It may feel like this panic has gone on for a month, but in reality we are just in our second full week. Technically, the panic began the Thursday after Trump’s speech in which he announced the closing of air traffic from Europe. That was the 18th of March, so we are in day 12 now. The real frenzy did not get going until the weekend, when governors started telling people the end is upon us. Last week was the first full week of people sheltering in place and treated one another like lepers.
The market always offers lots of lessons about the reality of social organization. In the best of times, you see how poorly people naturally organize. The best argument against libertarianism is simply going outside and watching people. Now, the best argument against curve flattening is to see how people behave when told they must assume everyone else has a deadly plague. They take symbolic steps to defend themselves, but the practical necessity of life overcomes those efforts.
At the ghetto market, the poor people, migrants and minorities are doing nothing different from what they normally do. You’ll see some blacks wearing masks, more on that later, but otherwise nothing is different. The store itself is not engaging in the defensive measures you see in suburbia. It’s not that these people are careless or stupid, but that they have a different sense of risk. When you have less to lose, you have less to fear, especially when your neighbor is scarier than a virus.
In the suburbs where the beautiful people live, the market operates like a German concentration camp. On the way in a nice older gentlemen wipes down your cart and directs you to the delousing station for inspection. Once you are sanitized, you enter the otherwise normal market. Again, the blacks have masks on and some old people will look like they are working in a nuclear facility, but otherwise people are spreading their cooties on one another as they do in regular times.
This is the skeptic versus curve bender in a nutshell. The curve benders live and work outside the confines of reality, so their schemes sound reasonable. In the real world where such schemes go to die, something else is happening. That is, people are already starting to show signs of weariness. The cashier whispered to me that she and the other cashiers are getting sick of the nonsense. There’s talk of collective action to either get more pay or stop forcing them to do all this extra work.
This is something people learn when they have to manage people. Just because they are paid to follow your instructions does not mean they will. You have to convince them to accept the rules so they become instinct. That can only happen when those rules do not conflict with their natural instincts or create what appears to be an unnecessary burden on them. Every captain knows the morale of his crew is his top priority, as it is the only way they can be counted on to follow orders.
In theory, locking everyone in their homes until the virus dies out is a great way to slow the spread and eventually eradicate it. After all, this is what the Chinese supposedly did in Wuhan and who does not trust the Chinese? In reality, people will go along with this for a little while, but they will soon tire of it. That and we are not China. Too many Americans will simply ignore the precautions. Unless they immediately drop over dead, they become the example everyone follows.
One amusing exception to all of this, as usual, are black people. In the beautiful people areas, rich Asians can be seen wearing masks in the best of times. This is a cultural habit they bring with them. In this panic, blacks have jumped on the mask-wearing craze in a big way. At the market, it is not rare to see a black now wearing a mask and colorful rubber gloves. Black people love display items. It is a good bet that masks and other gear get Africanized as fashion accessories.
Another reason blacks are jumping on the mask craze is they fear the unknown in ways most white people cannot grasp. It is why they are more likely to believe in ghosts than other races. It’s also why they fall for nonsense like white privilege so easily. To them, it is just another spooky thing about white people that they cannot see, but they are sure must exist. It is just one of the hidden forces that control events. This virus will be the best crime fighting too Lagos has seen in generations.
Anyone who has had to manage a large number of people knows that sentiment can turn quickly against you, unless you stay on top of it. It’s why sportsball coaches have locker room insiders to tell them the mood of the players. It’s why every military has a layer between the officers and the enlisted men. More than a few grand schemes have been undermined by a quiet rebellion in the ranks. This is something we are already seeing that will become more evident next week.
This is why Trump is getting antsy about getting people back to work. It’s not because of the economy, although that is one reason. It’s because he has managed lots of people and he knows this dynamic. By next week, whatever benefit there was to this lock down will have been achieved. The inevitable wholesale revolt against it will make the whole enterprise pointless. Trump will want to be seen as leading the charge to get the nation back to work, so expect that to be the topic a week from now.
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” In the real world where such schemes go to die ” My favorite line 🙂
Great post ! Keep up the good work 🙂
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This is a manufactured Mind Fuck.
Yes. Wuhan was and is the new detroit.
Just in time supply + Just payday loans REPO financing and razor thin margins of error due to indebtedness = Panic, but over money.
So they manufacture a hysteria to get $4 Trillion – but set off a real panic.
They lost control, and by shutting down the real economy hulled their own boat.
The Financial news is calling for a bailout of the mortgage industry – as the politicians (sensibly) put a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.
I don’t see that SBA money moving yet, I see Munchin talking like it is, he may believe it. Its not, and not fast enough to save small businesses.
Frankly the SBA desk needs to move as fast as the Fed, and that’s probably not fast enough.
Zman: “It’s also why [blacks] fall for nonsense like white privilege so easily. To them, it is just another spooky thing about white people that they cannot see…” Profoundly funny, and true. When it comes to plain old superstition however, it’s hard to beat Hispanics. Especially Hispanic women. Very likable people. But superstition runs deep in Latin American Indian culture. I live near LA. Just on a topical/conversational level, I’ve not encountered another race that enjoys both telling and believing the most darkly dramatic rumors possible. Rumors, news stories, any story. The more weird and gruesome the better. Like certain people enjoy horror movies. They have less sense of public decorum than others when it comes to bathroom humor and the grizzly. “He broke into the house. Duck-taped everyone. And with an icepick keeeled the entire family by shoving it up everyone’s asses. Eeeeven the leeetle baybeeees.” That’s dinner conversation.
Faucci says 200k Americans could die of this. That’s it??? That’s all??? We utterly destroyed our economy for a rounding error? I say this tongue in cheek because I’m an accelerationist.
Also, 200,000 is quite a bit lower than the 2.2 million forecast a couple of weeks ago. He’s probably also talking about it over the next year. That number will of course by hyped up to make it sound like 200,000 are going to die by the end of April.
An economy that can’t handle a two month crisis was doomed anyway and the only think that can actually save it is essentially killing it and rebuilding it by calling a jubilee and moving to economic nationalism hardcore,
Otherwise all you can do is slowly slip deeper into poverty and banker ownership
Methinks this is intentionally being done so the smalls get wiped out and the bigs can buy it up on the cheap. Further consolidation of the economy.
Just another sign crapitalism/globalism is on the outs. They can’t compete anymore. It won’t work, and it’s terrible they have to do this damage. Can’t hide behind the dwindling herd much longer. Justice is around the corner!
It’ll probably be considerably less. Maybe not, but I’m not betting on the experts. They’re in a worst case environment.
Orange man just said it could have been 2.2 M if it was not for him tremendous folks I am telling you tremendous
so now it is going be 100 k this plague is very dangerous said the orange man, I feel very strongly you know doctor Fauci is tremendous, people… tremendous I had call with President Xi, we had beautiful cake…lol
Conclusion the country remains closed until 31st of April (at least)
Forget about the Christmass opening he just announced a few days ago
If somebody wonders the current number of death, it is 2475
but do not let that discourage you when you think of higher numbers
The orange clown folded like he did many times before
By April 31st many millions will be out of job, many trillions of fiat dollars will be out circulating
Mediocre lunatics and scoundrels continue to lead the world into the crises that has never been seen before
Someone with a big memory help me with this. Z—whose podcast did you recommend to study history like Roman Empire? You mentioned this podcast a couple times, I noted it down and then buggered my lists.
Anyone remember?
A good time to study history.
Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” is great; covers a very wide variety of topics. Current series is about Imperial Japan, from the Meiji Restoration-forward.
Specifically on Rome, there’s a 200+ Episode Series called “The History of Rome” that is quite good (amateurish at the beginning but becomes quite professional). I’ve heard the entire series and enjoyed.
The creator of “History of Rome” has a new show called “Revolutions” that is also quite good. He’s trying to cover every major revolution from the English Civil War to current, and it is ongoing.
Super….that’s the one. Thank you very much for your courtesy and time to reply, Meme!
Carlin’s a bit too “agreed up set of lies” teller of history for me.
Billie – I don’t disagree with you, but the regulars here are of high enough caliber IQ-wise to be able to adjust and still enjoy.
But yeah, Carlin accepts a lot of agreed-upon narratives. He can’t fully understand Imperial Japan because they were race realists and he’s not.
Thank you both, Gentlemen! Forewarned is forearmed. I have reached the age of discernment.
Thanks. Can’t find the history of Rome, but I picked a random podcast about WWI, and I’m sold – excellent stuff!.
New York Post reports defiant ‘corona potlucks’ and residents visiting ‘speakeasies’
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/03/28/new-york-post-reports-defiant-corona-potlucks-and-residents-visiting-speakeasies-902439?utm_source=whatfinger
——-
“Lucian Wintrich, a former White House reporter and advertisement hand, is one of them. The 31-year-old contrarian recently hosted a ‘corona potluck’ at his small but chic East Village apartment,” the outlet reported Saturday.
While social distancing zealots would be horrified, there’s some logic to the 31-year-old’s madness.
“They can’t diagnose us all,” a tongue-in-cheek invite to the potluck read. “Don’t wash your hands. … Bring your fav dish!”
“The majority of folks I invited, if they got it, would recover fairly quickly and build up an immunity to the present form of COVID19,” Wintrich said in a statement to the Post.
I suspect Pres Trump already knows the outcome of the HCQ/Zithromax debate. It’s not going to work on everyone, but it’s going to work on enough people to bring the apocalypse to a somewhat abrupt end. It’s also probably going to prove to be a reasonably effective preventative drug.
Add to the the fact that the media is having trouble finding and filming ACTUAL EVIDENCE of the apocalypse. I don’t watch much TV news, cable or broadcast. But I do sometimes flip it on to see where the media is at. They are running frenetic images of ambulances and closeups of medical gauges…but few if any dead people and no piles of bodies like they’re hoping.
How many Presidents can credibly claim as their re-election justification that they saved millions of lives?
Lenny!
