[Ibon]

Sea Gypsy and I often have chat sessions over the sate of the world.... I thought I would post this mornings chat.........


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Would like to see a list of who is sitting on super yachts in remote locations for the last few weeks

MON 12:28 PM
just came back from setting camera traps up on the mountain..... I am looking forward to time spent in the woods the next couple of months........

MON 7:11 PM

Nice. Don't tell everyone lol

5:42 AM


https://www.thelocal.it/20200311/corona ... s-in-italy

Coronavirus: What do we know about those who have died in Italy?
After the death toll in Italy shot up by more than 700 in just two days, here's what we know and don't know about those dying in connection to the coronavirus outbreak.
thelocal.it

It does appear to be real & deadly to a certain cohort. "Average morbidity 81 years old with 2.7 other pre existing health conditions". So it's real enough to kill a whole lot of people, but almost all of those people are within 10 years of dying anyway. They are an important demographic, financially & politically. But when you have an idea of the consequences of crashing the whole world economy, potentially billions of people can die, from broken down supply lines.

7:12 AM
Brings to mind the eskimo culture leaving their elders in the igloo when they started their migrations to better hunting grounds.

Give this another couple weeks and we are going to see this capitulation happen.....

The new normal is that we simply live with a higher death rate among certain demographics

Up until say 2 generations ago this was normal actually.... we were not able to keep so many of the aged with complications alive


Yeah well... Things are going nuts here. Australia just put out an advisory to citizens to come home immediately- Facebook won't let people share the story on messenger.

We are going into lockdown very soon

Panama is exactly the same... everyone obligated to stay home except for essentials like buying food or medicine

Panama is on lock down now

Wow, when you consider the stats in the article I sent from Italy it's crazy

We have 2 couples still here, the last of our guests........in a few days they are gone

The economy is being crashed totally over a disease that's no threat to most people

Yeah those Italy stats are alarming. FIrst thing I read this morning when I woke up.

The talk here among the locals is exactly what you are now mentioning..... people live pay check to pay check.... there is no reserve.... you allow a few weeks to go by and people have no money to buy food and the shit will hit the fan.... the social upheaval will be immense and governments will deal with that at the same time as they are dealing with the pandemic crisis........

If you cant flatten the curve within a reasonable time it is almost better to let the virus rip through the global population and suffer the consequences accelerating the process toward herd immunity

Take away the moral and ethical considerations and looking at this from pure pragmatic considerations it is the way to go

I've said the same for weeks

A girlfriend of mine is on a rice & mixed crop farm near Olongapo, the dogs are going psycho all night, people wandering around trying to steal crops

2 days into lockdown

and that is only the beginning.....

Here is the deal..... philippines and panama and 100 other countries are all following the same script in order to not look like they are neglecting protecting their citizens. It is this giant cluster fuck of panic but even more governments covering their asses from being accused of not taking action.. This is causing a paralysis as the entire world plays by the same playbook out of fear of being accused on inaction..... this is going to cause an immense social dislocation and riots on the street...... fuck , it is so fucking obvious

it is all being driven by appearances instead of pragmatic considerations.....

The gears of the global economy just got jammed because of political expediency. The virus reveals deeper pathologies.

of course the virus is virulent and this will be a mini die off event and it is not to be under estimated but you have to put this side by side with the social consequences of trying to lock up the entire planet.

it is kind of funny in weird way how this event locks us into a unified global response that is singular in its nature.... you are not seeing any diversity of response. The attempt of the UK to try the strategy of building up herd immunity but not restricting movement of their citizens didnt last 2 days before they back tracked

Spot on

Clusterfuck is going to be a much used term again

What we are talking about now is going to go mainstream within the next couple of weeks. I see no other pathway out of this

Only other option is a Manhattan project to mass test, which as we already discussed would lead to American civil war

Even Taiwan and Singapore and the countries that nipped this in the bud cannot be maintaining their isolation in the global economy....... their advantage though is that they can slowly allow infection in their populations to avoid overwhelming their health care system... in the end this becomes a new endemic virus in the human population just like the cold and flu...

But meanwhile, the economy...

