On Monday of this week, I had a conversation with a client about the normal stuff we talk about on a regular basis. Of course, the panic was a topic, as every business is figuring out what they need to do to keep the doors open in the panic. This person is generally sober minded and skeptical about most things. He is one of those guys, who can get wound up over little things, but those little things are stupid things. Otherwise, he is not the sort to mindlessly join the herd in the latest fads.
Anyway, I just assumed he was as skeptical as I was about the panic, so I said something along the lines of this being madness. To my surprise, I got a lot of push-back about how this is super serious. He did the old “my wife knows a doctor at some hospital and she said 70% of people will get this.” It is the Ferris Bueller gambit, in which a mythological expert several steps removed from the person, is the most reliable source of information on the planet about the subject.
Of course, I made the mistake I often point out in politics and that is I countered his claim with actual facts that anyone can look up. I pointed out that there are eight billion people on the planet. I told him more people have died from suicide in China than from this plague and China is the epicenter. My client listened, but it was quite clear he was on the side of strangers he reads on-line. Those people are much more convincing to him, because of something called abductive reasoning.
Abductive reasoning is where you start with an observation or set of observations and then you find the simplest and most likely, or what feels like the most likely, explanation for the observations. Greg Johnson talked about this in his review of Ben Novak’s Hitler & Abductive Logic. In this case, my client sees the panic and the outlandish actions of government officials and thinks, “What could be causing this?” The best answer, the one that is the simplest, is that the virus is the Plague of Justinian.
Later in the week, I had an e-mail exchange with someone, who is most certainly on this side of the great divide. The e-mail was about the cancellation of this year’s American Renaissance and other dissident events due to the panic. I once again assumed he was on the sober minded side of this issue, so I freely called it a panic. What I got was the old line about “If we can save just one life.” In this case, he thought staying home for a couple of weeks was a perfectly reasonable measure.
The mistake I was making here was in not talking to someone where they are rather than where I would like them to be. That is, this person is a non-technical person working in a non-essential part of the economy. He will get paid to stay home for two weeks, so this is a nice unexpected vacation. He also has kids, so he feels he has to be extra cautious, as people literally count on him for their existence. He’s never going to respond to facts and reason on this issue. He’s being justifiably selfish.
Both of these examples are useful in thinking about politics. The whole point of politics is to persuade people. Being right is a nice side benefit, if you are into that sort of thing, but it is rarely an essential element. People, even smart people, respond to emotional appeals and moral appeals before appeals to reason. Critically, only left-wing lunatics put politics ahead of their personal safety or the well-being of their family. “For the children” is a cliché because it was highly effective.
In this case, after the panic has subsided and we are evaluating the wreckage, most of the people who supported these measures will be right there with extreme solutions to remedy the fallout. The curve flatteners will be demanding a New Deal to restore the economy and boost the stock market. Many may even howl about the foolishness of destroying the global economy to save a few extra people this year. People are funny that way. They forgive and forget their errors first.
It will be tempting to remind these people that they were warned about the trade-offs, but supported the panic anyway. In six months, a lot of curve flatteners are going to be complaining about the downstream consequences to this. Just as facts and reason are of no use in this panic, they will be of no use in the aftermath. It is a lesson dissident need to take from this current crisis and put to use in the next. Like animals, people must be led, exploiting their naturally tendencies, not their reason.
That’s the hard part of politics for the sorts of people that naturally find themselves on this side of the great divide. The bigots and anti-Semites, of course, end up over here because they have nowhere else to go, but most people are led here, because this is where the facts led them. It is the rejection of emotional appeals and herd thinking that opened their eyes to alternative explanations for observable reality. It’s asking a lot to then resort to emotional appeals in order to do politics.
That said, it is not impossible. Midweek I had a chat with another client and this subject naturally came up. This person is a self-actualizing beautiful person. Having been bitten twice earlier, I was prepared this time. I mentioned that I was worried that about how the lock-down would keep the tens of millions of diabetics from getting their insulin. This person then told me their mother was on insulin. We chatted a bit about how shutting down the economy would stop all sorts of essential items.
I could tell his sense of well-being shifted on a dime. He went from being comfortable with the lock-down to suddenly being worried it would cause him real harm. The number of insulin users is less ten million. The number is less than half that, but we all know someone that takes the needle. We can feel that without thinking about it. The ten million number is meaningless. What resonates is the one, the one person we know, who is dependent upon insulin to remain on this side of the grass.
Ultimately, this is the age-old lesson of politics. Politicians are trained to personalize issues as best they can, because that resonates with people. The town hall debate is really just a form of the AA meeting. The politician is the counselor, leading the participant in telling their story. The politician provides affirmation and encourages the groups to share in that affirmation. This is the ideal environment for the relatable sociopath, which is why democracy loves the town hall style debate.
For dissidents, there will be loads of open doors in the coming months, as the public comes to terms with what has been wrought. Suddenly, there are going to be a whole lot of people looking for the simplest and most likely explanation for what they see happening around them. The normal political construct is not going to be enough to explain it. That means there is an opportunity to provide a personal and reasonable sounding answer that emotionally connects with them.
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Most people don’t think, they feel, and then use reason to justify their feelings.
All people. All people have a gut reaction.
It takes training to take a breath.
Exactly. Emotion controls all of us to some extent.
The limitations of reason as they have been observed since Plato and Aristotle Logic–The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. Reason is an historian, the passions are the actors. Few can reason, all can feel; and such an argument is gained, as soon as it is proposed. You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. All theory is against freedom of the will, all experience for it. Man’s sensitivity to little things and insensitivity to the greatest are signs of a strange… Read more »
Abductive Logic = Ockham’s Razor ?
A sober analysis that makes Greg Johnson’s extremely disappointing column from yesterday (in which he calls out Z by name!) easier to swallow.
The issue we sane folk run into is that 99% of the social media buzz on this topic accepts the deep state framing of the issue. We won’t be able to reach people until after the damage has been done.
That’s some rather lame stuff, to be frank, but everyone has their bad days. I still count Greg as a friend.
Apropos of nothing — I was trying to find the column you mention — I like how Johnson’s Wikipedia entry is “Greg Johnson (white nationalist).”
For some reason Bernie Sanders isn’t “Bernie Sanders (socialist),” and Bill Ayers isn’t “Bill Ayers (terrorist).” I’m sure that’s just an oversight….
Found it! I’ve just skimmed it so far, but I think the part that references Zman, about “the Republican dad script” is weak. Trying to read peoples’ minds and attribute motives to them is a pretty error-prone business. Some of us are countering panicked reactions to the virus because, you know, we actually think people are over-reacting.
“The market will come back. The people who will die because of Republican greed and complacency will be gone forever.”
The people who die because of damage to the economy will also be gone forever.
I respect Greg for all he’s done for our movement, but it’s clear his homosexuality is showing in the article in question.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/18/how-to-handle-coronavirus-tension-with-relationships-and-roommates/ This article from the local bs joke rag, speaks to the “people” that the Z blog today addresses IMO. These are, after all, The People. From the article – an unintended parody: “Michael Day, 36, says his partner Byron Regej, 35, is “more alarmist” than him. While Regej was working from the couple’s Hell’s Kitchen apartment last week, Day, a furniture contractor, was still out and about taking business meetings. “He kept on saying to me, ‘If you keep doing this, do not bother coming back,’” says Day. At first, they butted heads. But after his last client lunch… Read more »
Casualties from the economic fallout by suicide and possibly street violence will dwarf the nursing patients who go to their sweet rewards.
Can you post the link?
https://www.counter-currents.com/2020/03/how-coronavirus-will-change-the-world/
Thanks.
It’s funny because he thinks Z et al are worried about a market downturn or minor recession to protect 401k plans and the re-election of Trump.