If this plays out such that the country more or less gets back to work by Easter and the HCQ/Zithromax basically works, Trump wins 40+ states and the Democrats stick with Biden because they’ll want to protect their future political viability.
>>> Add to the the fact that the media is having trouble finding and filming ACTUAL EVIDENCE of the apocalypse<<<
Bill Gates promised PILES OF BODIES!!! VERITABLE HUMAN PYRAMIDS!!!!
Climate hysteria affects even smart people.
Still re: COVID 19 the medical people are saying this was only at maximum 5% fatal and it appears to be less than 1%.
Also a lot of predictions were predicated on us NOT doing what we did and they health care system imploding. Thus the high numbers.
However this does not mean that there is a coverup. lack of testing or just general dumbfuckery so we won’t know the actual death rate.
The only thing for sure is this wasn’t an apocalyptic plague and even pessimists like me didn’t think so.
Now was it worth the economic damage? I don’t know. Glad it wasn’t my call.
Suburban wineplex females discovering that How To videos are useless if you don’t have the tools or know how to use them.
Even the Chinese have limits. News is leaking out that there are significant riots in Wuhan.
My guess is the Party decided to let up the boot a bit, if only so as not to destroy a major industrial area and viola the frustration boiled over.
Also Great Leap Forward aside the Chinese are often not as knuckle down as people think.
There is a possibly apocryphal story that goes like this
In some part of China there is a custom of buying fish and releasing them for good luck in the new year. A local merchant decided to catch these fish and sell them at market which was explicitly forbidden by custom.
The locals didn’t bother with the police and instead the older folks with much less to lose assembled a mob and beat the man to death , beat his family but did not kill them and wreaked havoc on them for such a gross breach of custom.
The police came by, investigated , looked over the scene and the angry people and decided that there wasn’t anyone who saw anything.
Given that this was a well understood, party tolerated custom , all Chinese even Communists are very superstitious and actually increased order, done was done. No arrests .
Chinese people aren’t like us but they are people.
US wise, the story is in some areas the lock down is working as the rate of doubling is half what it was. This is the desired outcome and as such proves that precautions work.
The extra work thing too is regional, at my local big box the cashiers have a slower pace of work do to customer limits although technically there is slightly more work I guess. I’ve never seen them more relaxed or friendly
That’s because all the non-whites quit once the virus came out. It’s a pretty chill environment when it’s all whites working together, doubly so when we feel we have a purpose.
“ US wise, the story is in some areas the lock down is working as the rate of doubling is half what it was. This is the desired outcome and as such proves that precautions work.”
No it doesn’t. Just as garden gnomes don’t prevent white giraffes. But I agree such data will be accepted as “proof” of theory.
We will have to agree to disagree. Being adults happily means we can manage this. This puts both of us far above most of the elected and appointed.
From your posts I can tell we have very different ideas on what makes American society. I consider how we conduct commerce and to a lesser degree economic liberty well at the bottom of the list of things that matter.
Here’s a link to a report on how the Rainbow nation is managing the lock down, which makes the same point as Zman’s. Welcome to our collective future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_bUpN52Iyw
That will be Detroit and Memphis and Atlanta in a few days.
My limited experience with black people is that the middle class ones tend to be germaphobes. They love bleach and Lysol sprays.
Un-noticed in all this media discussion is the role of mega corporations. Which are not doing well in the shutdown. Disney just took a massive bond issue — and they are hurting. Disney and Warners and Universal are as the FT Lex column observed years ago, amusement parks with movie studios attached. The bulk of their revenues are from the amusement parks.
Ford, GM, Fiat Chrysler, Apple, all the rest depend on consumer spending. They are built for it — they are not built to make money with 30% unemployment. Or more. People won’t buy new Iphones, or Apple Streaming, or buy Starbucks coffee, or new cars, or Disney Streaming Service with that level of unemployment. Wages will FALL not rise and everyone will cut back and cut back.
We are on the cusp of a Depression. One that would shatter many if not most of the big corporations.
Yes Babwa Streisand, Mecha Streisand, Nancy Pelosi, Chucky Schemer etc. all want a shutdown — to save their elderly lives and get Orange Man. BUT — Tim Cook has money on the line, his own, and so do the leaders of all the other companies that depend on consumer spending. Which is most of them.
If say, reflexively Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton (the likely nominee) campaign on shutting down America, Corporations will back Trump and the Republicans. And so will people who work for those corporations and don’t want to be laid off.
I know that the homeless in SoCal number around 3-5 million. Some are the “invisible” homeless who live in their cars while working, and there are a bunch of them in Silicon Valley as well. This is due to the astronomically high cost of housing in California. But most are on the street, in Freeway margins, etc. The number has skyrocketed in the last 12 years — Orange County in my area used to have none and has a bunch since about 2009. There was a massive encampment on the Santa Ana River trail that stretched for 15 miles.
And the homeless have been a vector for all SORTS of diseases — dysentery, measles, TB, even the Plague. Which has been an ongoing issue in Downtown LA for the past five years.
And yet — these people with depressed immune systems due to rough living, drug and alcohol abuse, constant sharing of everything, very close quarters, rough living, and more — they are not dropping like flies as they should. I’ve not seen a single report of a homeless death. Either they are not somehow magically getting contact with those infected, despite living right on top of the glitterati in Venice and Santa Monica and Downtown LA, or are magically immune to it from the Homeless Fairy, or the disease is not as virulent as the media and government is making out.
So we are getting a showdown — between preening politicians on camera and big corporations that face potential bankruptcy, and worse — big shots losing their bonus and stock options.
The scary thing is we could be tipped into a decades long depression (such as the 1873 Depression that lasted until 1896 — 23 years) just because politicians are addicted to daily news conferences in front of adoring media. Its not Trump’s call — its Cuomo (who is feeling the Corporate Heat) and Newsome’s and rest. From a politicians standpoint what is not to love — tell their corporate backers to go to hell, get SJW likes, screw over the middle class with vibrants raiding their homes while seizing guns and arresting the middle class for walking their dogs and pulling people out of their homes for “signs of infection” and putting them in concentration camps (er … reeducation camps). This is like a constant re-inforcing dopamine hit for politicians. They have good emotional reasons to plunge us into lockdown for 12 months and trigger a world-wide decades long depression.
Democratic governors have already become Doctors and forbid prescribing the drug Trump is touting. They have an Orange Man Bad incentive to keep their states on Lockdown just to oppose Trump, interests of big corporations and their voters be damned. The cost of a female oriented society. It runs on feelz.
But the battle between corporations not wanting to go bankrupt and the politicians they used to control will be epic.
[Yes many will get a bailout but funds ARE limited — and Corporate Execs will not get their bonuses and stock options in a bailout nor will they see growth year over year — its a one time deal. GM execs did not do well out of the bailout. Ford might survive. Disney might not survive — their content is dead, no more Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man or Captain America — “SNowflake” and “Safe Space” their new SJW tranny and lesbian heroes are not exactly going to put butts in seats, their parks are closed indefinitely, their new streaming service just launched in a depression hence the bond issue. All that park money and Robert Downey Jr. paid for the SJW messages.]
“But the battle between corporations not wanting to go bankrupt and the politicians they used to control will be epic.”
Great comment. Cuomo is “Exhibit A” in this battle. Many financial institutions have threatened to leave Manhattan (some have) in recent years. If he is seen leaning toward a Depression-spawned power grab, he knows full well the game is up and the financial sector will be gone. New Yorkers and West Coasters talk a good game but they really, really like the goodies a nice gig with Apple or Merrill gives them.
The truly epic battle will be within the Left between those who want a power grab without the Depression and the true Left that wants full-throated Marxism, which will necessitate a Depression to happen. I wouldn’t bet either way.
There it is. Why is there still a homeless population, if this thing is even 1% as bad as they say? There should literally be bodies rotting in the streets (unless, of course, heroin and Mad Dog cure corona). The whole thing stinks to high heaven… and that’s *before* you hear the official explanation for why liquor stores are “essential” (it prevents homeless alkies from getting the DTs, thus taking up valuable hospital beds).
As a window of insight into the fuzzy math driving this insanity, following is a brief summary of Friday’s press conference from the gay Governor of Colorado (((Jared Polis))), which he used to justified a statewide stay-at-home order.
The Colorado Department of Health concluded there would be 33,200 excess deaths caused by the Coranavirus by June, 2020. To get to this number they assumed an R0 value of 4, i.e., that each infected person in Colorado would infect 4 other people. They did some funky and completely unsubstantiated math about availability of hospital beds in Colorado that appeared to conclude that every infected person who needed a hospital bed but could not get one would die, and popped out 33,200 excess deaths. They ran a similar set of numbers with an R0 of 3 and popped out 26,000 excess deaths. They did not disclose their assumed fatality rate. They then ran through more fuzzy math to assert that the shelter-in-place order would flatten the curve below hospital capacity such that the number of deaths would be between 400 (for R0=3) and 900 (for R0=4).
Denver could fairly be called an urban area, but outside the city proper the rest of the front range would be considered suburban, exurban, or rural. Outside the front range the rest of Colorado would be considered rural. It appears the R0 value in Wuhan, which is a densely packed urban city, is settling in between 1.4 and 2.0. It is beyond absurd to believe the R0 value in Colorado is going to be 2X the R0 value in Wuhan. There are still many rural counties in Colorado that have no cases.
Working backwards from their numbers, the mortality rate for confirmed cases appears to be around 1.5%. Thus, 33,200 deaths implies 2,213,333 confirmed cases in Colorado by June 2020. Most conservative estimates I have seen indicate there are between 2-8 asymptomatic unconfirmed cases for every confirmed case, which implies that somewhere between 6,640,556 and 17,708,150 residents of Colorado would be infected by June 2020.
The population of Colorado in 2020 is approximately 5.8MM. Their model is simply mathematically impossible. Not a single journalist in the room asked a single critical question. Depressing.
Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs, mostly in the service industry. Many of those businesses will close permanently. Complete insanity.
