As long as is necessary. If Wall Street wants people to die for the stock market, too goddamned bad. If employers don’t want to give up their draconian policies on sick leave, they need to get over it or face jail time. If people want to travel in or out of the US, they’d better shelve those plans or face dire consequences. This is a national emergency, and needs to be treated as such. The US health care system is singularly ill-suited for a pandemic. The best we can do is allocate all possible resources toward weathering the storm, using the decentralized nature of most US metro areas to our advantage, and hopefully learn a lesson here.

My Domitianic tendencies are coming to the forefront here.

We can’t stay shutdown without the economy collapsing. So far, no one has shown this to be something more significant than a very bad flu type disease. It’s not the flu but it is not the black plague either. Things have to start moving again in two weeks tops. The economy is going to be bad enough as it is. We can leaving nursing homes and older people sheltering in place.

Trying to be done by April 12 sounds like a tidy little script:

1. Turn on Corona Virus
2. Scare people, close businesses, create financial havoc, get tyrannical with power grabs.
3. Pass a bill with lots of payoffs to buy votes and insert a bunch of unrelated legislation like D.I.E. initiatives.
4. Turn-off CV.

All done!

I’m still swinging wildly (like the stock market) between extremes on the danger of this virus. At one moment it seems horrible (overflowing ICUs), but then, is it really credible that China squelched the virus by confinement, testing and whatever after it had spread freely in a city of 13 million people? If the present toll of deaths in China is at all accurate, I’d say this thing has been overblown. But I am checked in reaching that conclusion by the numbers needing ventilation in the hospitals. I can’t reconcile the two.

My hope was for Trump, in early May, to bring out Tiger Woods to make announcement that the US Open golf championship would take place as scheduled on June 18th. The final day is Father’s Day and that would be a National day of celebration…all assuming things settle down of course.

If Easter works all the better. Maybe we can get things running in Easter and can shoot for 6/18 as complete return to normalcy. We do need to celebrate once we get past this though.

Quite right, Steve

Right now we are flying fairly blind.

The case fatality rate for H1N1 (from 2009) still isn’t known. It was all over the place.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809029/

Let’s make the decision not 2.5 weeks before Easter, but at the last possible moment when we will know vastly more than we do right now.

Why do we think if we beat this virus, we get to live forever? Between now and April 12, literally 125,000 Americans will die from other causes. Worry about the other 95% of mortality. What makes their deaths less important?

https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-deaths-october-1918

Few cities were struck harder than Philadelphia where Public Health Director Wilmer Krusen ignored pleas from doctors and refused to cancel a parade to promote the sale of government war bonds that was attended by 200,000 people. […] Over 11,000 Philadelphia residents died in October 1918, including 759 on the worst day of the outbreak. Drivers of open carts kept a near-constant vigil circling streets while hollering, “Bring out your dead!” They then deposited the collected corpses in mass graves excavated by steam shovels.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/coronavirus-spanish-flu-dark-history-keep-calm-carry-advice/

President Wilson led a parade of 25,000 New Yorkers down the ‘Avenue of the Allies’ in October 1918. “That same week, 2,100 New Yorkers died of influenza,” writes Arnold.

Wilson got it himself in early 1919, which may have led to WW2 as he was dazed and paranoid thereafter, and at the Peace Conference and failed to uphold his 14 Points. Biden is already dazed and coughing.

No one is dying for the stock market, asshole. But plenty of small business owners will start dying if we keep the economy shut down purely to save Boomers like yourself.

I’m fine w extending out the quarantine BUT there must be contingencies….saying price gouging is illegal means jack all when ppl are willing to pay such a price….

Trump is also going to have to outlaw evictions and dare i say utility cutoffs. Call it a bailout call it whatever.

Yesterday i had 2 young black girls….maybe 10ish….

They literally were going door to door @ my apt complex knocking on doors BEGGING FOR MONEY. I imagine the landlord will have an eviction notice on their door by tomorrow.

My mother came over on her day off to spend time w my daughter. As she was waiting on me out in the car they came up & asked if they could clean her car for $1….when she told them she had no cash they replied literally “but I need money….”

I dunno if they did this of their own volition or if their parents put them up to it as some kind of scam trick….

I wonder if this is fallout from the virus….and $1200 doesn’t fo far in places like Southern California….

Mr Sailer,

The prudent public policy response is a phasing-out of restrictions, step by cautious step.

But there will be no VE or VJ Day. There will be no ‘all clear’ air raid siren signalling it is safe for you to emerge from your walk-in closet.

(We once, in our hubris, declared victory over TB remember.)

The virus is now part of our ecology. We will have to live with it, and place our faith in immunity and its mutation into a less virulent/deadly strain.

In all likelihood, for some years ahead, there will be flare ups, here and there in the US and the world.

Meanwhile, Beijing will carry on bio-engineering/bio-weapon-ing; many Chinese will carry on gorging on all sorts of odd critters; their wet markets will carry on their brisk trade in those critters.

Hmm, probably best you stay a homebound recluse.

PS: How’s that spreading typhus in LA going?

Sweden bucks global trend with experimental virus strategy | Free to read
Fewer restrictions than other leading countries and schools remain open

https://www.ft.com/content/31de03b8-6dbc-11ea-89df-41bea055720b

Mexico too.

Males 30 and under should be allowed free passage. Females probably a much older age.

Daily death stats from NYC
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-daily-data-summary-deaths.pdf

Already the lock down is starting to be a farce. NJ immediately made liquor an essential business, and never shut down the lottery although the customers are disappearing rapidly anyway. NJ now wants an exception for childcare of ‘essential’ workers. Which will be interesting given the small businesses involved may not be able to function with such a reduced customer base.

Rush said it best, Steve: If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. What a great line from a great song, called Free Will, something the reaction to this Kung Flu will result in a great loss of. Nice going, panic-mongers!

Jack D might be a “Zionist Jew” but he’s maybe also “on the spectrum” as many of the commenters here are. This latter attribute provides perhaps more explanatory power for his callous sentiments.

Anyway, COVID-19 likely does resemble the flu in one big way: the mortality rate. Flu kills .1% of its victims annually, while COVID-19 kills probably not more than .2%, making it perhaps twice as deadly. What sets it apart and makes it so dangerous is how infectious it is (R0 of flu=1.3. R0 of COVID-19=2), and it has probably already infected millions of Americans. If it ran its course unimpeded it would infect half the country and kill .2% of those it infects, or 320,000 people. (“flu” infects about 40 million Americans and kills 40 thousand annually). This infection rate can be brought down with shutdowns/”social distancing” (expensive) and face masks (cheap).

East Asia has very effectively arrested the infection rate, perhaps mostly through face mask usage. This could be done in the West too, but in addition to the obstacle of acquiring and deploying the masks there’s the even greater obstacle of getting people to be willing to be seen with them in public. Perhaps television anchors, congressmen and even POTUSes could lead by example to help overcome this stigma.

Of course there’s the morbidly amusing possibility that Democrats will refuse to wear face masks because they saw Trump wearing one, so maybe that’s not a good idea.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronavirus-is-not-a-bioweapon-they-disagree-on-whether-it-could-have-leaked-from-a-research-lab/amp/

Ron many experts are saying its NOT a bioweapon….however there is disagreement on whether or not it was leaked from a lab…

Or perhaps its not bioengineered BUT they took it from a lab and WHOOPS exposed those GIs going to the Wuhan military Olympics or whatever those things were….

Good grief.

Jack D was clearly commenting specifically about economics, responding to a comment about the Coronavirus epidemic’s likely effect on our economy. The Black Death example is a standard lesson from high school history.

Around here, most of us are familiar with the idea that the good of the economy and the good of the nation are different concepts, and that weighing the relative value of each is an act of judgment.

Suggesting a timeline is not the same as inflexibly committing to it, which Trump and other pols haven’t done. If things look way, way worse on April 5 than they do today, of course no one will still be talking about reopening on April 12.

Uncertainty is the killer, and it’s killing the most vulnerable, those who live paycheck to paycheck or gig to gig and are now getting a much smaller check or none at all. There are millions of people out there living week to week, paying to rent a room in someone’s house, etc. Giving them an idea of when things might start to move back toward recovery, is a huge aid to them and the people expecting money from them. Your 11:59 idea assumes that everyone is capable of freezing in place indefinitely, until and then immediately springing back to work the next morning. Providing general guidance and updating the guidance as events evolve is the right way to go.

So perhaps I therefore owe an apology to all those “excited” commenters…

I think it’s taking a rather huge jump to assert a group collectively, or through an agent, “unleashed” it, when they’re more likely to simply be rooting for it, based on tribal wishful thinking. Truth to tell, pointed tribal wishful thinking has occupied the minds of everyone, every day, since this scourge began. And long before.

Call it the ever present, “just enough of me, but way too many of you” syndrome. We all root for what’s best for our tribe, and what’s not so great for the other, competing tribe.

What if there were 30 million less illegal aliens in this country by the end of the year? What if Abraham Lincoln had lived, and shipped the majority of freed slaves back to their country of origin, as he’d hoped to do? How great would our country be then?

We all indulge in that manner of wishful thinking. That’s common. Doing much about it has become relatively rare. I think Jack D. Is just another wishful thinker.

I’ve seen one too many #NotDying4WallStreet hashtags in use among the blue-checkmark parasites who already do all they can to make daily life intolerable in our country, being strongly in favor of no borders, abolishing ICE, support for antifa, releasing felons w/o bail, looking the other way on crimes under $1000 (but bringing the full force of the law on shopowners using force to stop thieves), and – of course – decriminalizing street-shitters in San Francisco and elsewhere (a public-health time bomb already paying “dividends” in our major cities).

Basically, the very same mutts who whine about anachronisms like “the Klan”, yet form menacing mobs at the drop of a hat, snarling at outrages such as insisting that all lives matter (which now, unbelievably, is verboten to utter aloud without immediate reprisals) are demanding we “not die for Wall St.” Plunging the country and, in our immediate wake, the rest of the world, into a second Great Depression is okay, cuz they, like, haven’t given that one too much, like, thought yet.

As is usually the case, I’d prefer to keep a long arm’s length away from any self-serving moral crusades that come codified in a hashtag.

Get Tucker on it, Steve.

As I think about the ‘problem’ I don’t see why we can’t do both. Allow those who want to ‘get back to work’ to do so and those who fear becoming infected to stay ‘locked down’. I live in a concrete condo building. I can stay inside my cocoon and order take out and I might choose to do that as I’m 68 and retired. OTOH it makes no difference to me if a neighbor decides he/she needs to get back to work. They only become mutually exclusive if one side enforces its will on the other. No one is going to insist I go out but if enough voters through their government insist on a total ‘lockdown’ those who need to earn a living may find they have no jobs or work to return to.

