I wonder if these habits will change and if masks will become a fixture of western life. — NOS4A2

At least it will be trendy now, especially in big cities and crowded places.

And think about the way how people react to someone that coughs out now. If earlier some people coughed to hide their farts, I guess now the fart to hide their coughs.

that's not necessarily capitalism's fault. — StreetlightX

That they are so stupid that they believe in socialism?

And he's right! He was the first major public figure to call out China's trade practices. — fishfry

I'm not so sure about that. In the end it's the same discourse as we heard about NAFTA long time ago:


During that time China's economy was a little bigger than the Netherlands, I guess, so China wasn't on the forefront yet.

You'd almost think someone's using this medical panic to fleece the public. But what kind of person could be that cynical at a time like this? — fishfry

I don't think that it's that. As I said at the time when I didn't believe this would be serious, this is the only way governments can react. They cannot say "This isn't our problem". They cannot say "We aren't interested". And from that they will really do whatever they can. Which I still believe is the right thing to do.

Yeah, who the heck knows what's going on anyway. Nobody trusts the Chinese numbers. And how many of infections a country has is more a factor of how many people get tested than how many actual infections. We're not even measuring the right thing. — fishfry

I believe there is a truth to them. Even in China, there is a limit how much you can suppress the truth.
Unfortunately epidemics/pandemics can have different outcomes in different countries. One country takes a huge hit where another is left nearly untouched in an pandemic. The wrong way to think about it is that the country that has less infections has done it's job better than the other. That's why we didn't take the lessons learned from SARS etc. to heart as those countries that took a hit.

The complacency of Trump is quite understandable. Preventing pandemics (SARS, MERS, Ebola) had worked pretty well.

How do people think THAT's going to work out? The Hillary/Obama wing of the party back in power with a weak president who will do anything they say?

I regard that as a very frightening and very real possibility. — fishfry

The people who are outraged at the administration will only change.

StreetlightX, for you capitalism is simply everything wrong ever in our society.

Very interesting reading! MMT is neo-chartalism. Today I learned! I actually understand MMT a bit now. Maybe they do have a point. Thanks for the links. — fishfry

Yep. Our whole financial system is so f*ed up that as crazy it may sound, they may have a point. But perhaps up only to a point I would argue. But I may be wrong.

Yes didn't Iceland or somebody just let the banks fail and now they've come through the crisis in better shape? In the US we just papered it all over, created a huge moral hazard, and now here comes yet another bailout. — fishfry

Yes. Iceland is a great example. Estonia is also: they let the free market mechanism handle it and they had a quick and very sharp recession and then things got better. With stimulus and bail out you get the zombie economy of Japan. Here's a great short recap on what happened to Iceland when they didn't choose the "socialism for the few rich"-option:



Unfortunately those that argue for free markets seldom argue for the same mechanism to carry us out when bad times come (and hence the bail out those who created the bubble).

My little coastal town's a ghost town. It's shocking. — fishfry

From which we come to a really callous and despicable topic specifically on this thread:

We may be soon coming to the best possible moment to buy stocks ever in our lifetime, perhaps. Who knows when exactly, this summer or next year? Or are we seeing the bottoms because of helicopter money? I don't think the last option is probable.

Because even if now you don't have blood on the streets, you do have a shock quite the same. Never in our lifetime has the economy been literally shutdown. All around the World. Yet we know that the pandemic will go away. The economy will open afterwards to people who are quite timid people and living in an economic depression, but we will get through this and the economy will come back. Many people understand this. But when they are at the verge of bankruptcy or in bankruptcy, those assets will have to be sold on the cheap. And that's what economic depressions are: events where huge transfer of wealth takes place. I remember my great aunt, a real-world example of the classical stereotype of a stingy landlady. She went during our 90's economic depression into these compulsory auctions of homes organized by the authorities. She didn't buy any of the flats back then, a few did with usually a person from the bank in the end buying it back to the bank. Years later we would be walking in the city center of Helsinki and she point out at these old expensive apartment buildings "Here was a lovely two-room flat being auctioned only for X marks. I wish I would have bought it back then!"

