If the monetary system is backed by gold there is a limit to what the politician can do. — Nobeernolife

And do populist politicians have those limitations? Nope. Both Bernie and Trump wouldn't like it.

We have actually a great example of what in reality a gold standard would mean and look like in this World, not a hypothetical scenario where everybody is a libertarian and irresponsible regimes (and voters) wouldn't exist.

That's the Euro seen from INSIDE the Euro-system. It has functioned like a gold standard (inside the euro zone).

So when the Euro came (nearly) everybody was first really excited about it! Shrewd London City bankers understood that this wasn't for them. But otherwise the majority of European countries were for it. No more goddam competitive devaluations! No more currency risk with EU transactions and no more differences with interest rates as there's no country risk. Everybody will have THE SAME CURRENCY. Just like with a gold standard.

But what happened...

The Germans continued to have that awesome economy of theirs as earlier and the Greeks lied themselves into the system (with the help of the banksters, of course) and continued to have their weak economy, yet were now able to enjoy low interest rates in order to be as irresponsible as possible. And the irresponsible one's were especially the Greek elite. And hence who benefited from the system was Germany with Italy, Greece and Spain getting later into huge troubles. And so came the bailouts of the irresponsible ones. And yeah, only the stupid suckers followed the rules.

That would basically happen in a larger scale in a functioning gold standard: without the inability to devalue their currencies, the better economies would benefit and the weaker one's could use the devaluation injections.

And who would get it's ass kicked the most with a gold standard? The US. That's why the Russians just love the idea of a gold standard. It would be the end of the Superpower they think is out there to get them.



You think that those gold bullions in Fort Knox give you security? Nope! That gold would go there where the money transactions go, just like between Germany and Greece.

With a true gold standard, you simply couldn't just finance your forever wars, the most expensive and extremely inefficient health care system in the World and give your richest people tax breaks all the time. The economy likely would look more like the Mexican economy than the Canadian economy. Your infrastructure would be even worse. Your already not well functioning public sector would in even bigger dire straits than now when there's not that huge debt that you can just pile away like crazy.

And would people like Trump accept that? HELL NO!!! They would holler how the evil foreigners are stealing everything from the Americans! Make America Great Again!!!

But that's just a nightmare that won't happen. Now you can create all the debt in the world and have the central bank pay for it with the Fed adding those zeros on a computer screen. Now with over 5 trillion balance sheet. Perhaps 10 trillion dollars later?



Hence, better idea just have some gold in your investment portfolio for exactly these kind of times. All time highs in euros now.

Whatever you say, quarantines are an age old way to prevent epidemic diseases. And it works. Even if used before in Antiquity, the quarantena, 40-days, comes from the lessons learned from the Black Death.

You can whine all you want about how evil governments are and dream about an utopia, but the actions taken now are quite normal when pandemics hit.

(Even they had to be quarantined. Just in case at the first time...)

My understanding was that by the time the Americans invaded, the Japanese had actually left, so the Americans ended up shooting at all sorts of imaginary things and each other. — Nobeernolife

Your understanding is wrong. You are referring to the invasion of Kiska island. There were battles, like the fight for Attu Island.

The Battle of Attu, which took place on 11–30 May 1943, was a battle fought between forces of the United States, aided by Canadian reconnaissance and fighter-bomber support, and Japan on Attu Island off the coast of the Territory of Alaska as part of the Aleutian Islands Campaign during the American Theater and the Pacific Theater. It was the only land battle of World War II fought on American soil.

The more than two-week battle ended when most of the Japanese defenders were killed in brutal hand-to-hand combat after a final banzai charge broke through American lines.

But if only a few die, like 1400 American KIA and 4000 Japanese KIA, who'll remember it when there is mass carnage in other places? Numbers make the difference.

The reality of the Aluetian campaign comes through very well in the cartoons. People forget that Alaska was the state that Japan actually invaded. The harsh climate and the lack of strategic importance meant that the fighting wasn't at the scale as in the South Pacific, but it was gruesome still. That ugly side wasn't fit for a cartoon, which is intended to make people smile.