The reality is that what they may and should be worried about is the unraveling of the bubble.
Should the bubble completely unravel, it will be worse than anything the coronavirus could do.
Yeah, he is using me and Paul Ramsey as a straw man, but no hard feelings.
I don’t think people really understand that if Humpty falls, nobody can put him back together. I don’t think it will even take all that long.
Vizzini – Whether people die because of “greed and complacency” or “damage to the economy” or corona virus or the flu or diabetes doesn’t matter – that was my point the other day that some took issue with. We will all die, one way or the other. The fact that someone over 80 with emphysema dies from the latest ailment of the day rather than an older and more familiar one is irrelevant. But, as repeatedly noted, people are not rational creatures and operate on emotion and a herd mentality. I’m not one of those “if it saves even one… Read more »
3g;
A strong Christian faith helps a lot too. If you know you’re going to a better place, it greatly quells the hysteria.
People are easily led to the disaster narrative, because they love a good panic. Think about how giddy and chatty people get when a huge snowstorm is forecast. Complete strangers will talk about it like they’re old friends
DLS said, “people love a good panic”
I think part of this is modern life is so dull a little danger is welcome. Triggers deeply buried genetic memories.
That Johnson column was freaking appalling. It’s not a time for division, but to see thought leaders buy into what is an obvious op and propaganda merits criticism. It was this mentality that enabled the criminal ruling class.
I found the column quite illuminating with respect to what lessons we should draw from these times. While you may disagree with Greg’s policy recommendations, do you disagree with the lessons he draws?
For those who have already come to those conclusions, this panic merely confirms them. Whether or not everyone else draws those conclusions is far less certain. Greg may simply be singing to the choir. For example, we have brown people demanding in Trump’s pressers that people stop calling it the Chinese Flu. The multiculturalists, I suspect, will prove to be much more resistant than to eradication efforts than the coronavirus.
My response to Greg would be (and best in mind he’s one of our best thinkers and someone I deeply respect):
Never, EVER accept our enemy’s framing of an issue. EVER!!!!
The moral assumptions in Greg’s piece do just that.
What assumptions do you mean?
I do not make it a habit to read “columns” be neurotic gay men. Why do you? Isn’t it a case of magical thinking to assume they can be one of “the guys”?? Is there not a parable involving a frog and a scorpion – applicable when say, Lindsey Graham does something disloyal – ‘but wait, I thought he was on our side….’ wail.
When has Greg ever not been on our side?
saw a study over at peak prosperity on youtube day before yesterday and that said 50 to 75% of the people who get this are asymptomatic, and it has a 14 to 28 day incubation period, and it’s airborne. that makes it one stealthy flu. It seems to be hell for some people, but for the vast majority of us it’s going to be nothing. However, something I learned from 9/11 is that most people are prone to panic. Still it’s better to keep your older parents and grand parents away from it, if possible.
NY Times:
“38% of Coronavirus patients who were sick enough to be hospitalized were were between the ages of 20 and 54. Roughly half of those were between 20 and 44.”
Recurring. That’s the word that might haunt us.
I honestly don’t think anybody panics- except the media.
Update: (Oops- and Rod Dreher. Whoever he is. Is he gettin’ paid?)
38% is a big number! How many, in *real* terms, were “sick enough to be hospitalized”? And compare that number to other diseases as well. Percentages and ratios are very often used to mislead by Journos on purpose.
Conclusions are only as good as the numbers.
20 to 54 is also a huge sample range. And how does one qualify “sick enough to be hospitalized”? Did these people have pre-existing conditions?
I detect a note of LARPing in all this. The citizens, accustomed to video stars and virtual reality, imagine they are in a movie, the kind that NETFLIX informs me is trending these days. Which means the ratio of drama to reality is badly out of whack, at least on the surface. In reality? In reality, I think many of the outraged and excitable don’t take this as seriously as they would like to think they do. If this really were a Black Death bring out your dead sixty percent mortality of the entire population, they would not be making… Read more »
There’s quite a bit of cosplay involved, and many are acting like they have a bit part in a zombie flick. But God knows an actual crisis awaits them, and they won’t be so down with the economic consequences of losing jobs, houses, and retirement savings, and the draconian police state that is likely to emerge.
The Z-blog was epic yesterday.
Everything will change, forever.
The 9-11 attacks were brought up.
Millions, for years, repeatedly pointed out that “the hijackers were Arab”.
Yet Mecca remains uncratered to this day, and nothing changed, except that the global Swamp grew richer and more powerful in spades.
We couldn’t even take back the oil infrastucture we built over there. FDI always seems one way. Heck, my dad was building those oil refineries, after serving in WWll.
Good advice.
“Always be persuading”.
I’ve been wondering about the insulin issue lately. We’ve had a huge problem (heh) with obesity that has only been worsened by the easy availability and use of insulin. I mean, why bother changing your lifestyle when a simple shot can enable you to keep your unhealthy habits? Life has become way too easy.
When the insulin runs out, it will be too late to change and the obese will start dropping like flies. As for triage, giving the remaining available insulin to the type 1 diabetics will be an easy decision.
A major reason for the moral rot of recent decades is that inbetween affluence, the welfare state and modern medicine, people don’t have to suffer the negative consequences of self-indulgent and self-destructive behavior.
Outdoorspro – an easy decision for you or I perhaps, but the obese who ride the little electronic grocery carts will demand “their fair share,” and they will be echoed by many – even by some here. Being rational in an age of drama and equalitarianism and individualism is akin to being disabled.
Interesting. I saw your quote, “their fair share” wrt to a fat diabetic in a electric grocery card and immediately thought, “what is their fair share”? For that manner, what is anyone’s fair share in a “just” society? —stop reading here if you are a bleeding heart— Plato defined “justice” as that virtual which apportions every man his “due”. So in your hypothetical, this person’s fair share would have to be proportional to his contribution to society. And what is this obese, sickly person’s contribution to society? Any thoughts here? Basically, my stereotype is a low functioning, none tax paying,… Read more »
Compsci – I tend towards Aristotle more than Plato, but you raise a good point. I would emend it, I think, by more narrowly defining their contribution to their community, and what we on our side usually mean by that. I’m constantly smirking at calls to “care for our community” anywhere in ‘murrica. Frankly, the whole idea anyone is ‘entitled’ to anything rubs me the wrong way. God gave us life and free will. He didn’t guarantee fairness or health or happiness or freedom from random tragedy. That’s the human condition. Those that can’t deal with it are now running… Read more »
It hasn’t helped that the US culture, aided by Big Pharma and Big Insurance have trained everyone to believe their health problems can be fixed by a magic pill or procedure and most people have swallowed that hook, line, and sinker. Taking responsibility for one’s health is ignored, and natural/home remedies are trashed as voodoo because there is no money in them for Big Pharma or Big Insurance.
“… fixed by a magic pill…” Prescription has come to mean drugs instead of a treatment plan which may or may not include drugs. Pharmaceutical profits would drop by half if doctors gave the proper prescription: get your fat ass off the couch away from the talmudvision which normalizes and celebrates your obesity and sloth and get some exercise. Websters 1828: “a medical direction of remedies for a disease and the manner of using them” Websters 1913: “A direction of a remedy or of remedies for a disease, and the manner of using them; a medical recipe; also, a prescribed… Read more »
Man, that insulin example really brings it home, doesn’t it?
I’m on your side of the divide but I have a neighbor who is prone to extreme interpretations of anything. One of his sales clients is a nurse who says the hospital system in our mid-sized Georgia city is on the verge of being overwhelmed. Currently, we have five known cases. I need to see more before I get excited.
