the virus name rayysiss ought to tell you everything you need to know about what’s going on with them.
I agree with the recommendation to stay away from groups of sick people. Comment was on the fullness of emergency rooms. Good advice to avoid. And if I heard Trump correctly, the goal is shortly to have testing for all on demand. In any event, should I fall ill I plan to stay home and weather the storm. Hospitals have their own risks.
Could there be an ethnic element here that would explain the numbers in China, Italy, Iran and the reaction by Israel?
—
This more than anything leaves me scratching my chin. They have these huge write-ups on on infection, death rates, etc. and then you turn the page to find out who is infected and who is dying and it’s blank, or maybe has some age data that’s not very revealing.
It reminds me of that biker gang shoot-out in Cleveland. Someone not from the area might see that and think that there’s some white “rebels without a cause” ripping up the town, but a local knows to look for the clues given by the press and sees that it happened on the “east side” and is thus forgettable.
I guess we need more plagues so that we can learn the clues to look for.
I am still hoping that this will flare and then begin to burn out by mid-Spring.
But the folks in rural Cascadia, Greater Idaho, Montana and so on might want to imagine now, while snow is on the ground, how things will be during fire season if this thing is still going on.
That story about the guy shot by the cops in his sleep made me so angry.
First off this isn’t the Big One and everyone knows it.
By most indications the people who it kills are already old and sick. Like Grandma in the senior center or Jose in dialysis ,a a diabetic fatty or the types with COPD. If you’re not in that category you’re probably okay.
That said, Trump was in bad situation. If he did nothing he’d be lynched. by various groups. If did something he’d be attacked. Now this shouldn’t have happened if China was straight up with us but refused to let the CDC in. So Trump’s people are probably 3 months behind.
That said the Corona Virus did a lot of good things.
1) It exposed how badly we are dependent on China for our medicine and everything medical related. If they stop shipping we start dying en mase.
2) It shows we really aren’t capable of handling a serious outbreak.
Actually . . . they’re not. The Trump administration has been on top of the situation since last year. Don’t remember where I read it but the administration tried to brief congress on Covid-19 back in early November but (IMS) fewer than two dozen congresscritters bothered to show up. We’re only behind the power curve (and only slightly behind at that!) because of the deep-state bureaupussies at the CDC refused to allow anyone but themselves to develop testing kits and vaccines for it. The Dems weren’t interested. They were to busy and too heavily invested in Russia/Ukraine Gate and “Impeached Forever”. The LSM weren’t interested since the only people sick or dying were Chinese.
Nope, I dispute and utterly repudiate your assertion that Trump’s people are “3 months behind”.
Trump impresses me as a very good “process” guy, who excels at figuring out how to get things done. That said, he is not a micromanager. This is the exact flip of our last president, who was not much good at figuring anything out, but did like to micromanage and boss everyone around.
John Hayward has made a great point. It has been the CDC’s (“Center for Disease Control”, heh) job all along, to get us prepared and have things go well. Do they need the President to tell them that preparing for mass testing is an obvious way to respond? Trump’s Mike Pence team is a response to this idiotic CDC lack of preparation. Trump is guilty only of expecting people to do the thing they were put there for. But forget it Jake, it’s government-town.
Absolutely, Mullins. Yesterday i listened to the President I voted for. Think of this as a 1932 Bank Holiday.
The regulators, bureaucrats, state and local politicians, and the Congessionals- swamp loyalists all- were delaying and obfuscating, blocking honest doctors with red tape, because they wanted in on the new gravy train and power grab.
They couldn’t get a war Spring, carbon crap has gone nowhere, the natives were getting restless about child rapists both imported and elite, so they sprung a Viral Planet Emergency!! to spook the herd.
Trump councilled calm at first, took his time to assemble the CEO’s, told ’em “get ‘er done”, and declared national emergency powers to get around the petty opportunists blocking him.
Untrue that they didn’t ‘Allow’ anyone else to develop tests for it. Hell i just got an email from my local university hospital that they’ve developed their own test and will manage it through proper referrals (the *right* way to do testing – folks with priors get tested).
Okay. Perhaps “allow” was not the optimum choice of words. How about instead the bureaucrats at the CDC simply refused to certify any test/vaccines/etc. for use in the U.S.? Because that is what they did. True, they couldn’t actually stop companies from developing products to address the problem of Covid-19 but they could damned sure make sure that none of those products could be sold/bought in the U.S. In a land where administrative law supersedes actual law the regulator is king.
Bad, they must get “the proper permissions”- that’s why Susan Chu and her team in Seattle were forced into trying to track the contagion on their own in Seattle. Their efforts were declared “illegal” by the bootlickers.
Remember a book titled “Bowling Alone” that lamented the disappearance of social interaction in America? It was made out by the author to be a bad trend that we would regret. Now it’s standing orders and SOP. Times do change.
If this turns out to be false or a deliberate hoax, we should exploit the living hell out of it. Point to the dangers of open borders, mindless “free trade” that resulted in offshoring pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and so forth. Then club the ruling class about the head with all of it.
And precisely HOW might one go about “exploit[ing] the living hell out of the situation? Hell! How would you suggest we implement your advice that we “club the ruling class about the head with all of it.”? C’mon! Exactly how would we do that?
This is a war of Narratives, and the gods just handed us the biggest stick.
Reality. We were right all along.
Our rulers and their priests have lost the Mandate of Heaven. Do we represent our own?
No one on this planet can stop united White men– because we are what Heaven has been trying to achieve, across millions of years and untold experiments. WE are the Mandate.
Yes. Linking this to the ruling class and its decadence is the key. This has started.
Start pushing the narrative that China and our reliance on it caused the economic damage, and tie that to the ruling class. That’s already started and will accelerate. This is why the Left is crying racism over pointing out where the virus originated and who and what is responsible. I’m seeing this already playing out.