Same story for Utah. The numbers are being worked like Colorado. Gov. Herbert is hanging on by a thread against the hysterics. You realize this pandemic is addictive…they’re getting a dopamine hit off of the hysteria. How dull life will be after this height of drama. Fear is dopamine and cortisol.
Not surprising, but relevant, is that the urban corridor of Springs-Denver-Boulder-FC here in CO has gone deep blue over the past decade. The feelz define the facts movement is strong.
Same thing here in Ohio. Two and a half weeks ago female doctor lady health director (you know she’s a real doctor because she wears a lab coat for all press conferences) claimed we had 120,000 infected individuals. So far, we’ve been able to find a little over one percent of those apprently infected. No one has called her out on where these people are.
New cases have flatlined, but aaaaaaany day now they’re going to soar to 8k a day.
On a per-capita basis, positives on Colorado, Utah, and southern Idaho are pretty high, much higher than the west coast. SoCal, AZ, and NM are particularly low. Maybe the warmer weather and longer days has something to do with it.
Ski resorts have been some of the biggest vectors of spreading the virus in both Europe and the US. It’s the perfect environment for spreading the virus: cold, dry, hundreds of people in lift lines with runny noses and coughs, close proximity in the ski lodge, etc.
You’ve been reading too much Sailer.
Can’t handle facts?
Back here in Southern Utah, am noticing 2 reactions: 1) the cultural lefties buy into the virus fear and stay blinkered to the hand waving the mesmerizing wand, i.e. the screeching wahmyn mayor of Salt Lake throwing the city into lock down. Reminds me of PM Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand wearing Muslim garb and virtue signaling. Now NZ is on lock down and the tyrannical PM will throw the law at anyone sticking their nose out the door. I’m with Whitney…..I’m for women having their voting powers rescinded, am so fed up with women!
2) Mormons are in full sheeple mode. Wow..stunning to watch. If one more woman texts me to trust in God, this is all God’s plan so sit quietly, marinate in Love and follow the prophet, I shall scream. Oh, I forgot…I already screamed. Didn’t help to walk into the laundry room and step in cat barf. That set me off. Was thinking seriously of animal sacrifice.
I am watching an entire Mormon culture go into sheeple mode. I’m a big one for “Trust in God but tether your camel.” Oh Lordy….a Prof. Muhammad utterance. Oh well, a blind pig gets a truffle now and then. These Mormons don’t tether their camel nor drive in their tent pegs. They’re all sitting glassy eyed watching for prophet pontifications. Meh! Romney can do any kind of hocus pocus he wants and the herd will sit collectively glassy eyed. Now I witness the strong collectivist herd sheep instinct come out in my friends and neighbors. Their brains are switched off. Meh! I’m so bored and annoyed with women. Basic Husband proclaimed, “Hon, we have each other.” Love in the time of cholera. Sweet and I’m not ungrateful….but I miss having a woman friend that can think.
RFF- it’s hard to believe that these are the direct descendants of the hearty folks who built hundreds of thriving, handsome towns scratched out of a desolate desert.
That took a certain degree of compliance also, but Brigham Young knew what he was doing. These clowns???
“The more depressed and maladjusted you are, the more likely it is that you are seeing things right, with minimal bias”–Derb
You got it, Meme. My grandmother was built like a brick craphouse, and those earthquakes are the ancestors heaving around in their graves. How quickly the culture can change.
RFF – you crack me up! Truly wish you lived nearby. Meanwhile I go about deliberately laughing in the face of all the masked numericans, waving my hands above my head and faux-shrieking “ZOMG! We’re all going to dieeeeee!!!!!” Wonder how long before I’m arrested for not taking covid seriously enough.
I’m laughing with you! Good Lord….way visual image of you driving people back! Me too…wished you live nearby. Someday we’ll have a gathering.
I, too, am sick of women. Wish I had one female friend I could talk badthink with in person.
3g, Range, and Lady Dandy:
Please add me to your list!
I would love to see the 19th Amendments rescinded (other women look at me with an blank stare when I remind what exactly the 19th is about…)
But it’s would be so nice to speak freely with other women “on our side of the divide.”
I know where Range is, but I’m in the mid-Atlantic, not far from Lagos.
“It’s because he has managed lots of people and he knows this dynamic.”
YMMV, Z. I’ve been burned too many times assuming I know what Trump is thinking or why he’s doing something. His empty trophy case does nothing to dampen his carny-barker self-promotion and his shambolic presentation and affect inspire me, but certainly not the way he’d like.
Bleatings will continue until morale improves – but the situation on the ground will not change.
This is another Bush-whacking, fam. Make your peace by saying “lesser evil” if you must – you’re probably right, if your goal is propping up the Empire that hates you rather than tearing it down.
If you understand that Trump’s not on your side, you don’t buy the hype and are merely making an alliance of convenience with him for the next four years, I understand your decision, even if I disagree – but dissidence and heartfelt MAGA patriotism are two different roads.
I was recently at my boomer parents’ home. The channel never changed from CNN. It was maddening. As in, after a few hours, the melodrama makes you go mad. The sickening repetitiveness. Expert interview…sob story…scary graphs…nurse story…expert interview…crowded hospital…sob story…nurse story…scary graphs…expert…
I’d thought “wall-to-wall coverage” was just slang. I thought CNN would throw in something about other news that’s still happening. Nope. It was all Covid intensity all the time. If aliens had landed the coverage would be no different than this.
And of course, my alarmist boomer dad eats it up. There’s nothing else going on in his world, EVER…so watching TV right now is like watching an awesome disaster movie that never ends.
Something I started noticing about 15 years ago when documentaries became popular. (And this could be stating the obvious). Is that viewers believe anything that a somber-voiced, concerned-face says. Maybe it’s an American gullibility thing. An over-respect for “plain-spoken”, “straight talk”. Like aspiring actors, you’re not allowed on TV unless you’ve perfected your Concern-Face. Hell half the commercials now simply show random people silently staring at you with their soul-face. Meant to convey, “We’re Nationwide Insurance. We’d never screw you over. Look at this earnest middle-aged mother staring at you. We ARE her. And just as incapable of lying.”
Anderson Cooper: “I’m not sure if our viewers realize just how concerning what you just said is Professor.”
Professor: “Very concerning, Anderson. Very concerning.”
How do we compete with that?
Frip….You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
Boomers grew up in a high trust society. Many are not used to the idea that we live in a society of swindlers and fraudsters. Some people will just be easy marks until they die.
A lot of younger people know that television is just a bunch of people running one scam or another. The magic will wear off as more of the population grows up in a low trust society.
I remember hearing a white comedian talk about something he witnessed one day that taught him everything he ever needed to know about black people: This black kid was walking down the street, someone pulled up to him in their car, brandishing a gun, and the black kid snatched the gun out of the car by the barrel. A couple blocks later a squirrel started hopping toward the same black kid, and he crossed the street fleeing in terror.
” This virus will be the best crime fighting too Lagos has seen in generations.”
How terribly cynical.
The decrease in shootings will be because the bangers are heeding the Mayors instructions to reduce the shooting. They are good citizens complying with their civic duties,
I noticed Friday in the “daily news briefing” a shift. orange man bad stated that if we have too many ventilators that we are going to help out our tremendous friends around the world who need them . that sounded to me like they know we aren’t going to need 200,000 ventilators and have to come up with a spin story to soften the blow of the obvious incompetent hysterical actions already taken. also MR “I cant be in a room alone with a women in not married to” was touting a GOOGLE app that would diagnose if you had the virus. any one who uses that is asking for trouble and would be a good candidate for a bridge sale their having in Brooklynn . the wife and I took a walk yesterday and you should have seen the people jumping into the street to avoid us. the sidewalk was wide. most of them said good morning to us. I just growled at them…. thanks again Zman. for another Sunday post. the scratch is in the mail. be careful handling it, it came from the liquor. I feel your right on.
“The best argument against libertarianism is simply going outside and watching people.”
That is also the best argument against democracy and the universal franchise.
Not sure what all the excitement was about stopping European flights to the US. They’re still flying out of every European country to the US; Lisbon to New York, Zurich to San Jose, and Frankfurt to Atlanta. Check for yourself… Flightradar24.com
Maybe not as many, but they’re still flying and I’m pretty sure it’s not just Americans heading home from the holidays either. No one in their right mind goes to Europe between January and March for a holiday.
One thing the lock down will bring to a fine point, it how many people are not necessary at work. When you work in a factory where 10% are actually making things or putting them together, and 90% are paper pushers (or keyboard tappers) it’s clear which ones are completely redundant. That 90% is also the group that’s happiest about working “home office” so they can set up their lap top, nudge the mouse now and then while catching up on Netflicks and HBO.
We’ve all seen it, the same people who are on their smartphones tapping away to their friends, family and kids are obviously better off at home where they can actually do something productive. Like raising their kids maybe.
No one in their right mind goes to Europe between January and March for a holiday.
Ski much?
Everyone that has died within the last month has died from the virus. Yeah. Right. How many were infected? Who knows? What have the States done prior to the virus to prepare for any eventuality. Not a whole lot. Bailout schmailout. The price of naked chicks in China has taken a big hit. Its the only market that seems to matter. The next few weeks will indeed be interesting.
JMDGT. Yes. It is a real possibility that the numbers of dead from any cause will be conflated with the Virus. All the better to make the situation seem much worse than it is.
The co-morbidity scam is extremely pernicious and everywhere in the available data. You can’t find any co-mo info for the Diamond Princess, which remains the best data set at this time. In the US, the CDC has instructed healthcare professionals to, “…err on the side of caution and attribute deaths to CV-19…” The media is playing along by citing, “….HIPAA and other privacy concerns…” when asked about co-mo information. To me, these are just more signs this is a planned psyop/hoax meant to steal more money and freedom.
A couple economic points I’d like to add that haven’t seen a ton of discussion:
1) What happens to the cash/off-the-books economy in this situation? I think one of the new cashiers I encountered at the grocery store was a person working construction or landscaping off the books. His behavior was that of someone who really, really did not want to be there.