(A good motto for the times?)


I got worried about the financial state of the World in 2007 thanks to this forum (or basically the precursor of it) because of a great warning from an intelligent poster (although I don't remember who it was). So I do respect people here for their intelligence and knowledge. Also when philosophy loving people here started a thread about "Cryptocurrencies", I thought this itself was a alarm bell that it was the highest point of the bubble (like the saying "taxi drivers giving you stock advice"). It seems to have been that time then.

Yeah, I guess that how it usually goes in democracies. First something really bad needs to happen before an issue is taken seriously and policy measure can be taken... and then they overreact for a while so it's abundantly clear to the voting public that they really really did something about it.

We still have the military parading around in our train stations after the 2016 terrorist attacks...

It's all so reactionary, no vision to be found at all. — ChatteringMonkey

That is the way it goes.

Especially with the military parading around. Usually it's just a photo op and to calm the people by showing that the government has done something. But there are also effective policies and actions that can be implemented which can be especially with fighting pandemics be successful.

And they can be harsh. You see it for example in Australia: people coming back from abroad are put into mandatory two week quarantine to hotels from where have to be inside and cannot leave or face a hefty fine.

Australian citizens and residents returning from overseas will be forced to quarantine in hotels in a bid to stop the spread of Covid-19 from returning passengers in breach of existing self-isolation requirements.

On Friday, Scott Morrison announced that national cabinet had agreed on the strict new measures to apply from midnight on Saturday, with the Australian Defence Force also set to help state law enforcement increase checks on passengers who arrived before the deadline, who are supposed to self-isolate for 14 days.

The police and the army enforce quarantine. Just like in China. So the future way to handle these kind of threats even in Western democracies is already implemented.

The overreactions are also noticeable. Here one official had the brainfart of tweeting the idea that perhaps for the shelter-in time one should ban all selling of alcohol. Well, likely if that proposal would be seriously discussed, then alcohol would be hoarded like toilet paper. Finns would react like Americans to buying guns if the government introduced legislation to limiting firearm sales!

They have been for a long time the local authorities, btw.

It's an indication, sure, but I sincerely believe that no matter what measures countries like the US or Italy would have taken, it still would probably have been worse than in China... unless maybe you would go that far to shoot down people in the streets who don't follow the rules. Measures can only be as effective as people are willing to follow them. — ChatteringMonkey

And nipping an epidemic in the bud when it starts is the real way to defeat these. And then follow a policy of strict quarantine, containment and exposing all infection paths and make proper precautions.

Singapore, South Korea and Japan show the way. They already learnt what to do after the 2003 SARS outbreak. And It has been working far better than in the West in general.

The West will learn only after this pandemic. That's the truth. I'm pretty sure that Western countries will take far more seriously the prevention of pandemics. Hence if there's somewhere, either in Africa or China or in Nebraska a local epidemic of a new zoonotic disease OH BROTHER!!! If you then come from that epidemic area on a plane and land to JFK (be it a domestic or an international flight), they will treat you nearly like a possible Al Qaeda terrorist and whisk you away into a 14 day obligatory quarantine in a heart beat no questions asked. Or as in China, you have to report you health condition daily to the officials.

If you think the US Constitution and human rights will protect your "freedoms" in this case, nope, wrong, happy quarantine!

That's the future post-corona World we will have.

Here's a good newsclip comparing the response in Taiwan and in Italy. Again the underlying reason of the difference is what Taiwan implemented after SARS outbreak in 2003. And what Italy didn't do.



The above clip made me think of the one major f*k up that my country's officials have done.

Yes, they closed schools, libraries, swimming halls and went to lock down even before the first death happened. They closed restaurants, closed the borders (including with Sweden) and they have put the Capitol region to quarantine with police and the army creating checkpoints. What they didn't anticipate is that when the general shelter-in and closing of Europe happened, about 200 000 Finns (out of 5,5 million) returned to Finland including many retirees coming from Spain. A strict quarantine? No, at first there weren't even clear instructions at the main airports and still there's no enforcement of the two week quarantine. Nothing like in China or Taiwan etc. At least the Prime Minister said she was sorry this error happened.