Spot on, Dobson. Spot on.
{shaking head and chuckling}Fortunately the wife and bought TP at our nearby Sam’s Club (don’t know what we’d do if Sam Walton had never come along. lol) a couple of weeks back. We weren’t psychic, just running low. I carry bottled water in the car with me when I’m running Favors just because it’s less expensive than buying soda to drink during my 8 – 10 hour work days.
This past week was spring break around here and school districts all elected to extend it a week. They can’t do it much longer than that or they’ll start running into state mandated minimum numbers of class days which would impact the start of summer school and even potentially the start of the fall semester. My wife drives a school bus and gets paid by the run. The current closure is gonna hurt but not too badly.I damned sure HOPE the asshats don’t keep the schools closed any longer.
Every spring San Antonio throws a 2-week block party called “Fiesta”. Fiesta this year has been postponed until some time in the fall. I feel for the food and beverage (shit load of beer and some soda) vendors and their suppliers. You knw how ordering supplies like that works. Somebody is gonna wind up stuck with a shit load of perishable goods. Reckon how many millions that’ll run to?
Yeah. Yesterday as I was shopping for sparkling wines (6 bottles, 1 each of three different brands and three of a 3rd brand.) for somebody, the parking lot was chock-a-block full and the checkout lines were very long. The people who I spoke with all agreed it was nonsense and plain old hysteria. I just hope it doesn’t crater the economy.
No model which cannot start with known past conditions and arrive at a decent approximation of what actually happens is worth shit. If engineers used i>models that did not predict performance any better than those of epidemiologists we would have planes literally falling out of the sky. SOMEbody ought to be holding these alleged experts’ feet to the fire. How theHELL do they get away with making predictions based upon models which cannot even predict past, known events?
And rightfully so.
Yesterday as I was driving to pick up the load for my first delivery, two thoughs occurred to me. The first was “So this is how the world ends?” The second was “Damn! this is Friday the 13th, isn’tit.”
I live in a desert. Bottled water is not useless—if the municipal water supply fails. I have always supplied myself with 30 days rations and a list of all the local Morman families in the area. 😉
If the municipal water supply fails, you better be prepared for more than a water shortage.
Compsci, first off. I never referred to bottled water as being “useless”. But in the context of the current situation hoarding it is mystifying to me. Likewise toilet tissue. I can see having a few days’ food on hand in case the stores shut down to reduce the chance of person-to-person transfer. As long as the power and water utilities continue to function all we need is food and I have sufficient food set back to feed us roughly a month. Longer than that and I will be loading the jerry cans onto the cargo carrier that fits into the trailer hitch receptacle on my Highlander and bugging out for my son’s place (compound? 😉 ) on Caballo Lake in New Mexico.
If things get so bad that the utilities fail … Well, the ZMan put it WAY better than I could
Amen to that, Zman. Amen to that. If the utilities fail I fear we would be looking at a whole ‘nother level of hurt.
Sorry Bill, but I can only go by what I read, and I quote from your posted comment:
“… we have hoarding of useless supplies like toilet tissue and bottled water….”
It’s not a big deal. In a wet area, or by a stream, I’d rely on a simple water purification device. Hell, I carry a “purification straw” out in the desert as I can guide myself to any number of cattle watering ponds. I often bump into IA’s drinking such directly. Giardia is not pleasant, but hey it kept them alive to reach a hospital.
For the record, it was the ZMan who characterized
supplies such as toilet tissue and bottled water as being “useless”, I merely agreed with him, you nitwit. In the context of Covid-19, hoarding bottled water is a useless act. Having supplies of potable water in a city with fresh running water is useless. Unless the utilities go down, it is useless to hoard water. In the context in which the ZMan made the statement, bottled water is USELESS. It does nothing WHAT. SO. EVER to increase one’s likelihood of survival. I stand by my original quotation because IN FEKKING CONTEXT it is absolutely true!! Of which part of the concept of “IN CONTEXT” are you unclear, Delta Square Sierra? FYI, context is pretty much everything when it comes to UNDERSTANDING the written word.
If you’ve got a hot water heater you’ve got 40-60 gallons available right now.
Speaking of Steve Sailer, he’s promoting ramping up production of however many billions of masks so that every person in the U.S. can wear a new one each day for a month. I really like Sailer and I hate to criticize him but how does the Great Noticer convince himself that more than a tiny fraction of people are going to wear surgical masks everyday?
There is a downside to intelligent and spergy men like Sailer and Cochran.
As good as they are in analyzing and breaking down complex issues, they do lose general awareness and miss other pertinent details and trends.
Reminds me of Newton and his bible code nonsense. Overuse and useless application of a high powered cpu.
Most of the stuff they tell us is somewhere from partly to completely untrue. But sooner or later the earthquake hits, the asteroid strikes, and the pandemic rages. We know the odds are with us on this virus petering out on us, but it isn’t a certainty. In the meantime, look at all the things that need pulling down, that can be pulled down, in the wake of this thing. Stay reasonable about things without pounding the table, and Normie will have nowhere else to turn to for any sane take on things.
I’ve been arguing for weeks that this is a highly contagious flu with essentially the same mortality rate as the flu, therefore this is hysteria over nothing . It’s been extremely disappointing that the vast majority of the good right has been hysterical women about this – zman (until recently), lion of the blogosphere, tucker Carlson, spandrell, roosh, I could go on and on with names. Only Dennis mangan has kept a level and skeptical head about this nonsense. Really disappointing stuff overall because I expect a high degree of skepticism of the media from the people I follow:
It’s clear this was a media generated panic to hurt trump politically at a time when his poll numbers were increasing dramatically. Media was told to focus on every single infection case and every single death, and trot out some talking head “experts” predicting exponential growth. Russiagate hoax fed into kavanaugh hoax fed into impeachment hoax fed into flu hoax. There will probably be one more hoax before the election.
