Saturday, May 16, 2020

Coronavirus: The Big Wake-Up Call

Well, we’ve had our VE Day celebration, but was World War Two anything to get fussed about? Not if you share the mindset of Covideniers.
The second Great War killed 384,000 UK military and 70,000 British civilians https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/crime-and-defence/the-fallen/, in all 454,000 casualties out of a 1939 population numbering 47,760,000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_in_1939 , or 0.95%. On average we lost around 6,200 per month from start to VJ Day.
By contrast, UK deaths attributed to coronavirus since the first on 28 February have run at the equivalent of over 16,000 per month. The latest ONS figures https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales , bringing us up to May Day, show that something is certainly happening, and the shape of the virus line in the graph below matches the grey line pretty well, so if the bulge is not owing to Covid-19 then I should be interested to hear an alternative explanation. As to the meme that ‘they would have died from something else soon anyway’, the jury is still out; we leave the excess-deaths calculations to the official analysts, and it could take them years to decide.


Fortunately, the curve was heading downwards at last report. The much-criticised Professor Ferguson had forecast around 600,000 deaths if no action were taken (0.9% of our current population of 66.65 million – very similar to the WWII toll); I think it is far too early for the Internet’s neo-experts to use the present decline as evidence that the model was wrong and that nothing much need have been done.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t review strategy now, and not merely because the public and the world of business is keen for a return to what we used to regard as normal. We now have more hospital beds, more ventilators (assuming they are the answer) and more (though still not enough) supplies of PPE equipment and testing kits. That said, there is the possibility of another, perhaps bigger spike later this year, as per the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919, so spare capacity may turn out to be barely sufficient after all, pace the empty-hospital Nightingale-nigglers. The vital need to maintain our economy, against significant loss of life: it’s a horribly difficult balance to strike.
Did that balance need striking? A crisis develops into catastrophe through a series of forced moves and hard choices. The point of contingency planning and preparation is to sidestep that sequence, but historically, the British way is to let a disaster happen, then scramble to survive and hope for a big helping of luck. If only we had listened to Churchill in his wilderness years… HMG, binge, brewery.
So, among the lessons that are definitely to be learned, one of them is that not all need have been learned the hard way. The UK had two golden opportunities to prepare: first, the studies and simulations here and in the USA going back years, that taught us some of the things we would need; secondly, a last chance to get ready as the virus burned its way through China but hadn’t yet come here.
It’s not entirely our fault. When the Chinese were so ruthlessly locking down Wuhan and other areas, why did they let international flight departures continue with little if any restriction, when this form of transport was known to be a main vector for spreading respiratory disease around the world? Nevertheless, even now, the UK Government is merely considering quarantine for incoming airline passengers. Melanie Phillips contrasts our approach and its consequences with those in Greece and Israel, here https://www.melaniephillips.com/terrible-cost-ignoring-common-sense/ . The Greeks say, ‘Pathema, mathema’: ‘I suffered, I learned’; but it seems that our lessons aren’t learned. even after the pain.
Now that our eyes have opened, there is more we should be seeing. One is the long-standing disgrace of the care home sector – scramble, scramble, goes the Government. Another is standards of public hygiene generally – how many deaths from influenza were preventable, over the years?
There is a personal lesson to learn, too. We know that we are more liable to suffer and die from the virus not just if we are old but if we are obese, diabetic and so on. This disease is now out of Pandora’s box and it’s not going back in. Sooner or later, we are likely to come into contact with it and our best chance of survival is to be as fit as possible. We have to address our weight issues, dietary habits (that can cure Type 2 diabetes in many cases, it seems) and exercise routines (without getting sweaty in gyms). These are things that the Government and NHS cannot do for us; and they could also help us defer or escape other health challenges.
Don’t wait for a vaccine. In the first place, it’s not certain that a safe and effective vaccine can be developed. Bill Gates has what (if I am to be charitable, and discount the profit motive) is a naïve belief in vaccines, despite his less-than-encouraging experiments in mass vaccination schemes in India and Africa; but even he has referred to the need for legal indemnity (see from 16:00 in this video https://youtu.be/o7A_cMpKm6w ) as he contemplates jabbing the whole world. He plucks a figure of one-in-a thousand adverse reactions out of the air – a mere seven million humans – but who knows what the actual casualty rate would be? Remember that much of the world is far less well-nourished than we – and even in our country, many people are technically malnourished, used to eating the wrong (cheap) things. Also, it’s possible that a vaccine may itself trigger outbreaks among the ‘immune-depressed’, as witness the massive measles epidemic among Yanomami jungle tribespeople in 1968 http://www3.gettysburg.edu/~dperry/Class%20Readings%20Scanned%20Documents/Methods/Tierney.htm .
Now let us widen the focus. We have become far too dependent on a system of international trade that has made us very vulnerable. I have read that when the USA opened up its markets to the Chinese economy, in part it was a strategy to drive a wedge between the Middle Kingdom and Russia, both then Communist countries. However, this was exploited by the Western business class to undercut and immiserate their own workers and boost corporate profits, so weakening our economies and throwing enormous debt onto us all -
‘Global debt across all sectors rose by over $10 trillion in 2019, topping $255 trillion. At over 322% of GDP*, global debt is now 40 percentage points ($87 trillion) higher than at the onset of the 2008 financial crisis—a sobering realization as governments worldwide gear up to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘ [* Gross Domestic Product, i.e. total economic activity] https://www.iif.com/Search-Results?sb-search=total+debt+to+gdp&sb-bhvr=1&sb-logid=51481-gqau9z7y7v88l19y  (£)
… but especially the ‘First World’ economies; and it’s not just government debt we should be talking about. Governments can keep rolling-over and increasing their debt issuance, whereas private individuals and corporations can be driven into cashflow crisis with loans that must be repaid within some limited timescale.
 looked at total national debts -  what the US calls ‘Total Credit Market Debt Outstanding’ (TCMDO) – and found that the burden on America was then 279% of GDP; by the end of 2019 this had grown to 347% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=7h0A . The same report showed that Japan and the UK were far worse off – over 500% debt-to-GDP. Unlike the USA, the UK does not routinely record this ratio and goodness knows where we stood before the coronavirus hit us.
We have been in systemic trouble for a very long time. As debt grows, it cuts into discretionary income. Financial commentators like this one https://capx.co/keep-calm-we-can-bear-the-cost-of-coronavirus/ sanguinely hope for a bounce back, but a wave of insolvencies will start a round of beggar-my-neighbour: who is ready to splurge when the all-clear sounds? So far, the UK and USA have kept things going by dropping interest rates to near-zero, but this is hammering the ability of pension funds to pay annuities, which are generally secured with government bonds. Add in a stock valuation swoon and the prospect of a comfortable retirement flees ahead of the investor.
In a way, the coronavirus was a trigger, or catalyst, for problems that have developed personally and communally for decades. Be prepared.