Already grocery stores are setting aside an early morning hour for ‘seniors only’ shopping and many are working from home. The people who are really being ‘punished’ are those who work in factories, construction and public facing businesses like hotels/casinos, airlines and the aforementioned grocery stores. Why is it OK to demand grocery store workers ( who aren’t highly paid) report to work for the convenience of everyone else. If they have no choice but to risk infection for the common good why not demand the same of everyone else?

The labor shortages resulting from the Black Death led to legislation tying labor more closely to the land, i.e., for many a deepened servitude, while unworked land was taken over by the local lords.

So, it wasn’t really all cakes and ale for the working man. In fact, the BD increased the power, control and wealth of the ruling classes. Sound familiar?

I don’t think there there’s any hoax going on. That’s not the right word. What there is is something that could never have been seen before the 24/7 internet in one’s pocket or hands. That is, an infotainment panic-fest that has pushed even the most intelligent people into a frenzy on this.

Yes, of course the susceptible (elderly, people with certain conditions) should take extreme precautions – staying home, rejecting visitors, cleaning obsessively, etc. That is entirely up to them. This world’s gotten to where people have been made to feel their governments are their nannies. That is why they look to them for advice and pay attention to some of the stupidest of advice and orders.

I also don’t think there’s too much call for conspiracy theories in this case. Whether it’s the Zionists, the Deep State (a big one for you, Ron), or the Chinese, you’re gonna hear them all. The dubbing of this thing “the China virus”, “Chinese virus”, “Kung Flu”, etc, should not be anything for anyone to get buttsore about. It’s not putting the blame on anyone (except, perhaps, those Globalists that push for huge migrations and travel between different areas of the world). Nobody is BLAMING the Chinese, contrary to what most who are not as good with English as they sound would tell you. We just figure it came from China for lots of reasons, and with lots of predecessors as examples.

I don’t agree that it’s just peachy if a lot of people die from this. The thing is, it is, and will continue to be difficult to separate deaths very specifically from the Kung Flu from those deaths that would have happened to old people with other complications. As you wrote, this is not like the Global Climate Disruption(TM) nonsense, in that we’ll at least know about mortality pretty soon. I think the number of deaths completely attributable to this virus alone won’t be anywhere near your numbers.

You can make math models any way you wish, Ron, but if you start out with lots of assumptions, the models are garbage.

Trump’s no blogger but I would wager he has good reasons for doing what he does, Steve.

Now “Jack D” is one of the most frequent commenters on this website, and my strong impression is that he’s a “Zionist Jew.” The very casual manner in which he expressed his sentiments strongly suggests that they’re quite widespread within his social circle.

Yeah, but Jack’s views are not that different from my own, and I am just a regular post-Christian who is completely agnostic about religion, as most educated people are these days. (Nobody is suggesting that we should have a national day of prayer and contrition to defeat the virus–except, perhaps, the odd TV preacher who sees that there is a buck or two to be made.)

These views may be expressed rather laconically, but then that is in the nature of public commentary, where expressing views that others find shocking is designed to get attention.

There is a genuine split in our population in beliefs on many issues, and the most obvious split is the left-right split in politics where both sides have sincerely held opposing beliefs to the extent that both sides believe that the other side is in bad faith.

Hence, even when both teams in Congress get together to enact an emergency bill, both sides are quite sincerely accusing the other side of “playing politics.”

Likewise, when it comes to the corona virus and what we as a society should do about it, there are sincere opposing views that can only be reconciled when we have a final outcome.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/12-experts-question-covid-19-panic

In the article linked to here, from the stock market blog Zero Hedge, the views of 12 medically distinguished physician virologist and epidemiologists who are completely opposed to the mass quarantine and lockdown method of dealing with the threat to the health care system posed by the COVID19 virus are laid out.

Here is a taste:

* *

Dr Yoram Lass is an Israeli physician, politician and former Director General of the Health Ministry. He also worked as Associate Dean of the Tel Aviv University Medical School and during the 1980s presented the science-based television show Tatzpit.

What he says:

Italy is known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems, more than three times any other European country. In the US about 40,000 people die in a regular flu season and so far 40-50 people have died of the coronavirus, most of them in a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington.

…there is a very good example that we all forget: the swine flu in 2009. That was a virus that reached the world from Mexico and until today there is no vaccination against it. But what? At that time there was no Facebook or there maybe was but it was still in its infancy. The coronavirus, in contrast, is a virus with public relations.

or:

Prof. Hendrik Streeck is a German HIV researcher, epidemiologist and clinical trialist. He is professor of virology, and the director of the Institute of Virology and HIV Research, at Bonn University.

What he says:

The new pathogen is not that dangerous, it is even less dangerous than Sars-1. The special thing is that Sars-CoV-2 replicates in the upper throat area and is therefore much more infectious because the virus jumps from throat to throat, so to speak. But that is also an advantage: Because Sars-1 replicates in the deep lungs, it is not so infectious, but it definitely gets on the lungs, which makes it more dangerous.

You also have to take into account that the Sars-CoV-2 deaths in Germany were exclusively old people. In Heinsberg, for example, a 78-year-old man with previous illnesses died of heart failure, and that without Sars-2 lung involvement. Since he was infected, he naturally appears in the Covid 19 statistics. But the question is whether he would not have died anyway, even without Sars-2.

– Interview in Frankfurter Allgemeine, 16th March 2020

And 10 more.

The governor of my home state (MN) has ordered continuation of the stay at home shut down with the rationale that it will not alter the overall infection rate, simply delay and spread it out some so that hospitals and ICUs aren’t overwhelmed. His modelers are telling him this. So the peak illness will hit in 14 weeks rather than six. Predicting the overall infection rate of 40-80% of state residents. If one accepts the current death rate as 1.3%, and take 60% as the infection rate, that means 35,000 dead Minnesotans. I’m still clinging to my skepticism. Epidemiologists are good detectives, but I’m not sure they’re any better at forecasting long term trends than the Weather Channel or those infomercial guys that claim to have a system for picking stocks. I’m 69, in good health and with the lockdown I’m not getting out much. Golf courses are closed. I’ll report back in July on the fate of the Gopher State.

Trump might have already made up his mind. Whether he’ll have his way is something else, but he gives some indications he’s determined to have businesses reopen by Easter — or even earlier, in the Holy Week — if it’s accurate that he said he wants to see, paraphrasing, “churches packed all around the country”.

I’m not an epidemiologist, and I don’t have any double-blind studies supporting my view, but I personally find this bad. Having a fixed date as a goal may lead to less attention being paid to the evolution of what’s happening. “A thousand deaths or so? How many cases? Okay, well, but Easter is in 18 days, right? Wait, make that 17… not that many days, don’t we better get ready to reopen?”

Covod19 seems to have hit Israel and NYC pretty hard. A few 100 Israelis returned from the Dolomites infected.

Apart from being The Usual Suspects, there isn’t anything concrete to point at ZOG.

The best guess, so far, is that this was down to the idiot Chinese reopening their wet markets after SARS was contained.

No doubt, the genealogy of the virus will eventually emerge from looking at the RNA sequences of the variants.

But so far the main lesson is: Do Not Eat Fucking Pangolins.

How can you guys support Trump after he flubbed the dub like this? Look at how China and Japan have handled the crisis compared to him. Just complete incompetence.

It seems to me that HBD has been thoroughly discredited. Just look at how Nations of Color have handled this compared to the “west”.

https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article241344641.html

“So there’s nothing here to doubt. We’re dealing with Republican bigotry. Again.”

“When should we shut down? As soon as possible.

When should we decide when to open up again? As late as possible.

Let’s procrastinate in making that decision to reopen….”

Sad, sad, sad, sad.

The US health care system industry is singularly ill-suited for a pandemic.

The US health care industry is ill-suited for many things, not spreading infectious diseases is just one of the most glaring. I don’t know anyone with the corona, but I personally know plenty of people who have had their lives ended or destroyed by MRSA after routine surgery, by a perforated colon after routine colonoscopy, by mangled sciatic nerves after routine surgery, by a perforated stomach after routine surgery, by intestines stapled shut after routine surgery, by destroyed esophageal muscles after routine surgery, etc., etc., etc.

This economy is just like the Great Depression. What we will need for recovery is a Good War. It worked the last time.

Well, this is the benefit of having a big country. Everywhere doesn’t have to open at once. NYC should remain closed for a lot longer to protect the rest of us. Finance can be done remotely, in fact it mostly already is remote, the HFT algos run out of data centers in NJ.

When we do reopen it would be nice to immediately go hard on setting us up for the fall 2020/winter 21 re-run of this thing.

We have like 6 months to ramp up domestic mask production (cheap cheap cheap and easy to wear is the most important thing – a bandana over your face is >50% effective in stopping the virus particles… so this is not complicated) and establish chloroquine domestic production. This plus figuring out safer food handling and distribution. This should be doable. Also develop some kind of automatic package disinfecting machine running in Amazon/etc warehouses to prevent transmission from people ordering delivery goods too.

As for “the economy”, this summer is the perfect time for INFRASTRUCTURE. Trump should dust off the Works Progress Administration and the CCC. Hunter Don JR could be the lead on the CCC, take guys out into the country and live in camps while building parks and outdoorsy stuff. The WPA would focus on building infrastructure to support more domestic manufacturing and also building out more facilities for safe screening/testing. The pics of people in mass crowds and lines in NYC can’t be repeated in parts of the country that matter.

One of the things we are taught in management courses is that after the Bay of Pigs, US presidents instituted a dialectic process in policy-making in which different points of view were argued in front of presidents to avoid making the mistakes of the Abilene Paradox, by which everyone goes along with a plan that they personally oppose so as to avoid conflict with others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

see also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance

… pluralistic ignorance is a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but go along with it because they assume, incorrectly, that most others accept it.

One wonders how this decision-making process is working out in the era of Trump, when the US populations seems to be genuinely divided between those who believe Trump is a visionary who sees what others do not see, and those who believe Trump is a charlatan who sees that people are gullible and will believe anything.

No, your craven, totalitarian core is unmasking itself.

There is some possibility that the Pangolin trade contributed to Coronavirus.

If the Chinese had just listened to Angelababy …

Steve is continuing to soil his underalls. It is a reflection of how feminized we have become.

You can almost tell what someone does for a living based on their views of the shutdown. Stay at home free lance author = shut it down!! Actually produce, deliver something, or otherwise have to interact with people = let’s get this thing going.

FYI, there are no “it’s just the flu” people, so keep arguing against that straw man. It’s unconvincing. There are people like me who think the numbers indicate it is just another version of previous coronaviruses (eg the swine flu*) with similar lethality , and wonder why we’re shutting the world down now when before a few hundred thousand deaths worldwide never caused us to blink.

*Note that the death tally for this corona virus will be a bit higher since it seems to target the old and infirm, whereas previous versions attacked, and killed, younger people who could fight it of better. I’m not sure the net effects on society are that much worse, but that’s not a fun calculation.

The Dems are explicitly playing politics with the relief bill.

They have 3 constituencies.

