Sometimes I’m slow.
There weren’t enough masks, so they told us masks don’t work.
Now they are telling us HCQ doesn’t work. What’s do you think is up with that?
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tanyachen/kaiser-permanente-lupus-chloroquine
https://whdh.com/news/after-trumps-statements-about-hydroxychloroquine-lupus-and-arthritis-patients-face-drug-shortage/
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-shortage-hydroxychloroquine-mothers-lupus.html
Interesting movie.
However, the issues not addressed are simple and can’t be ignored.
First, are current death counts significantly above what is normal or not?
Second, how bad is catching Covid-19? What is the CFR? How likely are permanent health impacts of recovering from Covid-19?
Great comment Urban Planner. But you certainly need to explain this sentence to the rest of us:
~40k deaths for every 1% rise in unemployment is a MUCH bigger deal than Covid.I have a guess...I imagine it means that when unemployment goes up 1% then you have more suicides, depression alcohol abuse, etc. All killers. Is that it?
Urban planning is a social science. Social scientists have been studying the effects of unemployment for decades. The stat I quoted came first from studies in the 80s but other studies since and around the world confirm these figures more or less. Google or DuckDuckGo unemployment mortality rates, wade through the current tsunami of covid coverage and lots of info shows up below the distractions. The Robert Kennedy Jr interview referenced all over the posts here also mentions these figures. I think he quotes 37k dead for every percentage point rise in unemployment. Then he references a real unemployment rate of (I think) 35%. Official stats right now are closer to 20%, but maybe he’s future casting or counting underemployed, gig workers who are ineligible, etc. Either way, the math utterly dwarfs Covid.
Unemployment has many direct and indirect effects. They include the ones you mention - the deaths from despair (suicide, higher overdose rates, domestic violence, high levels of stress which promotes sickness, the immune suppression and soul crushing pain of depression and loneliness) as well as things like lack of health care, poor nutrition because healthful food costs more, less sanitary and safe living conditions and run on, cascading effects throughout people’s lives like social ostracism and disconnects from society. These things are indirectly counted in mortality figures and play out over a lot more time. You can already see it at work in the US’s declining life expectancy. Poverty is insidious and right under the surface, or it was.
Covid will circle the globe many times and kill people, a lot of people, possibly as a permanent feature of our lives henceforth. But unemployment and its knock on effects will do far more damage. If perhaps this were a plandemic, just like with the Everything Bubble, Covid is just the catalyst. Covid can mask a lot of Wall Street crime. But the bigger threat is the depopulation bomb that was planted under Main Street and in the suburban cul-de-sacs and everywhere else people weren’t already subsistence living. Or, maybe it’s just a random meteor crashing into a crumbling and brittle economic and social system. The effect is the same.
My masters and career are in urban planning. My undergrad was biology. I’ve come to view this whole thing as a massive ecological phase shift wherein everything suddenly, seemingly inexplicably (though obvious in hindsight) changes radically. Some species or individuals are primed to thrive (think urban wildlife like raccoons, squirrels, etc) while some perish. Life goes on, but differently than before. Mount Saint Helens blows up, casts ash for thousands of miles and is hugely different. That’s how I see this.
Planners by our nature take the long view. My thinking is that this is going to get ugly for a long time and effect everyone profoundly. We have to find a way to salvage as much good for as many people as possible because they are us. And if we fail, well, in the super long view, something will work out. After all, we’re the mutants that survived the dinosaur apocalypse.
Unemployment has many direct and indirect effects. They include the ones you mention - the deaths from despair (suicide, higher overdose rates, domestic violence, high levels of stress which promotes sickness, the immune suppression and soul crushing pain of depression and loneliness) as well as things like lack of health care, poor nutrition because healthful food costs more, less sanitary and safe living conditions and run on, cascading effects throughout people’s lives like social ostracism and disconnects from society.Sooo the message ”stay the f$!,)@ home” has consequences.
