Good article. Indian capitalism is obscene, it is based on brutal exploitation, there's nothing new here though, India has always been structured like that.

From the author of my favourite book published last year:

"It is now rapidly becoming clear that the “spontaneous order” of the market cannot save us from the medical, economic, and social emergency at hand. Whether we like it or not, large parts of the world are already moving toward a partially planned economy — or at least a much more state-guided or state-directed one — in order to deal with the extraordinary challenges of the moment. The only real question is: Will the emerging economic model take the form of a business-friendly “disaster capitalism,” geared toward preserving corporate power in a more nationalist and statist shell, or will it take the form of an internationalist “disaster socialism,” geared toward protecting workers and preserving the fabric of our democratic societies?"

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/04/coronavirus-capitalism-disasters-socialism-economic-collapse

Implicit in the above: it's not a troglodyte question of: 'is state intervention good or bad?', but 'what state intervention, to what ends, for whose benefit?'.

Last one for the evening - why anyone who thinks what is happening is a 'return of big gubberment' is a living a fantasy:

"Fighting the pandemic in this individualistic way is a neoliberal fantasy. The confinement measures are seen as an end in themselves and an opportunity for our heads of states to showcase war-time leadership, while neglecting to implement all other measures requested by the World Health Organization, such as setting up massive and systemic screening for the infection, training of personnel and building new health infrastructures. The strict enforcement of confinement via law-and-order measures while also not implementing rigorous testing and tracing regimes thus amounts to coronavirus ‘greenwashing’ – doing the absolute least with maximum fanfare. There is no deficiency of competent advice, which is largely being ignored. Thus, despite much rhetoric about the “return of Big State”, Western governments remain trapped in the very neoliberal policy logic that brought us here.

...Our hospitals are overwhelmed not because this is a rare natural disaster for which no government can ever have on-hand capacity to cope, but because, unlike South Korea for example, Western governments have been under-funding public healthcare for decades, neglecting medical infrastructure, and outsourcing the production of key ingredients to countries with cheap labour."

https://www.iwm.at/closedbutacitve/corona-focus/albena-azmanova-our-neoliberal-war-on-the-pandemic/

:mask:

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/04/coronavirus-capitalism-disasters-socialism-economic-collapse

Implicit in the above: it's not a troglodyte question of: 'is state intervention good or bad?', but 'what state intervention, to what ends, for whose benefit?'. — StreetlightX

:up:

Praying for dic(k)tator putin to get coronavirus :pray:

Johnson has gone into intensive care, I hope he pulls through.

As I thought.

Ireland (pop. 5m) has just ordered 11 million masks. You can see where this is going.

Some good news. The US is flattening the curve.



:clap:

There are good reasons now not to go to the hospital so that at least your last moments can be with your family. — Benkei

I don't know. It would be a pretty fucked up thing for a family to witness and the sick person wouldn't be conscious at the end. Plus the hospital might be able to save them.

The pandemic effects our lives in various ways. — ssu

Yep.

:mask:

Kim Jong-Un :flower:
Bashar al-Assad :flower:
Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud :flower:
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan :flower:
Xi Jinping :flower:
Vladimir Putin :flower:
Donald Trump :flower:
Benjamin Netanyahu :flower:
Jair Bolsonaro :flower:
Boris Johnson :flower:

you forgot Hun Sen

Palliative care at home is possible in the Netherlands. It beats dying alone. Some older people in the Netherlands opted for it.

With morphine, yep.

Hun Sen's not (yet) a global hazard.

true, he's the small town dic(k)tator of Cambodge

What's with the logarithmic scale? (technically that scale would flatten any curve i think).

I've been wondering about when infections will peak in Canada and the U.S...New cases in New York started to plateau last I checked, which is a good sign that the peak is close.

The flattening is relative to whatever else is on the scale. It's just easier to discern on the log scale because it's less steep.

The vast majority of state lockdowns happened around March 16-21. Within about 5 days of that last date (the average virus incubation period) you can see the curve begin to fall off slightly and the new trend is becoming more and more obvious. Suppression is working. The trick will be making sure it's permanent.

↪Baden What's with the logarithmic scale? (technically that scale would flatten any curve i think). — VagabondSpectre

I was thinking the same thing...

Of course it’s true that not going outside will reduce the “paths of transmission”. I would argue that you’re not so much reducing a path of transmission as you are storing it for later, but the point is taken.

I’ve been following the case of Sweden intently due to its different approach. The chief epidemiologist, Anders Wallensten said people will eventually ignore stay-at-home orders if they are too stringent, so it's better to adopt measures that can be sustained over a long period of time. Another epidemiologist who earlier criticized the UK’s lockdown approach, Anders Tegnell, said that they are only pushing the problem ahead of them, merely kicking the can down the road so to speak. He also said that mass unemployment and a ruined economy brings with it its own public health problems.

Do you disagree with them? — NOS4A2

I disagree with their priorities - they are missing the forest for the trees. If there's a tiger roaming the streets, you get your family inside first. Then you have time to figure out what to do about it.

In the same way, countries are not prepared for the virus and so suppressing it buys valuable time to get prepared and act more effectively. Time to discover more about the virus, to comprehensively test-and-trace, to build up capacity such as masks, ventilators and medicines, to discover new treatments or cures, to train additional health workers, to educate the public, to address the issues you raise. Time is what China and South Korea now have and every week helps.

Conversely, there is large potential downside risk to just winging it. An overwhelmed health system, more deaths sooner, virus mutations resulting in re-infections, possible health problems for those that recover from the virus such as lung, heart or brain damage. And mass unemployment, a ruined economy, and public health problems anyway.

The options are to buy time now and prepare properly, or to fly blind and hope for the best.

SARS-CoV2 is simply Darwinism in action, weeding out the weak and inferior.

But what if it's natures doomsday machine and humanity is the weed, her furher?

Indeed, a natural phenomenon so perfect as this could only be characterized by an act of God, the human God... And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision making process which rules out human meddling, the doomsday machine is terrifying. It's simple to understand. And completely credible, and convincing

You two are talking teleology now. I don't think Darwin or Spenser could support that.

You two are talking teleology now. I don't think Darwin or Spenser could support that. — Monitor

But Stranglove certainly could. And probably Brigadier General Jack Ripper

is simply Darwinism in action, weeding out the weak and inferior. — Merkwurdichliebe

You'll be gone soon then.

Michael Gove has just said Boris is not on a ventilator. I think we all know what that means... Boris is on a ventilator.

simply Darwinism — Merkwurdichliebe

Because a lot of humans are inferior to a virus. by the way one weeds because the crops one is growing are weaker than the weeds. Darwinism takes out the crops.

China ended lockdown in Wuhan and sent 1000 vents to NYC.

Yay!

:clap: Hopefully that will put an end to the conspiracy theory that the virus is still raging over there.

Now we just need that vaccine.