I’m sorry, but this simply absurd moral signaling. I wrote about this at the start of the week. https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=20021
Who deserves the benefit of the doubt, and who deserves the burden of proof in 2020 clown world? Why should we believe anything said by purported “experts” being pushed by the media to drive any narrative given how bad their accuracy has been, without demanding an extremely high level of proof (NOT models)? if you think this is moral preening, good for you I guess
Many of the “experts” are not experts in the sense they have medical expertise. Those that do often are just “useful idiots”. Decent people to be sure, but never in charge of a body politic.
In short, they recommend actions designed to minimize disease (the benefit) without ever having to compute the disruption to society (the cost). There is no political penalty for them to recommend all sorts of adverse societal consequences, nor consider the ramifications of increasing government power and suspension of civil rights.
In this manner, they become the enemy we often rail upon.
“roosh”? You mean Rush? He called it right from the beginning.
No, roosh. PUA blogger turned religious Christian and political commentator. He’s gone insane over this
👍
What? The Zman was adamantly saying “don’t lose your heads, let’s be adults about this.”
He took time to watch and observe.
Hysterics like the alzaebo pushed on this topic.
Stop conflating the Z-blog with Roosh, please.
Our host is not some foreign darkie with all their weird thinking and a lust for white men’s daughters.
It’s just the flu bro. /s
Wow. Without a doubt this is the dumbest post you’ve made. And that is saying a lot.
Won’t be wasting my time reading your incredibly cold takes any more.
Good and all further posts from you will be deleted without commentary.
Just a troll. But I’m glad you take a stand on such blatant trolling.
The local Walmart last night was rather ho-hum. We missed all the welfare queens and trailer trash that came through during the day getting their 15 seconds of fame on local TV.
Of course the toilet paper, bottled water and frozen food was stripped clean. There was still plenty of rice, beans , cooking oil, fresh produce and milk. Oh and the potato chips looked like they took a pretty good hit.
Almost like people were shopping for Super Bowl Sunday instead of the great pandemic 🙂 It looks like the news media has changed the word snowstorm with pandemic stampeding the herd once again.
I notice that the chart tells me that there have been 2,034 cases in the USA. How do we know that? We have not been testing people who present at the doctor’s office or at the hospital. We also would never be able to count all the people who get a few mild symptoms and don’t even go to the doctor’s office. Who counts them? I can tell you that playing with bogus numbers rarely leads to useful conclusions.
Now the 46 dead is probably really true. 46! PANIC! Shut her all down boys!
As a boomer who has not had a cold or the flu for 15 years, I can tell you this croronavirus does not bother me much. As the holistic minded doctors tell us, keep your vit D, C, and A up as well as your minerals. Help your immune system defend you.
In the 1918 pandemic they really did successfully treat many with sunshine and fresh air. Imagine a doc recommending that today. He would be toast.
I wonder if anyone will notice how many people had their immune system fight off this virus and they are now immune from it for life — all without letting some doc stick a needle in your arm and give you all sorts of immunosuppressive components.
I think at this point, the missing infected argument has been addressed enough times where it no longer needs addressing. Sure, there *may* be lots of people who have it and show no signs. We may also have lots of false positives. That’s a problem with not only the tests, but the reporting mechanisms. The numbers we have are good enough to make some judgments, but not so good as to make other judgments.
Much will come over time as the data gets solidified and better known. But most likely after this crisis has passed. And yes, there are ways to model just how many “unknown” cases were extent in the population.
I think you would find this short post by Dr. Brownstein informative. He compares what South Korea did in response to what the USA did. The differences are astounding.
…
Coronavirus VIII: Why Does S. Korea Have Lower Death Rate Compared to US?
https://www.drbrownstein.com/coronavirus-viii:-why-does-s.-korea-have-lower-death-rate-compared-to-us/
Just looked at the blog. Not impressed with the good doctor’s assertions or credentials.
Which is why the precautionary principle should apply, but democracy makes that impossible. We can’t really measure one of the key variables here (infection rate), and yet “something must be done”. On the other hand, it would take a hell of a lot of fash for a government to get away with “sorry about grandma, but we’re not shutting down a third of the economy”.
Though I’m largely ignorant of epidemiology, as a fellow systems-thinker I contend that there’s still some value in hammering on the missing infected argument. I agree that it’s probably unfalsifiable with regards to 1918, and may still be today, but it seems to me that sufficiently improved testing would make it falsifiable. That requires resources, which require awareness.
When the history of this is written I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some bright bulb wanted to use a portion of the available test kits on a random sample of the population, and was stopped by the beauracrats.
But are the methods touted to fight the disease the best/only way to protect “grandma”. That is the question. Doubtful anyone would say, “tough luck” to grandma.
Yes — my comment was colder than I am, so I’ll amend it. Despite zman’s attempt to calm the waters I still think it likely we’ll lose a half-million in the US. That means not every family will be affected, but everyone may lose an acquaintance. I would be very happy to be wrong.
Possible, if we get a worse case infection/pandemic. What I was getting at was basically a recommendation that susceptible people (for deadly complications) self quarantine and the government help them however possible to accomplish that goal. This is somewhat different than everyone hunker down advice we seem to be getting. Everyone does not have the same risk—perhaps not even the same infection rate. Is one size fits all the best advice?
Agree 100% — told the Mrs earlier today that her aged parents need to stay home for a while — period. Leave their groceries on the doorstep. We can still go out, and even if we bring it into our house, we’re not going to die. It’s just going to suck.
If this does get worse I expect that “boomer remover” will flip over to “save the old people”. Real crisis has a way of bringing out the best in Americans — something we haven’t seen in a very long time.
What on *earth* about this this makes you think that we’re going to lose 500,000 people? Given that rate China would have millions dead.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
Taking the 50k 2014-2015 flu deaths as a median year, and a 10x COVID-19 mortality rate in the developed world, i.e. 1% vs 0.1% for the flu, gets us to 500k.