My daughter’s hospital isn’t overwhelmed. They’re just acting overwhelmed. They’ve seen zero coronavirus cases, yet they’re taking drastic measures. My daughter is a highly-skilled surgical technician and she’s being forced to take a week off. Meanwhile people who need surgeries aren’t getting them — all non-critical surgeries have been canceled.
Healthcare is a female-dominated field and this is the perfect storm of female hysteria.
Interesting to note that my daughter’s hospital is a non-profit. The two nearest for-profit hospitals and surgical centers are still chugging right along: “other peoples’ money.”
The girls get to be hero and victim in full public view. Every hospital is now the set of The Hunger Games.
That’s the script of every NWL movie and series for the past 20 years. There’s a reason AWFLs are the most disliked contingent in the Coalition of the Fringes.
Every day decision-making – from the auto industry to every battalion commander – involves acceptable casualties. We do not drive around in cars with factory 4-point harnesses and full roll cages. CO’s don’t make plans based on ZERO casualties or we all put out the white flags. FDA – every single pharmaceutical they blast at us 24/7 has a percentage of people that have side effects including, “sudden death…” Yet this panic is being managed as an expression of our FEMINIZED society now. So we will crush our economy, cause untold damage – so NO ONE DIES. No one. And… Read more »
What the heck happened to the Assistant Principal? His whole job was to be the sports coach and the man who administers beat downs to the misbehaving boys. I went to high school in the 90’s and our AP was a force of nature (though they did not let him beat kids by then).
I hear you. The 90’s was a long time ago. I am talking about more recent years, and the creatures of the public school no longer included men. Males, yes. Lesbians in high places, yes.
Men? No. But off label negotiating techniques can be used vs. girly men, they are weak once they cannot hide behind “the rules”.
Yes, the medical field is feminized, but so is the rest of our culture. Out fem-fetish for credentialed “experts” on the megaphone to validate our badfeels is a big part of the spiraling hysterics as well. Like climate mythology, 97% of “doctors” agree that their fear is justified. The female-dominance in “government” bureaucracy means social communication and organizing also works to filter out any masculine intervention that might threaten the narrative. The narrative being anything that keeps maximum dependency on that bureaucracy. Properly identifying the problem and then taking action to solve or mitigate is not the point. In a… Read more »
One more point of data to add to the feminization of this moribund culture… two days ago LA mayor Garcetti gave an address on the tube about this panic. Others say crisis, but panic it is. At any rate, he closed his predictable remarks with a very telling interjection. He said “I love you.”
Finally, this virus event has managed to make me feel sick.
The nail:
Girlfriend: “My head really, really hurts.”
Boyfriend: “You’ve got a nail in your forehead. Why don’t you pull it out?”
Girlfriend: “Why do you always interrupt me when I’m talking about my feelings!!”
The Nail
I went to the dentist this AM. They said they had about half of their appointments cancel on them! No trouble, easy cleaning, the hygienist said she was required to ask me if I had been traveling recently. Normal life is still going on while all around people are going nuts. They didn’t take any extra precautions other than the normal ones – gloves and masks as usual.
Huh. My dentist has cancelled all but emergency care until April, and I was forced to reschedule my husband’s cleaning set for 30 March.
I have read several anecdotes like that about overwhelmed medical systems in areas with a very low positive test count. Rod Dreher has been posting rants from a guy who claims to be a doctor in Wyoming that are downright unhinged. I could see the workers who take samples and process the tests feeling overwhelmed, but most health care workers aren’t being inundated with patients for this.
Rod Dreher has spiraled into a state of pathological panic over this. He is holed up in his house, he says he won’t leave under any circumstances, and anyone who questions the numbers is castigated as a denier, or worse. He sits at home generating multiple posts a day, each one more terrified than the last. For him, the apocalypse has truly arrived, not that he would know it directly because he’s hiding under his bed most of the day. As with Sailer and other conservative writers, this crisis has given us a real look at their personalities under pressure,… Read more »
Yes. We’ve known it but that never has been more on display.
Agree. I am disappointed in a number of dissident bloggers that have hit the panic button. I’ve seen 2 year-olds exhibit more calm and rational thought.
Bloggers? Heck, we’ve seen commenters right here in panic mode. But in fairness we’ve also seen many more with considered and nuanced insight into recent events.
Meanwhile our central bank that backs our currency is going underwater in an attempt to save every bank on the planet. Misplaced panic if you ask me.
It’s disappointing to see that even normally rational people like Greg Johnson are buying the GloboHomo frame on this “crisis.”
We won’t be able to reach those people until a massive amount of damage has been done – but that’s something we on the Dissident Right are used to.
I added the above after my original comment went missing, then mysteriously showed back up – would delete dup if I could – damn you Internet!
Zman was quite generous with the “everyone has a bad day” take on Johnson. Z or someone else wrote the other day you see how people actually are when there is a crisis, manufactured or real. Johnson always will have an asterisk beside his name with me now. The morbidity stats are available on line from the CDC and stand at less than 160 this morning. The Deep State, and that includes the hideous failure that is the CDC, certainly isn’t adjusting the numbers downward. If Johnson can’t fathom why that number is important–the bottom line, actually, it’s all you… Read more »
At this point everybody is desperate to get the numbers up. Did they die of anything – heart attack, stroke – while infected? Chalk one up for Coronavirus! Were they presumptive positive when they died? Presume no more!
What happens in 2 weeks, when people have lost their businesses, their retirements, their modern world, and it starts to become clear we’ve lost our old world, perhaps forever, and NOBODY knows anyone firsthand who was sick?
True. I can handle my wife’s fear mongering. That’s how she’s wired, and I know that as persuasive as I am there’s only so much effect it’ll have. But many other people don’t have that excuse. Scorecards need to be filled out today and kept for the very near future.
What about disablement or hospitalization? Do we know yet?
Once the Chinese “get back to work”, reoccurrences will start popping up.
Update: Lorenzo, below-
“370,000 hospitalizations… from flu”
Still, doesn’t Corona reinfection leave one disabled?
Two things can be true at once: that the virus is a serious problem, and that we might overreact. The problem is in fact that there probably is no easy solution unless we get lucky (e.g. chloroquine actually works).
I return to something I have been saying for a long time. The hive mindedness of the Left has polluted all dialogue. There is never a middle ground. It’s all black hats and white hats, good guys and bad guys. You either support a global quarantine or you want to see millions of bodies in the streets. There is a vast middle ground between those two poles. In fact, I am deliberately staking out the midpoint in this crisis. Yes, we should have ramped up prevention through public information and some mild restrictions. Playing sporting events in empty arenas, for… Read more »
Over 90% of mitigation will come from washing hands, assuming everyone you interact with is sick, and sheltering the old and vulnerable. All the rest is just wrecking the economy so we can feel we are doing something.
That’s what I got out of your comments yesterday, Z. Those who say “it’s just the flu, bro” are as out of touch, in their own way, as those who see a raging pandemic. It sort of is “just the flu”, but the environment we live in makes it worse than that in a lot of weird ways not directly related to the flu, and we need to ride with that. There will be a lot of things damaged and bent, and a lot of things knocked over. This is a time of the fraying of things and people, around… Read more »
Z;
Re hive mind dualism: You either get to sit at the mean girls lunch table or you eat in the outer darkness 😉
It would appear I’m being cast into the void by the witch hunters. “A prophet is without honor only in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own household.”
Did you see RamzPaul’s livestream yesterday with Tiina? This issue has divided us on the right also. The green eyeshades by the numbers guys and the, even x number of deaths are too many. We may have tabled the socialism vs capitalism debate for now due to immigration but these differences are always there subjugated for a while.
Trump is Yang now is a meme currently.