1. Urban poor. These people are already Provided for by the normal programs that are already funded. And the Dems cynically know that they are not going to lose this vote bank no matter what they do.

2. Superrich. Don’t actually need relief, but do want special carve outs for profit.

3. Urban professional/managerial class These don’t need relief either, they are telecommuting just fine.

Meanwhile the GOP main constituency is small/medium business owners. This group is fucked. Completely fucked.

So Dems have massive leverage and they are using it.

GOP was accidentally trying to do the right thing but they seem to have given up because again the other side has the power

Rio has outsourced favela lockdowns to the local mafia. ( “Coisa Nossa”?)

Gangs call curfews as coronavirus hits Rio favelas

“Threatening messages which circulated in the city’s notorious favelas warn that gangsters will teach people to ‘respect’ an 8pm shutdown, Brazilian media says.”

Brazilian police fly a helicopter to create a sandstorm and chase people off a beach to enforce coronavirus lockdown – as GANGS vow to enforce curfew in Rio’s favelas

The usa should never have shut down in the first place. The shutdownders should have been slapped down like the hysterical women they are.

Even I thought that was nasty on Jack’s part.

For my part I think Israel should have the right to exist (not that America has to fight their wars), am of partial Ashkenazi ancestry (half), and I’m disgusted at the people who think we should let old people die to avoid a drop in the GDP for a few quarters.

Like, really, guys, you think the people running things don’t have Mom and Dad holed up in the Hamptons with a lifetime supply of hand sanitizer? No, they want your parents to die for the Dow. I’m sure letting all the old people die would be good for the economy. Just remember, eventually you’ll be old too, unless you die first.

I’m an orthodox Roman Catholic and I agree with Jack D. Historically, plagues have led to economic booms for the young and/or healthy by clearing out the old and infirm, while massive population growth tends to lead poverty and immiseration. While I don’t wish a plague on the world by any stretch, I don’t fear it’s consequences, either. Plagues clear out social deadweight, giving the survivors lots more breathing room. It’s part of Nature’s cycles, which is why heavy resistance to it tends to have the same effect as surrendering to it, since having young healthy people be idle has as negative a consequence on outcomes as having them transmit the disease. At the end of the day, we all owe our existence to God’s mercy, even if it’s through his handmaiden of Nature.

Three million people just filed for unemployment: https://www.wsj.com/articles/surge-in-unemployment-claims-sparks-delayed-checks-amid-coronavirus-crisis-11585059384

I think you are about to find out that the rest of the world is not ready to live their remaining days in a closet in order to “beat our great adversary.”

Way way wait. More knowledge learned on a daily basis of a subject than at any time in human history? There was that interval during 1939-1945 that would definitely put that theory out to pasture.

I think Trump is a charlatan who sees that people are gullible and will believe anything.

Before this, I thought putting up with him for another 4 years was the price to pay to avoid swamping the country with illegal immigrants and allowing ‘woke’ people to throw every white man they can out of a job. And watching the tears of liberals around me was going to be a truly glorious thing.

Watching him mishandle an epidemic is making me reevaluate that. This virus isn’t *that* lethal compared to, say, Ebola. But who’s to say the next one won’t be?

Also from the Off Guardian website, though they may be using the same source of information:

https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/24/12-experts-questioning-the-coronavirus-panic/

One thing I’ve noticed is that this is one of those events when the crazy, irresponsible, tin foil hat view (“its just the flu”) is the view that is backed by actual experts in the field as opposed to TV talking heads.

Bullshit. This was all a hyped up false flag operation by the oligarchs in some Quantivirus Easing to shift Wall Street and the money supply. As Larry Kudlow has said, when it is all said and done with the emergency spending it could total 5 or 6 trillion. So, a portion of the $2 trillion goes to the American people ($1200 to some families and SBA loans for small businesses ) and the other trillions to Wall Street and the usurers.

You use White Helmets to initiate false flags to start Middle East wars for the oligarchs.

You use White Coats to initiate false flags to shift Wall Street and the money supply for the oligarchs.

The White House COVID-19 Task Force is run by Col. Deborah Birx, M.D. (U.S. Army, ret.)

Ron,

Your work here is stellar, really it is, but you and Steve are both being a bit crazy on this particular issue.

England supposedly already has half of its population infected by this particular flu.

So what the heck is a point of a lockdown there?

More importantly, what’s the point of this proposed law over there?

The NHS wants to “…provide indemnity for clinical negligence liabilities arising from NHS activities carried out for the purposes of dealing with, or because of, the coronavirus outbreak…”

https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/21/coronavirus-crackdown-beware-the-new-normal/

If Wall Street wants people to die for the stock market, too goddamned bad.

The only thing fouler than your mouth is the fact that I have to keep repeating myself to you people:

This is not about grandparents versus the economy

Wall Street doesn’t give a crap if no one works.

If no one works, the big corporations will survive. It is the small businesses and small towns who will suffer, or be turned into welfare queens.

For example, in Pennsylvania, the idiot governor and his Jewish transsexual Secretary of Health are forbidding dentists from doing emergency dental work. So, people with dental emergencies have to go to hospitals, where they typically get prescribed opioids. Classic “Kosher sandwich” move there. Pennsylvania has been particularly stupid, banal, and aggressively lately; they also briefly tried to prevent truckers from being able to take rest breaks in that state. But that is the kind of thing you’re enabling when you permit fanatical Democrats to have “emergency powers” to stop something that, according to the Democrats themselves, is only a problem because our hospital system isn’t sufficiently prepared.

If it’s true that 50% of Britain already has been infected, and if it’s true what Andrew Cuomo says that 80% of New Yorkers will get infected despite a lockdown, then the most obvious conclusion is that the able and willing should be allowed to get back to work within a range of basic precautions.

But you people, many of you supposedly dissidents, apparently trust the same governments who deliberately lied to us about the effectiveness of masks so that they could buy them up for their medical professionals*. Get real!

This crackdown is completely unprecedented in western history. It’s already worse than 9/11, but many of you can’t bring yourselves to admit that the big and wealthy will be insulated from the effects of this police state lockdown.

* Tacitly admitted by the NYT here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html

Not ‘Zionist Jews” exactly, but you could make a case for Jewish Emancipation, mainly in the 19th Century, paving the way for the virus:

– Jews emancipated in Europe after centuries of usury and money-lending

– Marxism (the Jewish projection that the competent are simply parasites)

– Collectivisation of farming in China

– Great Chinese Famine leads to Chinese having peculiar tastes in wild animals – snakes, bats, turtles etc, in order to stay alive

– Communist party formally allowing wet markets with snakes etc all mixing together

– Global pandemic

The UK government is stating that it no longer considers this thing a “High Consequence Infectious Disease” (HCID)”

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19

The webpage I linked to includes a definition of just what a High Consequence Infectious Disease is.

Nationwide we are recording 10,000 new cases every day. On the bright side the curve now seems to be getting linear, not exponential. But the idea that we can stop the distancing in just 2 weeks seems premature. I wish Trump would let the experts do all the talking.

WTH? How’d the software switch out my Rush video with Supertramp? Truly weird….

Here:

So the Zionist Jews, in their anger at the american gentile, targeted first…
…wuhan, China?? and then next!
New York City!!! Home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel!?

Wow, mossad’s really fallen apart. There used to be smart guys running it.

One thing I’ve noticed is that this is one of those events when the crazy, irresponsible, tin foil hat view (“its just the flu”) is the view that is backed by actual experts in the field as opposed to TV talking heads.

It isn’t just the flu.

But keep in mind that very few dissidents are actually saying that.

What they/we are saying is that it is a severe flu, but not as bad as Spanish flu, and certainly not something that merits a police state crackdown.

“It’s just the flu” is a caricature of an actually serious position. The caricature is being thrown about by bloggers who seem to enjoy doom and gloom for fun’s sake, by more sober but frightened bloggers, and by the media, who report every single death without reporting any of the tens of thousands of recoveries and benign cases.

If Wall Street wants people to die for the stock market…

Assumes facts not in evidence, both medical and economic. This is a simultaneous crash of both the stock market and employment, and statistics ignore comorbidity.

Yea, if Wilson had been healthy, everything would have been rosy.

…completely agnostic about religion, as most educated people are these days.

Speak for yourself, buddy.

(Nobody is suggesting that we should have a national day of prayer and contrition to defeat the virus–except, perhaps, the odd TV preacher who sees that there is a buck or two to be made.)

The national day of prayer and contrition is called the Sabbath. Unfortunately, we’re locked out of our churches all seven days of the week.

Is there any polling on how the elderly feel about crashing the economy to extend their lives?

Wouldn’t it be useful to know how the various age cohorts feel about the this difficult trade-off? Right now a few morally self-righteous, guilt-tripping loud-mouths are shutting down the conversation by asserting that no amount of material sacrifice is too great to save human lives.

Yet in times of war — and this is a kind of war it is widely agreed — we regularly approve of the idea of sacrificing the lives of a few (and they among the youngest and healthiest among us) in order to protect the interests of the many. Why is this any different?

But alas it is going to require all the eloquence that a real statesman can muster to put this question fairly before the American people, and it isn’t at all clear that Trump is the man.

Quite a lot of the people here seem to think “It’s Just the Flu

Remove the hysteria and the media campaign, and that is about right.

The hysteria around this is much worse than than “The Virus;” the overreaction and mass-hysteria campaign driving the shutdowns will be remembered as one of the biggest fiascos of our time.

Truly a monumental mistake to have taken this seriously, treating it like a nuclear war or like uncontrolled Ebola, triggering a major recession for nothing. The mistake has a decision chain with international aspects to it but I would primary blame the media, who in this affair have definitely earned their nickname The Enemy of the People.

I invite all to watch this by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, if they haven’t seen it:

If you inherently distrust all content in video form, see Dr. Wodarg’s website (German), which has much of the same content here presents, dispersed.

The German health authorities have tracked flu-like respiratory diseases closely over many years, and here are the results; the solid line is Dec. 31/Jan. 1 for the period in question, and each hashmark is a week. You’ll notice no significant rise in total flu, and the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons both worse.

And this by Dr. John Iodannis of Stanford:

“A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data”

That’s why I’m hoping we learn something from this. Covid-19 could just as easily have been another disease with the same long period of contagion before symptoms appear, but with a fatality rate of 30-60% like smallpox or the bubonic plague. We dodged a real bomb this time.

Right now we are flying fairly blind

I agree. The blind (the people) being led by histrionic, schizophrenic, and blind streetcorner-doomsday-nut mental-dwarves (the media).

It is more than the flu…. However, the reaction seems to excessive versus the actual events.

Let us compare WUHAN-19 to other diseases. (1)

average number of fatalities per year, worldwide, attributed to seasonal flu viruses (approximately 468,000); 2) the number of reported COVID-19 fatalities to date, worldwide, per the World Health Organization (18,440); 3) the number of seasonal flu deaths in the U.S. during the 2017-18 season, i.e., two years ago (61,000); and 4) the number of U.S. COVID-19 fatalities to date, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control (737).