2) Rest assured that the insiders and big boys were well-positioned for the market crash. They made billions buying put options on and shorting the market, airlines, hotels, etc. Now, as asset prices deflate they are perfectly positioned to snap things up for pennies on the dollar. This aligns with my thought that the Plandemic is a cover to permit the market crash while avoiding potential citizen revolt. Rather, the virus will be blamed as an act of God, thus limiting the blame assigned to the financial elites.
If you or a member of your household is “at risk” then wearing a mask (if you have or can find one) does offer some protection according to this: https://tinyurl.com/syurob5. Of course the Wu-Flu was just a convenient justification for the abomination of that bill that just passed. Trump should have demanded a clean bill or one that had some built-in oversight and transparency regarding how funds are spent.
Trump is fully culpable for signing the gibs from fedaddy bill, loaded with nothing but special interest slush funds and banker bailouts and the like. Even my hubby, who cuts him a lot of slack, is with me on this. We won’t see a penny from the bill – and while we’re still fine re supplies, I’ve noticed the price gouging in the stores – up to $3.50 for a gallon of milk (usually $.99 on sale), $9.97 for a 12 pack of toilet paper (usually $4.99 on sale). But the grocery stores are all hiring! The ‘economy’ will come roaring back – Vietnamese manicurists and Mestizo lawn guys will have full employment once again. Legitimate small business owners and White men, not so much.
The bill was passed exactly as Obamacare was: The Senate took an existing bill, stripped it of everything except its number, loaded it with pork and gibs for multinationals and Wall Street, sent it to the House, where it was approved, unread, by a voice (not roll call) vote, giving them all plausible deniability when reelection time comes. Anyone that claims to care about their kids’ futures and continues to support this BS as long as it’s “their guy” that does it is insane.
Not true. Obamacare did not pass by voice vote in the House. There was a roll call vote: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/111-2010/h165
Democrats were resigned to passing the Senate bill after they lost their filibuster-proof Senate majority when Scottt Brown won the Massachusetts special election.
In the final vote it very narrowly passed in the House because nearly as many House Democrats as they could afford voted against it in the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to shield themselves from backlash in the 2010 election.
$.99 for a gallon of milk! Wow I’d like that in normal times…
Spot on. I’m the owner of an “essential” small business. 25% of the staff refused to continue working out of fear and sheltered in place. They won’t be asked back when this is over. To keep the rest and satisfy the clients we had to implement some pretty ridiculous distancing and sanitation measures. By Friday, even the employee that is going through RA treatment was getting tired of the distancing protocols. Unless the the bodies start piling up, I’d give it another week.
Interesting. What, if any, characteristics did the refuse to work group otherwise share?
Female and (((old))) part timers.
Females, blacks, and hispanics where I work. With exceptions. Almost all of the white men wanted to keep working. If there are jobs for the others to come back to it’ll be because of our privilege 🙂
The Wife and I ignored the idiots and went to the main post office to mail a bill. Then we stopped by her favorite little ice cream shop.
They were open! They would only let one group in the store at a time. They said they let no one in last Friday. They went outside to take orders. Don’t know why they changed procedures.
So we got our ice cream and wondered why more than one group could not go in at a time. You should see how crowded the grocery stores are. (they only place it is legal to go to in Orlando apparently)
If you look at the flight tracker of your choice, it’s pretty clear that air traffic from Europe (or pretty much anywhere) hasn’t been shut down at all. Lower volume, maybe, but not shut down. https://www.flightradar24.com/37.75,-97.82/2
Posted this over at Sailer’s place, we’ll see if it makes it past the censor.
“According to the CDC there have been about 24,000 deaths from regular flu this flu season.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
According to the CDC there have been 1,668 deaths from the China virus.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
Stay cowering in place Steve.”
I’m trying to take a break from iSteve, the hysterics are firmly in control at this point.
Actually it’s 2.3k now. 10k in Italy. Italy’s population is about 60 million or roughly one fifth of ours. So will be 50k here in a week or two if we were to follow the same pattern. This is worse than the flu. How much worse, I don’t know but we’ll find out in the coming week. I’m gonna rather be safe than sorry at least until a few days pass. Everything is closed anyway.
Italy is much denser though. everyone packed into cities and breadbox apartments .also a shitty, left-wing country, worse than even America in this regard. You can see why New York is being hit so hard, it comes down to politics. Conservative states will fare better.
Japan is similar density-wise, older than Italy on average, and has a huge foreign Chinese workforce. So far they haven’t been hit very hard.
I’ve seen the claim that the “AVERAGE” age of the Chinese Flu dead in Italy is 82.1 years.
Italian life expectancy is 81.
Fash – please reconsider. In Italy they have admitted that only about 12% of those said to have died from the virus actually directly died as a result of it – the rest died of other causes but were then tested and found to have the virus and their numbers were added to the others. That’s happening in all western countries including the US. The numbers are NOT accurate but wildly inflated. Anyone who is hospitalized and/or dies of anything now who tests positive is counted as a covid victim. It’s all lies.
Not naysaying, but post any ref’s you have to this process of classification. This needs to be documented for the record.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/have-many-coronavirus-patients-died-italy/
Also, regardless of covid, huge % of patients who are intubated in the hospital die regardless – 33% on average:
https://www.geripal.org/2018/03/third-die-after-ED-intubation.html
Compsci – as usual the search engines hide the results I want, but from my memory – at Daily Mail – Florida’s first Corona death – gay man (multiple co morbidities). NY cops – obese black with diabetes. TV celebrity chef – survived lung cancer. Teen in PA – septic shock but after death found covid present. I could go on and on and on.
No need to go on. I’ll read up.
Oh I’m not thinking I’ll die I just don’t want to contract superflu. I’m a student anyway so I’m not personally economically damaged by not going to work. Lucky me I suppose, and I feel for those who this does deeply effect. It’s definitely overblown, for a variety of reasons. But If it is a plot, I think it’s an ill conceived gamble for them. Sure they are destroying little guys and shoring up economic power, but they have already been doing that for decades and the process is complete enough already. I think this might hurt them more than they gain in a lot of different more intangible ways. It’s definitely going to erode people’s trust in the ability of our gov’t to handle crisis’ for one. But to your point on misattributions, wouldn’t they need all the coroners to be in on it too?
And the 2020 Tony Award goes to: “Waiting for Exponential”!
and also the flu, despite having an r-naught of 1.3 , only infects 30 million Americans, when models predict a much higher spread., shows the limitations of models. Vaccinations help, but does not account for why the flu affects so few people.
It’s almost like epidemiologists build scary models to gin up support (money) for their ‘research’.
This excerpt from Foreign Affairs pretty well summarizes what our Ruling Class wants:
“Although the COVID-19 epidemic is far from over, China’s brand of authoritarian statecraft gains credibility by the day, objections to the state’s lack of transparency and accountability notwithstanding.”
The headline is “Past Pandemics Exposed China’s Weaknesses
The Current One Highlights Its Strengths”.
When Western people start to revolt late next week, it will be interesting to see how much authoritarianism the public will tolerate. It will be a shocking enough amount but nowhere sufficient to allow what these Stalin-wannabes want to impose. Brits have used drones to surveil the UK public not conforming with its restrictions and engaging in outdoors activities. This has prompted more mainstream British dissidents to voice outrage for the first time. While Americans still won’t tolerate the increasing totalitarianism seen in Europe, they will put up with a lot. Even so, being told to stop hiking on trails because a drone spotted you doing so will meet massive resistance.
You are right, Z. The current Ruling Class is eerily similar to the Romanovs at the peak of the Great War: foolish, isolated, and not long for it. The downside is the modern versions are much more stupid and vicious.
The people won’t revolt. They’re actively enjoying this. In their mind, they’re saving lives!
Go on instagram and search the hashtag #stayhome and you’ll see what I mean.
As much as I’d love for this to be Petrograd, February 1917, it just isn’t. There’s no need for Cossacks when the serfs keep themselves in line.
I agree fully with Z on this one, Meme. Late next week the cosplay gets old and the wine moms get tired of the little bastards whining and the fathers need more beer. While it is sad this now constitutes a revolt, non-compliance is coming fast.
However long a hair dye and gel nail manicure last, it can’t last any longer.
If Madison Reed were a publicly traded stock, I’d be buying it.
a large fraction enjoy it. women want to be independent and feel empowered while also being doted over and not having responsibility. this is perfect for them. too bad if the virus gets worse, these very people will be spared too.
MWV-
It’s hugely disturbing how much the libs are enjoying this shut-in. I guess they get huge dopamine hits LARP-ing Black Death 2.0.
That said, Jack below is correct they will get antsy after a another week or two. They will also be sorely disappointed this soft martial law doesn’t lead to their utopia of ethnic restaurants and craft fairs.
Thus my precautionary lament today, Meme. It appears there’s a lot of ruin left in uniparty neoliberalism and its shiny new MAGA wrapper.
American Whites are not ready. The desert of the real is too real for many yet.
This incident is giving a new understanding of the power of social media, particularly its power to keep people in line.
Just imagine if Marie Antoinette had 5 million Instagram followers, or if Rasputin had been a popular YouTuber before meeting Empress Alexandria. How different would things have turned out?
Social media was already a form of social distancing.
People have been training how to isolate, receive instructions, and signal compliance from the safety of their couches for a long time now.
SM has forever altered how people communicate, perceive and internalize the world, and view themselves.
Real time, real life feedback mechanisms are busted and/or atrophied. So the stay-at-home social distance shit is just aligning the physical clown world with the where the psychological has been for a while.
Its destructive and unstable of course. So we shall see if it can hold under its own weight. But most of the damage is done already.
“The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list.”–Derb
agree. a large chunk of Americans, especially women, enjoy this, Netflix, air conditioning, no work. what more do you need?
Anyone here recognize the country you were living in just a few weeks ago? Does anyone know anyone who knows anyone who has this thing? Anyone see an obituary for one of these countless victims? Is it worth trading our freedom and economy to keep some unhealthy people alive from this phantom menace just a little bit longer? Why doesn’t the government lock them in their homes while we go back to work?