Oops.

On cue, Ireland has been put on full lockdown because people kept doing stupid things. — Baden

And nationalized the health care sector for the time of the pandemic, which will make many here really happy and interested.

PRIVATE HOSPITALS WILL act as part of the public health system for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, the government has announced.

Some 2,000 beds, nine laboratories and thousands of staff have been drafted into the public system, Leo Varadkar said at a press conference today. Speaking at the same press conference, Health Minister Simon Harris said “there can be no room for public versus private” when responding to the Covid-19 crisis.

“We must of course have equality of treatment, patients with this virus will be treated for free, and they’ll be treated as part of a single, national hospital service.

My county just went to a total lock down. — Hanover

Wellcome to the club, Hanover.

I was responding to this not criticizing you. — Baden

My bad. Stupid of me.

That’s the key to the successes of places like Japan, South Korea and Singapore. They remember the SARS outbreak and took it seriously. They never forgot. — NOS4A2

I agree.

And for example when the 2003 SARS outbreak didn't hit us (US & Europe) so much, we likely patted us on the back on a job well done and how good our system was. China was then humiliated and had a political urge to do something about it. Just look at the stats:

Deaths to SARS outbreak by country 1 Nov 2002 - 11th July 2003:

Australia: 0 (cases 5)
China: 646 (cases 7083)
Singapore: 32 (cases 206)
Italy: 0 (cases 4)
Spain: 0 (cases 1)
Germany: 0 (cases 10)
USA: 0 (cases 75)

So I guess the positive side of this pandemic is that we'll take prevention of pandemics seriously next time. This is obvious as all the Western countries that have been hubs for tourists and business have been severely hit.

Is it not possible that people can go about their regular lives while still taking proactive measures to limit the spread of the virus? Personally I require no government to tell me that and I fear for people who do. — NOS4A2

I would say it will go backwards in slow motion.

First the most stringent restrictions will be opened after the infection rate (and the death rate) has dramatically fallen. Then the next thing will be that smaller gatherings will be allowed yet with events of 100 or 500 people still being restricted. Finally, large events will be allowed. The next thing is when people will people will start to flock to these larger events and then finally when they come without having head masks.And if you have looked at older Asian tourists, some of them use all the time masks when walking in urban areas. Social distancing might be for a while, but then again, even those who experienced the Spanish flu didn't take precautions later in the roaring 1920's. People forget. And always there's going to be a new generation that hasn't experienced the corona-virus pandemic later (assuming there isn't a larger deadlier pandemic later).

Stupid. Everywhere is high risk and anything labeled low risk automatically becomes higher risk when opened up. — Baden

Read what I write, Baden.

Now there are places that are hit by the pandemic and those that will be hit. — ssu

I agree. Now there are places that are hit by the pandemic and those that will be hit.

A step in the right direction, in my opinion. I think a sort of juggling act between lockdown and tentatively opening the economy is the reasonable approach. — NOS4A2

Have to say that at least he is optimistic. Perhaps his followers like it when Trump goes against the stream. But otherwise it's more of a denial. This first pandemic will take the time as any other one, 4-6 months, and there's no changing that. People won't come out when the infections and the death toll still rises.

Here for example the Armed Forces has determined (without coming out publicly about it, naturally) that the pandemic will be with us for 6 months. So going back to normal (from the start of the pandemic here) is after the summer here.

That's the probable way things will go. If it doesn't behave like the Spanish flu.

Yes! And we have the choice as people and companies to create our new normal just like we did on 9/12/01. Our society is built upon our collective moral compass and a whole lot more. We should take the time to think about how we want/need our society to be structured. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

That is a good point, Tiff.

9/11 did change a lot in the thinking. And on the positive side, hopefully this pandemic will make the focus to be afterwards on the prevention of pandemics from erupting, not on having the ability to cope with pandemics (or us just given it as some act of God). If there is now this surveillance network to track down terrorists (which many do fear), hopefully there truly will be a similar surveillance network to track down zoonotic diseases and other infectious diseases before they become a nasty epidemic/pandemic. How much emphasis will there be in this effort will be determined, unfortunately, by the death toll of this pandemic and the economic cost it will create.