The Fake Stream Media coverage has been extremely poor, overly histerical, and politically deranged. As a result there is a public panic. The government has to fight that panic even though it is not well grounded in science.

Q: “How long to maintain the public shutdown?”
A: “Long enough to deal with the panic.”

As long as the Fake Media keeps pushing anti-science, the government will have to extend the shutdown. Because Trump’s restart plan is grounded in science, the liars will not let it happen.

PEACE 😷
_______

(1) https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/covid-19-fatalities-so-far.php

Unemployment kills, by suicide & drugs & crime & poverty.

Bankruptcies kill.

Social isolation & distrust kills.

Totally OT I’m afraid, but surely the South Bank Centre in London, home of the National Theatre, has to be one of the most disgusting buildings in the world?

It has the air of a crematorium built by evil alien invaders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Lasdun

This is a national emergency, and needs to be treated as such.

Show me the bodies stacked up like cordwood.

The US health care system is singularly ill-suited for a pandemic.

The US and global just-in-time economies are completely unable to function without continual, steady cash-flow. They are unable to snap back from disruptions to that cash flow.

The economy has to get turned on sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you are going to see plenty of death from crime, cabin fever, drug abuse, social isolation, and general hopelessness soon enough.

As I’ve said, Mad Max is only fun to watch on TV. 99.999% of us are not capable of functioning in that scenario, myself included.

DeBlasio shutting down some pick-up b-ball. Maybe he’ll relent if the kids vow to play zone instead of tight man-to-man…

https://nypost.com/2020/03/25/de-blasio-removing-some-city-basketball-hoops-to-stop-games-during-coronavirus/

The major news in NYC this morning is that Elmhurst Hospital is now “ground zero.” That’s in a very Asian section of Queens

I’m disgusted at the people who think we should let old people die to avoid a drop in the GDP for a few quarters.

But they’re going to die anyway! It’s not like they’re immortal.

Which is worse? An old person who loses a few of their last (probably crappy) years of life, or a young person sentenced to 50 years of diminished opportunities. Studies show that those entering the workforce during a depression are permanently disadvantaged.

True.

Epidemiologists warned us Something Bad was coming soon. They just didn’t know when, or how bad.

And this will happen again. The next time might not be as bad, or it could be far worse.

Hibernian,

I completely agree with your sarcastic comment about Woodrow Wilson. (“Yea, if Wilson had been healthy, everything would have been rosy.”)

Wilson’s decision to put America into WWI was solely to satisfy his own ego – he wanted to dominate the post-war peace conference, at which he could attend only if America was in the war. He thought he was so smart and so persuasive that if only he was at Versailles, then he (and he alone!) would dominate the proceedings and craft a post-war peace that would make futures wars obsolete.

Woodrow Wilson was a fool, and a helluva lot of people (not just American troops) paid the ultimate price.

Had America not entered WWI, there certainly would have been some kind of negotiated compromise worked out between Germany and England at some point later in 1917. Millions of lives would have been spared. There would have been no Treaty of Versailles with all of its consequences. No one would have ever heard of Adolf Hitler. No WWII. No Holocaust.

Woodrow Wilson made the single most catastrophic decision of any world leader at any point in the 20th century.

To hell with him.

Yet in times of war — and this is a kind of war it is widely agreed — we regularly approve of the idea of sacrificing the lives of a few (and they among the youngest and healthiest among us) in order to protect the interests of the many. Why is this any different?

But alas it is going to require all the eloquence that a real statesman can muster to put this question fairly before the American people, and it isn’t at all clear that Trump is the man.

Like this?

More seriously, a huge part of the problem is that Big Entertainment and Big Pharma have convinced Westerners they are all going to live forever, or at least until 150 years old.

Another huge part of the problem is that the lingering elderly are a huge revenue stream for Big Pharma and Big Insurance. We certainly can’t be cutting into their profit margins, now can we?

“ The very casual manner in which he expressed his sentiments strongly suggests that they’re quite widespread within his social circle.”

The economic effects of the Black Death is one of the most studied topics by economic historians, and Jack D is obviously aware of this.

Ever think your tendency toward histrionic libel and paranoia, and ethnomasochism is why you’re a lonely old fool?

I have a family member in another state who was diagnosed with it. He is over 60 and generally gets sick with anything before others in the family get it. He has spent three or so days in the hospital so far. Hospital said he has is not seeing strong symptoms and he is being sent home in a couple of days.

His wife also has it and feels fine after minor fever. Others in the family who were exposed to them two weeks ago still have not developed symptoms.

The hysteria around this is much worse than than “The Virus;” the overreaction and mass-hysteria campaign driving the shutdowns will be remembered as one of the biggest fiascos of our time.

This thing is turning into the fiasco that Y2K was supposed to be.

Again, Big Media, show me the images of bodies stacked up like cordwood in Wuhan and NYC if you want me to take your hysteria seriously.

It’s not like it is purely a Federal decision to shut down or open up the economy. It may be necessary to shut down for a longer period, but there are enormous costs to an abundance of caution.

In addition, NY is larger than most European Countries, and there need to be appropriate strategies for each general region.

I know it was shocking to some that reopening was even on the table. But it was one thing to cancel the NCAA Tournament and another to throw millions out of work. People are getting (maybe) a few weeks of pay, so we need to be thinking of doing something else in a few weeks.

False dilemma.

The answer is yes: Maintain lockdown for sickly boomerds.

The answer is yes: Reopen the world for everyone else.

I, and every thinking rational person, made this decision not two weeks from now, but two weeks ago.

I have to agree. For all the panic that’s been whipped up we have come to the point where it is impossible for the cost of the response to the virus to come under the cost of doing nothing.

There are plenty of historical examples of pandemics in mammals.

Anyways for having the panic, what we are getting is a 9/11 moment for “biosecurity” which will further reduce the space available for human freedom. Like 9/11 there’s not going to be any coming back from this. Sure locking down now for this novel virus seems exceptional, but what happens in future years when the folks picking strains for the flu vaccine guess wrong. The precedent’s being set now that all lives must be saved at ALL cost, and so this new “security theater” show will probably never stop.

Never mind that most people aren’t useful for anything at all, the future of humanity will be organized as the most pointless factory farm imaginable. The sanctity of ALL lives will continue to beat out any concerns of quality of lives for reasons relating the the shortcomings of democracy, and the world will be poorer for it.

The choice if not whether social distancing for months is a crashing economy or a burn out strategy with more deaths for old people and a full economic recovery.

A burn our scenario means that the healthcare system crashes with no assurance that the economy really recover. The entire world is being affected. At best is would be a small, partial recover in certain sectors. Does anyone really believe that people will go back to purchasing homes, cars, or vacations while hospitals are overwhelmed, your dentist is shut down, and many people refuse to still go to work.

It is amazing how many people who are screaming communism because of being asked to self-isolate believe that healthcare workers, first responders, and law enforcement can be forced to go back to work in unsafe solutions.

Instead of worrying about a calendar date, everyone will know it is safe to ease up on self-isolation when hand sanitize, Lysol, and Clorox wipes are available at stores and the healthcare system is not worried about masks, gloves, or gowns. In addition, until masks are available for the everyman, opening up society is idiotic.

Yes, but studies also show that people who die are permanently disadvantaged

Here is something from the NYT

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-hospitals.html

13 deaths a day and this they call apocalyptic, the fear will end up killing more people than this virus will.

“Watching him mishandle an epidemic is making me reevaluate that.”

Our President is doing the best he can whilst hobbled by a hateful media.

I got a postcard full of common sense from our President’s Administration exhorting Americans to behave exactly as I’ve advised on this blog. Trump is not demanding or suggesting a lockdown – state governors are wetting themselves publicly and intentionally harming their economies to spite our President.

Your ire is misdirected. Our President proves himself daily an eminently wise leader.

There’s a big difference between wishing or wanting something to happen and predicting what is going to happen.

I wish everyone good health. I wish that the Chinese did not love bat soup and that we could have been spared this plague. I wish that the authorities will take reasonable measures to prevent deaths (including my own and those of my loved ones) from this plague, without throwing us into a years long depression that will take even more lives (and make many more people only WISH that they were dead). I wish that the US government bureaucracies were more competent than they really are and had really prepared for a pandemic instead of worrying about racism or other nonsense. I wish a lot of things.

But none of those wishes prevent me from making a cool headed assessment (and I have to say that cool has been severely lacking on all sides – naturally this is a fraught topic but it’s hard to make a level headed analysis when you lose your cool) of what the long term effect of plagues are on economies based on historical experience.

I have no idea what being a “Zionist Jew” has to do with any of this. I The predictions that I made regarding the long term effects of the Chinese Virus on the economy of the US are equally true for Israel – this doesn’t mean that I wish them dead either.

April 20th. That would be close to one month “down”. Its a Monday.

Ron, are your transitioning?

Jack’s saying true things. “once it is over” the post-epidemic world tends to be pretty nice for workers**. This is historically well documented.

But you’re shrieking about him saying something true and not being sufficiently mindful of hurt feelings. I.e. you’re acting like a girl.