Although this is not a conspiracy there will be a consequence that will give birth to new conspiracy theories

and it is the following.

SO many small businesses will fail as a result that the consolidation of corporate control of most of the economy will be further enhanced by passing through this global economic impasse caused by this virus.... the net result will be greater disparity and in hindsight when the panic settles the revised economy will be a further weakening of the already weakened middle class...... the long term consequence will be the accelerated move back to a tiny elite and huge population of folks living pay check to pay check.... Governments will subsidize huge businesses to get them back on their feet and let small businesses die...... that is what I think will happen

and there will be dozens of conspiracy theories that this was all by design.

Unless a grass roots uprising occurs which I think the current crop of humans are incapable of because they are so dependent on the system that exploits them that they will never really rise...... they will surrender to subjugation

Can you see any pathway where the disenfranchised around the world can effectively change the course of their governments pathway towards further consolidation of corporate control? I cannot see this..

Sadly most likely.

The spirit of rebellion has never been weaker, at least when talking on the macro scale

that is a good point..... on the micro scale we come back to that really poignant point that the real revolution is to simply not consume.... to not feed the corporate global inequity enterprise......

this is why wallsteet is tanking by the way... the response to the virus is halting consumption. COnsumption is what feeds the stock market. you stop consumption you stop corporate exponential wealth.....


Exactly, that's the only remote possibly salvation, first people are simply not going to pay their bills, mortgages & rent first. They are going to prioritize their bellies. This is going to crash the derivatives market in a way that makes the GFC look like a little talk fest. Lending will plummet & equity with it. The governments can't bail out billions of households without destroying any shred of validity of currency, which if they do, they've got nothing. The rebellion could well be the governments have no choice but to allow the destruction of most equity as most jobs vanish, then introduction of Universal Basic Income, with which people will have enough to eat perhaps, but very little discretionary spending ability.


If you do post it to peak oil, start a new thread, Ibon & SeaGypsy discuss the state of the world. Or something to that effect

I would join in

[Ibon]

Newfie and some of you boat owners will appreciate the email I received from some german potential guests today that had to cancel . They are sailing on their boat and have been denied access to land. Here is the email they sent me today

Hello!
We are fucked up, the police forced us under threatening of violence to stay for 14days on our boat .
So we won’t come.
If you know somebody important in Panama please help us to get on land!
The German embassy don’t have any executive rights in Panama and can’t help.

Regards


What a royal custerfuck.


This whole global quarantine lock down is a bunch of bullshit.

Let those old and vulnerable pass away who wont make it through the bottle neck of this pandemic and lets all move forward.
This is a radical position today but within 3 weeks I predict this position will go mainstream.

What do you all think?

[SeaGypsy]

Hahaha funny seeing our private yakking on here. I've checked in a few times lately just seeing what the old guard are exchanging. Both of us haven't been posting here for some time, perhaps that won't be held against us! Hi all, we're baaaack!

[Newfie]

Sea Gypsy,

Welcome back.

We bought this bigger boat with the express intent of having a bug out boat. The though was we may need some way to get out of Philadelphia.

Now here in our retirement, the boat is completely serving its purpose. Serendipity because we like Dominica and had intended in spending a month here anyway. Now starting to look like 10 weeks or more. Our USA passport is good for an automatic 6 month visa.

There are about 40 boats in the harbor right now. I think most of them are planning to move on, but those options are narrowing sharply. Martinique and Guadeloupe just closed their boarders as of noon. So I’m guessing we will end up with a yacht refuge community. Oh the hardship.

No super yachts here, no charters, but an international community of folks who live and travel on their boats.

This is about half the harbor.

[SeaGypsy]

Hi Newfie, I still never worked out how to make pictures work since the "upgrade" years ago, the old method doesn't work & nobody could explain it to me in any meaningful way (like why are we still in this format at all when a freelancer in India would jig us up a modern rig for a bag of potatoes).

I've still got my little 23' Hood coachdeck. Spent most of last year on her & probably going to go back tomorrow or Friday as the city is probably going into lockdown. Work in trucking has completely dried up for me the last few weeks, can't get anything in disability support because everything is panic mode about the virus.