I think the divide is this. On one side are the positive identity types. On the other are the negative identity types. The former takes a comprehensive view of politics. Identity is one part of their general outlook. The negative guys are reactionary. They cheer the collapsing stock market, because they think it hurts the Jews or damages globalism. They don’t think about how it will harm them or their interests. This virus panic has revealed a lot of fault lines. This is just one of them. There’s also the great divide between those who are comfortable with math and… Read more »
I think there’s a further fault line within the group that’s comfortable with math that’s been showing itself lately with Sailer’s hysteria in particular. Guy’s like Sailer seem to have fetishized math a bit and they’re willing to swallow the claims of pointy-heads uncritically if they’re based on the output of some kind of mathematical model. I am NOT any kind of expert on epidemiological modeling, but one of my thesis advisors at college was a published expert in the field so I’m vaguely aware of the types of models in use. They typically consist of systems of non-linear differential… Read more »
Exactly!!! Biological scientists have become modelers. It’s much easier to plug some numbers into an equation than to measure something rigorously. Thus, Tony Fauci can go on the corporate media shows and say it’s possible that 500,000 Americans might die from the virus. All he did was pick a number. Some modelers tried some different inputs and produced a list of possibilities. They kind of liked the assumptions that gave 500K, so Voila!!! That’s the story and we’re sticking to it. The way to measure the transmissibility, severity, and direct death rates would be randomly to test a significant part… Read more »
maybe Sailer’ wants to build his math and science cred
>Since they’re non-linear, they’re also highly sensitive to starting values
the sensitivity to the input has less to do with the type of equation but rather the solution.,exponential functions are sensitive to inputs. you see with with IQ at extreme tails. The difference between a mean of 100 or 95 becomes huge in terms of relative frequency when you go way out
Regarding math, I’d argue there’s an even finer distinction. There’s a great divide between those who are comfortable with probabilities and statistics (related but not the same thing) and those who are not. I’ve known plenty of engineers who aren’t comfortable with probabilities. Now, uncomfortable doesn’t mean lack of understanding. Can they do the math? Of course, they’re frickin engineers. But are they comfortable with that type of thinking? No. They crave certainty. The problem should have a concrete solution. Probabilities are squishy. I’d argue that comfort with probabilities and statistics requires both some math chops but, more importantly, a… Read more »
Probabilities create a lot of poisonous problems in our political discourse too because there are two distinct types of probability. There are “frequentist” probabilities that almost have the force of mathematical truths. If I flip a coin hundreds and hundreds of times, I can be fairly confident that it will come up heads about half the time so a probability of 50% for heads is a reasonable assumption that everyone can base decisions on. On the other hand there’s a statement like there’s an 80% probability that 10 million Americans will be die from the Coronavirus. That’s a Bayesian probability… Read more »
I call it the “red light, green light” effect. People want to know whether to stop or to go. Probability sets don’t work like that. Instead, there is an array of outcomes, and one has to decide how to position oneself to maximize the benefits of a likely outcome and minimize the risk. Given that there are identifiable but not really measurable “long tail” outcomes also baked into the array of identifiable outcomes, one needs to decide whether the magnitude of the harm done by a very low probability outcome makes playing the game at all worth the effort. The… Read more »
This here particular thread is fantastic. I never loved math, but through brute force acquired a deep appreciation for its ability to steward certain truths while allowing for exploration. Even though DE still make me queasy. Statistics, in some odd fancy, made more sense to me from the start. Perhaps because growing up with an insane mother had me primed at an early age toward understanding the probability of bad outcomes, relative to various inputs, than say to the purity of maths. IOW, to me math works toward resolving dissonance, while stats works toward accepting it for what it is.… Read more »
Poker teaches one a
appreciation of probabilities. I think to understand what is going on you must place yourself in the position of a college president or conference organizer. shutting it all down is very low risk. if you keep it open, however, and a outbreak occurs…. and a couple of old geezers kick the bucket…. we are seeing the fruits of the pussification of America. on the other hand I doubt the farmers will stop farming and the miners will stop mining.
Exactly.
While all of the “important” people self quarantine and sing “Imagine” on Instagram, I walk outside in NYC, and the tradesmen are still going full force, the garbage is still being picked up and people with real jobs are still putting in 40 to 60.
The class divide was never clearer.
depends how you define good at math. That leads me to the joke:
How does a mathematician calculate 3×3? He immediately says “9”
A physicist? Same as above.
Ask an engineer to calculate 3×3? He gets out his scientific calculator, inputs 3×3, and read off 9.0000000000000 until reaching the end of the screen
everyone thinks they are on the side of math, truth, logic, rationality, science, reason, objectivity, etc. even if to an outsider it is anything but. You can have two opposing opinions originated by individuals who equally believe their opinions are rooted in objectivity.
Very good points. I even found myself going back and forth on this virus thing but ultimately looked at the numbers of deaths and compared them to past pandemic events and the total population. It’s a mathematical equation and we should not be in the panic we are living in. But it is what it is. The persuasion of panic in the media and panic among our friends is a powerful force. The societal and economic repercussions of this thing are gonna be long lasting. If a nation like China observes what the result of this panic is to a… Read more »
Thanks again to Z-Man. We seem to be living in a bizarro world where there is more “common sense” from (certain) people on the dissident right than the so-called “normies”.
The lack of push back by the likes of the Wall Street Journal, National Review and Reason is amazing. Governments are seizing powers of which AOC would have only dreamt a couple months ago. All this upheaval and eventual suffering is based on the known fact that there are about 8,000 confirmed deaths from the virus worldwide!
Amazingly, The Federalist is posting some excellent articles on the panic, and their reason is not libertarian nonsense.
In a rational world, a prudent response would be to isolate vulnerable people; otherwise, business as usual.
But we do not live in a rational world, and I suspect there are other agendas at work.
Saw that Cramer guy said Boeing needs a handout. Grandma’s got the sniffles— better save the corporations!
Boeing blew $43 Bn on share buybacks while outsourcing it’s engineering to $9/hr Indians. The conditions for any bailout s/b 1) Reissue the stock and make the officers and board eat it. I don’t care if they’re all bankrupted. 2) Replace the officers and board “pour encourager les autres.” 3) No more foreign visas. Bring the jobs back. Americans are sick of socialism for the oligarchs and capitalism for the productive.
nakedcapitalism: “Boeing spent *$43 billion* on stock buybacks, helping more than double its stock price in 2017-2018, enriching shareholders, only to meltdown from its mass produced faulty planes and the current coronavirus crisis. Now they need a bailout?”
Dave Ramsey: “The market crash is 5%, for cripesakes, a correction.”
Just as soon as the actual data revealed the vulnerable population to be rather specific and thus manageable, the agitprop started appearing to counter the “false” idea that the risk to younger, otherwise healthy people and children was very low. The “don’t be fooled, this can kill your babies” pieces started coming out. And even when that data became obviously dubious to the few who actually went beyond the headline or soundbyte, the convenient overarching “asymptomatic carriers” dangers are turned up to 11. Don’t be selfish! Just because you may not die doesn’t mean you can’t give it to someone… Read more »
The sensible way to “flatten the curve” without flattening the economy would have been to make an effort to classify people as potential vectors, potential victims, or “neutrals”. Have you been flying around China, Northern Italy, or Iran recently? We’ll call you a class 1 Potential Vector. Maybe you didn’t visit a hotspot but simply traveled through a notorious hive of villainy and globalism like NYC recently* – you’re a class 2 Potential Vector. This pattern is extended to local traffic hubs like state capitals or a big city in any given state. If you live in OH did you… Read more »
It’s been known since WWl that Biological Warfare is very effective. It’s why it was “outlawed” over a 100 years ago. The only questions left right now are:
#1 “Who initiated the BW attack(China, Deep State, alliance of same, etc.)?”