Exactly the same sort of “microaggression!”, “triggering!”, “safe spaces” nonsense that is killing any intellectual life on our campuses.

~~~

Note: i’m well aware that in US, as soon as the epidemic is over … our “leaders” will call for … “more immigration!” to “rebuild”. Ergo destroying whatever small benefit a small epidemic like this one might offer.

Identical logic to “masks aren’t 100% effective, so don’t use them.” Trump’s not 100% effective, so we’d be better off with the people who called a travel ban from an epidemic China racist and are trying to ban the prescription of promising Wuflu treatments to own drumpf.

The mismanagement of the pandemic isn’t specific to Trump, it’s being played out across the western world because the deficiency of response is a structural problem inherent to liberal democracy (and in fact Trump’s response has been above average compared to most of the Western world, though still insufficient). Everything that might prevent a pandemic (closed borders, strict vetting and quarantine of foreign entries), or effectively combat one (technological surveilance, contact tracking, forcible isolation of the infected, travel restrictions) are illiberal and therefore seen as impossible because they are ideologically impossible to western elites. Since liberalism is the primary problem in addressing the issue, any other politician who is that much more within the liberal paradigm would almost certainly handle it that much worse.

“ No, they want your parents to die for the Dow.”

What an awful anti-science, anti-intellectual meme.

SFG, when you see yourself agreeing with Ron Unz doesn’t that tell you that you should consider your view a bit further?

A basic ingredient of advanced civilization is the ability to weigh the value of government policies that have economic costs and public and private health benefits. To take one example, the decision to add soft barriers to highways requires planners to use statistics on the number of lives they will save versus the cost of installing them.

Calling such weighing in the Covid context as dying for the Dow is really awful.

“ Like, really, guys, you think the people running things don’t have Mom and Dad holed up in the Hamptons with a lifetime supply of hand sanitizer? ”

The 0.1% are always going to be fine. They have far more money than they or their children would ever spend. Pointing out they will be OK under any particular policy therefore does not imply anything.

A prolonged shutdown would have an effect on the US economy similar or greater than the Great Depression. And it isn’t even clear it would save more elderly people than the disruption, isolation, and suicides would kill.

Trump is right to say the burden on those advocating this isn’t even close to met.

Coronavirus, Spanish flu, and the dark history of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’
Sir Arthur told the Royal Society of Medicine that Britain’s “major duty” was to “carry on” largely as normal, “even when risk to health and life is involved”.

In startlingly honest language, Sir Arthur told the conference: “The relentless needs of warfare justify the risks of spreading infection and the associated creation of a more virulent type of disease.”

Idiot argument, the great depression didn’t substantially increase the death rate. An economic disruption almost certainly won’t kill even close to the number an uncontrolled epidemic will, full stop. That it might doesn’t even border on plausible.

Like, really, guys, you think the people running things don’t have Mom and Dad holed up in the Hamptons with a lifetime supply of hand sanitizer?

That’s ridiculous. No one is safe from this. Princes have it. The frigging Heir to the Throne of England has it. Millionaires have it. Rich people are MORE likely to have it. Usually, the “World Ends – Women and Minorities Hit Hardest” (or the alt.right variation “This is designed to punish Deplorables”) is an effective emotional appeal because we want everything to be equitable, even diseases, but viruses really don’t give a damn about who they infect.

BTW, in the post that Ron cites, I never said that we should let old people die. I was just trying to give a rational prediction of the long term economic results. It really looks, now that our incompetent authorities have totally failed at testing, contact tracing and containment, that this disease is going to course thru our population whether we like it or not. Making predictions about future economic performance has nothing to do with that one way or the other. If I talk about the consequences of a hurricane (which BTW include lots of new construction and an improved housing stock once rebuilding is complete), that doesn’t meant that I wish for hurricanes or recommend throwing open the flood gates.

Which is worse? An old person who loses a few of their last (probably crappy) years of life, or a young person sentenced to 50 years of diminished opportunities.

It’s amazing how many people believe that what would be at most a few months, and most likely a few weeks, of enforced economic depression is bound to be a permanent lifetime depression. Where do they get these stupid ideas?

Ron Unz,

Whatever JackD said or did not say, do you really think that the authors of a world wide conspiracy to spread a deadly disease would casually announce it on your website ?

Quite a lot of the people here seem to think “It’s Just the Flu

It is like the flu except it creates a surge in medical demand, which creates additional problems. All this focus on confirmed cases (a function of actual cases and testing) and deaths (the single most lagging indicator) is ignoring the event that is the immediate cause of the crisis. Namely the surge demand for hospitalization.

This surge is concentrated and very public. As such, it has the emotional impact of a plane crash. People are shocked and horrified in a manner out of proportion to raw numbers. And the raw numbers are not small. Plus, it severely degrades the effectiveness of the entire hospital system, with the accompanying morbidity and mortality.

We need to explain why and how this is happening as well a way to manage the surge of hospital demand. This will last until the hospital crisis is solved. So develop data on that and you might find either an answer or at least some consensus.

Back to the Diamond Princess, out of 700 confirmed cases, about 35 or 5% required hospitalization. Age adjusted, its probably about half that or less. This is the data needed to manage this. This number has to be managed down one way or the other.

Germany’s death toll over the last four days:

March 23rd – 31

March 24th – 28

March 25th – 35

March 26th – 49

So, Sean, with three days to go how are you feeling about that bet that Germany would NOT have ten deaths a day from coronavirus starting on March 29th?

I’ve noticed an unusually large Covid-19 cluster in San Jose. San Jose is 1/3 Asian, according to Wiki. They have 459 cases for a population of around 1 million, and 17 deaths.

By contrast, Los Angeles has 812 cases for a population of almost 4 times that number, and 13 deaths. So San Jose has double the cases they should have and a higher death rate than LA.

About 200 people have died in NY state. That’s a bad weekend in Chicago. Just lead poisoning there.

It’s a transparent attempt to create 50% unemployment to get Biden elected.

Already many if not most small businesses are over. The people who ran them bankrupt. Their employees out of a job. Many permanently. We are letting prisoners out of jail. While closing gun stores. Cops are saying in Cincinnati they will not answer 911 calls.

Asians and elderly rich people are at risk. The rest of us not so much.

Steve and Rons principal mental failing is trusting the female hysterical media. They lie. Always.

Trump mentioned a malaria drug and every Dem gov banned it by executive order. What does that tell you?

It’s a serious problem for Asians and the elderly. Men especially women to a lesser degree.

Female panic and hysterical reactions are not helpful.

The media aren’t hyping Covid-19 in any special way. They hype everything. Hype is how they earn a living.

One of the things we are taught in management courses is that after the Bay of Pigs, US presidents instituted a dialectic process in policy-making in which different points of view were argued in front of presidents to avoid making the mistakes of the Abilene Paradox, by which everyone goes along with a plan that they personally oppose so as to avoid conflict with others.

This seems like common sense to me. I can’t imagine making a decision any other way.

Yeah but Biden’s been in a daze for the last few years, so it’s hard to determine as of yet if it’s virus induced.

I just tried to call my car lessor to extend my lease. The recording said if its about your lease payment there are too many calls so please wait until the week it is due to call.

So if one week without pay means many people cannot make their car payments, then the banks must either repossess the car and try to resell it (good luck) or write off all or part of the loan. But loans are made from other people’s deposits so millions of bad loans mean millions of lost deposits.

Government insurance can give you money in place of your deposit, but money alone does not make goods and services, otherwise no one would have to work. Business bank accounts are not insured.

Already I saw three “for rent” signs in stores of a small town I drive through. Last week 3.3 million people applied for unemployment. All the output they were producing is gone.

Is there any polling on how the elderly feel about crashing the economy to extend their lives?

Good question. I think you also have to take the possibility of suicide very seriously. Middle-aged men who lose their ability to provide for their families would be disproportionately affected, of course.

I don’t know enough about this to have strong feelings either way, but I certainly don’t think the case is clear enough to warrant demonization of either side.

You do realize that it’s way to play chicken little, and espouse throughout your lifetime that something bad is gonna occur somewhere, someplace, and at some time?

At least Jeane Dixon gave a few falsifiable details regarding her most famous prediction.

How about the elderly (I’m 68) and everybody else take some f-n personal responsibility for their health. If Washington, Jefferson and the other founders could have foreseen what we have become, they probably wouldn’t have bothered. Semper Fidelis.

I’ve come around to the Ramzpaul view, as he makes the best case of all the pundits I have listened to.

Isolate places like NYC where there are big numbers……and let Arkansas go back to work.

It’s likely that the virus has been here longer than people think, which means that herd immunity should be kicking in. Chances are that a good number of Americans have already been exposed and showed no symptoms at all. 80% show zero to mild symptoms.

I’ve suggested there should be mass testing, but the tests appear to be somewhat inaccurate. I believe that Japan and Korea have utilized testing to isolate the infected, and with mass use of masks have got the numbers down.

If Trump lifts the lockdown and people go back to work, surely the (((MSM))) will find ONE cute little girl in pigtails dying of the CV and blame it on the bad orange man.

Generally speaking young people are not in great danger from this virus.

My fear is that the lockdown will cause a depression, and with it massive craziness, substance abuse, suicide, rioting, looting, and civil strife. I predict a black chimpout a thousand times worse than Katrina.

It’s not a matter of “letting old people die” and this argument is both stupid and intellectually dishonest. If the lockdown is lifted, old folks should stay home, visitors should wear masks, etc. ,
and in fact most of the at risk elderly probably spend most of their time inside a safe space anyway.

I’ve seen quite a few clips of CV patients/victims and some say it was just like a bad cold. And of course I have seen the clips of victims on ventilators. Obviously the virus impacts people in different degrees of severity, and/or there are different strains/mutations of the virus.

At this point when I see math models my eyes just glaze over because every extrapolation is different than the last one I saw. TBH I’m simply wore out regarding prognostications. The other aspect is that NOBODY really knows how many people have been exposed to the virus, and without that information, nobody can make an accurate predictive model or death rate assessment.

I do think that people have gone crazy. The other day I had to have a prescription filled, and I got in line at the pharmacy….and a chubby young woman chewed me out, said I was “Too close, back up, observe social distancing!” I was really shocked. I was not too close to the crazy lady. I might not have been the full six feet away, but I was a good four feet in back of her. Her reaction was uncalled for and obnoxious.
Then when I left the pharmacy, there was a raggedy black man on the corner yelling, “SADDAM AND GOMORRAH! EVERYBODY GONNA DIE!”

Reason is a slave to the passions and it is interesting that the bloggers most frantic about COVID-19, despite being otherwise skeptical of the MSM narratives, are those who are most personally susceptible to infection. There is a lot to be concerned about with novel coronavirus but also a lot to be skeptical about.

When I read post after post of COVID-19 fearporn on a couple of popular hbd-sphere blogs written by older gentlemen it feels like a higher-IQ, more indirect version of “let’s talk about me” NYT articles. A marked decrease in typical levels of objectivity.

Maybe there’s an old-young deal to be had?

We old people to agree to open things up so the economy can rev back up and young people have jobs.

In return young women have to immediately go on a diet, hit the gym and have any tattoos removed.

If i’m going die gasping for air, i want to do waddling down the beach gawking at some first class bikini bods.