[Newfie]

I’m using an online free app called imgbox

https://imgbox.com/

It’s actually easier and better than the former methods.

For image size I choose “resized 500x500” which seems to fit well.

[SeaGypsy]

"an error has occured" imgbox doesn't want my pics.

[Newfie]

Gee, sorry about that. It’s been flawless for me. I’m using an iPhone.

Did it fail in creating a link? For me it provides 3 different ways of linking to the image, I use the bottom of the 3, I copy the entire bbc code.

The other problem may be that if you did not select “family safe” the forum may reject it as porn. Although god knows enough porn gets through otherwise.

[Plantagenet]

Let those old and vulnerable pass away who wont make it through the bottle neck of this pandemic and lets all move forward.
This is a radical position today but within 3 weeks I predict this position will go mainstream.

What do you all think?

Hey Ibon and Sea Gypsy....glad to hear you guys and OK out there.

However, I've got to say I think Ibon's idea of letting the old and vulnerable die so the rest of the world can get on with it is the wrong approach.

Yes, the Wuhan virus mainly attacks older people, but a goodly number of middle aged and young people also get serious infections and wind up dying. One of the hero-doctors who died in China was 29.

So far we don't really know very much about this virus. For instance, we don't know how it started or what animal populations carry it. Is it in bats, or is it in rats or birds or pangolins or did it come out of some Chinese lab somewhere? We really don't know.

We also don't know if people can get reinfected even after they'd had it....so there may be no herd immunity to be gained by letting the virus run through the population.

Doctors and nurses are getting seriously ill at rates greater then the general population....this suggests there is some danger is being exposed over and over again....so again this disease isn't behaving like a "normal" flu virus.

So far every health professional in every country of the world is advising that the only thing we do is social distancing...to try and slow down the spread.

For now, I'm willing to accept what the health professionals are saying and I'm washing my hands and mostly staying home or just going to my office at the University.

Of course, up here in Alaska "social distancing" is a little easier then in most areas of the world. Many many people are spread out and live in isolated cabins, with acres of land separating them from the next cabin. The state testing lab for the virus is right here at the university, and they are doing the tests is less than a day. So far we've got two cases of the Wuhan virus in central Alaska, and both were people who had been outside and caught it in the lower 48. I know we'll be in big trouble eventually, but as usual Alaska is lagging a bit behind the rest of the US and the world in being seriously affected so far.


social distancing is easier in Alaska then in most parts of the world.....

Cheers!

[Outcast_Searcher]

Let those old and vulnerable pass away who wont make it through the bottle neck of this pandemic and lets all move forward.
This is a radical position today but within 3 weeks I predict this position will go mainstream.

What do you all think?

How much innumeracy does it take to believe that ONLY "old" people will die from this?

Just because, perhaps, only 1 or 2% of say, under-40 folks will die from this if they contract it, and 10% or more of those in, say, their 70's or above, with something closer to, say, 5% for folks in their 50's and 60's, doesn't mean it will ONLY impact "old" people to a significant degree.

Oh, and if someone survives but has $hundreds of thousands in ICU and related hopsital expenses, pretending THAT has no impact on society is delusional as well. (Insurance rates, debt, etc., as obvious examples).

If locking down can prevent a tremendous amount of that, it accomplishes something.

IF we could KNOW exactly what will transpire and when, then we could perhaps make some apriori value trade-offs, ahead of time, re minimizing damage to the economy.

However, lacking a functional, reliable, two-way time machine, I don't think we can do that.

The "young" pretending this is all an "old people" problem sounds just as accurate as the millennial couples pretending all of AGW is all the Boomer's fault, even as they live in McMansions, buy all manner of consumer products they don't actually need, fly to foreign lands for vacations, and drive both their SUV's 25,000 or more combined miles a year.

(Meanwhile this childless boomer who never has done ANY of that, says, "WTF"?

[Newfie]

Outcast,

Nice post. Nothing is simple is it.

[SeaGypsy]

"Almost all patients were already suffering from serious health problems, including cancer, when the coronavirus infection was detected, according to the new data from the ISS.