Notice the tractor, the soldiers and the mud drawn in 's last picture and in the picture below:

The glaring need for state protection of strategic national industries, starting with health equipment and pharmaceuticals, is no anathema for national-populists who have already embraced trade protectionism. But the populist right has strongly opposed welfare measures that are becoming a matter of necessity to avoid social catastrophe. Having repeatedly branded these policies as “dangerous” and “anti-patriotic”, these politicians find themselves in the embarrassing situation of having to espouse them. — StreetlightX

You are correct that this isn't an anathema for the right wing and not every right-wing populist party has a problem with this. It's only the populist who read eagerly Ayn Rand and believe in libertarianism that think this way. But even they can change their views.

For example, in my country the populist True Finns-party demanded alongside the conservative party (both parties in the opposition) that the Socialist-Centrist administration would impose a lock down immediately as the pandemic was breaking out. The administration first hesitated, but then agreed with the opposition and implemented this and the lock down came days before the first victim of the pandemic died in the country. Then, to the amazement to our young Prime minister, the opposition was satisfied and started to support the administrations actions. The opposition even withdrew an interpellation they had made earlier as it was deemed to be a distraction in the fight against the pandemic. Very few times in our history the ruling parties and the opposition has found an agreement what to do. This naturally this boosted the popularity of an otherwise wavering administration which was earlier floundering from one political crisis to another, but at least I'm happy that political parties can sometimes put aside the struggle for power and work together. Which isn't the case in all countries.

To prevent a pandemic will be an easy thing to accept as a collective measure. After all, armed defense of the country is widely accepted as a collective measure by otherwise libertarian people, who are against socialism. It's not difficult to reason that actions that prevent death on a large scale

I think it’s simply untrue that people would have done nothing, as if there was no virus ripping through the population. — NOS4A2

And the response is these kind of things that you feel are authoritarian. Society simply doesn't work the way that somehow without any coordination each individual just comes to the conclusion that voluntarily social distancing is necessary.

Well, people are willing to make sacrifices if that keeps a million or more from not dying. Without anything done that would be the case.

I've said it from the start of this pandemic: in this Century (or Millennium) people aren't willing to have epidemic diseases ravage through our population as in the old times. They aren't taken as a given.

On this matter I think according to principle rather than political ideology. The authoritarian measures have been taken by governments spanning the entire political spectrum. So perhaps you’re projecting a little bit. — NOS4A2

But it's really not about basic principles. Sweden and other countries are looking at how to fight the pandemic. If your country would be attacked and the war would not in a far away place, but close to or at the homefront, every nation would enact "authoritarian" measures.

The regimes abusing the pandemic to centralize power and implement authoritarian measures are either already dictatorships or populist administrations, usually so-called anti-elitists, like Orbán of Hungary and Bolsonaro of Brazil.

At least the Trump administration is quite honest about the situation. Pence admitted that there estimates forecast that the situation will be as dire as in Italy. That's the starting point. Honesty is a good thing these times.

I agree with everything that guy said. We aren't locking down because we know it's the right thing to do. We're doing what we think is smartest. We'll know more down the line. — frank

The lock down option is basically just to flatten the curve. Not to have that overflow of patients in the hospital and put the doctors into the worst spot to choose priorities. And then use this time to ramp up the defenses, get all that needed material and hospital beds and personnel ready to counter the possible next wave.

But it's a very risky strategy. — Baden

It really is. The effectiveness of Herd Immunity will basically be seen once the pandemic is over. The results of lockdown will basically start to be noticed in few weeks. Containment with large scale testing would be the optimal policy, but that option has been lost nearly everywhere. The difference may simply become too big and the public outcry for tougher measures might force political leaders to change the strategy.

I think we should seriously start considering nuking viruses. — Evil

That's the American spirit.

No really, when you start to think about this issue as really as an enemy which kills Americans and you can either fight it or surrender, then people will get the right attitude about this.

No, sorry, I will not fall in line behind these authoritarian schemes. — NOS4A2

Behind every scheme there is an authority.

Perhaps NOS4A2 hope is now that Sweden is successful in it's permissive stance in order to get herd immunity. But then again, this policy has authorities and their schemes behind it too. Above all, it has NOTHING to do with political ideology:

I do not see that. If the base is solid, then everything is solid. — Nobeernolife

To have today's politicians in charge of a monetary system, think it will be a solid base?

I am sure there was and is lots of shady stuff going on in the system. That is why e.g. Russia keeps its gold at home. But that is a question of cheating within the system, not setting up a system that is based on cheating. — Nobeernolife

It's meaningless to have a constitution and the rights of the individual written in law if the rulers disregard them totally. And so is when you have in the monetary environment the foxes guarding the hen house.