A basic ingredient of advanced civilization is the ability to weigh the value of government policies that have economic costs and public and private health benefits.

That is what they do behind closed doors anyway, then they find some moralistic reason for obeying the dictates of realism. However,there is no war on. like in 1918. The situation would be more similar to the Irish Famine and associated deaths from disease. A number of landlords were shot.

[T}he burden on those advocating this

It would be a very brave politician who openly argued with hard clarity against it, knowing he would be seen, rightly or wrongly, as having caused the deaths of thousands of people. For such a person, there would be the knowledge it could only be matter of time before some bereaved relative or loved one carried out a reprisal.

Compare Trump to a Senile Biden, Pelosi’s attempted bailout re-purpose, and the ossified FDA response and Trump doesn’t look so bad in comparison.
Perhaps Tucker Carlson would be an improvement, but he’s not currently an option.

As Will Ferrell says in Zoolander, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here.

We’re making massive decisions that are tanking the global economy, with consequences we can only begin to understand at this point. But we’re doing so on the basis of very poor data. We have little understanding of the real severity of this disease. It might be bad enough to justify what we’re doing, or it might not be. We need to find out now. This is absolutely critical.

Specifically, we need to know how close the Infection Fatality Rate is to current estimates of the Case Fatality Rate. In order to determine this, we need to know what percentages of various populations are or have been infected. There is a very wide range of estimates of how many people have few or no symptoms. If that number is high, the big fatality predictions we’ve been hearing could be much too high. If it’s low, they could be accurate.

Rough guesses based on the Diamond Princess, NBA players, and so on are interesting but highly debatable. To find out the truth, we need many tests of large, random samples of the population.

As long as there remains a testing bottleneck, we should be diverting many of the tests from symptomatic individuals in order to do this. Now that there’s community spread, testing sick people has less utility. People with symptoms should assume they have the virus and isolate. If they’re bad enough, they should go to the hospital. Tests are not needed for this.

Tell me if I’m missing something obvious here. We should be increasing ventilator capacity, preparing for all contingencies, etc. But random testing to determine the actual spread of the virus might be the most important thing we could do right now. Why isn’t there more discussion of this?

Spot on reply Jack.

Noticing facts, doing analysis and predicting are not the same as “wishing for”.

In fact, that’s the whole point of Steve’s blog–noticing. Heck i wish blacks weren’t as low-IQ, as impulsive and crime prone as they are. That Jews weren’t as clever as they are. Heck, that homosexuals didn’t exist. That young women were in better shape and didn’t have these ugly tattoos. That this Chinese corona virus wasn’t around. All these things would make life in America better.

But that is not the world we live in.

OT: If anyone wants to learn more about epidemiology (in the context of COVID-19) in a structured online learning environment Johns Hopkins is offering some programs.

The COVID-19 epidemic has generated both curiosity and confusion about the science behind control efforts, so we’d like to let you know about two relevant learning opportunities from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
• Fighting COVID-19 with Epidemiology: A Johns Hopkins Teach-Out, a free two-week learning event, beginning Tuesday, March 31
• Epidemiology in Public Health Practice Specialization, an on-demand five-course sequence that goes into even greater depth about the field and its tools, available now

Nowhere does our President advise a shutdown. As patriotic Americans, let us stop panicking and instead heed our President’s wise counsel.

Jack D, is simply being wrong in his prediction that a megadeath is an economic positive. But your giving credence to the theory that this is Bio-warfare by USA is anti-national, if not outright treasonous. I would any day have Jack D as a friend. You are a despicable leper.

This pandemic has revealed the fact that most people are at best borderline innumerate. Even among the allegedly smarter than average it is obvious many, many cannot fathom what “denominator” means – grade school fractions. Nor can most people understand elementary probability: “1 in 1,000” vs. “1 in 10,000” vs. “1 in 100”.

It is not possible to have a serious conversation with most people about the current situation, because it involves numbers different from football scores. Very illuminating. But also a bit depressing.

On the one hand, we view this virus which has so far killed about 3 out of every one million Americans as the greatest threat to civilization ever.

That is obviously false. But that is our consensus view. Fine. Let’s go with that.

Well, we are unable to do the one thing that reliably reduces transmission: everyone wears a simple mask in public. This gets R0 under 1, and that is all you need.

This is one of the most amazing and hopeful things I've read. How the Czech Republic, through community effort, got to 100% mask usage in 10 days, nearly all thru home DIY effort.

They only have 2 deaths and have no growth in daily new covid-19 cases.https://t.co/xsS4POZUs9 pic.twitter.com/9nAGCfjipt

— Jeremy Howard (@jeremyphoward) March 24, 2020

Even if a mask is only 80% effective, the odds of one person wearing a mask transmitting to another wearing a mask is reduced to 0.2 x 0.2 = 0.04 percent of the previous level. So if R0 was 3.5, now it would now be 0.14 for the everyone-wears-a-mask society. This makes sense: Every country where everyone wears a mask stopped community spread, no exceptions.

Instead we shut down our economy, have 100 million people not working, and still haven’t taken the first first step to stop the virus, which is that everyone wears a mask in public.

Our Congress was meeting continuously for the last 3 days on the very subject of dealing with the Coronavirus situation, a bunch of high-risk senior citizens grouped tightly an enclosed space for days on end, far exceeding the numbers they warned us about and C-SPAN shows me that there are zero masks.

To sum up, our strategy consists of two parts:
(1) Remove our economy.
(2) Let the virus run and get herd immunity (by not taking the central step of wearing masks).

If (2) is the path anyway, it would have been better if we didn’t take step (1).

On the bright side, everyone who sits alone in self-imposed solitary confinement as the nation collapses into poverty has exceedingly clean, if somewhat chafed, hands.

(I was hammering about how winter humidification helps and it still will — see https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-virology-012420-022445 and especially figures 3-5 — but if people won’t wear masks, which is the obvious first step, there is no hope that they will take that secondary step.)

Obviously a mask looks dorky, but you can wear all sorts of colors, and funny messages, and sell ad space. It could be great fun!

This crisis was so easy to solve. All the Asians solved it, by doing the same thing they have done for a generation.

In conclusion, to quote the Derb, we are doomed.

Noticing facts, doing analysis and predicting are not the same as “wishing for”.

“Describing” vs. “prescribing”. In the modern “feelz rule, realz drool” world that is not comprehensible.

“IF you drive that car without oil in the engine THEN it will break down” is not the same thing as “You SHOULD drive that car without oil in the engine”. But to most special snowflakes, it is literally the same thing.

One expects educated people to know the difference between what “is” and what “should be”, but one is almost always disappointed.

It seems like almost everybody is on the front line now, and deserves hazard pay, so once people are able to certify they’ve acquired immunity, they’ll be able to write their own ticket…

The longer it takes to start certifying people, though, the more critical systems are going to massively fail.

Netflix

You’ll notice no significant rise in total flu, and the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons both worse.

If everyone is isolating, washing hands, disinfecting etc then that should impact the spread of boring old fashioned flu and colds.

Santa Clara county, CA has announced schools will be closed through May 1st.

I guess teachers have decided they prefer being at home. Who’d have thought?

My three elementary age children are driving me nuts 14 hours a day.

“When should we shut down? As soon as possible. When should we decide when to open up again? As late as possible.”

Thanks for responding to my inquiries, Mr. Sailer. Still cagey on this front, but you are making ever slight progress!

“It might turn out to be a good idea to reopen on Easter (April 12). (It probably won’t, but it might.)”

Most likely Trump will already have made his decision by then on his own accord, or he might go against his inclination by actually listening to the medical experts. Maybe. Then, again, perhaps not. Right, Mr. Sailer?

Cochran on Ioannidis:

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2020/03/20/john-ioannidis/

Evidence the plant flavonol quercetin can inhibit viral reproduction:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercetin

https://www.longdom.org/open-access/quercetin-a-promising-treatment-for-the-common-cold-2329-8731.1000111.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4728566/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmv.1890150110?sid=nlm%3Apubmed

https://regenexx.com/blog/coronavirus-episode-9-can-quercetin-help-covid-19/

Gold box for your comment! We are not ready to #DieForTheDow.

The 40-50 deaths is dated. The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is over 1,000 now.

At least 1,046 people have died due to coronavirus in the United States, according to CNN’s tally. https://t.co/SGu5ipUxAs

— CNN (@CNN) March 26, 2020

One thing I notice here in the comments is the very odd and contradictory duality between those who appear to be total cynics about everything, and their often simultaneous criticisms and laments, complaints and nutty conspiracy ideas about why Big Brother and the medical establishment (basically everyone but themselves) somehow “failed” to adequately prepare for this.

The fake Wise Men (only men post here I suspect) spout foolish cynicism about why we can’t trust anything anyone says (other than perhaps some Chinese propaganda team) because they are evil and self serving. So Wall St., the feds, the Medical Establishment (their own doctors?), Big Pharma, the Trump administration, oh, and the Jews and Zionists, all want to make this evil disease worse for you and me.

But at the same time they hold an unstated belief that these same entities have somehow “failed” everyone because you know, they aren’t omniscient. All of these groups didn’t have stockpiles and detailed plans for dealing with something that didn’t exist six months ago. So they blame Mommy and Daddy for all of their problems even though they hate them and claim not to ever believe what they say.

This line of childish thinking is akin to an atheist blaming God for everything and also blaming God for not solving all of mankind’s problems. Snarling at something you claim you don’t ever believe or trust, for failing to prevent Bad Things, is an obvious logical fallacy at the very least. But being Mr. Cynic means never having to say you’re sorry. This isn’t just a right-wing tendency either.

POTUS is talking it over as to what to do RIGHT NOW!

JackD – “After the Black Death, wages went up because labor was more scarce. “

It’s true, it was a mortal wound to feudalism. If there wasn’t enough labour around to cultivate your land, you were desperate for labour, and you had picked up four or five good workers who were rightly the serfs of a baron in the next county, would you return them to him or keep them on as paid labour, where they’d previously been serfs?

But it’s a totally irrelevant point. Our elites will just import more cheap labour if coronachan impacts labour availability. The US and UK are still accepting visitors from all over the world.

Quite a lot of the people here seem to think “It’s Just the Flu!!!” and all the reports and projections of vast numbers of deaths are merely a hoax by the Deep State or somebody.

A remarkable thing about this view (in addition to its wild counterfactuality) is that, up until thirty seconds ago, the Deep State was enthusiastically promoting the idea that it’s just the flu and many of its mouthpieces continue to do so.

A few more thoughts on this Big Mistake:

(How the panic started, identifying the chain reaction and parties involved [almost all of them innocent of malice as such]; why the media loves the ‘Coronavirus Crisis;’ the inevitable Deaths of Despair, which the media will not cover; the inevitable lowered birth rate, which the media will not cover; imagining what the Definitive History of the Coronavirus Panic of 2020 will look like, when written in [say] the 2030s; political realignments, with many anti-Trump people saying Trump Is Right; a notable case of technology being weaponized against us.)

_________________

– A reply to Ron Unz deep in the comments of a previous thread on why the proposed 1.0% death rate is too high.

__________________

– How it started; identifying the sources of the chain reaction. For those who, like me, have come around to the idea that the Coronavirus Panic was/(is) unnecessary, a media mass-hysteria, the important question to ask is how it happened.

My thinking is this: The germ (so to speak) of this hysteria was the disaster-movie-like scary pictures of hazmat suits out of the Chinese interior (which, in retrospect, was the original, severe overreaction after what was arguably an ‘underreaction’ initially, involving government thugs threatening/intimidating a doctor; classic CCP).