The Robert Kennedy Jr interview referenced all over the posts here also mentions these figures. I think he quotes 37k dead for every percentage point rise in unemployment. Then he references a real unemployment rate of (I think) 35%.Remember when people have nothing left to lose, they lose it.
Remember when people have nothing left to lose, they lose it.I can't usually chime in to these conversations, because T-Cells, D-daimers (sp?), immune pathways and the like are distinctly not in my wheelhouse, but your line hits squarely within my area of knowledge (history). I'll just back up that line (spot on, by the way) with a screenshot of the powerpoint presentation I gave yesterday to my World History II students regarding Hitler's rise to power; namely how a political party that got below 3% of the vote in 1928 captured 37% a mere four years later... I support the notion of "stay the F**K home," but I also understand very well why people are equally concerned about the economic repercussions. There's no easy way to get through this pandemic, that's for sure.
marjay,
Chris posted this last night:
“Re: Plandemic Movie
Just a few quick thoughts.
I found the beginning with Dr Mikovits pretty compelling.
However, they really lost me by bringing in the Bakersfield knuckleheads. Especially when they spouted their unique theory of immunology which has people suddenly becoming immunologically naieve over a couple of months. You know, because they aren’t out getting re-challenged every day by pumping into other diseased folks.
Yeah, no. That’s not how it works.
If it were, then they could simply dig up all this amazing data showing how round-the-world sailors and people otherwise isolated for long stretches became sick when coming back into society’s fold.
It’s not a thing. It doesn’t work that way. Of course, the tetanus boosters every ten years, or the once-in-a-lifetime measles vaccine ought to have steered these fine gentlemen into some concerns over their theory’s validity.
Or maybe they should have stayed awake during those classes.
As I said - I wouldn’t want them as doctors.
But allowing such claims to be part of a documentary undermines it pretty badly.
Here’s my rule for pushing the boundaries of ‘acceptable thinking’; you can’t make silly mistakes when doing so. It gives your detractors both ammunition and an easy out.”
I have been reading your posts and it seems you believe wearing masks, social distancing, and sheltering in place are unnecessary. It seems you ascribe to the idea we should just go about life as if everything is normal and let the virus burn through the population until everyone has gotten it and we just “might” have herd immunity.
Is that your position?
I’m currently reading a book on the Wiemar Republic. It is the radicalization of political views and the convenient scapegoating that scares me the most - on all sides. We have more in common than we don’t, but you’d never know that by the reporting. Ask any random group a list of social questions but leave out the dog whistles, the bias, the clues and you find that time and again people from all races, religions, classes and political leanings care about the same things - health, safety, opportunity, community and a bright future for their kids. It’s the reason I will always bring up the larger society and not the <1-2% that jump into homesteading, which ultimately is just hiding from the larger world. (Not to say I wouldn’t enjoy the lifestyle choice that is homesteading. I worked on an organic CSA farm as a farm laborer with hand tools for the better part of a decade while also running my solo proprietorship as an urban planning consultant.)
I try not to wear the tin foil hat. And maybe I’ve read too much science fiction, too much actual science, too much history and too much ZeroHedge (this one for sure, especially lately), but what if this were (hypothetically - based on nothing) a depopulation experiment (though I really would hope that we’re just not that smart, coordinated or evil)? One of my climate change books suggested the carrying capacity of the earth is about 1 billion. That ain’t too many of us. Knowing lockdowns are likely to result in far more death through unemployment and poverty effects globally than are likely from the virus, I wonder hypothetically if the lockdowns aren’t as much about the pin (Covid) as they are about massive course corrections for the failing system. (Or maybe just making gadzillions for the obscenely wealthy.) We’ve lost, as of this morning, 440 US jobs for every US Covid death (understanding the stats aren’t very accurate). If this was a social experiment (or purge), I cannot understand why you’d put so many people in a position to lose everything, thereby radicalizing them because they have nothing left to lose - including hope. If they were happy with little pink houses and the circus maximus, why not leave well enough alone? Unless there are bigger issues at play - like population overload and global ecosystem crashes. Then, though, you have to hope that you can control the population in other ways - say the surveillance state and fear. It’s a bad movie. The other explanation, also horrible, is we stretched the empire way past its limits and got caught with our pants down. That seems more plausible, though that book won’t make an exciting screenplay. I wish I could say I was looking forward to the documentary.