Two of those who died had no pre-existing health conditions, the data showed.
"Patients who died with coronavirus have an average age of over 80 years, 80.3. The peak of mortality is in the 80-89 year age range. Lethality, ie the number of deaths among the sick, is higher among those over 80," stated.

On March 5, the average given age of the deceased was slightly higher at 81 years old, but the overall picture remains very similar.

Brusaferro stated that two patients under the age of 40 had died. Both were aged 39.

One had a tumour and died in hospital, while the other died at home and “had some comorbid factors including diabetes, obesity and other types of ailments that characterized his life before becoming infected,” said Brusaferro"

https://www.thelocal.it/20200311/corona ... s-in-italy

Firstly I will say that the snippet of conversation Ibon copied to the OP is the tail end of about 5 weeks of private conversation we have shared on this particular topic. We don't have conclusive conversations, we don't argue, we just bounce our ideas around & try to keep clear headed.

In response to the points raised in replies so far-

1/ the countries which have successfully passed peak infection rates all had not just social distancing & sanitary advisory, but mass testing including non symptomatic folk, followed by mandatory, enforced isolation for those testing positive for the virus. There are no examples of success without these last two procedures, to date. I'm not going to post a pile of links as none of this information is difficult to find. South Korea has been by far the most successful at reducing new contractions. Ibon & I me are only slightly ahead of the curve as we were on this only hours before TIME Magazine-

https://time.com/5804899/u-s-coronaviru ... w-s-korea/

Thing is, there are not even a tiny fraction of enough test kits around for the SK model to be implemented broadly, anywhere. They can't be manufactured quickly enough.

Then in conspiracy nuts USA, particularly flyover Trump voting ones if somehow hundreds of millions of kits become available, how does anyone see FEMA & the CDC going around door to door mass testing, with swab kits & handcuffs? This isn't fantasy, it's real & it's the only possible way to stop this virus spreading.

Both Ibon & me think that it's impossible for the above scenario to occur, it would lead to civil breakdown & chaos. For obvious reasons.

So we have an impossible solution as the only possible solution, doubly impossible. So what we are talking about isn't strategy, it's recognition of simple facts- this disease is going to run right through the community, may at best be slowed down, but it's not going to be stopped.

2/ instead of looking at a handful or less of sensational deaths, look at the specific body counts, particularly as recently updated by Italy, with the largest source pool of mortality data outside of China. Far less people under 40 who are currently healthy will die from this than from any of the common causes of death for that demographic. In Italy so far that number is zero.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/

Full data is not yet available anywhere yet, Italy of course is mid triage not post mortem.

[Newfie]

Sea,

Thanks for that synopsis. I would just add that most of the graphs I see are either showing the fatalities or showing number tested positive. Number testing positive is a joke because it is not taking a random representation of the population. Death is more meaningful but probably represents a 3-4 week delay. Because it is 3-4 weeks from infection to death.

That’s why I think this will hit hard with little mitigation, the public is 3-4 weeks behind the curve.

Hope I’m wrong. Hell of a way to find out.

[SeaGypsy]

Newfie, among the many often repeated blurts on this topic is the idea the media is blowing this out of proportion. I suspect they are in one important aspect, playing it down. The death rate for finalised cases is more than double the often repeated WHO figure, a few weeks ago 2.3% now 3.7%. On the other hand, the most reliable mortality figures indicate no significant threat to young & healthy individuals, as detailed in the article from Italy above. The media is generally avoiding this topic, along with the key procedures, equipment & processes used in the countries where the outbreak is apparently under control.

[Ibon]

On the other hand, the most reliable mortality figures indicate no significant threat to young & healthy individuals, as detailed in the article from Italy above..

For the proper functioning of our global economic system this sector of our population we can do without.

If the aged where noble they would all come together and make a plea to world leaders to please stop this insanity of grinding to halt the entire economic system just for their sake. If the elders were wise they would stand together and tell the world to please move on without worrying about them.