Because “equality.” If you’re going to lock down the sickly people for a couple of weeks, you have to keep up appearances and put everyone on lockdown for a couple of weeks. Freeeedommmm!!!
Well not just the commons are worried. So are the Banksters.
The unexpected moratorium on evictions and rent, mortgage payments has the Banksters clamoring for; a bailout of the Mortgage industry.
Which they”ll likely get of course.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/27/mortgage-relief-coronavirus/?outputType=amp
I cannot resist; “But then something happened the Ring did not expect.”
It was picked up by the unlikeliest of creatures – a Six Foot Orange Hobbit from Queens, who knew how to wield a ring of Power..,.”
😉🤡
If this was a possum virus that killed us hillbillies the cosmopolitan media in New York and LA would be making fun of us on late night TV. We hillbillies go to Afghanistan to fight for the nation. These nut job progressives cower and panic over a virus that kills far less than the common flu.
They better be glad they got a fellow New Yorker in Trump to calm down the hillbillies as we lose our jobs.
Not sure how long that will work?
Can guarantee no one would be clutching their pearls over calling it hillbilly flu either.
If the stats continue to bear out, we may need to transition from “Chinese Flu” to “Jew Flu.” Wonder how that will be received?
To be fair, we are ridiculing the Northeastern morons stampeding like retarded buffalo. Justifiably. Eventually you have to question if we need to share a polity with these types.
Increasingly, hillbillies are starting to refuse to join the military, and that includes the children of multi-generational families who served. I’m familiar with quite a few and the parents and grandparents are quite supportive. The DOD earlier this year floated the idea to allow 16-year-olds to serve as the number of young people in the South and Midwest willing to be cannon fodder for the Evil Empire II refuse to do so. It is a safe bet the Empire is working overtime to develop AI and robots to fill the void and hopes the coming great recession will force people to join. Good luck with that last one.
Unfortunately for them, someone has to build the AI, drones, and computers, and if they think they are getting nickel and dimed now by incompetent corporations and soldiers, wait until the last remnants of patriotism vanish.
We’re probably only 10-20 years from a proxy war with China that we will lose, badly.
At this moment the defense industry functions largely due to the efforts of heritage American Boomers in key roles in management and technical areas. There are a smattering of heritage GenXers and Millennials in those areas. Those key Boomers are starting to retire en masse.
There is not a large cohort of heritage American late Millennials and Zoomer STEM wizards that is going to arrive to prop up the defense industry. They are trying to pozz up with local and H-1B vibrants per FedGov directives, but they realize that 99% of those people can’t hack it.
This is obvious to me because all the major defense companies and their suppliers are desperate for decent technical talent right now. A couple weeks before the current panic a major flew me out for an on-site interview for a position that was not a good fit, which is highly unusual.
I’ve seen this in both the Medical and Utilities industries, as well. Basically the top brass are Big Dick Energy alpha boomer types. Definitely competent and not really pozzed.
Even if their replacements are white Gen X or Millenials the quality just won’t be the same. I dunno if these boomers have failed to cultivate talent or what but you’re right that things are held together by a thin veneer of non-pozzed Boomers at the top. There just aren’t enough white STEM grads, even the “domestic” grads are 50% white at very best.
Anyways, I’m one of the ones with a technical background and happen to be currently looking around for a job. If you’re looking for someone, lemme know.
Speaking from experience (though not in a corporate setting), a lot of these boomers don’t want to let go. You almost have to show them you’ll run them over if they don’t get out of the way. I don’t know if that’s an ego thing, or if you’re proving yourself to them. The more I do it the more it seems like the latter. They like that hungry edge.
Henry Ford was a mechanic. It might be a problem of perspective. Also, the big boys choke out the little guys. The situation you describe will cause things to devolve, and as that happens an army of Fords will rush into the vacuum. There’s a ton of non-credentialed talent out there hungry for opportunity. Or the big boys will stop insisting on the piece of paper and look for real world talent. The lost art of apprenticeship and learning on the job. Younger people are cynical about education but that doesn’t mean they don’t have what it takes. Rough ride, but it’ll work out.
That’s the key, some type of apprenticeship vs credentialship. Bryan Caplan has some good thoughts on this problem in his new book: The Case Against Education. He discusses why employers hire credentialed mediocrity, rather than potentially good, but uncredentialed talent.
amazing news.
shows how dumb the elites are. all they have to do is keep quiet about the diversity bullshit on the front lines and people wouldn’t notice. same thing is happening in Canada, white men are no longer signing up to serve a country of racially alien people. surprisingly, the Indians, Nigerians, Pakistanis, and Mexicans are in no rush to die for Canada.
Maybe our elites honestly think that they are the next Poles and Italians, but that is just never going to happen. There will be no WW2 unifying moment.
I’m familiar with quite a few and the parents and grandparents are quite supportive.
I picture the scene from Hillbilly Elegy, where Granma Walsh is denying the recruitment officer access to her porch, a six-shooter in her pocket.
The downside of not serving is the learning curve if war comes anyway.
I absolutely appreciate the reluctance of parents to bless off on service, but if bad things happen it actually *improves* your chances – and the safety, standing of your loved ones. We’re not just military, we’re veterans, police; from the same families. That counts for something in a pinch.
You don’t have to sell me on what a corrupt farce it was, I was there.
But still; this is a tradeoff of risks.
Oh, I agree. I absolute intend to force my nephew to don the king’s tunic, although I’ll be equally adamant they don’t serve in neocon military adventures – let’s hope they still listen to their paranoid uncle by then.
Never mind the zombie apocalypse, but it’s the only time in life you get a chance to acquire that particular skillset.
This is a question I’m torn on for the reasons both of you touch on. There is nowhere else comparable to acquire martial skills and mindset than your nation’s armed forces, but soldiers are the hardest guys to red-pill after that conditioning takes hold and there’s always the risk of being Forever War’d.
We don’t even have the Boy Scouts anymore. DIY militia-type training can substitute (inadequately) but it depends on who’s doing the training – a very sketchy roll of the dice.
” We hillbillies go to Afghanistan to fight for the nation. ”
Whatever the fuck you’re killing Afghans for it aint “the nation”
National Restaurant Association reports 3% of restaurants are already permanently closed with another 11% to follow within 30 days:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/industry-has-never-experienced-anything-3-all-restaurants-have-already-closed-permanently
darn. they will miss their $1000 check. that would have saved them lol. at least airlines will get their $. Apparently this sector ,. which is so important that the fate of civilization hinges on it being bailed out again, apparently has not figured out how to make money despite being of such upmost importance to the economy.
They could survive if the industry reverted back to what it was in the 60’s when only the middle and upper classes could afford it and the profit margins were a lot higher.
Back then air travel was heavily regulated which made travel actually better. This race to the bottom crap we alll worship like God has it’s downside. Of course conservatives of every stripe keep embracing it and then wondering why life gets shittier.
As it stands now where any slob with a $100 can get a ticket – which forces the carriers to jam pack each flight and make travel miserable to make a profit, well we got the airlines we deserve.
Way more than 3% of restaurants are shut down in Oregon. Only ones still operating are fast food drive throughs.
As much as I wish there would be mass civil disobedience; I don’t believe it. The Beckys and Karen’s get way too much of an emotional charge from the virtue signal of thinking they’re “saving lives.”
The blacks will softly ignore the unconstitutional abridgment of their freedoms, and will be allowed to do so. The rules don’t apply to them anyway.
He’s not talking about mass civil disobedience though. It’s a subset of workers that are doing the essential stuff like food distribution where they have to interface with the public whilst in the midst of pandemic. They have a strong bargaining position and it’s a stressful time for them. If you are talking mass disobedience, that might happen in the form of riots if and when things get worse. In my area it’s still hard to acquire food and other essential supplies. Getting more difficult actually. This thing is looking like it’s gonna get worse and I don’t think it’s gonna be ending quickly. The reported number of infections are increasing rapidly.
Here is what has changed; It is the middle class shopkeepers that make revolutions* and they are being both ruined and caged, helpless. They are the commons natural sergeants, lieutenants, captains. They had no stake in revolt before, they may now. That’s who was missing before, they may remain missing now. Nothing may change; but many talented and organizing successful people are ruined.
*See America, France, Russia, Iran, etc.
They make revolutions, not workers.
I’m kind of going back and forth between “this is a hoax” and “this is a serious thing”.
I think alot of the steps being taken are purely symbolic. Like standing 6 feet apart at the checkout line. OK, but the line just gets pushed back. Now I’m stuck standing in the cramped aisle where everyone is crammed together like sardines, until we move into the taped lines on the floor where we need to stand. And then it curves and winds its way through so you’re passing everybody. A total farce. Likely makes almost zero impact.
The virus will come back once things re-open. It will spread and the open borders will bring it right back.
I’m starting to think that this is a serious thing that we’re just going to have to deal with. Another addition to the Tax. However, the white liberals (elites) are actually quite affected by this virus. Hence the freakout. 500,000 white people are dead due to the opioid crisis. How does that compare to this 2,000 death toll of old asians? The elites are scared over this Chinese flue.
I would love to see all those filthy liberal shitholes shut right down. Force these rich whites to feel the brunt of the mud hut people they’ve imported. Many have fled to their summer homes but there are still many stuck. Now Florida and R.I. are doing checkpoints.
May we live in interesting times.
It’s not a hoax. The virus is real, but the establishment wildly overreacted, using the media to dial up the hysteria, in order to reset the global financial system and further expand emergency powers.
This was a beta test to see how far the public can be pushed before they crack.
Something like that.
I think their trial went spectacularly. Apart from a few skeptical people, the majority are begging for more nanny state and government lockdowns.
An interesting question will be how many NY libs got out to their summer homes before the checkpoints started. That would be another interesting piece of data.