(Also, I’m quite willing to be talked off the ledge, because I really am an optimist and haven’t enjoyed the rabbit hole.)
Nope, that’s not my position.
My position is let people have the dignity to work, put food on the table for their families while taking precautions to protect others.
Perhaps you are unaware of the 1957 worldwide Pandemic that killed 1.1 million people. No draconian steps were taken to imprison people in their homes and society got through it. The working people were not sacrificed.
https://youtu.be/P5LF8dwOhKM
I believe the long-term damage to families, businesses and the economy will be more catastrophic than the virus from this Plandemic.
Well maybe Urbanplanner. Then maybe not.
Social science is an interesting field. It is based on a great deal of statistics. These statistics are gathered in various ways by various people and are interpreted by various people.
Interestingly the number 40k which you cited comes from the movie the Big Short. This has been studied by many for awhile now and it is not a cut and dried issue. Apparently there is a bit of debate about this very issue.
https://www.businessinsider.com/study-recessions-unemployment-mortality-rates-2015-10
The studies that say the mortality rate goes up indicate it is primarily due to heart attacks. That would make unemployment a comorbidity of heart attacks. I have never heard of anyone having a heart attack who did not have a high risk factor such as smoking, heredity etc. .
I think reducing this into a simple quote lifted from a movie is giving short shrift to a very complex issue.
Just a quick back of the envelope calculation that would mean assuming a 20% unemployment rate 800,000 people would now be dead since January. Certainly that would dwarf SC2 by a wide margin. That would destroy Chris’s deaths above baseline numbers in short order.
I am not suggesting unemployment is a good thing, but I am questioning methodology and conclusions.
Ps I have been unemployed for long periods of time on lots of occasions (it goes along with my line of work) I never had a problem. I actually enjoyed the time off
I’ve not seen the movie.
Jim,
That’s great to hear. I imagine Kunstler will mention that in his blog tomorrow since he periodically talks about it as well as other shenanigans…
Linda
These are all very good points. But the analysis is way too limited. Have to apply complexity theory. Complex systems have many inputs and apply simple analyses is to invite failure. You can “open the economy” all we want but the economy represents a series of relationships which is undergirded by confidence. If I don’t have confidence the interaction is going to be positive I will not engage. The discussion has been focusing on the labor supply side, but in reality it is consumer confidence and consumer demand that is going to drive the economy. Until people have confidence that leaving the confines of their homes is safe they won’t be transacting. So opening up labor supply will end up being futile. Long story short, we have to fix the health crisis. Three calls to open up without dealing with this decisively is likely (IMHO) to result in our right economic collapse, and quite possibly worse than if we impair some economic activity but deal decisively with covid-19. Folks, we have empirical examples. This is demonstrably not a puzzle at this point. We have a myriad of examples and approaches to choose from. But we have to fix the public health crisis. If we don’t, I have no confidence America will remain an economic power because if people go out there and cases and deaths mount, all confidence may be lost and the economy might disintegrate. I would counsel everybody to look at this all in a multivariate manner. All of this said, we cannot allow the economy to remain shut down indefinitely, and we need to figure out how much activity can be sustained under the current circumstances (will require trial and error) but it CANNOT be full scale activity imo. Just saddened that we wasted the past three months (2 in lockdown) and we have developed practically no systems and procedures to figure out how to proceed sustainably. Doesn’t give me confidence if Covid-19 is going to be around for a while.