#2 “How far will the world’s economies collapse?”
Answer to #2 should become apparent by May.
I have a feeling this is Chinese sloppiness being exploited. Just my suspicion. We’re not dealing with competent people. A bunch of tricksters, not villains.
It’s another thing we’ll never know. I suspect incompetence being the most likely explanation, but the other is not unheard of either.
I had my first, similar experience yesterday. Typically, a sober-minded investment person with 40 years experience and semi-retired, he was moved by an on-line video of someone in Italy reading obituaries in the paper. When I asked if the number of dead (obituaries) was out of the normal, he could not respond, but assumed it was al Coronavirus related. “You don’t know that,” as a response did not sit well with him. When I asked why a single mother waiting tables in Sheboygan should be unemployed and her child go hungry because the elderly may or may not be experiencing… Read more »
The political class (including many of the celebrity doctors and academics) fear the apparent death-to-confirmed-case ratio, which currently stands at ~4.5% across the countries most affected (Korea, China, Iran, US, Italy, France, Germany and Spain). Under this assumption, if even 10% of Americans were infected (~30 million) we’d be looking at ~1.35 million deaths. That would be not good. Of course, there are good reasons to be skeptical of that ratio, but the political class is acting as the weatherman for this event: If the weatherman predicts a huge storm that never happens, everyone has a laugh at them and… Read more »
Sleepy; Good point re the futility of expecting politicians to be heroes by refusing to ‘do something’ in the face of a hostile and hysterical media drumbeat. People seem to have forgotten the daily media drumbeat coverage, daily body count, etc. of every War on Terror (WOT) casualty while Bush II was in office. And he was a fellow member of the ruling elite doing what their elite masters wanted done, FGS_! Nearly ran him out of office early. So can you imagine the shrieking coverage of any and every death that could possibly be attributed to COVID-19 had P.… Read more »
> The political class (including many of the celebrity doctors and academics) fear the apparent death-to-confirmed-case ratio, which currently stands at ~4.5% across the countries most affected (Korea, China, Iran, US, Italy, France, Germany and Spain). Under this assumption, if even 10% of Americans were infected (~30 million) we’d be looking at ~1.35 million deaths. That would be not good.
It’s not even close to that for most of the countries mentioned.
I’m not if you saying I am mistaken or that you believe that the count of confirmed cases is way lower than the actual number of cases (confirmed and unconfirmed/unknown). In case it is the former, here are the latest numbers from Johns Hopkins:
Country Cases Deaths D/C
Korea 8565 91 1.06%
China 81155 3249 4.00%
Iran 18407 1284 6.98%
US 9415 150 1.59%
Italy 35713 2978 8.34%
France 9058 243 2.68%
Germany 13979 42 0.30%
Spain 17395 803 4.62%
Total 193687 8840 4.56%
Numbers from here: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
You can find similar (though never exactly the same) numbers other places, since they are all relying on the same sources (CDC, WHO, etc.).
I just don’t want anyone to think I’m making things up.
I figured that’s what you did. I just wanted to state many countries have a far lower rate.
Thanks for the clarification.
The numerator on Sleepy’s figures is somewhat accurate (were there deaths associated with c-virus infected people who died of other causes? Did some die of undiagnosed c-virus somewhere?). The denominator is a complete unknown (most people haven’t been tested). When the denominator (cases identified) has some measure of accuracy and completeness, then we can get to work with the numbers.
As I said in my initial post:
“Of course, there are good reasons to be skeptical of that ratio…”
The “confirmed case” statistic is completely meaningless, though. Nobody knows how many unconfirmed cases there are. Plenty of people are like me and figure that the last place you want to be is a hospital or testing center until you have no choice.
As I said the other day, being confirmed with coronavirus doesn’t change your home treatment plan at all.
I agree that the panic and “lockdown” are doing incredible damage and that we will be paying for this for years. What I am not sure about is what would happen if we adopted a “business as usual” model. Would there be a total disease-driven meltdown, or would the death rate spike for a few weeks then return to normal as the plague burnt itself out? We don’t really know, because everywhere the virus has hit, our Masters have instituted pretty strict measures to limit the spread. The test case may be coming in Brazil, which is apparently taking a… Read more »
What I am not sure about is what would happen if we adopted a “business as usual” model. This is the salient point. We are reacting as if we do know. More precisely, we are reacting as if this is a once in a history of the planet event. No pandemic has ever behaved as they are predicting. We have no records of anything reaching 70-80% infection levels. Not even the black death. If a guy knocks on your door and says you must buy his special insurance policy, because a flying dinosaur from another galaxy will smash your new… Read more »
Most humans hate uncertainty and appreciate kindness. Our Masters therefore exude certainty and kindly concern in order to remain in power — even if (as usual) they really haven’t got a clue about what is actually going on and care less about what happens to the hordes of peasants outside their gates.
Knowing all this, the question becomes, what, realistically, should I and my family do to survive? That’s my take on it anyway.
“We have no records of anything reaching 70-80% infection levels.” Are you sure? Can you provide a source? Genuinely curious. One thing I’ve learned from this thing is how flimsy much of the epidemiologic data is. Even the annual flu death estimates are just that, and are really ranges with large error bars (e.g. 20-50,000 deaths, 30-40 million ill). Most people who have the flu never get tested, some may not know they got anything, and some may know they had something but wasn’t necessarily the flu. Good data like in Vo or the Diamond Princess, where everyone is tested,… Read more »
I’ve spent a fair bit of time looking for an example of a pandemic reaching 70% of a large, dis-aggregated population. You have to rule out examples of a small town all getting sick. America is a continent sized nation. The closest is the Black Death, which infected 40-50% of the European population. There have been small pox epidemics that have infected half a city in the medieval and ancient times. The thing is, we have that cruise ship, which was a great real world test case. Infection rate was 20%. That’s a good number to use when thinking about… Read more »
I’m anything but an expert on the subject, but most sources I’ve seen estimate that 30-60% of Eurpoeans DIED (rather than were infected) in the Black Death. Further, according to this article, the bubonic plague is fatal without treatment in 50-70% of cases: http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/plague.html Assuming mean of these numbers, (45% dead & fatality rate of 60%), then 75% of Europeans were infected with the bubonic plague during the Black Death. If you assume the values that will result in the lowest infection rate (30% dead & fatality rate of 70%) then 43% of Europeans were infected, so it is possible… Read more »
That’s the thing. People were dying from broken legs and bad teeth, while living in filth. Our guesses about infection rates are not terrible important as a result.
Didn’t new disease wipe out 90% of the population in both North and South America?
The bubonic plague approached those rates three times in historical China, I’ve read.
90% seems exaggerated, but David Goldman also used it in one of his articles.
Could it be the diversity of European populations, and their exposure through travel and trade, perhaps.
Have any other peoples kept the historical records that whites have? (Arabs and Chinese tend to burn theirs.)
As you say, though, the relevant recent cases “all failed to infect more than 20%, with most down near 10%.”
Agreed. The herd is being driven to the cattle chute. Unfortunately, survival will mean, in part, assuming management of the herd. I get a slimy feeling typing that, but thems the breaks.
Well, I hope you’re right that it’s overhyped. They seem to be having trouble in Italy, but not so much in other places. Can you explain, in detail, what “flattening the curve” means? What the logic is there, and why you conclude that it’s wrong? While you’re absolutely right that our rulers are evil filth and the crisis won’t go to waste, that doesn’t tell us anything about whether or not it’s a real crisis. Nor does the dependence of diabetics on a functioning supply chain. It’s better to lose a chunk of your population than to lose your whole… Read more »
It’s putting the virus on the payment plan instead of getting it over with. Months, maybe years of dealing with it, long after the pandemic has, or should have, subsided.