7 comments:

Nick Drew said...

very good summing-up at this point in the ghastly saga

any reading of WW2 (British perspective) up until Alamein is a story of tremendous muddle, slowly and fitfully being resolved, with a series of epic fails, not to mention a hundred mis-steps, along the way

that's THREE YEARS

Sackerson said...

@Nick: perhaps you could say more, at length?

Btw I hear Pen & Sword are at last going to publish H E Bates' pamphlet on The Night Interception Battle, having come to an understanding with the family.

Jim in San Marcos said...

Hi Sack

Great article. I read it several times.

Corona is mostly killing people over the age of 65. The deaths in WWII sadly were very young,

If you were to show a graph of the people living instead of the deaths, it would look like a flat line. The perspective is missing with the death graph, and the problem magnified.

The economy will suffer the most. The young need to work and the old are retired. Government thinks it has a solution and in reality, they are the problem printing money.

If you are retired, the next decade could be a rough one. Thats why I'm still working at the age of 73.

Sackerson said...

Thanks, Jim.

Yes, the virus hits the old (and those with certain health problems) disproportionately, but the old are still people. Why, the ancient Chinese revered their old; the fools!

World War II killed 0.95% of the UK population, civilian and military - 454,000. Live births? 700,000 pa in wartime, over 1 million in 1947.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281965/live-births-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-1931-1960/ Ferguson's original 600,000 prediction represents 0.95% of the current population.

The virus isn't what's f'd the economy, it's just lancing the boil.

Jim in San Marcos said...

Hi Sack

lancing the boil worries me.

I'm thinking gold and silver.

Paper money could be our problem.

Too much of it.

Sackerson said...

This one has long worried me, not just because there is historical predecedent for the Government grabbing it off you. One gold piece for one toilet roll? Sorry Sir, no change.

Billonaire Hugo Salinas Price has long advocated a bimetallic standard - as is in the US Constitution, who knew?

http://www.plata.com.mx/esES/Propuesta

Sackerson said...

JD comments:

Here are David Starkey's views on the current 'crisis'
https://youtu.be/8S8Js-tEmlg

Two points became very clear: He stated that all of these 'plagues' come from China! And the point he made about older people being removed from hospitals and sent back to care homes or just to their own homes/families in order to make room for an expected influx of covid19 patients could explain the mystery spike in deaths which you highlighted in your post.

He also made an important observation on how we have lost the art colleges and technical colleges which were comonplace half a century ago, all of them having been turned into 'pretendy' universities: Northumbria University for example used to be Newcastle's College of Art and Design.

: Yes the NHS has become the new state religion.
: Yes the Granny Farm business needs to be held accountable for their failure.
But we knew both of those things anyway and both of them could be classed as 'unknown knowns' to misquote Donald Rumsfeld.

This is Chris Whitty speaking on 11th May -
https://youtu.be/adj8MCsZKlg

The government knew all of that at the beginning of March (19th March statement from Public Health England) so why this drastic lockdown which is destroying the economy and why the daily diet of fear by both government and media which amounts to a psychic attack on the populace?

But the reaction is growing everywhere: There have been six weeks of continual protest in Lansing against the lockdown and also in Minneapolis/St.Paul (shown on RT news), riots in France and Germany and a very passionate speech in the Italian parliament -
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/disease/motion-made-to-arrest-bill-gates-in-italian-parliament/

Here is a transcript of her speech -
https://greatgameindia.com/italian-politician-demand-bill-gates-arrest-for-crimes-against-humanity/I have my own tale of incompetence this week while trying to get repeat prescriptions but that is for another time.

John Ward is right - IABATO