Oh my, if you want to ignore anthropology and related sciences, we are in trouble. I don't know how any good can come out this. — Athena

On the contrary, we tend to try to answer very difficult questions of our complex society by preferring to anthropology and biology disregarding sociology, the political sciences, economics and history.

"Why did the US invade Afghanistan and Iraq? Let's look at why and how aggressive chimpanzees are, biologist X has studied West African chimpanzee groups...".

It's like asking deep philosophical questions from a quantum physicist or a cosmologist, because they study things that people think is close to deep philosophical questions, not knowing that what they actually know is math & statistics.

This is really tricky! — Athena

Yes, would we even notice that you are a women if you wouldn't say that you are? The name in an anonymous site can be actually confusing.

Prior to 1973. I am not saying everything was perfect then, but there was less freedom to create fictional wealth with empty promises. — Nobeernolife

I'd say that was a confidence game. A system where the dollar was valued in gold and other currencies in the dollar gives the leeway for the US to be irresponsible as it did. Other countries didn't believe in it and so it was left for Nixon to face to the obvious and pull out from the system.

And this is the problem when gold is held somewhere as the reserve. Just who's gold is it is a real question. Current gold markets show this obvious failure, where in the end some markets can pay in cash if for some reason they don't have the gold.

Return to what?

The system prior 1973? Or 1933? And even then, there was the lure to borrow that gold, because people wouldn't demand the solid metal.

Sweden has some of the least hospital beds per capita so they will run up against the limits of their health care capacity quickly. — Benkei

Of the 88 homes for the elderly and nursing homes in the Stockholm area at least every third has corona infections. :mask: (article in Swedish)

So I guess NOS4A2 shouldn't get his hopes up that Sweden will be an exemplary model on how to deal with the corona-virus without lockdowns and other "police-state measures".

Some economists are predicting a return to the gold standard. I hope they are right. In the long term that will be good. But it would definitely not be easy or painless. — Nobeernolife

Even a gold standard is a confidence game. I'd the best role for gold is what it has now. It's a good investment and performs well along other currencies. And those that think that it has no value, you are wrong: if gold cost 1 cent per kilo, we would use it in a lot of things starting with coating our water pipes with it.

↪ssu Prepare for the next jobless recovery. — Benkei

Fun fact: the divide between the rich and poor closes during economic depressions. But then there's the "recovery". The outcome might be less rich people, more poor people with the gap widening again.

Well, you would have to take that up with the epidemologists who came up with the 200.000 figure. I am pretty sure Trump did not do the math himself. — Nobeernolife

The pandemic in Italy isn't contained yet. So there is that issue as now it's just really starting in the US

If we assume that South Korea has beat the first wave of the pandemic (and trust South Korean stats), their turning of the tide happened when they hit 5100 infections. Now they are at nearing 10 000 cases in all. So I guess at the peak very roughly half of the infections have happened. So there comes the 200 000 figure.

So the way I interpret it is that the epidemiologists think the US is going the way as Italy.

Sweden is an interesting case as they have avoided going full authoritarian and is instead banking on personal responsibility idea. In due time we’ll see how this approach has faired in comparison to the lockdowns and police-states of their neighbors. — NOS4A2

I've mentioned it few times on the thread. It will surely be interesting to see as this will be something that experts will be looking at later.

I think sooner or later prime minister Stefan Löfven will crumble under the pressure if the death toll starts rising too much compared Denmark, Finland and Norway. Btw there's here a serious row here about workers going cross the Northern Swedish-Finnish border to work even if the country ought to have closed it's borders. Sweden wouldn't like if all those Finnish health care workers wouldn't come to work there. For us it seems that the close-borders-lock-down isn't as air tight. So I guess we can have it here as bad as everywhere else.

We know the CCP suppressed and coerced its own doctors in the typical bureaucratic form of Communist parties throughout history, but now US intelligence is saying they are faking their numbers, which could prove disastrous. — NOS4A2

Well, you have those travel bans, right? Even for China it may be difficult to hide hundred thousand deaths (hundreds or thousands, yes). Actually Trump's great fan, the Brazilian president Bolsonaro is quite open about that he simply doesn't like the numbers either (as the Chinese).