We may get a vaccine, and this doesn’t happen. If not, is it really that hard to imagine a million Chinese dead by this time next year, particularly if they lift travel restrictions and get back to work?
If we took the “precautionary principle” as gospel we would all be preparing for the Alien Invasion.
This has been In Country for several weeks now. If it really was as virulent as they suggest……wouldn’t the lines around Emergency Rooms be as long as those around Wal-Mart and Costco? Wouldn’t those be the images you see on your local tee-vee news?
The way it’s working right now is this: patient with cold or flu symptoms goes to doc/ER/urgent care. They first get swabbed for flu and RSV (one swab to the throat, another very unpleasant swab to the back of the nasal cavity). They get those tests to rule out more common stuff. If those are negative, it gets sent out for Kung Flu testing.
It’s a terrible time to be working in microbiology, but a great time if you are the producer of PCR testing. It’s a butt-load of extra work for lab personnel, in a profession that has already been under-staffed and over-worked for a decade.
I’m seriously starting to question my career choices…again…
How many PCR machines are there in the US?
How long is the turnaround per sample?
Doesn’t Craig Ventner have a lotta machines for his sequencing project?
Could they be repurposed quickly for Covid identification?
PCR is quite common now. PCR testing for flu and strep A has become Point of Care. TAT for a flu or SAG is less than an hour. I would expect Kung Flu to be similar.
As for repurposing, the simple machines use plug and play cartridges with all the needed reagents. Just send out new carts, software update and instructions. No problem. See video below for one of the most common POC PCR machines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGNH7NaGqiw
Hey! Let’s stick a TV studio into everyone’s pocket and give them access to an entire global network. Let’s professionalize a lot of it so they have a spectrum of centralized newsfeeds that can keep them engaged, especially with things the oligarchs consider attractive enough to directed them away from things the oligarchs consider too important and dangerous for the hoi polloi to engage with. And for those members of families with connections, those members who sprouted from the shallow end of the gene pool…let’s stick them on the screen to play crier and oracle; the ones who can’t even manage that can be penned up in the government. We can create a whole new worldwide community to replace the local communal ones we’d rather no longer existed. But…people are getting bored. T & A shows seem to have dulled an interest not only in T & A shows but also in the drive that made those shows illicitly attractive. The freak shows of gargantuan jocks whose pituitary glands when apeshit when they hit puberty also no longer seems to have much hold on the audience, at least the intended audience. The volume always has to be turned up to 11, the sirens always need to be blaring, everyday is a blowout sale, boobs and butts need to balloon even more and the panic button needs to be taped down in the on position if we are to hold their attention. We can’t let things get away from us. If they have a few quiet moments who knows what they may notice and what they may begin discussing. No! No! No! We can’t have that. A Chinese community in Italy and an African one in Maine? Lad, now you’re getting delusional… If Pacino can play a NAZI playing a Jew who get to broaden to infinity what passes for a vile NAZI…then maybe Di Nero can play a ytHetero playing a tranny who gets to broaden to infinity what passes for a vile ytHetero. Then maybe Eastwood could legally marry a horse in a new production of Dr. Doolittle and James Bond could…Ah, we’ve already got that one covered…
“America has rounded up most of its imbeciles and put them on government payrolls.” OK, I peed myself laughing at the accuracy of that statement.
On a more serious note, as a result of living in civilized affluence for a few decades (and it’s concomitant extinction of existential threat), we now crave the opportunity to experience hardship and challenge, even if we have to invent a pandemic in order to experience it. But a fake pandemic is still preferable to a concocted sham war.
This. There is a ritualistic aspect to this. The hoarding of TP is a great example. TP is a symbol of civilized life. Hoarding it is a gesture symbolizing the defense of civilization.
This panic may be our version of the feelies, described by Huxley
There’s also a substitution problem.
Protein comes in many forms, so do carbs.
Sears stopped sending out paper catalogs a while ago.
Is Toilet paper protein or carbs?
I don’t know but I have a recipe for it:
Brown it on one side and throw it in the pot
One of my coworkers said he “scored” on three giant packages of toilet paper and made jokes about selling us TP for exorbitant amounts when we got desperate.
Figures he has enough for at least 3 to 4 months.
Another guy asked him if he bought 3 to 4 months of food. When he said that he hadn’t the other guy asked him what he was expecting to sh*t out that would require the use of toilet paper if he wasn’t eating for a few months.
Where the hell did this TP hording thing start?
I’ve always made sure I have plenty of tp because my wife seems to use a lot of it. I’m not really sure exactly what she’s doing with it all, but it seems to disappear fast. I think I have 4 big costco sized jumbo packages out in the garage now. I never mind buying lots of tp because it will never go bad and we’ll always use it eventually. I imagine it won’t be any cheaper in the future either.
Are you married to my wife? Between how fast we use paper towels and toliet paper.. i swear we go through at least a tree every week. What’s wrong with using cloth (for paper towels, at least)!?!
Ha! I’m ahead of the curve. Let the lumpen buy the TP. I have soap, water and a hand 🙂 I’ve enjoyed traveling around the world, and even more so that I haven’t traveled to places where the aforesaid is standard cleaning equipment. [grin]
I had a single roll left in the house. Bad timing for the stock-up. I don’t usually have more than a single thing of it in the closet. And Paper Towels? Are we wiping our butts with those now?
They bought all the pickles, but left all the Giardiniera… apparently they didn’t know that you can pickle more things than cucumbers?
I had that thought this morning too. It’s kind of like in a totalitarian society where the powers-that-be give permission to the people to get outraged against some unrelated slight (the Chinese government letting people attack our embassy some time ago comes to mind) to distract the people from the regime’s oppression. The oppressed, excited at the chance for an outlet, become obsessed with it.