A slow-moving chain reaction followed, which was international in character and which was pushed aggressively by the media. It triggered well-documented mass-hysteria-like behaviors that will seem embarrassing in retrospect. People started clamoring to “Do Something,” and it got out of hand, quick. An eclectic mix of people, some induced to panic by the media and many simply pushing their own interests, began demanding total shutdowns and indefinite closures, eventually succeeding to that end, all to all of our long-term detriment. Considering how minor this virus is (though it looks scary if covered with scary pictures and saturation-coverage shoved at you every day), this was even to the detriment of actual disease control going forward. Say there is a serious virus crisis in the future, something like Ebola on the loose all over America; after this fiasco, people will be less likely to take anything like that seriously (“remember Coronavirus?”).

Who were the groups that hijacked the ship, tied up the captain and his crew (some crew joining in the mutiny), and steered us over the edge? The groups, if we can call them that (often the better word may be “personality type”) that have aligned behind Shut Everything Down Indefinitely, are truly diverse — in the classic sense of that word. I am sure others can think of more categories, or express them better, but here are a few that come to my mind:

A prolonged shutdown would have an effect on the US economy similar or greater than the Great Depression.

It’s the covid-doomers who are coming to wild conclusions without adequate evidence, though.

Sorry, Jack, but that should’ve been addressed to Sean’s post, not yours.

Germany’s death toll over the last four days:

March 23rd – 31

March 24th – 28

March 25th – 35

March 26th – 49

So, Sean, with three days to go, how are you feeling about that bet that Germany would NOT have ten deaths a day or more from coronavirus starting on March 29th?

“It’s just the flu” was the conventional wisdom, trumpeted far and wide by every media, government, and expert outlet up until very recently. The Chamber of Commerce PR machine continues to promote it. The groaning army of conservative NPCs repeats it constantly. Describing it as a tin foil hat view is starkly delusional.

Hydroxychloroquine seems to work, and every day I am reading of more evidence that it will genuinely cut the duration of this pandemic.

Someone said that this will allow the country to gradually go back to work, safely. But it won’t be like turning a light switch suddenly from off to on in one day. It will be more like gradually sliding a dimmer switch up from off to on over the course of weeks or months. (Yeah, okay, scott Adams said it.)

Some of this is due to availability issues of hydroxychloroquine, which is one reason the government (other than trump) is not promoting it. Some doctors are already hoarding it, for example.

Of course, the press just goes against anything trump says, so perhaps that will actually help in this case.

Of course too, it may not work, but I haven’t seen many examples where it really didn’t work. Has anyone?

Check out Peter Schiff on U Tube. he is the man who predicted the 2008 housing crash; more recently he predicted that the Fed could never complete the normalization of interest rates; he predicted the Fed would lower interest rates to zero. And now he is predicting that the bubble economy, based on debt, will collapse even if the quarantine is lifted by Easter. Remember, he was laughed at in 2007 and 2008, he was right and all the experts were wrong. Check him out!

It’s amazing how many people believe that what would be at most a few months, and most likely a few weeks, of enforced economic depression is bound to be a permanent lifetime depression. Where do they get these stupid ideas?

They are not stupid ideas. With the damage done to certain industries like travel, tourism, hotels, oil, it could take years to fully recover, especially if people started defaulting on home mortgages and car payments thus driving down real estate prices and destroying people’s credit records. There is also the possibility of large numbers filing for bankruptcy over medical bills.

Certain areas of the US would be hit worse than others, for example in beach resorts many businesses might go out of business. Certain states would crumble. Large cities might become deserted, as has already happened with Detroit after the fall of the automobile industry and other formerly prosperous cities in the heartland of the US.

Civil disobedience and rioting could break out and destroy communities.

Are you familiar with the plot of the book and movie Jaws, which is all about a mayor covering up the shark deaths so as not to spoil the Memorial Day commercial bonanza for the fictional town of Amity?

It is a fact often cited that a majority of Americans could not find $500 in cash for an emergency bill.

Of course I hope, and I hope we all hope, that this thing will be brief and everyone will be able to get back to work, but it is not a given. This is how civilizations die. The Roman highways, aquaducts, walls, temples, stagecoaches, mail services, bathhouses were marvels of their age, but they eventually fell into ruins and walls and temples were used for quarries.

Wilson led to WWII by involving the US in WWI. The 1918 flu was bad enough on it’s own merits without further sullying it by blaming it for the results Wilson’s policies.

“…each day, the human race is learning more and more about our adversary.” We don’t have an adversary, we have two. As Sowell reminds us, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

I, for one, am sick to death of being accused of heartlessness for raising the question of whether this is worthwhile. As if trade-offs between wealth and life aren’t a reality. As if a depression wouldn’t have its own fatalities. As if a strong economy weren’t necessary for any prolonged battle against coronavirus (or the next one).

Grow up, people. There is no safe choice.

Man, Mr. Unz sure can get our local red-sea-pedestrians’ panties in a twist!

EL-OH-EL

But who knows? Maybe I’m just a gullible idiot and it’s just a hoax like lots of people are saying…

It is not a hoax, but is probably a gross political overreaction to a public health problem that could be dealt with by the usual public health measures in the affected communities.

When AIDS was a new disease in the early 1980’s there was a lot of hysterical talk by chastity campaigners, but it is still around and has rarely spread significantly outside the initial population of gays and people who shared needles to inject drugs, and some of the sexual partners and babies of those people.

People used to spread rumors about the virus being small enough to creep through holes in condoms, rather ignoring the fact that a virus is not a flea or a mite, but an entity that needs to be carried by some liquid or blood that cannot pass through a condom.

People love to scare themselves. People love Stephen King books. People love scary movies. People love to get on social media to scare their friends about the latest disease.

Most likely Trump will already have made his decision by then on his own accord, or he might go against his inclination by actually listening to the medical experts. Maybe.

Trump isn’t really the one making any decisions about quarantines or shelter-in-place orders. Those decisions are being made by governors and mayors. It would be Constitutionally questionable whether Trump even could order a nationwide quarantine (and it would almost certainly be unconstitutional for him to try to end a local one).

The issue has been though what the effects are of his comments and the federal government’s recommendations on the behavior of state and local governments, and individuals. Some Republican governors, like Ron DeSantis in Florida, seem to be taking cues from Trump in not ordering a shutdown. Conversely, Democratic states may just figure “do the opposite of whatever Trump says.” Such is the state of our politics.

My guess is that events are likely to make the decision more than anything else. If by Easter, the situation in New York has continued to get worse at the rate it has been, even the hedge fund guys Donald, Jared and Ivanka are probably listening to might have to admit “maybe we better wait a bit longer.”

What makes their deaths less important?

It’s the part about overwhelming the healthcare system that matters.

That will make it more likely for people to die after car wrecks, other diseases, and any other cause of being taken to the hospital, plus kill a bunch of doctors and nurses.

New York City is just beginning to feel the force of such a catastrophe. Look at Italy and learn.

Even if we were to be completely cold about it and abandon those over 70 who were infected, there would still be enough of those younger to overwhelm the system.

One can make an argument that it is the responsibility of the older to shelter in place, and that is probably what will eventually happen, but right now they are trying to avoid a sudden flood of critical care patients.

this is one of those events when the crazy, irresponsible, tin foil hat view (“its just the flu”) is the view that is backed by actual experts in the field as opposed to TV talking heads.

Good point.

I wrote about this in a long comment above which included thoughts on how this event has triggered a political realignment, or so I have observed/heard first hand.

Anecdotally, I’ve heard quite a few anti-Trump people say “Trump is right on this one,” often prefacing with something like “I have never agreed with Trump on anything, but he’s right here.”

It’s at least a temporary realignment, as long as the Corona Panic lasts, and they are talking about April and May at least. Maybe a lasting realignment? It’s hard to tell if it will be lasting, and if so, what the real nature of it is. At the least, maybe it’s one that has the energy in it to last thru voting day Nov. 2020.

Your observation of the so-called “tin foil hat” people being in agreement with the experts is another example of the same realignment, viewed from a different angle.

__________

I guess I am one of the “crazy, irresponsible, tin foil hat view” people who is very skeptical that this is the doomsday scenario we have been sold by the media and some alarmists. I have concluded that it is, to simplify a highly complex thing (see above if you want many more thoughts), a media -created panic for which people in the media ought to really be ashamed of themselves.

Like most the rest of the regulars here, I was following the ‘Corona story’ more-or-less regularly from its emergence in January, through February, when it was still something distant and theoretical in the US itself, of real interest to only a few, to those who regularly follow and analyze the news and world events. With all the data we now have, I have now concluded that it was a mistake outright to react as the world has done. Caution, yes; this kind of overreaction, no. Fiasco. The serious, actual experts (to the extent anyone has asked their opinions) are largely in agreement, it would seem, though others can’t help themselves from piling on and joining the pitchfork mob, and others are so narrowly focused on their field of expertise that they see nothing else, that all life, all reality, is as a disease-suppression video game.

I stopped actively visiting this site when I sensed the panic starting to emerge (you can confirm that my last comment before today was March 10), figuring it was not a good use of time, and decided at that time to also make a real effort to minimize exposure to the media (without cutting it off entirely), to the extent I could, sensing the oncoming mass hysteria; I could see the outlines of it. I thought to myself it would last a few weeks and assumed a good chance it would come and go by March 31. We are still in it, and with the piling-on (the serious mistake of society-wide closures), it looks impossible that March 31 will be the end; that plus two weeks maybe at most optimistic (Easter 2020, April 12).

Being that we always need/want more data, I wasn’t absolutely sure one way or another, as of March 10 when I stopped visiting this website. In the meantime, stepping away from actively following the Corona narrative from usual sources, I began reading, observing, and gaining perspective from other places, always with an eye to data analysis and the views of actual experts, to the extent one can find them. Sometime about March 15, 16, or 17, I realized we’d already gone too far, and was beginning to seriously question the Coronavirus Panic. By the end of that week (March 20), I had seen enough to be strongly against the Panic and the entire Corona Narrative. This Bubonic Plague or nuclear-war-like reaction was a serious, serious mistake. A wrong turn down a road to ruin paved largely with good intentions, to mix metaphors.

Reviewing some of the comments here, I see some in the same place, others not, again suggesting a political realignment along a new axis. I have great respect for the wisdom of the comment-section here. I have long known the commentariat here to be wise, rational, and above-the-fray, and therefore am not surprised that per capita many more here are Corona Skeptics, or however to label us, or against the Shut Everything Down Indefinitely mob mentality.

The US and global just-in-time economies are completely unable to function without continual, steady cash-flow. They are unable to snap back from disruptions to that cash flow.

This is a bug, not a feature, don’t you think? Unless one believes that steady state undisrupted operations are how human events work.

Seems like a lot of people have gotten that idea in recent decades, as it had been working pretty well.

This is a good time to check one’s normalcy bias.

“Let’s make the decision not 2.5 weeks before Easter, but at the last possible moment when we will know vastly more than we do right now.”

From your blog to Tucker Carlson’s eyes to the presidents ears.