You can believe it is serious and take precautions at the individual level while still opposing how governments are handling it. In theory, 1 million Americans may die of this, but that does not mean everything has to shut down.
That I can agree with. Also, we must take into account who those Americans are who pass on. How many years of life remaining? Here’s a prediction. In five years, plot the death rate for 2020-2025. Then plot the projected death rate as taken from 2014-2019. Compare the results. I’m betting you’ll see little difference.
Our Epic weariness cannot wear out fast enough.
Gotta love how Cuomo demands Wartime Executive Orders as magic wands, bemoans the fate of Raccoon City – but THEN reacting to Trump denies Trump’s power To quarantine NY, NJ, CT. Trump just put it back on him. Meanwhile RI governor is using cops to forcibly quarantine NY residents with out of state plates- and Cuomo threatens to sue RI.
Trump just Chumped Cuomo.
*DPA was written for 1950, Korea.
Its Command, wartime, 1950 economy.
We had just demobilized from WW2, the knowledge of how to implement a wartime economy – which BTW started in 1940 and didn’t get figured out until 1942 at the earliest, really 1943 is when it really started pumping – that knowledge was alive, among us.
Saying “War” is no magic wand.
Zman says “The best argument against libertarianism is simply going outside and watching people.” Disagree. The best argument against libertarianism is watching libertarians. Watching people comes second.
when i think of curve flattener, i think of flat-earther . just another form of religion for the the left
“Curve Flattening” is the third biggest hoax of all time, behind “Global Warming” and the one that people get sent to jail for asking questions about.
There are 6 million dead of Corona Virus you cad!
And that number will only increase exponentially; 6 Billion, 6 Trillion, 6 Quadrillion.
Exponentially as in; Catchy.
Yesterday I read a small post by Thomas DiLorenzo:
“On March 11 Dr. Anthony Fauci famously told a congressional hearing that the COVID-19 virus was “ten times worse” than the seasonal flu. Then fifteen days later, on March 26, he co-authored an article that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in which he wrote that the COVID-19 was “no worse” than a “very bad flu” but nothing like SARS or MERSA.
“Having been involved in the academic publishing business for the past 41 years, I can say with some authority that the article published in the New England Journal of Medicine was almost certainly submitted to the journal months before March 11, probably many months. This fact suggests that Fauci knew on March 11 that he was misleading Congress — and the world — about the severity of the coronavirus.”
———————————
I have been saying for years that the “health care professionals” of all kinds are lying sacks of the smelly stuff. But this Fauci guy is extra special evil.
I hope the people start stringing up some of these horrible asshats. As Mencken pointed out; it is a shame to think of how few politicians are hung.
Interesting. I read also that supposedly scholarly work is being rushed through on this virus without peer review and the other normal checks and controls. That may be an excuse or explanation or both. Fauci is emblematic of the career D.C. bureaucrats who have failed every time a challenge has presented but, or because of that, are seen as extraordinary people in the Imperial City.
The peer review process is a lengthy one by nature. Treat all day, and write all night is what we are seeing. Info—even incorrect and subject to revision in a panic—is not without merit in this case. On that, I give them a pass. I don’t give them a pass on accepting anything on paper as if handed down from Mount Sinai, nor license to abandon critical thinking and cost benefit analysis.
People don’t remember the AIDS panic (another upper class urbanite disease) but Dr. Fauci was the prophet of Doom then as well.
He’s sort of the Judge Judy of medicine for the urban neurotic.
This virus has certainty divided the dissent right and conservatives, in general, even more so than Trump. It’s not a libertarian vs state divide either nor anything that can be described in ideological terms. Ideologically, Greg and Steve are not that much district from us. There’s an overlap in readership. .Few of us here would be considered libertarian . It’s something more to do with psychology or philosophy as to why people react differently to things, that cannot be explained by politics. .
What’s the bur that’s crept into Cochran’s panties, though? It’s not just Belligerent Boomer Syndrome.
Some people deal with mortality better than others. Or they aren’t at the age where they have to face it, while others are.
Somewhat tangentially I have to say: having had the benefit of spending lots of time with my grandfathers (both combat vets), regardless, it seems to me being a man means doing what needs to be done for the benefit of your people, even if it kills you or brings resentment. Consequently the panic has really rubbed me the wrong way. Men are supposed to lead not roll over and wet themselves. So many over-civilized nancies out there.
In my corner of flyover country, the mood is guarded but calm. On social media, those who are the least skeptical about the threat, the ones most stridently sharing posts about “staying home and saving lives” are also the most outspoken shitlibs and Trump-haters.
Those of my acquaintance with politics like ours are skeptical but quiet, nobody wants to be called out for being callous about the safety of the most vulnerable.
A friend was in a local hospital for several days last week (unrelated condition). It was not crowded or chaotic. Lots of precautions in place, he was tested while he was there and came up negative. No visitors, no exceptions, not even his wife. He was talking with the nurses about the virus, if course. Several of them said that they were way more worried about H1N1 (in 2018) than they are about this virus, based on what they’re seeing so far. One said that there’s something odd about the way this is being reported on and prepared for. They’re just not seeing what they were told to expect to see, even in the last couple of weeks.
Once we return to normal I assume this thing will increase like every other airborne viral infection. Even if we eradicated it from our borders the international flights will get turned back on.
That’s the thing. The curve benders think like modern economists. If the cost can be spread thin enough, they go away. In reality, the cost of spreading the cost so thin is prohibitive.
Deferred pain hurts the most.
Bandaid removal technique 101.
Excellent metaphor.
Really good point Z.
It would have been better to selectively quarantine and build some herd immunity.
Out here in flyover country we might need a little more time than another week. Our folk – the normal folk, or typical folk – were late to the party by at least a week to begin with, and I daresay that a significant faction remain mostly unconvinced this little scare (or at least the government reaction to it) was ever legitimate in any case. People have slowly and reluctantly gotten on board to an extent, so it might take them an additional week or so to get fed up with the whole business.
I would love to hear more of your thoughts on leadership; or perhaps you can recommend a good book? I’ve found that managing people is pretty much the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Particularly, figuring out how to disassociate, so that you don’t see others as folks with the same motivations as yourself. See people for who they are, not who you want them to be (while at the same time trying to encourage them to be who you want them to be)…
I’m not sure how much of this can even be a learned skill versus a personality trait.
Teams are a matrix of complimentary skills. The faster you size that up and orient your demands to that, plus an assessment of where they can improve, the better. Then assemble all the pieces you need. Too many managers make the mistake of trying to hire to one ideal “template”–which is a fools errand and always ends in failure.
I’m not sure there is a book worth reading on leadership. The one book that opened my eyes was called You Are The Message by Roger Ailes. Once you come to grips with how people actually see you, not how you wish them to see you, you start to think clearly about how you lead and manage people.
In my case, I was trying to be something I was not, because it was what my bosses taught me. After enough failure and stumbling onto that book, I just started doing what worked for me. Once I got the results I was seeking, it became second nature.
I’m by no means an expert on the subject, but my hunch is good leadership is a lot like good salesmanship. The best salesmen know people buy from people. If you are trustworthy and aggressive, you do well in sales. For leaders, it is about being decisive and being genuine with your men. Some people are naturals. Some need to learn and others are just best as seconds.
Would add one thing. Read good biographies of leaders. Picked up more about “management” from those than most of the business crap that gets published. Though as an exception did enjoy the sections of Ben Horowitz’s “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” where he discusses “wartime” vs. “peacetime” CEOs. That was valuable.
Someday, when this is all over (assuming it ever ends), I’d love to see a post about the gibberish that passes for “Leadership Training” in Corporate America.
Could write a book–having been dragged through damn near every one of these over three decades.
I would love to hear more of your thoughts on leadership; or perhaps you can recommend a good book?
There’s The Dictators Handbook. The book itself is a bit of a slog, but CGP Grey made it into an excellent video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
One thing I’ve noticed as an “essential” worker (pops collar) is that traffic this past Monday was almost non existent in the outskirts of the Chicago area. By Friday traffic volume was noticeably higher, as like you say, people by nature cannot stand to be confined.
Noticed the same in my NYC suburb. On Monday and Tuesday I could have sat down in the middle of the main street at 2pm. By Friday at the same time, I had to actually wait for the cars to pass before I could cross.
Same area–lot of people are just going out and driving around just to see something other than their own neighborhood and four walls.
the streets in Bay Ridge are empty, parking spots everywhere, the sidewalks are empty, the stores are not crowded and mostly well-stocked (except paper products pasta and rice).
It’s very quiet around here.
Wife and step-son spent 30 minutes doing a phone screening w/ Dept of Health …. a preliminary triage before getting approval to get tested. The Dept of H hasn’t called back, so I assume they aren’t ill enough to warrant getting tested; yet their doctor “diagnosed” them over the phone. I’m not sure if they’ve been counted in the official tally of how many cases there are.
they’ve had moderate fever and coughing for more than a week; seems to be getting slightly worse today. I feel OK so far.
Two days ago the Chinese staged a riot against the police for reasons stated here.
Just wondering if kids being prevented from going to school are itching to go back. Most go to school to be with friends or for the chance to strut their stuff. Nah, their teachers are in contact with them and will remind them to be obedient serfs.
They haven’t met my teenage daughter. The number of “there is no {name} only Zuul” moments with her have skyrocketed over the past few days. Couple more weeks and she’ll be out flipping and burning cars.
Already pointing my directs towards “restart” activities. Ditto with our intermediaries. Already seeing the cracks after two weeks of effective “lockdown”. That and trying to figure out the second and third order effects and prepare for them. Most people, even at surprisingly high organizational levels can only think in one dimension at a time. One interesting item to ponder is how our “elites” will be regarded as this resolves. Seeing Hollywood moguls posting Tweets from the yacht in the Grenadines. Wealthy NY’ers fleeing to the Hamptons, Vineyard, Nantucket, obliterating grocery stores and bringing virus cases with them may not be forgotten. Out in Nantucket it appears all the positives are (in carefully worded reporting locally) “associated with recently outbreak areas”. This will not sit well.
