Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

April 5th Covid Data

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On April 5, 2020

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A note from our benefactor:

April 4th’s report was skipped because the data were from 2:25 pm Saturday afternoon. The drop in doubling rates reflect the additional six hours of delay.

Today’s data normalize.

 

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 5, 2020

8 Comments

  1. Aqua Lung

    The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer’s soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness. ~ Albert Camus, The Plague

  2. Aqua Lung

    In this respect, our townsfolk [Americans too and especially] were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions. ~ Albert Camus, The Plague

  3. Aqua Lung

    This defies/contradicts that first quote from Camus’ The Plague. This is pure evil. It’s not borne of ignorance for surely those doing this know what they’re doing. They’re doing it because they are pure evil and evil like this must be purged from this realm. The pandemic has made it clear as day.

    https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1246815648900055040

  4. Jace

    Aqua,

    My wife is doing payroll right now. She was just told that the policy that was crafted to retain frontline medical and admin staff will now not apply to most of them. They will have to use ‘earned time’ none of them have, or risk losing their health insurance, or jobs (to self-termination).

    Originally, they were told to work from home. Then, that most of their home time isn’t work time; that if they come to work they still cannot get tested or protect themselves, even though the door through which they enter is shared with an urgent care office converted into a high-risk testing site; and that they are essential workers, so uncovered by unemployment or sick leave.

    Most of them, caregivers or single mothers.

    Who get lectured daily by a ‘health care’ six-figure executive who thinks this is all overblown, and that they are being babies.

    My wife is yankee’s yankee, the kind who don’t do wrath, rudeness or incivility without feeling morally compromised. Even she is starting to find her wrath difficult to contain.

    So:

    ‘Evil’ is too banal a term. As is ‘depraved’. Or ‘hateful’.

    I think nothing less than ‘malignant iniquity’ will do.

  5. Ten Bears

    Obama handed Drumpf uck a detailed plan for dealing with a global pandemic …

    Despite President Trump’s repeated assertions that the Covid-19 epidemic was “unforeseen” and “came out of nowhere,” the Pentagon was well aware of not just the threat of a novel influenza, but even anticipated the consequent scarcity of ventilators, face masks, and hospital beds, according to a 2017 Pentagon plan.

    I don’t know what to call it, they knew, none of this is accident or incompetence.

    They’re trying to kill us …

  6. Aqua Lung

    I agree, Jace, we need a new term for it and my wife is the same as your wife, it takes a lot to conjure her wrath but it’s been conjured. My wife is not in healthcare but the authoritarians where she is employed are doubling down on their authoritarianism and using this crisis to consolidate their power even further.

  7. Benjamin

    @Aqua Lung

    It is perhaps interesting to note that, according to Google search results, it will cost about $1200 to make a guillotine completely from scratch. Which is exactly the amount millions of Americans will be getting in checks over the coming weeks.

    I’m just saying…

  8. Benjamin

    Haiti has had it’s first death.

    https://www.france24.com/en/20200405-haiti-reports-its-first-coronavirus-death

    This is probably going to get apocalyptic there. The entire country has 64 ventilators. Not 6,400. Not 640. Sixty-four. There won’t be any agonizing decisions revolving around age cutoffs for who to try and save. There simply won’t be enough gear to save much of anyone.

    This guy is speculating on 800,000 Haitians dead, which is the better part of 10% of the population there.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6aj-rRdt_U

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