.
Dada:So it's innocent. It isn't part of a psychological operation.
I disagree. While it's never so simple as to apply a broad-brush assessment of intent for such a global phenomenon, I've no doubt that at certain levels, there is
opportunistic and greed-based intention.It may be that many, perhaps even most, involved in policy/guidance/implementations over the past ~year had variants of 'good intentions'. As with any pyramid power structure, those below the top won't be privy to details or primary drivers. It's also possible that whatever 'good intentions' were in place in the early weeks shifted over time to more opportunistic power/resource grabs.
(unprecedented average increase in revenue/profit for billionaires in 2020 while working/labor classes and small businesses are/continue to be devastated; politicians leveraging the crisis scenario to pass increasingly draconian laws, etc.; the latter is a recurring pattern throughout history, to be sure).
Whatever the 'true' drivers: whether this crisis was initiated as part of a long-term agenda, or as a recent, and hopefully temporary, opportunistic set of power moves
laced with a measure of
good intentions -- the results are the same.
The People have been, and will continue to be, F#cked for years because of decisions made by those in power coupled with the (thus far) subservient acceptance by the majority (perhaps due in large part to their continued
internal dialogue that it will soon pass... many refuse to contemplate the nefarious implications of any other scenario than "good intentions/
temporary govt overreach").
If it turns out, in the next ~12 months, that current [egregiously excessive] measures are largely scaled back; that those in positions of power/authority acknowledge overreach, and that we revert to a more balanced approach, then my intuition/researched take on this will likely be [THANKFULLY] wrong, and y'all can berate me repeatedly, indefinitely.
Important caveat: if measures are indeed scaled-down in the coming ~year, only to be ramped back up (along with
stricter, new restrictions) in the not-too-distant future due to a
reported resurgence of this virus, or perhaps -- dare I ruminate -- a 'more lethal' version (
real or exaggerated), then unfortunately it will only lend more credence to the notion that intentions are
not good overall.
If I'm at least partially correct, the People will need to UNSUBSCRIBE to these measures and refuse
en masse. Hopefully before too much more devastation.
While I'm here, may as well add a couple links.
First:
Scientists from
Duke, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins released findings, titled,
"The Long-Term Impact Of The Covid-19 Unemployment Shock On life Expectancy And Mortality Rates". Link here:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/worki ... w28304.pdfA few excerpts:
...severe economic distress might also have important consequences on human well-being (Gordon and Sommers (2016) and Ruhm (2015)). This shortcoming is arguably explained by the fact that current macroeconomic models do not allow for the possibility that economic activity might affect mortality rates of the agents in the economy.
...
Between late March-early April, most U.S. states imposed stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, resulting in widespread shut down of business. Unemployment rate rose from 3.8% in February 2020 to 14.7% in April 2020 with 23.1 million unemployed Americans. Despite a decline to 6.7% in November 2020,the average unemployment rate over the year is comparable with the 10% unemployment rate at the peak of the 2007-2009 Great Recession and it is near the post-World War II historical maximum reached in the early 1980s (10.8%). Importantly, COVID-19 related job losses disproportionately affect women, particularly of Hispanic heritage; African Americans; foreign born individuals; less educated adults and individuals age 16-24. In fact, the unemployment rate underestimates the extent of the economic contraction as many potential workers have abandoned the workforce (especially women).
...
The long-term effects of the COVID-19 related unemployment surge on the US mortality rate have not been characterized in the literature. Thus, as a last step, we compute an estimate of the excess deaths associated with the COVID-19 unemployment shock. This corresponds to the difference between the number of deaths predicted by the model with and without the unemployment shock observed in 2020. For the overall population, the increase in the death rate following the COVID-19 pandemic implies a staggering 0.89 and 1.37 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively.
These numbers correspond to 0.24% and 0.37%of the projected US population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. For African-Americans, we estimate 180 thousand and 270 thousand excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. These numbers correspond to 0.34% and 0.49% of the projected African-American population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. For Whites, we estimate 0.82 and 1.21 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. These numbers correspond to 0.30% and 0.44% of the projected White population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. These numbers are roughly equally split between men and women.