From Brazil:

Bolsonaro said that in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazi's economic powerhouse, the death toll seemed “too large.” Sao Paulo has the most cases and deaths so far of coronavirus in Brazil, at 1,223 cases and 68 deaths. “We need to look at what is happening there, this cannot be a numbers game to favor political interests,” Bolsonaro said.

The epidemologist experts are predicting 200,000. I would say half of that is a good job. What number would you, in your apparent infinite wisdom, call a good job? — Nobeernolife

It's a good prediction...if you still have some states open and without a serious lock-down as you already have lost the containment phase and aren't prepared for it. Something equivalent to other OECD countries would be good.

Italy has now 218 deaths per million. South Korea 3 per million. Now the US is at 14 per million. Now to have the similar death rate as Italy now would mean 71 940 deaths. So that will give you roughly the ball park where 100 000 deaths is.

Trump knows that telling a lie or something crazy (like 100 000 dead is a good job) works. He's gets constantly into the focus of the media. It's the reason why he cleared all those othe candidates in the first place. I'm sure that actual Trump supporters don't follow Trump's remarks and tweets as observantly as you actually do. They observe more just that the mainstream media is again and again outraged at Trump and when it's the lying pinko-liberal media being outraged, that's just good.

And let's face it, this old man really has a lack of empathy and doesn't have the capability to focus on multidimensional issues. For a lot of people it's hard to understand what is the difference 10 000 people, 100 000 people or a million people. You can picture ten people, perhaps a classroom, but thousands is more difficult. Trump may understand the difference in dollars, but dollars aren't people with families and loved ones.

Anyway, let's hope the US gets it act together and we don't go from the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands or a million, because at the worst possible case it could do that. The positive side is that after this ordeal the US could get a genuine true health care reform. If only Americans start looking at defense against viruses in order to save American lives as they look at the defense against terrorist attacks.

Here's a good recap of why the present system has made United States so weak and vulnerable unlike other OECD countries.

A counterargument would be that how the US and the West came out of WW2. Then you had limitations on private consumption. That built a lot of hidden demand. You see, this has been an event of involuntary halting of consumer spending. How does that change the picture? This year is lost. Is next year lost? The following year too is negative growth?

The technical rebound will happen. Now consumption is dramatically reduced. Travel is banned. The downturn is a free fall. Shelter in place will have it's consequences. Once you stop it, there is the technical rebound. Even if you are midst of the worst economic depression of all time and that rebound doesn't correct anything.

There is certainly a degree of hysteria. Such is the internet! — I like sushi

Hmm.. I think that when your President is speaking about the option of 100 000 dying being the option where they have done a 'good job', that might spread a bit hysteria.

The Swedish Prime minister said Swedes shouldn't panic. Some Swedish doctors are getting a bit nervous:

A petition signed by more than 2,000 doctors, scientists, and professors last week – including the chairman of the Nobel Foundation, Prof Carl-Henrik Heldin – called on the government to introduce more stringent containment measures. “We’re not testing enough, we’re not tracking, we’re not isolating enough – we have let the virus loose,” said Prof Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, a virus immunology researcher at the Karolinska Institute. “They are leading us to catastrophe.”

Strong words, but stoicism is a way of life here, as is unflappability. A 300-year history of efficient and transparent public administration, and high levels of trust in experts and governing officials, have left the public inclined to believe what they are told, and that those doing the telling have their best interests at heart.

“I trust that the doctors working with the government know what they are doing, so I suppose we’re as well prepared as we can be,” Robert Andersson, 50, a vendor manager in IT who lives in Södermalm, Stockholm, said. “This ‘hysteria’ that the media is launching is far more dangerous than the virus itself.”

Let's see how Sweden goes. Interesting to see.

(Our neighbors taking it easy. Remember when cafes and restaraunts were open?)

We're talking Nixon? I think if he knew how China was going to turn out he wouldn't have bothered. The dream of "good world citizen China" isn't working at all. Nixon did see how big they'd be though. Maybe it's still too soon to know. — fishfry

No, actually the time of Perot. China's economy was still rather small in 1990. Or lets say that Netherlands GDP is actually large, the 17th biggest in the World. China was small back then. Remember that the country feared famine in the 1970's and even 1980's.