Too vague.
Letting the virus run its course would produce a steep but short curve. Everybody who’s going to die will die in a short period of time.
Flattening the curve spreads that out over a longer period of time. The idea is to not overwhelm the health system, which in theory will save lives and prevent infection.
Flattening the curve assumes the collateral damage, including unnecessary death, from prolonged economic disruption will be less than the damage from letting the virus run its course.
The payment plan, in other words.
But, with this one, you can get reinfected.
Everybody keeps forgetting that.
Can you explain, in detail, what “flattening the curve” means?
What? You haven’t read the explainers on every single mainstream news site?
I understand it perfectly. I was asking Z man to explain his understanding to me. I’ll settle for yours.
Edit: I don’t pay much attention to mainstream news. I would expect the “explainers”, so-called, to be vague generalizations directed at low-information folks.
Who set you up as headmaster? I don’t have to prove myself to you. Do you have a point?
Z called it a magical incantation. I would call it a prayer to the Science gods.
Nope.
Sometimes smart people don’t think. If that’s really what he thinks.
“Flattening the curve” means preventing the hospitals from becoming overwhelmed by slowing the spread of the infection by shutting down public spaces.
Without numbers, that sounds like it’s just an opinion, or a nice idea. But you didn’t get anything wrong. Very good.
Thanks, Line, I was wondering myself.
(And thanks, Wilbur, for asking.)
I hate it when snob-signallers say “bonds are inverting the yield curve” instead of “bonds cost more”.
There will also be a lot of unprovable “just imagine how bad it would have been” if we didn’t overreact assertions. It’s like the guy whose favorite player has a horrible game proclaiming his team would have lost by more if not for him.
It’s starting now. Fauci basically has been saying how much better overreaction will be. I’m also getting the vibe that the low morbidity rates are starting to evoke an “oh shit” reaction among the sincere panicmongers.
The justification for the panic isn’t falsifiable. If a lot of people die, it’s not going to be that shutting everything down didn’t work. It will be that we didn’t try hard enough and it would have been even worse if we didn’t shut everything down. If there are few deaths, it won’t be that the shutdown was unnecessary. It will be “Yay. It worked.”
The awkwardness will continue as the quant-media split screen the death count next to the economic numbers to all the couch-locked proles. If the deaths don’t penetrate into the six-degrees very soon, as all the shit-scale charts clearly show they will, the emotional beast switches teams. It will be “give me my goddamn job back right f’n now.” They need “my girlfriend’s nanna died of the corona (at 88 in a care facility)” to keep the “laid off and can’t make rent” at bay. The question is (T). There is a lot of stock in 15 days but most closures… Read more »
From the beginning the propaganda machine linked Trump to carelessness and thereby solidified half of America siding with the panic party. How does ZMan keep clients in such an atmosphere? I got my Millennial kids talked off of the ledge no problem. Meanwhile, my Nor Cal in-laws pass emails touting the latest medical analysis with “Brilliant” added on. Then I send Toilet Paper memes ridiculing their beloved devotion to the party line and don’t get so much as a laugh. Yesterday’s essay here is beyond their vision. I even got banned from American Partisan and Raconteur Report for telling them… Read more »
People get set on what they think, and then become impervious to different ideas or contrary evidence. These days, people are taught to do that. Feelz and all…
Our society seems more neurotic than it used to be, or perhaps, it’s just that the neurotic elements in society have more influence than in the past.
Draw your own inferences as to what constitutes “neurotic”.
The average person has very little in the way of actual useful knowledge and believes she can look up anything she needs to know on the internet. The hive mind problem Zman mentions is another big part of it. We are seeing some signs of the worst impulses being checked. Cuomo shut De Blasio down when he floated the idea of a shelter in place order in New York City. This can’t continue for months on end.
Line I’m using that people seem to like: “We need to end all immigration until this coronavirus thing is over.”
The strangest part of all of this is the sudden China-shilling by some of the louder voices on the dissident right. I guess if you think you can score some points against the neocons by praising the Chinese, it is worth it.
It’s true but hard to square “(w)hat I got was the old line about “(i)f we can save just one life”’ with “(m)any may even howl about the foolishness of destroying the global economy to save a few extra people this year.” It does show a complete lack of rationality in the political realm. We can exploit this by appealing to emotions, as you pointed out, and the facts as they emerge will be devastating to the old order and bolster our arguments. I still expect a slide into totalitarianism from all this, but there is an outside chance this… Read more »
One thing to consider as the result of Winnie the Flu: how smart was it to off shore production of essential medical supplies and medicines to China and India. This outbreak could be the beginning of the end for the globalization experiment.
In a rational society, this would mean the end of globalization, but we are not rational, and if we were, we wouldn’t have off shored the bulk of our manufacturing to China in the first place.
As 9/11 saw an increase in immigration, I am sure we will see more, not less, globalization and outsourcing, because that’s how our leaders role.
I hope I’m wrong.
I think this is the end of globalization.
It won’t be long before boycotts of Chinese-made products become part of the virtue signaling. Good.
Jack – I’d like to hope you’re right but I think you’re placing far too much trust in even semi-rationality. Anyone looking at the facts logically would see the connection between globalization and Chinese corruption and American insufficiency and economic disruption. You’d be lucky if 5% of the people truly made those connections. I’m not one to gently lead people to reality; perhaps others can do so.
I think this, 3, because it certainly seems the Cloud People themselves have decided to ditch globalism and move toward a planned economy to impose feudalism. This is not being done because the masses suddenly have become rational.
A quip at Kunstler:
“wondering whether those supply-chains from China will come back. It’s no different than the cargo cults of the Solomon Islanders circa 1947”
Ray; It already just happened, I think. During the Cold War (CW) there used to be pretty strict ‘made in America’ requirements for *any* govt. procurement contract, particularly any DoD related. After the CW ended, the the globalist owned US Chamber of Commerce got to work eliminating or at least diluting these rules by buying Congressmen and Representatives to create industry-specific carveouts. After a while, the many, many carveouts made enforcing ‘made in America’ impossible. I just read that one of P. Trumps executive orders snapped those rules back into place (why he invoked the Defense Production Act). If true,… Read more »
If true, chalk it up to someone actually looking out for all of us. So rare in politics these days.
Let’s hope. Everyone will at some point need medicine and/or hospitalization. It’s optimal to have drugs developed and produced here stay here. Along with every other industry that’s been outsourced.
The Chinese know that money and access talk. They know how to work the clouds. The clouds will ditch the Chinese only if they think Xi’s crew is refusing the clouds their gibs, or Xi has no more gibs to offer.
Instead of using their imagination to imagine the worst case scenario they can muster of the virus, they should be using it to imagine the worst case scenario of economic collapse. I heard on Tucker that in the 50s there was a major Chinese flu that spread around the world and killed quite a few Americans. But because there was no panic, I had never heard of the pandemic he was talking about. Despite the panic already happening, the press seem to all be in competition with each other to see who can print the most hysterical headlines. The people… Read more »
All I know is that as of right now, the news is still reporting stories on one or two people testing positive in various areas, which feels like is no where near the amount of cases they thought we’d be at by now.
The number of positive tests / hospitalizations better increase in number quickly or people are going to get antsy sitting around in the homes in quarentine for these relatively small numbers.
Our Smart People have busted the world economy over a disease that, to date, has killed world wide, about 6,000 people. Meanwhile, back in the real world.
https://wmbriggs.com/post/29830/
There had better be a really good explanation pretty damned quick for going nuts over the Coronavirus.
Not only has the massive spike they predicted not arrived, every news story from every outlet uses the word “soaring” to describe the latest cases or deaths.