Overall, our results indicate that, based on the historical evidence, the COVID-19 pandemic might have long-lasting consequences on human health through its impact on economic activity. We interpret these results as a strong indication that policymakers should take into consideration the severe, long-run implications of such a large economic recession on people’s lives when deliberating on COVID-19 recovery and containment measures. ...Policy-makers should therefore consider combining lockdowns with policy interventions meant to reduce economic distress, guarantee access to health care, and facilitate effective economic reopening under health care policies to limit SARS-CoV-19 spread.
And an opinion piece:
https://off-guardian.org/2021/01/18/ant ... xtinction/One of the most important aspects of aesthetics, of the study of art at all, is that it teaches the viewer or reader how to see and experience more deeply, with more sensitivity, and this in turn (among other things) leads to the ability to recognize the fraudulent. In other words you come to recognize propaganda. It is almost the cultivating of a sub clinical intuitive skill, a sense when a narrative or an image seem counterfeit.
Along with this comes the ability to, at least partly, resist marketing campaigns and advertisers’ manipulations.
I have always felt the reading of the classics serve as a teflon shield for advertising.
Art and culture have more profound gifts than just a finely tuned ‘bullshit meter’. But given the events of this last week, and of the entire year, as well,
the loss of cultural education keeps coming back to me. The least-enrolled post grad program at U.S. universities is the study of the classics. History is very low, too, for any era. Business management is the most popular.I often have thought that the loss of such studies today has had a genuinely deleterious effect. Certainly most big search engines, if you google post graduate programs in the classics, will return a variety of links about how such a degree has nearly zero economic reward attached.
This is now about a year into the pandemic and there have still been no debates, no public roundtables and no referendums. Nothing. Just decrees by the government. I honestly have given up trying to make sense of statistics, really. But
a couple of things have not changed; the fatality rate if you catch Covid 19 is under 1% (and yes, case fatality is different than infectious mortality and that in turn is different from mortality rate). And depending on how it is being counted, it is often a good deal less than that. And yet the entire planet has been subjected to severe restrictions on travel, and coerced to follow pseudoscientific behaviour like mask wearing and social distancing. Today in many places there is what amounts to martial law. Police or national guard patrol the streets after dark. Many countries have banned public events, closed restaurants and nightclubs, and limited any public gatherings. Many schools remain closed or only partially open.The economic consequences of these non-debated government policies have been catastrophic. In the U.S. something like 60 million jobs have been lost, many never to return. A hundred and fifty thousand restaurants have gone bankrupt. Only one in three museums will ever reopen. In San Francisco they decided NOT to count the numbers of new homeless. No reason was given but one can guess. The homeless situation in the U.S., in big cities in particular, was critical even before the pandemic. Now the numbers are unprecedented. Not even during the ‘Great Depression’ was there anything like the current level of those without basic shelter.
Food insecurity is at a crisis level. Feeding America, the largest hunger relief organization in the US, estimates over 50 million people go hungry every night including something close to twenty million children.
Since mid-March 2020, numerous surveys have documented unprecedented levels of food insecurity that eclipse anything seen in recent decades in the United States, including during the Great Recession. Over the past five years, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates of food insecurity in the United States have hovered around 11% to 12%.
As of March and April 2020, national estimates of food insecurity more than tripled to 38% In a national survey we fielded in March 2020 among adults with incomes less than 250% of the 2020 federal poverty level (based on thresholds from the US Census), 44% of all households were food insecure including 48% of Black households, 52% of Hispanic households, and 54% of households with children.
American Public Heath Association (Dec 2020)
And yet, congress just passed another
defense budget increase. According to Defense News…
the final version of the 2020 defense appropriations bill, part of a broad $1.4 trillion spending deal to finalize federal spending for 2020 and avert a government shutdown. The defense bill would provide $738 billion.
Almost one in three households suffers hunger, regularly. Almost half of black and hispanic households. Households with children are most vulnerable to the government policies. So half of the kids in the U.S. have inadequate nutrition. Half will suffer long term developmental problems, almost guaranteed.
The [lengthy] piece continues at link.
A couple more breadcrumbs.
https://twitter.com/brdlnrs/status/1350770568094769152
https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk- ... mic-began/Quote from the
Express & Star article:
Deaths in private homes have been consistently well above the five-year average since April 2020.
While deaths in other settings had fallen below average by summer 2020 – after the end of the first wave of the virus – those in private homes remained above average by between 700 and 900 a week.