This post should win a Pulitzer Prize. It is ancient wisdom encapsulated in the essence of human nature, and it’s power transcends the DC stupidity that is the real disease that afflicts us. It is also uplifting to note that many of our fellow citizens are breaking from the parasite herd and once again asserting their ancestral resilience. If we can’t beat this virus, we have no business remaining as an extant species on Planet Earth. Fuck the cowardly wimps that purport to lead us into self-imposed captivity.
There is no way to “beat” the virus without sustaining casualties. In there lies the rub. None of the numbers of potential casualties I’ve heard set me on edge. But that’s me, and I guess I’m of another time and place. Someone yesterday spoke of his father storming the beaches of Normandy—where every other man fell with the initial landing craft hitting the beach. Yep, that was another time and place—brave leadership, brave followers—perhaps not coincidental.
There will be casualties in crashing the world economy, including fatalities. There is no free lunch, only trade-offs.
I don’t think this virus is going to beat the flu pandemics of the 50s and 60s. The Asian flu of 1957-58 claimed 116,000 lives, and the Hong Kong flu of a decade later 100,000. And those deaths were on a much lower population base. The SARS 2 we are living through may not even match those raw numbers, much less hit the per capita.
I think Z’s citing the Great Fear that preceded the FRev is spot on. This panic is indicating something has come apart in our culture. We’ve known that, but now the lid if off. I’ve got no clue what the outcome will be, but don’t think it’s going to be pleasant.
“I don’t think this virus is going to beat the flu pandemics of the 50s and 60s.”
Not to mention some ghastly diseases that hung around till relatively recent times. I was 10 years old before Dr. Salk came up with his vaccine against polio. During those 10 years thousands of youngsters of my generation left this world not long after entering it, or were confined 24/7
inside a metal tube for an indefinite period. Some never left it for the rest of their lives.
If you were struck by the polio virus (virus!) you were quarantined (quarantined!) at home and and the health department put a placard on your residence to warn others to keep their distance. During the worst outbreaks in the ’40s and ’50s whole towns and cities were under lockdown (lockdown!).
I’m not trying to belittle the seriousness of our current reaper, COVID-19. However you calculate the numbers of cases and fatalities, this Crowned Virus is a threat to our health and civil life. But while polio is all but forgotten except by epidemiologists and medical historians, it’s a reminder that we have been through other grim transmissible diseases and overcame them. That took a long time but we did it, with puny experimental resources compared to what researchers can deploy today.
Fear and hope should be kept in a delicate balance.
Another conversion I’ve had with former friends, people I once took to be sober -minded and serious: “Do you *really* think the homies are going to shelter in place? Really? That would be cute if it weren’t so terrifying.” Anarcho -tyranny for the win. I still think this blows over by the end of next week, as Karen in the ‘burbs has been stuck with her kids and no manicures for an extra week of “spring break.”
Around here the effects of botox and fillers wearing off are going to be a wonder to behold. Sort of like Rip Van Winkle. Friend of mine is one of the top aesthetic dermatologists in the city. His phone is ringing off the hook for people desperate to be first in line for their “touch ups”. PS. no, the “homes” won’t be staying home for long. Teaching one of my sons how to reload.
I get the sense that the vibrants will ignore the lockdown and eventually start robbing, raping, and murdering may be a feature, rather than a bug of this PLANdemic.
Maybe. Maybe other people are thinking about that too. This from Zerohedge today: “We have noted that National Guard armored vehicles have already been spotted across the country and have suggested that troops are being positioned around major US metros to maintain order if social unrest was seen in low-income neighborhoods. The Western world is on the brink of turmoil….that could soon lead to the unraveling of social fabric.” Read the whole thing at https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/west-faces-social-bomb-pandemic-sparks-unrest-among-poorest
The 10 day waiting period in places like California will certainly get you killed now. Those communists really think of everything don’t they?
Here is So Cali the amount of burglary and theft are super low, the former is because this is a well armed state with everyone at home and even Left wing areas do not tolerate home invasion (it can get long prison times and after a few other offenses 25 to life ) and the later as nothing much to rob is open.
That said too long a lockdown might produce some riots in some areas but again here, demography and weed play a part.
IIRC pot stores are open and the population is more Hispanic and far more chill than it was during the L.A. riots era.
I’ve been in areas that were scary as hell during the 80’s early 90’s that have become Latino and are rough but alright.
Vibrants already ignoring the lockdown in France:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/french-official-says-quarantine-should-not-be-enforced-migrant-areas-avoid-riots
So basically Globohomo is scared of people who will actually chimp out. White people follow rules , even in protest like the Yellow Vests. So they aren’t scared of us.
Yes. White people are shit on because others do not fear us.
This is just an Iron and Eternal Law of Man. You must be feared to be respected.
““Do you *really* think the homies are going to shelter in place?” Yes. White people are pretty well-behaved, witness the orderly lining up for soup kitchens in the 1930’s. Vibrants? Not so much. As usual, they’ll be the trigger, and their cities will burn. So?
Exactly the point. White folks will comply; the Diversity won’t. And since there’s no point in the White folks staying on lockdown while the Diversity roam — we’ll need to return fire, if nothing else — then the lockdown ends as soon as the Diversity start getting Vibrant. As they will. Soon.
In some places it’s too late to arm yourself. Michigan State Police have suspended weapons purchase permits indefinitely.
Don’t worry though, there are no checkpoints, so, “…it’s not martial law…”
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/03/23/michigan-state-police-enforcement-stay-home-order-coronavirus-governor-whitmer/2900739001/
It’s not just our vibrants either. I watched an absolutely hilarious media puff piece about all the valiant efforts they are making in India to control this. They had video of a couple of typical wretched looking Indians sitting in little chalk circles 6 feet apart while a police officer in a mask talked to them. Yes, I’m sure this is how everything is being done there now. I’m sure everyone in the slums of Bangalore and Calcutta is washing their hands obsessively and wearing a mask. We should applaud their efforts I suppose given that they don’t actually have much running water or soap to do that with.
It’s gonna be a pie fight of epic proportions!!!
The poseurs, the wahmen and other hysterics will not want to give up their stage where they can pose as heroes or noble victims. The neoliberals and the media slobs won’t stand for it either.
Men, now is the time for panic buying! Beer and popcorn will be in very short supply soon…😆👍
Oh. Whaddya know…
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/newspolitics/inside-trumps-risky-push-to-reopen-the-country-amid-the-coronavirus-crisis/ar-BB11QYv8?ocid=spartanntp
Looks like the Orange Man politically is between a rock and a hard place. He will be blamed for the deaths of people and the likely economic downturn. He will need to be a political Houdini.
So far he has been. Last I heard his popularity was at an all time high…
Ah yep. President Trump is as cunning as a shithouse rat which serves him very well.
It also helps when your foes are far from quality.
Now 2024, that will be lit.
2024 won’t be left vs right, it’ll be foreign vs native. We’ll see if Trump (campaign promises aside) has done his job. I’m optimistic for some reason…
Assuming Mr.Trump prevails this year, then 2024 will be American Nation .v. American Empire.
He’ll come out looking good. The political side of this is a replay of previous take-out-Trump shenanigans.
“He will need to be a political Houdini.” Given the past 3 years, he already IS a political Houdini.
Closer to the election he will be hammering the globalists on outsourcing, Borders, walls and immigration and America First.
I’m sure he’ll be using the Mexican Government closing its northern border to keep out diseased foreigners.
The Puerto Rican bartenders’ demand that all illegals get a grand a pop too will be useful.
Which is great, but if you expect him to follow through with actual action on any of those I’ll refer you to the last 4 years… Talk is good… but cheap.
Agreed. There is the possibility that this could weaken the opposition in the bureaucracy and the Deep State enough for him to finally bulldoze them and act on his (supposed) agenda. Of course, this assumes that the reason for his inaction the last 4 years was opposition. We’ll see his true colors soon enough.
I expect nothing from him in terms of action. His value lies in bringing the unmentionable topics squarely into the public arena,not in resolving them. To a quite remarkable extent he’s turned the Overton Window into the Overton Conservatory.
Overton Conservatory
When you shift an issue inside the Overton Window, then fail to achieve a victory concerning that issue, You end up in a worse place than if you’d never brought it inside at all.
Here’s your problem. Trump is, at root, a tinkerer and experimenter, positioned at odds from the Powers That Be. A lot of people in the middle of the political spectrum have encouraged and tolerated such tinkering, knowing that the system is flawed and sinking.
But the c-virus scare and lockdown has brought out another side of normie. He now wants someone of demonstrated success and competency to tell them what to do to make it all better. The incessant media drumbeat of Trump’s fundamental incompetency has done its work on normie, he’s willing to listen to other voices.
The Biden/Bernie/Warren/Buttegeig group has been wandering around squawking about irrelevancies for so long, they are done. Bloomberg and Steyer ably demonstrated that the really rich are truly out to lunch, as far as normie is concerned. But now we see the Andrew Cuomo phenomenon, being set up by the media as the bossy, serious, steely pin-eyed savior of the moment. Never mind he is the governor of a seriously dysfunctional state, in which everyone upstate hates his guts, and he has overseen and put his name all over a deeply fraudulent statewide “economic stimulus program” that simply allows favored friends to loot the treasury. In the time of c-virus, he has swung from extremes of “everyone get out and shop” to “everyone lock down” in a matter of days, with each pronunciation of what to do attended by the budding totalitarian’s attitude that deviation from the proclamation of the day is everything from stupid to treasonous. He doesn’t do these things in Trump’s spirit of experimentation and probing the waters, it is done as the proclamations of the only person who knows what to do (even though it is the exact opposite of what was to be done yesterday).