Working people all over the country might enjoy having jobs and being able to pay for food and housing, education and health care after even after the current pan[dem]ic is over. I’d venture a guess that most responsible people would readily accept some increase in their personal health risk to preserve their family wellbeing. Wouldn’t you?

I know we’re currently being encouraged in the ethos that maximizing personal safety is the only possible human value but I don’t think men (who have as a class earned their bread and beans in coal mines and trench combat) are generally given to this sort of thinking.

Furthermore… the naive view of “wall street” as some clearly separable entity is childish. I don’t think most people even know what they think they mean when they say that. To take one example CalPERS (California public retirement fund) has about $400 billion dollars invested and about as big a dog on “wall street” as there is. If they went belly about over 1.6 million former school teachers, janitors, police officers, firemen, etc are suddenly facing penury in their old age. This is one of many such entities.

The financial profession has plenty to dislike but “wall street” in the sense you mean is ALSO synonymous with the accumulated wealth and security of the kulaks. There are certainly some genuine weevils in the community granary and yes burning the granary down may be an inconvenience to them… but what will the town eat afterward?

“The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is over 1,000 now.”

OK, so we’re up to 1/30th the number who die annually from regular flus, and 1/100th the number who died in the 1968 pandemic, when we had half the current population. Big whoop.
.
.

“Luckily” for us we have Corvinus to keep us informed of the latest Astroturfed talking points.

Well, Achmed, consider the conspiracy angle.

That Supertramp album cover has long been cited as one of many weird “predictions” of 9/11. Look at the tray held by the waitress. Right above it, the Twin Towers. The “U” and “P” look like a backwards 9/11.

The internet is trying to tell us something! Will we listen?

I make sure when I eat pangolins, they’re not fucking.

I believe he is a Gen-Xer.

A fairly simple answer as to why few in the US are wearing masks.

1. There are few for sale online or in the US.

This is chiefly because:

2. For inane reasons, the US outsourced it’s face mask production to China, as it has so many industries.

So the COVID-19 was not only originally “Made in China”, but now so are the face masks which can help go a long way to reducing the rate of infection.

According to the CDC there are 480k deaths from cigarettes annually. 36,500 from traffic accidents.

We allow driving because of its utility and cigarettes (almost banned) because of individual freedoms.

As others have said, end the shutdown and let people resume life at their own risk, with the following caveats:

1. People serving the elderly and sick (eg nursing home staff; nurses) need to self isolate. The government can subsidize them. Nursing homes and other similar institutions need to be in quarantine.

2. Let everyone know (like tobacco) that you assume your own risks and that for COVID-19 healthcare will be rationed by age. You smoke, you may die prematurely but it’s on you. You’re like my dad – in his 70s with two major heart surgeries – you self quarantine or risk death. It’s up to each individual to decide what precautions are appropriate.

3. Pass legislation for additional benefits/employment protection/leave for the old and sick that can’t work from home.

We can’t stop everything for this. It’s likely to linger for 1-2 years. We lose hundreds of thousands every year to keep our freedoms (smoking) and utility (driving). Looks like more people than average are going to have to die for freedom and utility this year. So what? If you have a problem with that then don’t leave your house.

Please run for Senate, we need your common sense there!

“Right now we are flying fairly blind. But each day, the human race is learning more and more about our adversary. Probably more new knowledge about one subject is being uncovered daily than at any other point in human history. So let’s not shortcircuit the learning process by deciding now when lockdown will be over. Let’s make the decision not 2.5 weeks before Easter, but at the last possible moment when we will know vastly more than we do right now.”

I’m a sucker for inspiring humanitarian stuff. I’m officially moving my position a bit closer to appreciation for this new religion.

I’m all for more human happiness and health too. If this gets us there that will be great. I only want my small piece of the pie. As a nomad I don’t know whether or how to receive my Trump-bux. But, whatever. Maybe the knowledge learned and the good will earned will both exist and do some good for us all.

Three Cheers for Steve Sailer’s optimism and let’s hope he’s right.

IF the death rate is still accelerating on April 12, most governors and mayors will not back off of stay at home order and social distancing. President Trump has done little to control the pandemic and thus, there is little that the federal government can change to get people back to work.

Do you really think the NBA will start playing again or Disneyworld will open up because President Trump says so while hospitals are still overwhelmed, one can still not purchase hand sanitizer, and the rest of the world is still closed?

The consequences to the economy the #ReOpen crowd keep crowing about seem overblown, and, as much as anything, like a case of “fighting the last war” based on experience from the last recession. I think too many people are just gun shy from 2008.

There’s no reason to expect that what the economic aftermath of this will be has to be years and years of misery. This isn’t a case like 2008 where Wall Street screwed everything up with their MBSes, CDOs, CDSs, tranches and other financial wizardry that created a systemic problem. This is an exogenous event that basically just caused a halt-in-place of a significant portion of economic activity. Pretend it was an asteroid strike, if you want. It’s reasonable to expect that when it passes, demand is going to be extremely strong. I had a vacation planned next week, for example, that’s obviously off now, but I’m definitely planning to take it again whenever the “all-clear” is given. Many other people will do the same.

As far as the consequences regarding credit, loans and personal finance are concerned, there’s likely going to have to be some arrangements made and some belt-tightening. The federal government has already approved forbearances on student loans and federally-backed home loans. Affected states and localities are instituting eviction and foreclosure moratoriums. The courts are effectively closed many places, at least for in-person hearings, so good luck getting a judgment against a debtor. The banks are probably just going to have to throw us a bone here and wait for their money. Given that Congress just forked over the equivalent of more than a quarter of the country’s GDP to them in “stimulus,” I think they ought to pay it forward a little.

One thing I’m worried about right now though: too many earnest, productive citizens who have never even thought before in their lives about calling up their creditors to ask for a forbearance, who would be ashamed if they did, and who are going to let themselves get into their own personal financial crisis as a result.

“ Plunging the country and, in our immediate wake, the rest of the world, into a second Great Depression is okay, cuz they, like, haven’t given that one too much, like, thought yet.”

Have you heard the phrase being bandied about that this pandemic is “the socialists’ 9/11”?

For alot of these degenerates crashing the economy is a feature, not a bug. If pandemonium panic causes enough economic discomfort then the media will depict Trump as Herbert Hoover 2.0, Senile Biden will be praised as carrying FDR’s mantle, and then it’s Goodbye Borders and Hello Green New Deal!

“This was all a hyped up false flag operation by the oligarchs in some Quantivirus Easing to shift Wall Street and the money supply.”

Wait, I thought that the Covid-19 pandemic would finally bring globalism and immigration to its knees, and Jewish banking cabal will come to a screeching halt!

https://culturewars.com/news/the-coronavirus-and-the-culture-war

Just as the Black Death, which carried off 40 percent of Europe’s population in the mid-14th century, signaled the end of the Middle Ages in de Mattei’s eyes, so the coronavirus pandemic signals the end of the American Empire and the era of Globalization, as practiced by oligarchs like George Soros. Globalization is both the perpetrator and ultimate victim of the current crisis because it “destroys space and pulverizes distances.” But because God is in charge of history Globalization finds itself subjected to the cunning of reason which has created “social distance, the isolation of the individual and quarantine,” all of which are “diametrically opposed to the ‘open society’ hoped for by George Soros.” De Mattei believes that the pandemic is bringing an end to “the world without borders.”

Same thing with the notion that it is an engineered Chinese bioweapon.

China appears to have been as surprised by many aspects of this virus as is the West.

Obviously a mask looks dorky, but you can wear all sorts of colors, and funny messages, and sell ad space. It could be great fun!

Dude, this is America.

Looking cool is far more important than trying to stay healthy.

One needs to look up what is happening in Sweden before discussing what is happening in Sweden.

On a per capita basis, Sweden has more positive cases and more deaths than the U.S.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

https://www.thelocal.se/

Cytokine storms are how this virus kills (mostly, there are some plain vanilla pneumonia deaths). Cytokine storms are triggered by genetic circumstances combined with age related immune senescence. That makes this thing very selective. You should take comfort in the fact that your relatives have survived.

Trump promised Easter, goshdarnit, and so like The Wall, it WILL be by Easter … not sure which year, but Easter, dammit!

Having read Mein Kampf, one of the things I agree with Hitler about is that:

The only thing worse than a “Zionist Jew” is a non-Zionist Jew.

That’s you Ron.

Hitler considered you a far more dangerous sort of Jew than the openly Zionist Jew and he was right.

The Zionist Jew at keast has a Homeland and a Nationality. YOU are the unconnected metropolitan, international Jew with no loyalties at all but to your odd ways of making money and influencing the public discourse based upon the peculiarities of his own mental illness.

YOU are the enemy of mankind and everyone, Jew and Gentile alike know it. None would trust you as long as your mishapen head. And nobody wants to be around you.

You still have a choice however.

The people who live watchingbyou disembowel your homemade Zionist Jew Pinata will happily disembowel you too once you’ve served your purpose.

The Zionist Jews hiwever will cease regarding you as the race-traitor TO CIVILIZATION that you are, once you stop being one.

I wish you well. What good people hate is not the sinner but the sin. And sin generally does not arise from a happy and settled soul. I wish you happiness and a settled soul. May you have all good things Ron Unz. And may the new you be a better friend to us all. Zionist and non Zionist and Mexican and Muslim alike.

Be well.

If people want to go out and ignore public health recommendations, shouldn’t those risk tolerate also sign a do not treat/do not resuscitate order so that the brave do not become a burden to healthcare.

People seem willing to accept risk until they get sick and then they demand to be saved.

Everyone should ask themselves if they would fly on a commercial jet if a jet crashed once a day. Unless one is willing to accept that risk, one should just shut up about accepting a much higher level of risk.

Trying to be done by April 12 sounds like a tidy little script:

1. Turn on Corona Virus
2. Scare people, close businesses, create financial havoc, get tyrannical with power grabs.
3. Pass a bill with lots of payoffs to buy votes and insert a bunch of unrelated legislation like D.I.E. initiatives.
4. Turn-off CV.

All done!

5. Wait a suitable period for dumb money to pour back into markets.
6. GoTo 1:

There, fixed it for ya’

…to save Boomers like yourself.

I believe he is a Gen-Xer.

Don’t expect precision from those who resort to such idiotic terms.

“So far no one has shown this to be more than a bad flu.”

Wrong. We don’t run out of ventilators during flu season. Many, many doctors have shown this to be a serious threat. It is SARS 2. If you believe the entire world is quarantined over a hoax, you need psychological help. The economy is not the issue. I don’t care what the stock market does, it had always been a scam and a grift.

Let’s be a real country again that solves real problems, not just worker bees for the banking elite.

And the economy will be ruined either way. It will rebound faster if the virus is actually contained.

Please stop listening to the likes of Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump. They are wrong on this and so are you.

Italy’s infection rate has almost matched China’s. Italy’s 8.1K deaths are also more likely to be what China’s actual death rate was at this stage.

I’ve always had a very high opinion of the PRC government, but they exceeded my expectations.

I no longer know if you are being serious.

As far as I know, and anyone can correct me if I am wrong, the PRC government has never been a big fan of alternative media.

Or maybe alternative media is not important?

Or maybe they just never needed it?

Or maybe I’m just not smart enough to understand your game. The other day you were praising Goebbels or Hitler joking about the Jews, which I couldn’t figure out either.

I’m missing something, and I can’t understand it.

It would look scarier on a logarithmic scale.

A: “Long enough to deal with the panic.”