I like your positive attitude, Tiff. Never forget that moral collective compass and that lot more, or otherwise all those guns you have will make a truly toxic cocktail.

So what do people think about Trump's new idea:

President Trump said Thursday that he planned to label different areas of the country as at a “high risk, medium risk or low risk” to the spread of the coronavirus, as part of new federal guidelines to help states decide whether to relax or enhance their quarantine and social distancing measures.

What regions is talking about? States? Lower level cities, communities and counties?

This sounds as great as Trump's proposal of a joint US-Russia taskforce to counter hacking.

Just occured to me,

Oh how the 2020's are going to be so different from the 2010's and 2000's.

This global pandemic hitting us in 2020 means that 20's have really a different tone historically as what came before it. Such collective experience from start of the decade has to have at least some effect how later people will view the 2020's to the 2010's.

We would never finish writing down the natural numbers. — TheMadFool

Wasn't this enough?

Oh right, it's a Philosophy forum. :wink:

Don't care much about the 2016 election, just as I don't care of the 2012 election. It's history.

Just answering Hanovers question.

Just as only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could bring socialism to the US. Historians will note the irony. — fishfry

So it goes. I bet many historians will smile when telling this story.

Of course, it's going to be marketed only as "socialism for the rich". Remember the half trillion slush fund Trump is going to personally administer? That's the way it's going to be marketed by the opposition.

Fair question.

Of course, you would have suffered for years now of Hillary Derangement Syndrome (HDS) and the country would be as polarized and hateful as now. Hillary's action would have been likely more in the line of let's say other OECD countries like the UK or France etc. The weaknesses of the health care system would still be obvious.

Because it's very unlikely that Hillary would have gone all "Chinese" and truly taken drastic measures of shelter-in the and quarantine of the whole country before this time at least. Likely a Hillary administration would have followed the steps of how Obama tackled the ebola-pandemic only to understand that this is something bigger. Perhaps now a country-wide lockdown would be implemented. Likely national state of emergency would have been called weeks earlier (perhaps in the start of this month, not on the 13th) and all the precautions done during the Obama years would be used. That famous organization for pandemics that Trump dissolved would have been leading the fight. Likely the respirator and PPC shortage would be there, but the National Procurement Act would have been enacted already. There would be more testing and perhaps New York would have gotten few days if not a week more time to prepare for what is now unfolding. So I guess that means less dead New Yorkers.

The stimulus package would be more difficult to push through, because the Republicans would be outraged about the size of the package and would be terrified of the "socialization" of the US and would be reminding about the deficit. And of course you wouldn't notice anything different, because the Republicans and Trump on his TV show would be hollering on top of their lungs how badly Clinton is doing this and what a fiasco this all has been. Republicans would be really eager to make Hillary a one term President and just waiting for the elections.

So my answer: In the end fewer dead Americans due to the pandemic. Perhaps -10%.

And NOS4A2 and Streetlight X and Maw would be making similar arguments as they are doing now.

What is wrong with you? He's the president of the United States. Jesus fuck on a stick. Did your brains fall out as soon as you started typing the word 'Trump'? Why does his name turn everyone into an irrepressible moron? — StreetlightX

I think it's the contrary.

Second, a declaration by elites that the economy is in fact open — StreetlightX

Stop right there.

That is Trump and the people that want to lick his ass. And some libertarian weirdos. That isn't the elite. Everybody else understands that the epidemic plays out in roughly about 6 months, even if it can come back then later.

Yes, for some reason the ultimate crash just never happens. Maybe they really can borrow and print their way to prosperity. It's been working far longer than you'd think it could. — fishfry

That's the view of the Modern monetary theory (MMT) and Chartalism say.

But I firmly believe there is a limit when people simple have doubts or lose confidence in the currency system. But that might be a long way from now. Or not. But then again, it isn't an apocalyptic thing: it's just one of the crisis we experience and wealth just changes hands.