You can find plenty of imbeciles in corporate America. Probably more on Wall Street than in D.C. considering they were the ones who pushed for globalization, intricate house of cards economies, etc. And that is ready to collapse because of a virus. And it is.
The scary thing is how dependent we are on China for our medical supplies, machines and drugs. Right now there is a shortage of masks across the country. because China has kept production for themselves,
Yet outside of Tucker Carlson no one gives a shit. The DR and Conservatives don’t. They think China’s death grip on the country is a joke Considering if they ever cut off medical supplies Americans start dying by the thousands every day.
Also China has not ramped up production at their factories. The intermodal trains that use to run by my house every hour haven’t been running for almost two weeks now. Our supply chain is a taking a serious hit.
A great deal of the panic has to do with the supply chains from China being hit hard. Fear, Greed and Guilt are quite a combination.
Malice , Stupidity and Mens Rea;
They should put that over the gates of every Ivy League School.
I know “conservatives” don’t care about anything but the DR certainly does. This is one of those things that should should be giving some of us ideas about how to go about re-inventing Western civilization. There are lots of people on this board and in the DR in general for instance who are very skilled in technology. How about getting people on our side together to share technical skills like 3D printing, CNC machining, electronics. From this little businesses might grow that initially just sell to our own people.
This shutdown of the flow of cheap Chinese crap is a huge opportunity. Eventually, we can be there with American goods and services. A lot of the reason the global Poz keeps growing is that it has captured these global flows of wealth created by the destruction of local industries. That money is then used to fund propaganda media outlets and stuff the coffers of politicians. Redirecting that flow will starve the Poz and strengthen us.
That is “efficiency” bro. Milton Fraudman says so, corporate profits above all else.
“… we now crave the opportunity to experience hardship and challenge.”
Very well put. But I think there’s more to it than that. I think a large number of people subconsciously want the whole rotten system we live in to tumble down in a great smoldering heap. Our politics are fake, our financial system is fake, the whole moral edifice of late-stage liberalism is unbearably fake and unbelievably gay.
Zman has often written about the fact that we’re in a transitional period. Our old political alignments no longer describe the actual divisions between us, our governmental masters actively despise the people they rule, and our financial system is completely unmoored from reality. Meanwhile, we’re continually badgered and scolded by humorless bluestockings for imaginary moral infractions. People just want it all to stop.
Trump was meant to be the political COVID-19: a rampaging agent of reality, laying waste the weak and useless inhabitants of the Imperial Capital. That didn’t exactly work out, so now we’re turning to the real thing. That probably won’t work either, but this sublimated desire for destruction is going to keep going until we finally happen upon the Big One.
Murray, correct, but one must remember this crap has evolved over the past 30 years. One person, even the President, will not change it in one or even two terms. Best we can hope for is delay and movement of the Overton Window on such discussion.
This has been going on much longer than 30 years, it’s just increased in severity lately. The groundwork was laid a century ago, things kicked into gear in the 60’s. Since then nothing but social decline in fits and spurts. Whites have an illegitimacy rate (25%) equivalent to blacks 50 years ago, while blacks are now above 80%. This didn’t happen by accident. It happened because of a long march towards our cultural conquest by a hostile tribe that began long ago.
A time will come to throw a brick through the Overton Window 🙂
This quip would be even funnier if not so true. Check out any of our large municipalities and the numbers of minorities on city payrolls. They far outnumber their representative populations in the area. That’s another reason local government fails to function efficiently.
Government Jobs are how you keep the more ‘energetic’ diversity folks occupied. In well run places, these people are put in charge of the things that aren’t important, like the dog park.
I agree with Z’s description of this as ritual. It’s also cosplay, wherein people get to perform in a real time version of one of the apocalyptic zombie films that have been all the rage. On a serious note, the panic also illustrates the spiritual void that has made the West a lamb tempted to walk too close to the woods. When the Dear Leader arrives to preside over the finals days of this empire the lambs will see the wolf as their shepherd and be led into the forest. I’m agnostic but it makes me laugh when those who knock the religious get into more of a fervor than an evangelical at a tent revival ever could. This will get worse, unfortunately, until the actual crisis we here acknowledge becomes more and more obvious to the folks now hording toilet paper.
US airlines being slammed more than after 9/11. You would not believe the empty planes, and bookings have evaporated. There will be bailouts, and at least one major will go under.
Everyone loves to hate airlines, but they gainfully employ hundreds of thousands of people and provide a service that truly is miraculous.
Never seen national panic like this before. Woe be to our leaders if we’re being played.
Service Industries in tourist towns are already being hit. People will grow angry when they start missing income.
Well I wouldn’t fly knowing how little they clean the planes before each flight and the way they recirculate the air in the cabin to save money.
Look the crews maybe have 15 minutes to clean a entire plane – that is not enough time to do anything but a quick vacuum.
The planes are flat out filthy. The problem is most passengers are such pigs they don’t even notice or care.
Yep, but in realville, like local towns and such, we have health authorities who check on the sanitation of facilities—particularly restaurants. How about we swab down random airliners for germs and publish the results?
rw;
Agree. Plain cleaning is an excellent example of the phenomenon under discussion, namely Cloud incompetence being demonstrated in real time. Major airlines put out press releases about how carefully they clean their plains in a vain effort to halt flight cancellations and, so they thought, reassure the flying public.
All that they accomplished was to call attention to how filthy their cabins actually are. Anybody that’s seen a turnaround knows that they’re lying about thorough cleaning. Made it worse, they did.
I think there may well be some major changes in air travel. As you say, the slovenliness and lack of cleanliness in these planes is being highlighted. As well as the louts in the seats. Personally, I can do without the middle-aged females and the dancing queens who tend to be the flight attendants these days.
FWIW, I can tell you the air quality from the recirculated fans is hospital grade filtration (when the plane is in the air, anyway). That won’t do you much good if someone sneezes or coughs on you.