Shanghai traffic in the 1970s, note the horse drawn wagon:


Shanghai in the 1980s, still bicycles:


Shanghai traffic in the 2010s:

Ok. Just tell me this. Why wasn't there a national panic and stay-at-home orders when 80,000 died of the flu in 2016. Yes R-zero and flatten the curve and exponential growth and death rates and so forth, I read the papers too. But really, 80,000's a lot. Nobody said a word. Why is that, exactly? — fishfry

1) Because we have the capability to prevent pandemics.
2) Because we don't tolerate the idea of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands dying because of a pandemic in this Century.

Just how did you react to 9/11? You see, at other times you could have simply stated that it was a bad thing, yet as a crime it is a police matter: Have the FBI hunt down the perpetrators just like they had with the earlier bombing. Have OBL go to a US jail. No wars.

Just from a civil liberties point of view, this is all disturbing. — fishfry

It might be. What's happening in Hungary is disturbing. But ask if New Yorkers want this experience that they are now experiencing to be a re-occurring event. I don't think they will be OK with that. I think after this pandemic, their attitude will be "never again". And they won't care a shit if you or anybody else comes to say that shelter-in orders or putting people into quarantine when coming from an area with an epidemic is against civil liberties.

I've heard it said that Trump's supporters take him seriously but not literally; and his detractors take him literally but not seriously. — fishfry

Now that's a great way to put it!

I always try to look at administrations beyond their figurehead leader, be it a president or a prime minister. Here with this pandemic it's obvious that crucial part of the response and the policy actions are taken by the states. Rerunning Trump's gaffes isn't so important.

I think a lot of damage is being done to the economy the longer this drags on. Tomorrow's rent day, millions of unemployed people and small business owners won't be paying their rent. This thing could go south. I have no idea. — fishfry

Well, what will happen is the technical rebound at some stage: when the first pandemic wave is over, when the infections and deaths decrease and when people come out after the "all clear, but use caution" sign is given. When they open the restaurants again I'll go to eat with my family. I think many others will too. Life continues. With the massive halt now taken there will be that uptick. I assume that rebound won't go far and naturally will not erase the destruction already taken place. So the question is as we have lost this year, how about the next one?

I see some forseable problems with this: — schopenhauer1

II) Trying to stop wet markets like in Wuhan would simply drive the business underground. It would be replicated in rural regions which would be logistically harder to monitor. — schopenhauer1

When I was a small boy it was great to feed birds at winter time. In the city parks there would be so tame (or so bold) little birds that they would even come eat from your hand. My father forbid me to do that and warned that also I should not try to touch ducks or other birds. When I asked him why, he said that not only could a small parasite try to jump to you, but I could get a very nasty flu from a little bird. He is a devoted ornithologist, but also a virologist. Now perhaps it might come more common to know that you can get Avian Influenza or other zoonotic diseases of some sort from interaction with wild animals. And that can change our customs.

Never underestimate collective learning and the changes in time.

I think Chinese & South East Asian customs can change and I think these experiences (SARS, birdflu, Corona-virus etc) can easily make those changes to old customs too. Naturally China and other countries will crack down on the "wet markets" and as you said it will go (and in many places has gone) underground, but also I think (and I hope) that it's not going to be so wildly popular anymore. It's a loosing market, especially when wild animals become so rare. The xenophobic hostility against "bat-soup eating Chinese" might be something popular in the West, but I assume that even in China what is acceptable can change. Not only is there widespread condemnation of it, but calls for an global ban on wildlife markets is something that can happen

1) Is it right to ask another culture to change its practices, when those practices affect the health of the whole world, or would this be just cultural insensitivity played out as public health missionizing? — schopenhauer1

What kind of question is this? As if practices that affect the health of the whole world would be culturally sensitive and go against multiculturalism? It sounds like you would assume someone would use the multiculturalism card on this case. I don't think so. I think that as the whole World, once containment hasn't worked, has opted to wreck the economy in order to save lives tells that the World takes the pandemic seriously. Human life is valued even in the worst places in this World.

It is acknowledged that in some areas (maybe in rural China or Africa or Southeast Asia), perhaps wild animals is all there is for protein consumption — schopenhauer1

Not so. Likely wild animals go far earlier extinct because of climate change than the last domesticated cow or chicken is eaten. The Chinese diet has gone the other way (more meat). And let's remember that human kind will likely hit Peak population soon as with prosperity fertility goes down.