A couple months ago I visited one of our carpenters. I sat with his father in their home who is suffering from advanced prostate cancer. I asked him about his treatments. He told me he stopped any further medications of visits to the doctor. He mentioned that he does not want to be a burden to his family or put them under any financial stress. He looked me in the eye directly when he said that and he didn't have to say another word, I received his transmission directly and it was clear.... " I am at peace. I am ready to go.

Why can't the elders of the world stand together and make this noble gesture to the younger ones.

They cannot because we no longer have noble sentiments. We are collectively cowards.

[Ibon]

I am 62. And I hereby tell all world leaders stop this stupidity. I am ready to perish if the virus infects me. Carry on world. All the best and godspeed.

[SeaGypsy]

Wow Ibon, I have to say, I'm 52, come & get me too you big scary virus!

I can't but help my recollection of my grandparents & their generation, the so called "greatest", as compared to my parents, the boomers. The former were better people, much more inclined to altruism, a much less selfish take on reality, a clear memory of the horrors of war & real financial depression. I find myself now pondering how would they have acted in this scenario. In doing so, perhaps I'm glorifying, but I do suspect they would have come out en-mass to do or die. Rather than watch the world ruined on their behalf.

[Newfie]

Ibon,

First on my post above, I would call those consequences, not silver linings. It is a disruption to the hive, the hive does not like disruptions. It may not end up working as it at first appears.

Second, on your subsequent posts especially to Dohboi. This is war and by dying you are surrendering to the adversary. This may make you feel noble, heroic. But the classic definition of a hero is an idiot who luckily survived.

And even if you are “right”, if “right” can even be defined I am personally not ready to join you.

I’m 69, worked my whole f#%^*+g life at jobs that did not “incite my inner muse” so those little rug rats could have a decent upbringing. I have spent years sitting at the kiddy pool. Now is my turn and I still desire some time in the deep pool. I don’t feel I owe my kids much because I’ve given them my all for a long time. They are adults on their own. I’m here to give advice and compassion when they don’t take it. I humor myself with the idea that they would miss me. I don’t want to deprive them.

Now how’s that as a fine rationalization?

[Ibon]

Ibon,

First on my post above, I would call those consequences, not silver linings. It is a disruption to the hive, the hive does not like disruptions. It may not end up working as it at first appears.

Second, on your subsequent posts especially to Dohboi. This is war and by dying you are surrendering to the adversary. This may make you feel noble, heroic. But the classic definition of a hero is an idiot who luckily survived.

And even if you are “right”, if “right” can even be defined I am personally not ready to join you.

I’m 69, worked my whole f#%^*+g life at jobs that did not “incite my inner muse” so those little rug rats could have a decent upbringing. I have spent years sitting at the kiddy pool. Now is my turn and I still desire some time in the deep pool. I don’t feel I owe my kids much because I’ve given them my all for a long time. They are adults on their own. I’m here to give advice and compassion when they don’t take it. I humor myself with the idea that they would miss me. I don’t want to deprive them.

Now how’s that as a fine rationalization?

I started another post to address this...... Those over 60 name your song..........................

[yellowcanoe]

For the proper functioning of our global economic system this sector of our population we can do without.

If the aged where noble they would all come together and make a plea to world leaders to please stop this insanity of grinding to halt the entire economic system just for their sake. If the elders were wise they would stand together and tell the world to please move on without worrying about them.

I am 62 and very close to retirement. Once I am retired my contribution to society will drop significantly. I fully agree that elderly people should be willing to refuse to accept expensive, hi-tech treatments that will likely only marginally extend their lifespan. However, I don't see the problem as residing entirely with the elderly - a large segment of our society seems to abhor the idea that anyone with this virus would be denied an intensive care bed if that is what was required to give them a chance to live. People want to show compassion and it is very hard to get them to understand that spending money on one thing invariably means that there is less money to spend on other things. My expectation is that the massive expenditures that will be required to deal with the Corona virus and economic downturn will result in considerably less expenditures to deal with climate change. Indeed, my Facebook feed which until recently contained a lot of climate change material is now dominated with calls to close down activities and promote social distancing. Ironically, the people who were most adamant that we needed to do something about climate change are now focused exclusively on the corona virus issue, seemingly unaware of the damage these actions will have on dealing with climate change.