One theory is that the stock crash isn't about the virus at all. The market was in a huge bubble and if it wasn't the virus it would have been something else. — fishfry

I say it's definitely both. Our system was a reinflated bubble-economy, yet now the stock market is truly responding to events in the real economy.

Rarely do you see stats like this:

I opposed the 2008 bailout. I was for actual capitalism. Let the "too big to fail" banks fail. If they managed their affairs in such a way as to not be able to continue to be in business, let them be liquidated and their assets absorbed into more profitable and sound companies. That's exactly how it's supposed to work. — fishfry

I was too, with the exception that ordinary people with bank accounts up to 200 000$ would have been guaranteed by the Fed printing the money at the last case. I would have been for that horrific -20% deflation and shock and then have. The have bankers (banksters) who broke the existing laws worst to go to jail. That would have sent a message not only to the financial community, but also to the people. The close it came was that the Fed looked at the "Nordic Model" of rearranging the banking system. That they didn't do.

Wall Street was in charge, literally. Nobody went to jail except a con-man that simply was fed up of lying to the World. He too would likely have gone as nothing has happened, if only he would have denied it and gotten some of that bailout money. It's real ugly when you think about it.

And they are now trying to do the same thing: keep alive a bursting bubble.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Cuomo totally fucked up too. Except he wasn't the one actively downplaying the issue while being briefed about the severity and Mulvaney was having daily meetings on CV. Gone by April he said. — Benkei

Places with most tourists and business links around the World will be first hit and that has seemed to happen to North Italy and New York. Of course now would be the time to prepare for the places that haven't been hit. But except New Zealand, it's typically that the economy is put into first place.

For New York I think 5th of March was when they lost containment:


When you don't have the connection to travel and cannot make the path of the infection, then only thing is "flattening the curve". Cuomo declared state of Emergency two days later. But I guess shelter-in orders came only later (24th of March).

And it's most definitely in the right thread. An important part of why Corona is as bad as it is, is trump not listening to advisors and in fact communicating the totally opposite of what he should've been doing in order to get Average Joe prepared. — Benkei

Likely even worse was that we didn't learn from the SARS and the Ebola outbreaks that an international effort and coordination in the prevention would have been the best case. Hopefully after this pandemic more resources go into prevention of outbreaks. But then only when people see how bad it can be do they take it seriously.

Nice sarcasm on the Nostradamus BTW. — Benkei

:razz:

We are awestruck of your uncanny Nostradamus-like abilities to forecast that Trump wouldn't solve anything, but is this the correct thread, Benkei?

Trump just tells his crazy fairy tales of packed churches in Easter, yet the nation isn't him, not even the government is him. The political leadership handling this issue is more with the governors of the various states I would say.

Let's see then on next Monday what the figures are. (Let's see who got closer! :death: )

What I suspect that at some point Trump will get angry at the death rate being told in the news and somewhere down the line the statistics will be not accurate (as in Iran).

And he did reality tv for ten years so he knows what the American public likes. A showman and, in his strange nonlinear way, a statesman. — fishfry

That's why his followers love him as he doesn't at all sound like a politician. And he is a great communicator for his followers. And he's a genuine populist.

Or you could say that his instincts are against globalization. — fishfry

That's the basic agenda in modern populism.

A month ago nobody knew that China makes a huge percentage of the pharmaceuticals we use. — fishfry

That sounds like a Trumpism. Perhaps one could assume that making cheap simple industrial things hasn't been very popular in the US. Manufacturing has left the country for cheaper labor, you know.

In 2018 the CDC reported 80,000 flu deaths in the US. You probably didn't even know that. There was no hysteria. — fishfry

I did. And I've right from the start said this: in 1968/1969 about 100 000 Americans died in the Hong Kong flu pandemic. It's a thing hardly anyone knows. A pandemic in 1968-1969??? Never heard. That's how things have changed. It's simply we don't take as granted that oh well, old people die.