You’re right about the cleaning though. Passengers who still insist on flying wipe down everything now with personal cleaning products. I don’t think that will last.
You’d be amazed how different cities, and different nationalities, especially, tidy up after themselves. Walk off a plane that came from Japan and you won’t see a crumb. Walk off a much shorter flight from, say, Haiti, and you’ll want to just write off the whole aircraft.
There’s a whole trope of airline passengers misbehaving pics on US domestic flights (what they wear, nasty feet going on tray tables, that sort thing) that’s pretty gross.
Also think that if the current plan is to “flatten the curve”, lamentably, social distancing via not travelling makes a great deal of sense.
It’s almost like people from different places are different on a, shocker, biological level?
I’m not in the industry but I am a well-read educated man 🙂 Consider that most highly-contagious human diseases (excluding “third world” cases due to poor water and food sanitation) are most likely transmitted by “normal” physical contact (the dirty door knob, elevator button, etc.) and by air (sneezed droplets in aerosol, etc.) Of course this is pure speculation, but I imagine that, even if all surfaces were sterilized once a day, it might reduce disease transmission by what, half maybe?
“They may also wonder why there is a Chinese community in Italy.”
This.
THIS IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
“When it became an Italian problem, suddenly it resonated with Americans.”
I think it was Ann Coulter who once pointed out that, when you’re watching one of those nature documentaries on the Discovery Channel, and they show a film of a reptile fighting against a mammal, (it doesn’t matter what the species is), you sort of instinctively root for the mammal, without giving much thought why.
I once posed this question (or at least a similar one) to a female acquaintance, and she replied that it was simply because the reptile was the aggressor. I pressed her to try and imagine the roles being reversed, and she admitted that she would have far left compassion for a scaly, green thing being eaten buy a cute/beautiful furry mammal, regardless of “who started it.”
America’s interest in Europe was b/c most Americans came from Europe. When America becomes less white, ie less European, it will also lose interest in Europe. And Europe without American help tends to be an unstable proposition. The problems of the West concern all whites, b/c Huntington’s civilizations tend to be centered on shared ethnicity.
“He who panics first, panics best. “-
It’s a shame that so much lying out of our media has caused us to doubt every damn thing they say. -And selectively believe whatever we prefer.-
Now that it’s almost too late to get respiratory protection don’t forget to wash your doorknobs every day /sarc.-
(ebay still has ‘3m series 6000’ reusable dust masks, 6100 is a small… ), The prices are even close to normal (~25$) , I paid double for mine a couple weeks ago. I think they are not selling because the filters are p100 , not n95 as mentioned in the news. p means ~‘reusable till you can’t breathe thru it / n means not’, 100 means ‘near 100% effective, unlike the n95 @ 95% . ‘. (you’ll need a pair of filters+?) Walk slow or run out of breath.
Good for infrequent store trips. Mostly I’m just staying home, and buying groceries from walmart pickup. Not going to any big bother, it helps that I prepped a small amount starting a month ago.
I sincerely hope that I wasted my 100$ or so. Remember that this will likely come back in the fall – like when the spanish flu did most of its killing.
It’s damn near the Pareto Principle. We’re at almost 17% of the population above 70, yet we’re asking 73% of the population to wholly disrupt their lives. Think about it, most above 70 are able to self isolate as they are retired and have a steady income.
We’re disrupting economies, schools, businesses, and life just for 17% of the population.
Yeah, I’m not panicked, I’m pissed. Idiots are clearing the shelves of grocery stores here in my Large Northeastern Metropolis (TM). This whole thing is way overblown. Feels like an op.
I’ve got panic buying going on here in small town northern NJ. I was at the local Shop-Rite yesterday around 8PM and packaged veggies, meat, pasta, and beans, were all gone.
This whole episode feels surreal, like a dream, or bad zombie movie. I agree there is potentially more going on than we are being told. I wonder how long that information will be surpressed?
Yep, and a wise/intelligent leadership (we can hope can’t we) would be mentioning this as a primary method of reducing risk. Programs would be instituted (we have opened up unlimited funding) to promote and support oldsters in their quarantine. But no, everything proposed is created and designed for the 15 second sound bite, and the order of the day is “act concerned and run around yelling the sky is falling”.
I am self quarantined somewhat myself—and that’s in a part of the country with close to zero cases. Do I go out, damn right I do—whenever I hear the location of new supplies of toilet paper!
If it’ll make you feel any better, the old folks are the ones most likely to “check out” during a flu-like pandemic.
I have seen enough of rational common sense in my fellow Americans recently to give me hope (even the women).
It’s just the idiotic 20% that really worries me. In a real crisis that will come some day, I fear they will effect events in a disturbingly bad way. These types punch way above their IQ in a negative way.
I have said the biggest killer will be the secondary and tertiary effects of mass panic. We still haven’t run into those yet so maybe the worst is yet to come.
Sounds like the brouhaha over “global warming”. One of the best and earliest critics was Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and paid a dear price for it. Basically, he challenged the models with some very basic statistical knowledge and promoted using funds to ameliorate problems involved in basically unchangeable/unknowable future events involving global warming.
He never challenged the fact that the earth was warming, only that one should use limited resources more wisely than attempting to change what probably is inevitable (earth’s climate). In short, he was touting an old precept, that “the cure is worse than the disease”.
Similarly, with the present pandemic, we are seeing that the panic is currently worse than the affect (so far) of the disease. Panic has been spread, schools closed, courts no longer schedule justice, stock market tanked, panic buying, businesses closed, etc.
Bjorn is my favorite Dane—after Felix of course. 😉
Wait until L’il Pookie and his boyz can’t get any Black ‘n Milds and a 40 of malt liquor at the local Iranian convenience sto’ It will be on!
One of the best things about a Z column is that it often triggers related observations.
