« The Idlib cease-fire is already disintegrating. | Main | 2 questions for the Democrats about the debate on the 15th »

15 March 2020

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

turcopolier

all updated daily at 1200 UTC.

Laura Wilson

Thank you.

Deap

Let's tax remittences sent to home countries to pay for "free health care" for illegals.

Stueeeeeeeee

While the virus gets the attention, the post WWII financial world order is on the brink of collapse. The Fed is nearly out of ammo. The only option left is outright stock purchases by the Fed. Helicopter money won't even work given the virus.

The timing of the virus and the pending financial collapse is interesting. Are we at war?

J

A nationwide ban on domestic travel is a remote possibility.

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/15/anthony-fauci-domestic-travel-restrictions-unlikel/

Terence Gore

Gov Newsom just requested all bars and wineries to close.

The establishments should just establish a reverse age ban. If you are older than 55 they can't serve you.

born in 58 myself

Fred

D,

Let's remit them instead.

Stueeeee,

Let me know when Apple hit $5 a share, which might be hard given the 100+billion of cash they have right now. Google has even more.

guidoamm

I am still looking for a rational explanation as to why, amongst the more than 9000 people aboard the 3 ships where covid19 was detected, there should be so few infections (706) and few deaths (6).

Anyone?

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0320-t1

Kunuri

For once the whole world is speaking the same language. Even the cartoons on major newspapers around the world have the same theme.

Another silver lining is, in all of the countries of the world, weak leaders, non believers in science and dogmatists are being exposed. Bullshit does not cut it anymore. US, Iran, UK, Turkey, and you all add your nominees... Finally the nations of the world will come to an understanding how similar they are, and hopefully after this has blown over, there will be an enlightenment not dissimilar to 18th century.

Vig

Finally the nations of the world will come to an understanding how similar they are, and hopefully after this has blown over, there will be an enlightenment not dissimilar to 18th century.
Posted by: Kunuri | 16 March 2020 at 06:43 AM

I agree, but basically not quite as optimist as you seem to be.

English Outsider

Colonel - not the happiest picture over here. There is a conflict between two approaches. Fight the infection, or let it rip but try and keep hospital admissions low at any one time -

http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=87548#disqus_thread

The comment section, incidentally, sometimes shows the near obligatory TDS we most of us take for granted in Europe. That, and the deep rooted belief in R2P, are inevitable here and can scarcely be combatted.

My own belief is that reason for the seemingly laid back approach to the virus in the UK is not to do with an idiosyncratic approach to infection control. It is that the economic and financial consequences of going all out to tackle it are so severe that the government is holding back.

Norbert M Salamon

All: very interesting medical description:

An English translation of the physiology of Coronavirus COVID 19 By top Russian Pulmonologist -- Russian video is also supplied for those interested.
Symptoms, progression possible actions to lessen damage.

http://thesaker.is/how-to-treat-coronavirus-infection-covid-19/

Eric Newhill

guidoamm,
My SWAG is that the cruise ships represent the true epidemiology of virus and the statistics for China and the other countries are totally bogus; meaning that, in reality, there were millions infected, but the infections were not identified and registered. Also, if that SWAG is true, means that this virus represents, basically, bad seasonal flu of the kind we see periodically, and nothing more. The stories told by those who have the virus, got sick and have now recovered mostly add weight to the bad seasonal flu theory. This is a fascinating study in mob psychology.

guidoamm

Eric Newhill,

Mob psychology is brought about by thoroughly aberrant government policy.

You start closing down borders, quarantining people and putting the army in the streets, people will panic.

When all will be said and done, our actions will have killed more people than the virus ever would have.

Of those that will weather this crisis, most will be pushed into the hands of the banks at usurious rates. Of this wretched lot, the majority will never recover.

Eliot

“Finally the nations of the world will come to an understanding how similar they are, and hopefully after this has blown over, there will be an enlightenment not dissimilar to 18th century.”

This is fantasy. We are not similar. We are often quite different. Compare the Japanese to the French for example.

- Eliot

Eric Newhill

guidoamm,
It's not the govt. It's the media - and it's people's underlying anxieties that leave them prey to the media. The govt is then forced to appear to be doing something lest they be accused of fiddling while Rome burns.

Dr Drew agree with me, apparently. It's the media fanning the hysteria and this is no worse than a bad flu.

People need to get a grip.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/10/dr_drew_pinsky_coronavirus_panic_must_stop_press_needs_to_be_held_accountable_for_hurting_people.html

Deap

France may have the right idea - close everything down for an entire month. Every year. The French do it every August. Allows things to settle out, re-boot, re-start and break bad accumulating old habits. Personal chill time too.

Can the US survive a month long shut down? Of course, if France can do this every single year so can we. This current "shut down" has been a remarkable "stress test" for most of our national US institutions.

When the rubber hits the road, some very interesting reactions have been getting flushed out. Even Canada now wants to close their borders to all non-citizens. Celebrate Canada as a virtuous role model.

Democrats want to use this media hysteria crisis to cram in every unrelated social agenda wish list item they can come up with.

BTW: whatever happened to the soundest personal financial advice ever given - everyone needs an "emergency fund" of at least 3-6 months of expenses. Everyone. Instead we get the Democrats and Romney demanding the government pays everyone to stay home.

In fact everyone should feel safe economically because they already managed to put together their own in-house emergency fund and can weather this short-term set back with ease.

One more insidious way to remove personal responsibility and replace it with state dependency - you don't even need an emergency fund or even talke about having an emergency when the Democrats are in charge.

Jack
Life in Singapore (243 cases, 0 deaths) has pretty much returned to normal.

People are walking around, mostly without masks. Shops & restaurants are open.