No. What's really going to get under the American collective skin is if on average more people will die in the US than in other countries. If China gets away with thousands of dead, and in the US it's over hundred thousand (let's hope not), that's going to be a real irritant for Trump. We'll see how it goes in the next two months I guess.

Because what Trump does now will have an effect on his re-election. Being even a decent leader would surely make him win the re-election. If the US muddles through this pandemic, it's going to be fine. But if the response is far worse than Katrina, then it's a different story.

Wrong. The bankruptcy of McDonalds would not have a significant impact on the US economy. Nice graph showing the significance of the entire services sector, as if that's what we were talking about. — Hanover

Bullshit.

Bankruptcy of one of the most successful franchising companies operating in well over 100 countries would be a big issue. And if you think a company like McDonalds isn't important, what company you think would be then? The one you have in your stock portfolio? GM isn't in the position as it used to be, you know.

And yes, we are talking about the service sector. It was the sector that didn't suffer from the Great Recession so much and did provide work when a sector like construction collapsed.

Step up and tell your friends, family and coworkers that it is time to go into self-isolation now. — Andrew M

Begs the question: Who is still living normally, going out with friends and not taking any other measures than not shaking hands on the forum?

I'm just waiting when our dear neighbor Sweden will change it's policy and quarantine Stockholm. I think there the only Nordic country with schools open etc. and going with herd "immunity".

I don't think McDonald's, despite having delicious sandwiches, fuels the economic engine of my great nation. — Hanover

Wrong.

Your economy is a service based economy. Period. Please understand it. McDonalds is important.

Nice to hear. And hope everything goes fine with her husband too.

Michael, how is your mother? Hope she's good.

I don't know if it has as much to do with expense as it does the inability to accurately predict the type of crisis that might arise. It would have taken a crystal ball for someone to have predicted we'd need 1000s of respirators — Hanover

That's simply wrong. We knew a pandemic would hit us sometime. What medical equipment would be needed was easy to see for the professionals.

The medical community was for a very long time saying over and over again that a pandemic was going to happen. Just check yourself (if you bother) how many have said "It's not about if, but when. Heck, I've heard it all my life as my father is a professor of virology, so the argument of nobody could have predicted this is utterly false and nonsense!

make the purchase and then store the respirators in a warehouse somewhere for decades until some novel virus emerged. — Hanover

Sorry, but this just shows your ignorance about how strategic reserves work.

They are NOT storaged into a bunker dig into a mountain and stacked there not to be touched until a crisis happens and then opened. It's not that way. First of all, things like grain and even those protection gear couldn't be storaged for decades as they do have a limited shelf life. Everything has a limited shelf life. No, the way you do it is to have your ordinary warehouses store the grain / oil whatever and basically keep the reserves always on their books whereas the actual resources and equipment is sold normally. It's basically an agreement with the government with the logistics companies that this amount of this and that will always be in storage.

In a way yes.

But those emergency reserves are exactly for these kind of events: when there is an acute shortage because of a sudden crisis and you cannot wait for six months.

To anticipate possible crises is a thing what the government ought to do. Unfortunately this kind of thinking is usually confined to the armed forces, which optimally should be in peacetime preparing for war. Other sectors, like the health care sector typically understand the importance, but don't do anything to prepare for these kinds of events. Too expensive!

he was seeing ahead of the "experts." — fishfry

(I think this would be better to be answered in the Corona-virus thread, not here, but I'll answer still.)

His rhetoric afterwards and at present tells quite clearly that he's not seeing ahead. He got lucky with this call, and of course luck is important.

In this case a travel ban/quarantine of people coming from China was something close to his heart, something fitting his World view and his followers. It would go into the category of "be tough on China". Hence the ban on flights from Schengen countries, but leaving the UK and Ireland open for traffic, showed also this kind illogical thinking in the case of the pandemic. As a jab to the EU it's something else.

I posted here that there's no rational basis to know whether we should blow up the economy to prevent a worse outcome. It's a valid question. — fishfry

Well, the question is simply how much are you willing to do to save lives? Nobody wants to make the juxtaposition like that and likely it will become a taboo to ponder it when the death toll rises, but it's obvious that containing it like China did (for the moment) cannot be done anymore.