With respect to the extremely complex way in which societies work: In the old days, the critique of planned economies was exactly that real life is too complex for a central planner to get things even approximately right. The market, by contrast, and through the mechanism of mapping all of life’s complexity to a scalar price, is exactly how things get right.
So far as it goes, sure. But our markets have no context. As Z has been talking about for a while now, our capitalists have monetized all the social capital in the place and turned it in to eight-figure payouts to the finance team. It is like imposing a linearization on a complex system, which works well enough in a neighborhood of the conditions where you linearized the thing, but gets very wrong very quickly when you get away from that initial point. In this way, our market economy suffers from exactly the same deficiency as the planned economies.
They have two solutions. First, more authoritarian police actions. Second, more intense erasure of those irritating non-linear social relationships.
there is always an opportunity for an EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Kalman_filter
Great post! You are right that people will be annoyed. Alas, in Soviet America, the nomenklatura doesn’t know or care if you’re pissed. Nobody dares grumble outside of their dissident in-groups. Look at Trish Regan; on a supposedly conservative news channel, one moment of public annoyance is the end of a distinguished career.
I saw a chart yesterday showing peak flu season month, 1980 through 2018. There was not one year that it went past March. This will end soon, they will all declare victory, and lurch on to the next manufactured crisis.
But then, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
The panic ends as soon as soccer moms realize they’re stuck in the house with their kids for an extra week after spring break.
Ha! Right you are, Sir! One look at the letters to the editor of the major newspapers in a state in the middle of a few “snow days” closings taken at the public schools will more than convince one of the truth of that assertion.
As someone who has homeschooled kids for 30 years (only now do I have a daughter in public schools, starting last year, because she was really, really adamant very about it. She’s much more of an extrovert than the other little Vizzinis were), I always find that really sad.
I enjoy my kids being home.
Through church, I’m forced into frequent interactions with a stereotypical “Karen,” the bitchy, clump-haired, capri-wearing soccer mom who always wants to speak to your manager. When this thing first started, she really got her chance to preen and parade her superior virtue; she was almost purring like a cat. She actually said — no lie — “think of the children!!” But now that spring break has started, she has thought of the children, and there’s a small but rapidly-growing look of fear in her eyes. Yes, dingbat, closing the schools etc. also means the day cares are closed. Also all the other places you’d fob off your kids while you go get self-actualized. That means you, Karen, are going to actually have to do stuff with your little self-propelled status symbols. No SAT prep classes, no violin lessons, no soccer practice, no day care, no “kid care” at the gym…. yeah. I’ve got “March 27” in the office pool for the date Karen decides enough is enough, and no stupid virus is going to make her interact with her kids for a minute longer.
One thing modern parents get wrong is this thing of constantly trying to entertain their children. It’s impossible: their appetite for external distraction is endless. Doing stuff with them is great, but there is also nothing wrong with a little boredom. They have to learn to exercise their own minds and entertain themselves. In fact, I find the internet to be a real pain — it makes entertaining themselves too easy, and the entertainment is low effort. It’s much more productive for them to be so bored out of their skulls that they start inventing things to do.
Once you get over that hump, eventually you get to the point where they’re learning instruments, creating artwork or inventing the lightbulb.
Can you please tell that to my wife. I’m like, the kid has lots of toys and a friend coming over. Let them play. But no, they have to make complicated crafts and shit. Good lord woman just let them play with the freaking dolls.
Severian, wonderful prose. 🙂
Nobel for Literature.
really, really adamant very about it
Gah. I’m coming down with Yoda Syndrome. Help me, you must!
Yay! But your PS child will survive because of the compass that you bequeathed to her.
You might have to knock on a door or two and threaten to make an offer or two that can’t be refused, but she’ll be fine.
😂😂😂🤣🤣👍👍
…..Public officials will no doubt claim that the lock down was a success, but that’s like claiming the reason there are no giraffes in your garden is due to installing a garden gnome. Very few people are going to buy it and the more so-called experts push it, the more the people will reject it. The already low faith in public officials will fall even further….
Spot on, although I’m having trouble calculatiing how my faith in public offcials can fall further when it’s already at absolute zero.
Right now, I’d say the middle of the curve is the sense that our public official are fools, but mostly harmless fools. It’s like how people always say politicians are corrupt. They believe it, but not enough to do anything about it. The normal range could move suddenly right if this virus turns out to be a fiasco or a false alarm. This could usher in a great sweeping away of the old guard.
They are not harmless fools, they are malicious fools, and deliberate ones at that. The poisonous malignant worship of Magic Jewish Statue of Liberty Poem as the highest of all values, at the expense of actual Americans, demonstrates this.
I think this would seem like a justified response if one or all of the presidential candidates came down with a fatal case of the Wuhan flu.
The lack of any prominent celebrity deaths being lamented in the news media makes it all seem unreal. Even more so not knowing any friends or family impacted by this contagion
From your lips to God’s ears, Z.
There will be a price to be paid for being that wrong about something this big.
Here Lies The Corporate Propaganda Media – Killed By The Coronavirus 4/1/2020
That would be the best possible outcome!
And replaced by what? More sportsball? Too many are too dependent on the soma of the media. They don’t need to perform analysis of a subject bc a talking head told them how to think/feel/act. If this is a big nothing burger then 300 million will be irritated for all of a week, when sportsball and new dancing with the american idol starts.
Who needs the Soma of the media when you have a nice big bottle of Xanax the nice Indian doctor gave you?
Picked up a few items at the local Shop-Rite this morning. There were employees directing traffic to the checkout counters. I’ve never seen that before. Plenty of food available.