The problem, for normie, is that the fun and games of throwing some sand in the gears and going to a Trump rally/party is over. Now normie just wants to be told what to do. Andrew Cuomo was born for the job. See, people don’t hate fascism. They just want to be led by the “right guy”. A bunch of what FDR did and tried to do was purely fascist, but he gets his head on the dime and is heralded up there with Washington and Lincoln as “having saved the nation”. Normie is going to be all over Cuomo, as the man is packaged and groomed by the media. NY will be presented as the state that does everything right (ask a downstate New Yorker, he’ll tell you so). If you can’t see that, you just don’t “get it”.
The danger of Cuomo is that he is a strong leader, and he does know how to get things done. He is the right man for the job to bring fascist totalitarianism down on all of us. Because he is not an eccentric, and he has no personal quirks. He simply gets done what needs to get done, in a brutal and efficient manner. He is a Putin for the West. Some might argue that he is not a bad choice for the next stage in the demolition of our republic. We could do worse. The problem, for us, is that Cuomo is really good at what he does. Those midnight front-door-busting midnight raids will be done with maximum efficiency at ferreting out the enemies of the state, and with minimum disruption to the community. There will not be the other infuriating and stupid posturings associated with his rule, the kinds of things an Obama or a Hilary would say and do, and said and did. Cuomo has the bearings of a shark, constantly moving, constantly hunting, without distraction and without anything but a singular intensity of purpose. You read it here first, plan accordingly. OK, rant over.
Andy, like papa mario, is sfacime…
a two faced liar.
Ahhh, another Bob Grant fan, I see. Love that guy.
I’ve also noticed the media’s attempt to deify Cuomo. Something tells me this will fail. For a lot of normies in Flyover Land Cuomo = NY arrogance and now NY = plague-bringers as well.
I hope whatever is telling you this will fail is correct
Agreed, as a upstater. He’s not competent at achieving any good results, but he’s superb at seeming to, at appearing to get government moving, and covering his a$$ when it blows up.
Dutch, also….that’s not a rant. You can see the left media arm panicking over Biden, and looking longingly at Cuomo.
Cuomo’s got to fatal irresolvable problems.
First, he’s been governing a state for many years that was completely unprepared for the crisis. From cutting hospital beds to spending the money allocated for medical hardware on illegal immigrants. The more you look at his record the worse it looks and smells.
Secondly, even worse. He’s the embodiment of the Ellis Island Mythology. The public mood will turn against immigration and globalism as a result of this. Cuomo will reject that sentiment with ever fiber of his being.
Recently he said that New York was suffering high infection rates because they are so open. Which begs the question was it worth it?. He’ll have to answer yes – which will be his Bernie Shaw moment.
Dutch:
I completely agree with your assessment of Andy.
I was watching him last week on one of his daily press conferences and thought: damn, now THAT guy could be a Democratic candidate for the Presidency.
He does VERY well at press conferences.
I can see what you are saying, about his brutal efficiency that wouldn’t disrupt the community, but get a door knocked in, and residents “taken care of” in no time flat.
I can definitely see how this guy gets sh*t done.
I’ve come to agree with Zman on Trump as disruptor vs. builder. He’s like the military. The Statists would have you believe they are potent forces for nation-building and peacekeeping when their actual (and proper) function is killing people and breaking shit. That’s fine. I’ll accept that. We won’t get our messiah in 2020 but I’ll settle for a pale horse.
The Mexican border thing made me laugh. They helped keep is campaign promise one even I though was a ridiculous brag.
even the left secretly knows that trump is Teflon. Trump will come out ahead on this too. Unlike the last two presidents, Trump is competent enough to actually take charge. You see him taking a much more active role in the economy than possible any president before him.
Dunno. Detecting lots of equivocations and political distancing from Blue State governors and Blue City mayors in recent days. There also is loads of desperation in the propaganda outlets blatantly hoping the entire country gets as bad or worse than NYC, which itself hasn’t been as bad as “experts” predicted just a few days back.
There is just as likely to be tremendous backlash over the draconian measures put into effect for what is a somewhat more contagious, marginally more dangerous flu.
The hatestream media desperately wants Corona to ravage flyover because flyover is filled with worthless Deplorables who deserve infinite amounts of suffering, unlike the perfect, beautiful media lightbringers that live in NYC.
500,000+ mostly male, mostly working age whites dead of the opioid crisis.
How does this compare to the 1,600 old (unknown race – maybe Asian) people who were one fall down the stairs away from dying anyways?
How many have OD’d since the start of the corona fear? How many new addicts have picked up the addict disease? The drug crisis is a real crisis that is being ignored. Why? Because it’s mostly rural white men who are dying from it.
A client called yesterday AM. One of their clients is ramping up for a recapitalization in advance of a massive growth initiative.
Guess what “business” they operate?
MAT centers. Medication Assisted Treatment centers. Aka methadone kiosks. Guess who admins these? The CDC and uncle sam. Guess who reimburses/pays? Medicaid.
So a private investor group invests in a “business” that gives drugs to addicts and gets paid by the government to do it.
And there is enough subsidies baked in to this essential public health provider that these investors are going to GROW this business right on the heels of a massive recession/depression. They are positively giddy.
So much evil is incentivized and supported it can be demoralizing.
I passed on the project. I am hoping to get some work helping firms to navigate the covid legislation – which is bad enough! But I still hold onto hope that there is some value creation opportunities in all this that doesn’t trade on evil.
Upside of this virus closing borders is the smaller drug supply. Maybe it will save a few lives.
That said the remedy for despair is hope and the only way there is a new society. The old leaders have to go but given the rural-small town vs. urban divide that won’t be easy to do democratically.
75% of the country is willing to ride this out. Barely 15% want to get back to work right away. What are you guys reading? People are antsy not because they’re eager to get back to the grindstone but because they’d like clear answers. In another week the raw numbers of infected Americans will be in the neighborhood of 300K. You can show people graphs and charts all day long but for most even if they understand things in the abstract will in the end go with their gut instinct. If they see that we’ve gone from 100K to 300K you aren’t going to have demands to go back to work you’re going to have demands for stricter quarantines. We’re are already nibbling around the edges of that at 100K. Many people in infectious hot spots are leaving for elsewhere spreading it far and wide.
Societies don’t function using reason they function using group cohesion in one form or another. If that means going from one goofy idea to another goofy idea as long as they have enough people to agree with them that’s exactly what will happen.
Beside, why would Trump want this to end he’s just had the most fun of his presidency. He has real power, he can exercise it , his approval is going up, the Dems are sidelined and the oligarchy is getting all kinds of goodies. Watch our rulers and see what they are doing. Last week it was ransacking the Treasury, do you think that’s it? No other needs that should be addressed that would reorder things more to their liking? We’re quasi- quarantined, we’re going to lose millions of jobs…and they are still bringing in Wetbacks and Pakis. In the meanwhile if the hoi polloi get too rambunctious they’ll generously cast a few more coins our way.
An insane percentage of people live from paycheck to paycheck. Many of these people won’t have jobs to go back to or will have only part-time work available to them. Oh, I forgot, manufacturing will be coming back to our shores. When exactly? 6 months? 3 years? Lots will never come back. Watch our rulers and see what they do. Are they investing here or over there? This will give us a hint about what they think will happen in the long run… Are they moving personal assets elsewhere? Taking their eggs out of our basket? Are they dumping excess personal property? Buying up lots of cheap RE both residential and commercial to better control population dynamics? And lots of other things along this line.
They will make plans and promise the heavens to us all. Slowly people here and there will go back to work but demand is going to be anemic. We’ll be lucky if half the workforce is back by Easter. For a lot of people there won’t be anymore work. Our infrastructure needs are enormous. They could startup a new WPA, Carlos and Gautam need something to do.
Going back to work would be great but don’t equate that with things getting back to normal (Clown World); In a few months Clown World may seem like paradise. Whatever happens things will change significantly. This means opportunity for our enemies and opportunity for ourselves.
Yeah personally I’m dialing back my red pilling efforts. This is a terrible opportunity but it looks to be the one we’re given. Again, the future belongs to the barbarian. That means less thought and hand wringing, more doing. Make the best of it.
Besides, action and energy are more infectious than ideas. Your people might follow your lead. Be great!
A First Principle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RetDSGQOVhM
Frodi has a great speaking voice as well as solid arguments. One of our best.
Exactly, YY. Watch what they do, not what they signal. Senate insider trading, big investors dumping shares (well before the SHTF – Bezos cashed in $3.5b worth Feb 5ish). And there’s been unusual activity in Big Money & the Fed since at least September according to that Wall Street on Parade report linked here recently – link below for those who missed it.
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/03/wall-streets-crisis-began-four-months-before-the-first-reported-death-from-coronavirus-in-china-heres-the-proof/
Exactly, what people do is far more revelatory of the truth than what people say. That’s the simplest and most effective redpill and the best way to glean truth from all the noise.
No one knows how to restart the economy. All current initiatives are either guesswork or pure theft/pay offs. So Yves, it’s a very good guess (?) things go back to “normal” slowly—how slowly, who knows. The chain of economic transactions that was halted is long, very long. Along the way we will find many have been irreparably broken and must be worked around. All takes time. The government is betting that Joe Normie won’t notice if they pay for businesses to immediately reopen as if this all was Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday closure. But it wasn’t, cause Corona.
As you point out, the most important variable in the chain is Joe “Normie”. His confidence is now shattered. He worries about his health—*both* economic and physical. When has this *ever* occurred outside of major war and invasion? Trump may sing a good siren’ song, but I suspect Joe Normie will sit back and watch how the herd reacts—not necessarily the head bull’s lead.
I see a lot of people questioning their status in the current system in a roundabout way.
I know that my job is bullshit and can go away at any time, and I accept that. I’m thinking that those that want “Muh eCONomy” to get back up to full speed don’t want to accept that maybe, just maybe, the gravy train is stopping for them.
I don’t know how this virus will turn out, whether this wave kills tens of thousands and weakens enough to kill hundreds of thousands in the next wave, but one thing is certain:
The tide has gone way out, farther than it has before, and there aren’t a lot of people wearing trunks.
And I don’t believe it is just low tide, but the calm before there tsunami, and those that can’t or won’t adapt to being useful are going to be fucked.