Also, on a slight tangent, others might defend the exotic animals trade and markets similar to defending coal. Shutting down the trade, just like shutting down coal mining and coal plants, would be negatively effecting the economy. Are economic considerations more important for the exotic animal traders and sellers? — schopenhauer1

How big you think is the exotic animal trade? Exotic wild animals are usually in the ten thousand, hundred thousand range, perhaps one million. There are roughly about 1,5 billion cows on the Planet. Notice the scale difference?

Coal? Let's take another example. Do you know what is a really serious health hazard?

Cooking with an open fire.


It's one of the worst things you can do, if you do it every day from year after year and inhale daily that nice sweet smoke of burning wood (or dung or whatever). In the poorest countries it's a real health hazard. But here the economic aspects are obvious compared to exotic animals trade. Poor people without ovens or electricity would gladly get that microwave oven and modern kitchen. But they can't. So they chop up the wood and help desertification etc. because as poor they cannot do anything else. You cannot ban people from being poor. Exotic animals are different starting with the economic scale of the problem.

Coming back to one topic earlier discussed, seems that at least the judicial system works:

The Justice Department is investigating stock trades made by at least one member of Congress as the United States braced for the pandemic threat of coronavirus, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The investigation is being coordinated with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and is looking at the trades of at least one lawmaker, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

As head of the powerful committee, Burr received frequent briefings and reports on the threat of the virus. He also sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which received briefings on the pandemic.

New York has also done more testing than the UK, France, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark. — NOS4A2

True. Yet the death toll then? For example, the Nordic countries far have more people (27 million) than New York State (19 million) and the death toll now:

Norway: 32
Sweden: 146
Denmark: 77
Finland: 13
Iceland: 2
New York State: 1218

Anyway, here comes to play the status of NYC being a global hub and the simple fact that without a lock down there is extreme difficulty for social distancing in Manhattan.

True. Wonder how ugly it will be when the pandemic hits in earnest Mexico City. Just got back from there before the World went upside down from the pandemic and my wife has family and friends there.

And we got our first Euro-Dictator with Hungary's Victor Orbán. Now he got powers include sidelining parliament and giving himself the power to rule by decree indefinitely.

"The irony is that the government is giving itself extreme powers,"
he (Gabor Gyori, a political analyst) says, but "it is not taking any extreme measures" when it comes to combating the coronavirus.

With Trump talking about possibly millions of deaths and hoping that we could get it to hundred thousand, I think Donald is finally understanding the scope of the issue. This is the good time for a power grab by emergency powers.

The state of New York overtook Germany in the number of infections (and deaths) as it had done earlier the United Kingdom. Compared by population, the UK is three times larger and Germany four times larger than New York State. Only China, Spain and Italy have more infections, if we look at the official numbers.

I hope nobody wins the nomination, — darthbarracuda

Your hoping that Bernie loses the least or what?

We'll see if he's right. It'll be sumpin if he is. — Hanover

The hope you have lived by for the last four years.

Perhaps finally Mexicans will build that wall and we Trump-doubters have all been wrong:

Mexican protesters have shut a US southern border crossing amid fears that untested American travellers will spread coronavirus.

Residents in Sonora, south of the US state of Arizona, have promised to block traffic into Mexico for a second day after closing a checkpoint for hours on Wednesday.

They wore face masks and held signs telling Americans to "stay at home".

See Coronavirus: Mexicans demand crackdown on Americans crossing the border

They've had the 'advantage' - if you can call it that - of knowing full well that their health institutions will not be able to handle the pandemic if it grows out of control there, so have been crazy pro-active in trying to prevent it's intrusion into the community. Seems to be holding fast so far, one only hopes it keeps up. — StreetlightX

Well, they got their version of South Korea's Patient 31, the "Super-spreader".

At least 15,000 people who may have caught the new coronavirus from a Sikh religious leader are under strict quarantine in northern India after the man died of COVID-19.

The 70-year-old preacher, Baldev Singh, had returned from a trip to Europe's virus epicentre Italy and Germany before he went preaching in more than a dozen villages in Punjab state.

Bad luck if true, I guess. But politically correct for the current administration, as the case is about a sikh, not a hindu.