I’m in rural SC and haven’t seen anything crazy myself, but have heard from others about shortages of toilet paper. I’m with The Z—I think this reaction is mostly overblown, but I’m more concerned today than I was even a few days ago. That said, two weeks ago I ordered a bunch of rice, beans, spaghetti, Ramen, etc. Weeks of durable dry goods for probably $30 total (yet we need food assistance because Marqueevius can’t boil his brood some eggs in the morning). I have plenty of eggs, too (just need to get some more Duke’s Mayonaisse—ooooh, baby…).
After listening to Z’s podcast yesterday, I swung by my local Piggly Wiggly. No panicked shoppers. No empty shelves. Picked up some beautiful ribeye steaks on the cheap, as well as some chicken breast fillets, and popped ’em in the freezer.
I’m a schoolteacher at a private school here, and we had an emergency training session on distance/remote learning. I’ve been adjuncting online at a local technical college for six years, and it really does work better for some students; as Z said, it separates education from the much-lauded “socialization” component of school. That said, it’s also a glorious racket, as I can set up the course basically to run itself (although I keep assignments rigorous and still have a lot of assignments that require active grading). We’re still in session unless Governor Henry Mac decides otherwise, though; indeed, I’m proctoring the SAT this morning!
Here’s hoping everyone stays safe. I suspect Z Man is right—there’s going to be a lot of discontent when this thing runs its course (and no one is going to miss professional basketball).
Marqueevius or Tamika can’t bother to feed its spawn before sending to skool. Now the social workers are all freaking out because the keeds won’t get their gibs free breakfast, lunch and to my surprise, dinner!
Of course, little DeShawn, Jerome and Quanisha all have the latest iPhone and $100 sneakers. PRIORITIES!
Public school is just another gibs program.
Yeah, one of the concerns a bleeding heart prog on our faculty brought up re: distance learning was “what about the kids that don’t have computers or devices?” Gotta hand it to our associate head of school (a BoomerCon-ish woman who is NOT red-pilled in any form or fashion), who replied, “They all have phones.” Bingo.
Distance learning, as voiced as an immediate answer to school cancellation is a farce, if you are not already set up and the course designed properly. It is simply a ploy to justify the institution keeping your tuition dollars while not providing service, i.e., instruction. On the other hand, most classes are quickly forgotten after finals, so no loss.
Distance learning for children is a step towards breaking down the schools. Don’t conflate or confuse our schools as anything but state enforced racketeering for fat, evil women. Not to mention indoctrination and the sexual grooming of children. Ruinous property taxes. Grooming to debt slavery.
So forget the tuition; break the schools. This is a most wonderful and fortuitous event.
The Blessings of COVID be upon us all. I’m really feeling affectionate towards China now. This virus is killing globalism, Boomers, and the schools. God, we whites thank ye for COVID, an angel come to smite our enemies.
VXXC, no argument here. But having some involvement with such, distance learning is not as simple as having a camera record faculty lectures and rebroadcasting (yes, that’s a straw man, no one is touting that form). Students are often a lazy bunch, they don’t listen, need folks to elaborate/repeat points of lecture etc. The better courses are set up with online interaction and class aids to handle discussion and questions. In short, it’s not always as desirable as face to face classroom lecture, but it can be done far away from the source with greater groups of students. Point here is that when I hear my old University tell students to “stay on Spring Break”, all classes will be held “on-line” so not to worry, I call BS. The students are most likely being poorly served with this alternative.
Hey, VXXC is a Chicom troll, He always praises the gutter oil nation of China.
Oh look, the Toxic Chinaman vector is back again, shilling for his Chicom masters.
God, we Chinamen thank ye for COVID, an angel come to smite our enemies, FTFY. Chinaman Flu is killing many whites in Europe and the US too.
Marqueevirus*
Does mom and her latest baby daddy consume all the food that the EBT card purchases? Most of the underclass aren’t interested in education because they’re goals in life are to be gangbangers, rappers or welfare mammas.
Ris,
Naxalt, but many to most. I pick up eggs at the local walmart Market because I eat them by the case and they’re cheapest there. This gives me the birdeye view of EBT purchases.
The baskets are usually full of lunchables, frozen hot pockets, sodas, frozen entrees, etc. Literally nothing that requires any cooking and is the least amount of nutritional value at the highest price. Its lazy comfort garbage food and pretty much that’s it.
California has generous benefits. I know someone who fell on hard times and needed the assistance briefly. This woman was shocked how much the benefits provided, and as she cooks well and nutritionally, and knew how to stretch multiple meals, she didn’t need to use all the benefits to feed a family of her and three kids (two of them teens with their voracious appetites) on the benefits.
Lakeisha and D’rrell are simply too lazy to cook and aren’t smart enough to feed themselves well. Do you have any idea how much flour, eggs, vegetables, whole chicken, pastas, rice etc. you can buy with almost $700 per month (the amount my friend received while needing assistance). It’s a mountain. Or you can buy ice cream, ho-hos and hungry man meals and fill up one shopping cart.
Everything run by government devolves, sooner or later, into a program for (1) buying votes and/or (2) buying a sullen suspension of violence among a certain protected class.
Government has legitimate functions. If only it could be held to those.
The best, most real-world meaningful classes I ever took were on-line.
I need to wipe my a** because I’m having trouble breathing.
Correct. My weekly shopping at ShopRite took 45 min to checkout b/c of the line but I was able to get everything on my list. Surprised at the half bare shelves and sense of urgency expressed by some shoppers on a sunny spring-like day. Similar to a approaching snow storm.
Spot on, Zman. My son (in college) says everyone he knows is pissed off about the clampdown. Spouse in healthcare field not seeing anything out of sorts. Yes a lot of people have been sick — like every year at this time. (It does seem to have been a particularly bad winter for colds, etc. in SEPA.) Count me among the “chunk” who is calling BS on this. Great post.
Where is SEPA? South Eastern PA?
Yes.
Yep, my wife is a pediatrician, same observation. And yes. It has been a worse flu season with both influenza A and B going around plus a vaccine that is less effective than normal.