It’s always “soaring” or “spiking”, no matter how insignificant.
Every new case is treated as if 10,000 people just died.
It really is panic politics all day, every day.
I was already disgusted by the mainstream media before this, but they have taken the hysteria to an entirely different level, and have half the population wound up so tight that the spring could burst at any moment.
From the globalist perspective, if the deaths and human suffering don’t materialize but our economy gets shut down and the government changes over next year, it is still a job well done and a victory for them. Remember what matters in their shabby little hearts.
I gave that an upvote because it is well-reasoned, but no longer think this is to maintain globalism. The Cloud People intentionally are ditching globalism and will use a planned economy to reduce the masses to serfdom, or further to serfdom. Yet your larger point is correct. Mission accomplished.
Younger urban dwellers have started to ignore the restrictions, and suddenly we get breathless reports about how even they are in danger, maybe more in danger than anyone else!!!
Young people love to live “dangerous” lives, especially when it is easy to get away with it and then be able to brag about it.
Here in NYC, most people think this scale of shutdown is highly suspicious. Everyone is in awe of the scope of it, and no one around me has personal contact with someone who has been hospitalized for this. This scale of forced paralysis can last about 2 weeks, 4 weeks max, in a city this size before the fault lines start cracking. In my daily routine, black people seem to be the most openly suspicious of this entire event, at least on the ground here, but a lot of people are murmuring. Of course, there are plenty of true believers,… Read more »
I’ve noticed the same. Otherwise government-compliant, nice liberal white types realize this isn’t adding up. That almost never happens. The nascent police state cannot be ignored.
Wow! I am unsure how much the ruling classes are playing a multidimensional chess power grab or they are simply incompetent.
Embrace the power of “both”!
Maybe some shadowy cabal took a look at the conditions that foster Communist overthrow and wrote up the playbook du jour? I’m guessing, much like Muellergate, that the virus was intended to be much more impactful than it turned out to be… but the script was already in motion, so they are editing on the fly.
Prior to this catastrophe we already had the opiod epidemic and “deaths from despair”. The decline in real wages and the inability to form and maintain marriages have left so many with very little to live for.
There will be more white suicides from a 2nd Great Depression than there will be from direct coronavirus deaths.
Yes. I initially thought the Deep State had not done a cost/benefit analysis, and then realized, duh, yes they did.
>Of course, I made the mistake I often point out in politics and that is I countered his claim with actual facts that anyone can look up. I pointed out that there are eight billion people on the planet. I told him more people have died from suicide in China than from this plague and China is the epicenter. My client listened, but it was quite clear he was on the side of strangers he reads on-line. Those people are much more convincing to him, because of something called abductive reasoning. —————————- 1st order thinking is predicting the outcome. the… Read more »
Pretty sensible piece on the Wuhan flu from Angelo Codevilla… “Our 21st-century “developed” world, which so touts its own rationality, is now engaged in the historically unprecedented attempt to shut down most social and economic intercourse for the sake of mitigating the effects of a virus the lethality of which is far more like recent strands of the flu than that of the plague. One reason we do not know how many persons have been infected by this virus is that most infections in most people are so mild as to be unnoticed. That is also why we do not… Read more »
Was thinking about the Derbyshire quote and it dawned on me . That stuff about wanting to be well-liked by other people tends to go to the wayside after you’ve seen real death and crisis. Reality has a way of cutting through all the emotional nonsense. Death is death.
We are very fortunate to live in these modern times. It’s allowed us to ignore reality.
When death smiles at a man all a man can do is smile back
Rationalization is not reason. Reason is that rare commodity that is dependent upon a well tested external feedback loop, experimentation & observation, for which no one can posit a better explanation. Reason, which includes all scientific theories, has a half-life. Rationalization has more to do with group cohesion and group identity than it does with how nature, which includes all of human civilization, actually works. The need for group cohesion is what drove the increase in human intelligence during Pleistocene and the Holocene. Cold Winter Theory and Adaptability to change are too far removed from immediate group needs. Primitive man… Read more »
Z writes that “in the coming months, as the public comes to terms with what has been wrought,” “suddenly, there are going to be a whole lot of people looking for the simplest and most likely explanation for what they see happening around them.”
I tried to list those explanations and came up short. Then I read Greg J’s latest piece, where he criticized Z, and got his list:
Globalism is bad, Global “free trade” is bad
Democracy is bad
Liberalism is bad, Conservatism is bad
Diversity, multiculturalism, open borders, & anti-racism are bad
Are these the lessons and if so, what are we advocating?
Self-reliance, community reliance, trust and work with small and local, because you have the power to accept or reject at that close-in level.
I think the Zman is cautioning us to not expect too much. The Revolution isn’t here, and the DOTR is beyond fantasy.
I know I’m getting pissy with him over the JQ, but he’s trying to steer a wide circle around things that drive away much-needed allies…
Because, man, are we gonna need them.
Panic or not, Greg Johnson notes that there are some salutary results to be had out of the current coronavirus conundrum (his column can be found at https://www.counter-currents.com/2020/03/how-coronavirus-will-change-the-world/). Among them: “Even if the Globalvirus stops today, we are looking at a world in which nationalism is stronger and the anti-nationalist forces of globalism, democracy, liberalism, conservatism, and the diversity cult are weaker.” And then, “After Globalvirus, charges of racism will no longer be moral kill shots.” So there’s that, assuming he’s even partially accurate.
The most obvious sanity check once we begin to return to normalcy is whether the unrestrained mass flows of people continue between China and the West. So much of this could have been avoided by simply shutting down flights to China in late January. There needs to be more sensitive circuit breakers to lock out traffic from epicenters of disease. Limit the downside quickly. If we don’t get at least new protocols for insta- flight restrictions from regions known for Zoonosis and outbreaks, this will have been all for naught. Don’t let politicians create the equivalent of a repeat of… Read more »
I dunno. If the mortality from Chinese Flu is 2% and if 70% of everyone can be expected to get it, we’re looking at 4.5 million dead. That’s on top of the normal 2.8 million we get in a regular year.
Take the mortality up to 4% and the number climbs to almost 9 million.
That’s a lotta stiffs.
The Civil War killed around 2% of everyone in the country and created profound social changes. 9 million dead is around 2.8% of our population. If that is what we are looking at, then maybe this isn’t an over-reaction.
Modern medicine created vast amounts of grey haired people shuffling around The Villages (not saying that’s bad). Fire goes to the dry timber. Italy is a graffiti covered conversant home staffed by muslims.
Yup. If Kung-flu does it’s worst it won’t do but a fraction of the damage to young people the flu of 1918 did, also a Chinese flu.
What number of incremental dead wold concern you?
6 million. Exactly 6 million, no less.
BTP. The dead in the Civil War were the cream of American youth. As in countries like Russia in WWII (1920 cohort, 80% males died), the effects can be profound for society. Now with the present Chinese Flu (I like that term) we have most of the 1-2% mortality in the 60 and above range. A previous statistic I heard a week or so ago was that no one has died here under 50 yo. In Italy, it has been reported that the median age of folks dying is 80 yo. My actuary table has my predicted age of death… Read more »
Compsci – I agree that the social calculus should decrease the weight of deaths among those who don’t have much life left. And we don’t really know the mortality rate in the population, overall. Italy’s rate is considerably higher, but that may well be affected by the selection of who gets the virus. So, considerable unknowns – I agree. And like someone said here, it’s possible for the situation to be serious and also to overreact to it – I agree. Still, the Chinese lost their fracking minds over this thing. Does it seem logical to you that they reacted… Read more »
That’s exactly Zman’s point. Your alarmist assumptions about morbidity and mortality rates are unfounded and unsupported by historical probabilities. GIGO.