They all describe a situation where the operation happens on a higher level of abstraction to the usual way it operates.

If we understand metaphysics to be about the "reality behind reality", then that's exactly what we're doing - going to a higher level of abstraction. — Echarmion

Going on a higher level of abstraction changes the game.

And it's really only abstraction, not in the sense of sciences can be abstract. There isn't any way to verify anything of the metaphysical. Otherwise it wouldn't be metaphysical.

Wouldn't that just be sociology? — Echarmion

Perhaps if you define sociology or social sciences in the broadest way. It surely isn't metaphysics.

Thus, is science really devoid of metaphysics? It would seem to me that no, science is not devoid of metaphysics, and also has some theories that pertain to the domain of metaphysics.

Would you agree with this? — Shawn

The metaphysical by it's definition ought to lie out of reach of the scientific method as from one point of view quite well explained.

Perhaps the reason for the misunderstanding is that we nowdays use the term meta- quite trivially. For example, we use the term metatext, a text that describes or discusses text. And that of course is totally normal text and nothing to do with metaphysics. Or then there's metaprogramming, where a computer running a program treats other programs as data. Again, that is an ordinary computer program.

Hence just to talk about science, use the scientific method to study the process of people making science isn't anything meta at all, and totally misses the point of metaphysics. A metaphysical question would be like asking about the universe looking at the universe from outside the universe.

Speaking of Darwin, the award goes to...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/24/liberty-university-reopens-despite-coronavirus-closure-calls-jerry-falwell-jr?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR2Tr7pQIYVN5qq79Uk8jdRdIB3EVBBCLAwYypw8MLoF9qDPHW_ex4Sbj-M

What was that about Jesus, again? — unenlightened

The story continues....

Eleven students who attend Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, have come down with coronavirus symptoms after returning to campus. - Nonetheless, 1,900 students returned to campus last week, but 800 have since left

See article

However, not everything is at what it first seems like. Perhaps this interview with Falwell clears a little bit the situation (and shows what Falwell's is really thinking about the pandemic). From four days ago:

People have been predicting the burst of this 2008 Fed-induced bubble since 2008! — fishfry

And that's the problem.

It was 12 years ago. 12 years is quite a long time in the lifespan of anybody. And typically the forecasters can be divided into "bears" and "bulls" that unfortunately turn into permabears and permabulls, talking just to a specific crowd that either wants to be pessimistic or optimistic. It's hard first to paint a picture of doom & gloom and then suddenly change it to a rosy dawn with great optimism. Or vice versa. I remember this one commentator I've followed who was very bullish about gold (before and in the start of the great recession), yet then changed his view and finally disregarded the hyperinflation argument. He got at first so much flak from his audience that basically he stopped answering questions of the public.

And people politicize these issues. Those buying gold started to be the Tea-party type libertarians while on the other side the liberals upholded Paul Krugman etc. as real economists to be listened to. The idea of "right" and "wrong" economists isn't the way one should approach these issues: one economist has one point, another has another point. Hopefully we won't see a similar politicization of the response to corona-virus, but those lines can be seen emerging with Trump "let's go back to work" attitude and with his opposition.

you didn't have to be a Senator to see this coming one way or the other. — fishfry

And will we have a long economic depression or can it be a shorter sharper depression? Is that easy to predict too?

Baden: Your prediction of 150,000 is pretty much on the money. — Andrew M

Baden wins!

People (like Bitter Crank, Benkei etc.) have made good forecasts on this thread, which was started 25th of February. I have to admit that I'm not one of them. I assumed that this would be on the line of previous outbreaks in this Century and thought it would be something equivalent of the SARS outbreak. No cigar for that one.

Flying blind. At the other extreme, New Zealand have been on lockdown for several days and had it's first death yesterday. — Andrew M

We had too our first death after implementing the lockdown. Yet I'm not sure if Sweden is totally opposite to New Zealand. I think there's a lot more variables than the policy measures taken especially if you haven't chosen the South Korea / Singapore option right from the start.

Sounds somewhat in line with what Fauci has estimated.Well, you'll see how correct the model is in a few weeks.

Walk around in your boxers and bump loud music and sing along, every now and then, just to decompress. The stay-at-home-order has only started and will continue on for a while. And if you're already having the urge to decompress...

She might find a new interpretation of the stay-at-home-order in order decompress herself, perhaps.