Gold crashed the first day of the DOW crash but it's up sharply. I think people are going to bet on big inflation as the Fed and Congress flood the country with what Ben Bernanke called Helicopter money. — fishfry

Yes. This is the continuation of the fraud perpetrated on the public in the 2008 bailout. — fishfry

Yes, it is.

Inflation didn't happen after 2007-2008 in the "Great Recession". Neither it happened in economic crash of the 1990's in my country (and other Nordic countries), which was a classic speculative bubble that started from deregulation of banking and ended in a banking crisis. In both cases many thought that inflation would kick next in. Others thought that deflation would happen. Either didn't happen. What simply happened is that the money stayed propping up the banks first stayed in the banks (with the banks sitting on the money as Uncle Scrooge) and then raised the prices stocks and financial instruments, created asset price inflation. That was different from classical inflation.

Now it's interesting what will happen when again trillions are poured into the system. Those money given to people will likely be either saved or with the poorest people spent on necessities. But here's the interesting million dollar question: if and when this pandemic is over, will the economy get going again. Or has the corona-virus shown that there wasn't any recovery and we will just continue having the Japanese-disease in our economy of low to negative growth?

Or will this spending with the recession create finally a dollar crisis?

But now the airlines plow a decade's worth of profits into stock buybacks and now demand a public rescue for their greed and incompetence. It's obscene. — fishfry

Ah. Good that you mentioned those stock buybacks. Think about all that money wasted in propping up the stock prices by stock buybacks, so the managers can get money from their options. And now they have disappeared into thin air. And all those index funds that have been propping up the price of Apple and Google and the like. Ouch! And of course, that's the thing Trump and his supporters are worried about.

I'm not familiar enough with the NATO rules on assistance to say one way or the other but it's probably moot: NATO members are in trouble themselves. — Benkei

And I guess sending troops from one country to help in the worst hit pandemic area and then them coming home would be like... how the Spanish Flu spread.

If there's one thing that really ought to change from this, it's the attitude against strategic reserves. They are seen as a waste of money. If you can produce the JOT (just on time) then your efficient. You save money. And now that the Health Care Systems have done this efficiency thing, we pay the price. Every nation is geared up for normal times, for normal consumption of material.

This is the one thing we ought to truly change.

No, it is not crazy. Economic activity is necessary for people to live.... we can not go back to a hunter gatherer society. — Nobeernolife

And with this recession you won't go back to a hunter gatherer society.

Remember the financial crisis of 2008? Some call it the "Great Recession". Yeah, might have something even worse now. But that surely isn't the end of the World, just as isn't this pandemic.

I remember two really bad ones here, the 1990's recession and the 2008-2009 crisis, which really wasn't so bad here at all. When the depression first hit I was in the army, and afterwards there were really now jobs around. Before going to the army and just graduated from school I could pick from a multitude of jobs the place I wanted to go, literally. Afterwards I wondered why people had bitched so much about unemployment.

Anyway, this crisis is a truly external recession. Hence if there was a truly free market mechanism would be used and not socialism for the rich and connected, then this could be over too in a very short while. Like in a couple of years. But as the system is geared to serve the extremely rich, I'm not so sure how badly they f*k up the economy this time.

I think you are spoiled by having always a shop with shelves full of food stuffs nearby.... there are places where that is not the case. — Nobeernolife

So you live in Venezuela?

I remember when I visited the Soviet Union in the final year of it's existence. I stayed with a family and they were horrified as shortages even bread started just then when I was there. They tried to keep a happy face, but they truly feared something like a civil war would erupt (like happened in Yugoslavia). Luckily that didn't happen, but with the war in Ukraine now we see just how close the situation was back then for a new Russian tragedy.

Some of the preparations made is New York State as the state has passed the infection numbers of France:

New York state has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help setting up emergency morgues as the death toll from the coronavirus strains hospitals and mortuaries. - officials who spoke to Politico, which first reported the states’ requests, said the city’s (NYC) morgues were not yet close to capacity.