@Maus –
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/02/25/coronavirus-update-italy-mortality-rate-similar-to-chinas/#347887a26c43
Italian rate a couple weeks ago was 2.6%. Iran’s was 19%, but that’s inexplicable.
But who cares? Get yourself a little spreadsheet and play with some numbers. I get it that we are planning on paying a giant cost in economic terms for this, but presumably there is some benefit on the other side of the ledger. We don’t know what that risk/benefit is, but it matters.
Sure, 9 million dead. Where are the bodies? That’s extremely unlikely.
Also, the dead, such as they are, are mostly old and/or sick people who probably would have died sooner rather than later without corona. The Civil War, on the other hand, resulted in a lot of deaths of young men. Certainly, the deaths of millions of old and sick people would create social change but probably much less than caused by Civil War deaths.
One thing that will be lost on history to this is that the economy, in its last few quarters, was a tinderbox of bd debt waiting on a match. That match may very well have been that Jew war we were pushing in Iran. But orange man blinked. Thank God that deep down, he’s a coward. So it turned out to be a virus instead. This was never going to be a normal bear market, but the lockdowns have accelerated the damage. If Orange Man can use this virus as a fig leaf for all the brewing problems. “We had… Read more »
Yes. I think this was orchestrated by the banksters and the Deep State, at least in part, to camouflage the impending meltdown. This is far larger than just the 2020 election. Biden obviously is just packaging and easily could be supplanted at the drop of the dime. It’s his puppetmasters we need to watch. Hell, what was coming likely was so bad this may actually have mitigated an even worse panic. Regardless, the world’s wealth has been reduced greatly for everyone other than the Cloud People, of course.
I don’t think it was “orchestrated” per se. I think it’s the logical conclusion of a system corrupted by special interests (foreign and domestic) that is basically legalized bribery. Too bad we can’t elect anyone willing to stop it.
vmax, trolling, yesterday: when Iran sent the Saudi hijackers in 911
Epic. Epic troll. I almost got kicked out of Belmont Club for pointing out that Saudi Arabia, at that time, was the #1 state sponsor of terror, not Iran (the Narrative was being revised yet again).
People do indeed forget their errors.
The Narrative masters all.
The Zman is absolutely right that today’s Crashers will tell us they were right all along, as I’m listening to a bit of FISAgate right now.
Seeing much of this from sportsball in the US Mr Z?
https://www.theguardian.com/football/video/2020/mar/18/coronavirus-gary-neville-says-nhs-staff-will-stay-at-his-hotels-for-free-video
I’ll bet he’s glad the Valencia job went south in a hurry.
Given the size and scope of the economic interventions on the table, it’s clear that Bernie dropped out because he already won. It’s a Bernie world around the corner. Our purchasing power will ultimately be berning. A lot is being exposed right now. So called “libertarians” who pretended to be for freedom of association, then spring out of the closet as germaphobes who want vast quarantine powers. So called “conservatives” proposing stock market interventions by the government because “it’s not really a free market, if it only was we wouldn’t have to do this.” Suddenly, all over the political spectrum,… Read more »
Spot on.
This is Propaganda 101, but our side needs to take that class.
The truth is on our side, but that’s not enough. The truth has a force of its own, but the other side’s wishful thinking has a force of its own.
We have to personalize, narrativize, and religionize our thing. We have to become “propagandists for truth”–strange to say–to counter the propagandists for lies on the other side.
Yep, don’t let your virtues be used against you. We must learn the language of subtle duplicity to promote our side. Yep, sounds harsh—and a few years ago I’d argue for the high road. But a few years ago, I was a loser (of the argument) but didn’t know why. Today I know why and am willing to change tactics.
If you have better suggestions, please share.
I am glad you see the point. Long ago as a dumb-assed tween I thought THE TRUTH would win out in the long run. Ha! Reality is that almost everything you believe is based on lies, distortion, misunderstanding, and delusion. Even the gold-standard “germ theory of disease” is not completely true; at least not as most understand it. The Z-Dude wrote an essay a while ago and asked “what if you are wrong?” What if you don’t catch the flu but already have it and the damn bugs are just waiting for your immune system to allow them to proliferate?… Read more »
The infighting among the hard right on this issue has been pathtic. This issue has exposed so many targets among the globalists and whole anti-white cabal, and we’re still friendly-firing at each other. Shakin’ me ‘ead.
I think it’s explained by Z-man…emotion trumping reason and thoughtful action. The bottom line is the DR is composed of human beings.
I believe Exile put it best yesterday, some disagreements are best left to another day. Focus on the big picture. This crisis will subside and Sailor, Cochran and others will still be on or side and useful.
Wouldn’t it be convenient if we had a major re-occurrence of Corona-chan in the fall, just before the election.
Justinian’s Plague had re-occurrences for 200 years; some might find that useful.
Politically, this far exceeds just the 2020 elections although they are a part. The Cloud People are going for all the marbles. The more I think this through, it becomes obvious they are intentionally ditching globalism. Good there, but revenge is being extracted since they have to give up their religion.
Hyperventilating can be fun. It gets the heart-rate up, causes the face to flush, and even stimulates a dopamine rush. People who like movies and Broadway plays are really into this.
Yesterday we laid off 45 people from our restaurant bakery operation which ground to a halt despite being in a city without a single confirmed case and no one dead as far as I know. We don’t have any debt so we’ll likely see another day without the banks taking everything in the meantime. But, as Z implies above, this guy’s view based on real immediate experience is our mid-wit leaders are crashing the economy into a depression to save against an unknown that probably can’t be stopped. The actions are guaranteeing a lot (double) mayhem.
Here are the actual numbers from the hospital I work at, as of this morning. Updates: • We received 5 COVID test results came back today; 3 negative and 2 positive. Total tests sent: 73 Positive: 3 Negative: 60 Pending: 10 (8 sent today) This is a major west coast VA medical center. One of the biggest and busiest in the country. All procedures and appointments other than emergencies are on hold for now. That may be the reason for the low positive #s or it may also be that it’s not as bad as we’re being led to believe.… Read more »
I’m not sure who or why they decide to test someone but I assume it is patients with actual flu type symptoms.
The week before this hit, I remarked to my wife that by next week (This past Sunday) we’d have to shop armed. She kinda laughed. I shopped armed Friday, in Texas. Now Ive been prepping since January so it was this was less shopping and more temperature taking. People have lost their minds. I saw this in Baghdad in 2003 after we dissolved the military and life was already cheap over there so it may take some time. I’m not worried about the virus. I’m in good shape, my wife is a crossfit competitor, I’m armed and trained and have… Read more »
I’ve been shopping armed for about 20 years. Welcome to the club.
How could shop without arms? How would you pick things from shelves or carry them to the car?
I know, right? Before 20 years ago mom and then the wife did all the shopping. 🙂
How many young, or middle aged white men have died from opioid overdoses, caused at least semi-purposely by the Jewish Sackler, the Mexican cartels and China pumping in fentanyl?
This is a true national emergency that has been going on 15 years. Over 500,000 white people are dead. Mainly non boomers. Trump is quietly improving on the issue.
This is the real national emergency.
You answered your own question: “young, or middle aged white men have died.”
Hissssssss.
As an anti-Semite who used to donate to Magen David Adom (Israeli Red Cross), I’m glad to know we didn’t come to our conclusions based on facts or reason- that we are brainwashed, entirely incapable of reason.
Still, this blog is focused on the future, not the past. Point taken.
The past takes far too long to explain, “in not talking to someone where they are rather than where I would like them to be.” Because, people do tend to forget their errors.
(PS- sorry we’re cranky, spent all nite in a line in a snowstorm, didn’t sleep much last nite or the nite before)