Predictions
Apr. 1st, 2020 05:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
degringolade
One of the reasons that I am super uncomfortable right now is that no one "knows" anything. We have people trying to jam a novel situation into models that kinda-sorta worked before in a different situation. But they are taking that uncertain knowledge and letting go like Jeremiah with blood curdling predictions.
I have an itch to make a prediction. I think that anyone who blogs has the same problem. We write for a small audience and want them to know all about our omniscience. But in this case I got nothin'. I am very much starting to suspect the numbers coming out of the pipe. I am beginning to be suspicious about the way the statistics are generated and the significance of the numbers being presented. I am questioning the basic assumptions made in this mad dash toward being #1.
I have always been a skeptic. Science can never prove anything, it can just disprove things.
I am beginning to think that I smell a rat.
You are Worth It
Date: 2020-04-01 03:35 pm (UTC)In other words, according to prevailing moral standards, you should love yourself more.
Think about those who will miss you, and those who will not, and strive to be there for those who will miss you, so they might enjoy your continued presence, and do the same for those who won’t miss you, lest they be allowed to forget that they are full of shit.
Also, remember that you are contributing to the common good by working on the medical response, not just commenting on it. You have put yourself at increased risk because you care more about doing your job than the risk, not because you are a weirdo. At least possibly, and the possibility makes you worth saving.
What the Poor Get for Being Greedy
Date: 2020-04-02 04:56 am (UTC)President Trump making a point 23 days ago:
"So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down; life & the economy go on”.
This statement says nothing about what should be done about coronavirus; but it is revealing anyhow. It reminds us what value, if any, we assign to the lives of the elderly who die from the common flu every year. It is not one-trillionth of the value we assigned to whoever or whatever we are trying to save from coronavirus.
We don’t value the helpless old geezers enough to move them from a crowded nursing home when the flu is spreading within the facility. They are removed when they are taken to a hospital with pneumonia, where they are given one or two days to pull through, after which they are taken to hospice and given enough morphine to ease them out. End of story, end of Medicare expenses, end of SS payments. It might be different for wealthy geezers.
What is Trump’s point? Is it that the same 70,000 will die from coronavirus instead of flu, or is his point that since we don’t care about the first 70,000, why should we care about another 70,000? Hard to say.
If he meant the same 70,000, then he had a good point; but if this were to be the issue, nobody would be concerned about coronavirus in the first place. So, he must have meant that we shouldn’t care about an additional 70,000.
Well, apparently, we do care about the addition; in fact, dollar-wise, we care trillions of times more than we care about 70,000 elderly who die from flu. One reason is that we have been told by Fauci that the result of doing nothing (like we do for the flu), is likely to be 2+ million deaths, not 70,000.
Part 2
The stock market operates to generate profit by any legal means, so deciding how to proceed has nothing to do with morals. The market will, from now on, react unfavorably to indications of the shutdown being extended, but it will not react as unfavorably as it did to indications of blindness and avoidance at the top.
The idea that politicians are fighting big business over the shutdown is absurd, especially when they are supposed to be attacking business to ruin Trump. Wall Street Dems are supposed to be attacking big business – right!
If anything, politicians pushing restrictions saved Trump’s ass, and, if politicians are owned by big business, then big business saved Trump’s ass – just in time. We can thank big business for accidently acting morally, and for saving us from the effects of Trump trying to be a businessman.
In the future though, big business will not accidently act morally, it will intentionally be immoral. At some point, the cost of preventing preventable illnesses/deaths, will exceed the cost to the economy of accepting them. This is when big business will want the poorest workers to go back to their low wage jobs. The poorest workers will be the means - to starting up the economy.
Recall that Republicans in congress found it nearly impossible to accept the idea that the poorest workers will get a relief check (for 4 months) that exceeds their normal pay – due to a bonus given to everybody. The problem, explained by Sen. Lindsey Graham, is that “you're literally incentivizing taking people out of the workforce at a time when we need critical infrastructure supplied with workers”.
Why do Republicans say that the infrastructure is “critical”, but they don’t say that the low wage workers needed to run the infrastructure, are critical? The answer is that workers who are critical, should not be paid so little.
Big business, like trump, is probably figuring that we will accept adding 70,000 more – not 1.5 million more, as long as the 70,000 are poor people – like the ones who were overpaid for 4 months.