Big events & school activities such as tournaments were canceled, but schools remained open unless there was a case.

https://twitter.com/msmelchen/status/1239604019460558848?s=21

A proactive and early response builds public confidence and prevents mass hysteria. Now we have public officials over-reacting and in herd momentum to shut it all down. Definitely impacting the economy in the next couple quarters.

Terence Gore

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/Bay-Area-must-shelter-in-place-Only-15135014.php

Deap

Guidoamm, as a 500 day-plus world cruiser, you ask why so few deaths on cruise ships? Deaths occur on cruises all the time, regardless of any co-existing global pandemic. Special places in the hold of the ship act as morgues, and more than once we have seen hearses and not ambulances meet the ship at remote ports.

My first world cruise in the 1970's, three persons died in the first week - leaving notes stating if anything happens to me my affairs are in order and I am doing what I always wanted to do. So one must sort out the normal death rates in what is often an elderly and increasingly frail population group.

ADA demands on the cruise industry opened up travel for even more health compromised passengers. One Hotel Director in a moment of candor said look around this dining room, 50% of these people should not even be on a ship. Should there be real emergency, one does wonder how the many seriously mobility-compromised passengers will in fact be able respond to abandon ship operations.

The other factor unique to cruisers is having to battle the noro virus (intestinal, what was known as tourista before) outbreaks for years onboard , barrier control and watching inadvertent hand to mouth contacts. You get trained to get squeamish even using the salt and pepper shakers at your table. So prevention become ingrained among many long term cruisers, cutting down infection rates no matter what the bug du jour..

Only time will tell, but one can also suspect the virus of the media hysteria may not be in fact not the virus that was actually present onboard. New data is changing the parameters of these corona cases every day.

The TDS virus remains the most lethal bug by far - so many people are even feel eager to catch it and even more eager pass it on. No cure for that one. That is a willing self-inoculation. That may have been the real bug we are seeing in the media, which may also explains why there were so few cruise passenger deaths - you don't die from TDS because then you would miss out on all the fun.

Add in SJW class envy about "rich" people who cruise and eco-terrorists hatred of cruise ships as "floating petri dishes", and you indeed do have a tailor made media toxic soup; but it affects more people on land than on the seas.

oldman22

Here is an interview with Justin Lessler, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Lessler, who has studied outbreaks of influenza, measles, and cholera, is particularly interested in modeling transmission dynamics as a method of controlling the spread of disease.

Unfortunately this article may be behind a paywall, and I am not going to quote the whole story, but here is a taste:

"We had signals of this a month ago, but now it is very clear that the age distribution of death and severe outcomes is stark, with older adults having quite high mortality rates, and young kids basically not dying at all. But we do now know that kids get infected. It was unclear why there weren’t cases before, but now we are relatively confident that they are getting infected. They just aren’t getting sick.
I don’t think we have a great sense of exactly why children are not getting sick. We have some good ideas of why older adults may be dying at higher rates than younger adults and children. But why children may not be getting sick at all or getting seriously enough ill to ever show up in the data is a little less clear.
I would definitely say that what China has been able to accomplish has been quite impressive. They had a raging epidemic that looked like it was out of control, and by shutting everything down they managed to stop the epidemic in its tracks. That was an impressive accomplishment, although those are extreme measures we would really prefer not to take in most places in the world, and, if we had to do them everywhere, the repercussions of those could be quite bad themselves. And now Italy has had to do the same thing. South Korea seems to have done a somewhat better job of getting hold of things simply by ramping up testing and with more moderate social-distancing-type measures. Hopefully we will have a sense of how well that worked sometime soon.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-epidemiologists-understand-the-novel-coronavirus

Serge

Near-empty roads driving down towards Boston this morning, eerie. Same old (old) clientele at my gym at 5am though, the same 80 year olds bench pressing and relaxing in the sauna/by the pool. Not a millenial/ gen Xer in sight. There appears to be a big generational divide for threshold of hysteria, notwithstanding the fact that the older folks are the one actually at risk here.

Vig

One more insidious way to remove personal responsibility and replace it with state dependency - you don't even need an emergency fund or even talke (sic) about having an emergency when the Democrats are in charge.
Posted by: Deap | 16 March 2020 at 04:14 PM

you are a "deep" evolutionist?
https://profile.typepad.com/d162310893297737741

Artemesia
It's not the govt. It's the media

The only media I tune to is C Span -- Washington Journal, congressional hearings from time to time, BookTV, History TV.

Many, many times C Span is lauded as "the most trustworthy media outlet of them all."

I don't agree. I think the C in C Span stands for the Colin Powell effect.

And after observing C Span closely for >10 years, I'm convinced that 0 degrees separate C Span media from government.

Deap

Vig, are you implying a "deep evolutionist" is a social Darwinist?

Try being old fashioned enough to remember the world before credit cards when one saved for what they wanted - and everyone should want the security that comes from having an emergency fund. Toss in a dose frugal Scandinavian too.

Do you think "poor people" should be exempt from having emergency funds? And that the US Government should send everyone $1000 ....for what? Good way to track how we spend discretionary funds.

That we can learn from tracking what our armies of "homeless" panhandlers do with their cash flow: the luxury of being able to choose meth, heroin, high-grade pot or speed.

Fossil fuel hating California worries more about school kids not getting their free breakfast and lunch due to school closures so they recommend parents drive to pick-up spots where they can continue to let the state feed them. How much does it cost of crank up the car and drive to the free food pick up spot compared to slapping together a PB&J at home?

If this corona thing were a sci-fi dark comedy, one could not write a better script that what is happening in real life. Good time to re-evaluate the prior War of the Worlds hysteria - what was also going on at that time and what was the power of the budding mass media, who at least was fully in on the trick.

The comments to this entry are closed.

My Photo

February 2021

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28            
Blog powered by Typepad