Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
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John Quiggin 
Major problems are on the march on every front for Australia and global civilization.
One: The “Pandemicene”
COVID-19 continues to be a serious and dangerous disease for a significant proportion of people who contract it and people are contracting it multiple times. Chances of serious adverse outcomes increase with every re-infection.
Many other known diseases are on a steep increase. We can name heart attacks and strokes, influenza, RSV, atypical (walking) pneumonia, pertussis and cryptosporidium, plus in parts of the world tuberculosis and mpox. More could be named.
Contributing causes in order of most likely to least likely are COVID-19 damage including systemic inflammation and damage to immune systems, lowered vaccine rates due to anti-vax propaganda and refusal to mask and filter for clean air. All of these problems due to the anti-science campaign of neoliberal market fundamentalist economics.
Two: Climate Change
Climate change and the attendant damage accelerate due to climate inaction and obstruction. Geoff Miel will no doubt keep us updated. Delay and inaction due to the anti-science campaign of neoliberal market fundamentalist economics.
Three: The “Agricene”
Crops and productive lands face damage and declining productivity from climate change effects including more severe wild fires, droughts, floods and pest invasions. The ABC has carried stories in the last few days about fire ants and the fall army worm in Australia. Delay and inaction due to the anti-science, anti-quarantine funding campaign of neoliberal market fundamentalist economics.
Four: Increasing Regional Wars
Caused by increasing stresses and competition for resources plus rising religious and ideological fundamentalism.
Five: The Decline of Democracy
Caused by anger about real unmet needs and also by forms of open-ended entitlement anger among the already well-off. Excess individualism and market fundamentalist economics also play into this.
This is a short summary only of just part of what is going on.
The economics of renting are in the news with the passing of the federal governments rental assistance bill. Australia is seen as a land of home owners but that is a relatively recent development. Before 1950, renting was more common. If there was a home owner, they often ran boarding houses or allowed many family members to occupy rooms. Rental home supply was able to match demand. Then the illusion of self sufficiency took hold in the public imagination. This ideal included home ownership and independence from family enclaves. The 1960s saw a gradual breakdown of traditional family structures. Women could now choose to live independent of their families. When the 1970s arrived, this trend continued. Now young women wanted rental accomodation. At first they. joined up with women of the same age. Rental contracts were signed under. the assumption they every woman in residence would contribute to the rent.
The 1980s saw no change in the rental market until the mortgage rate boom. When interest rates on mortgages climbed into double digits, rents started to soar. Now independent living had its biggest challenge. More women began to share a rental contract. But as rent rise dramatically there were many delinquencies. The woman who signed the rental contract found herself abandoned by those who had promised to share the rent.
The 1990s were worse. After the recession “we had to have” is followed by a global recession, the rental market becomes exceedingly tight. As women lose their jobs, they return to the family home. Rental properties are now less attractive. Many landlords only stay in the rental home supply market for the tax incentives given by negative gearing. Keating tried to get rid of negative gearing but this led to a catastrophic fall on supply. The negative gearing tax benefits now became entrenched in rental supply planning.
A new century gave a chance for a reset. As the Australian economy entered the early years of its longest run of no recessionary cycles, independent living returned with renewed vigour. Now it’s was not just women, but men and even tertiary students demanding rental accomodation. The rental market still had its ups and downs as mortgage rates remained sticky at the upper end of the scale. But slowly the official interest rate was lowered and mortgage rates began to fall. This drew some former renters, usually married couples, away from the renting option. It also led to the rise of the multiple property landlord. The rental market was in equilibrium.
Low interest rates encouraged a boom in real estate prices. This had a flow on effect in the rental market. Supply quickly started to fail to meet rising demand. Initially stressed renters could switch over to buying their first home, mainly because of misguided government ( state and federal) subsidies and tax concessions. By interfering with market forces, governments caused distortions of supply and demand.
The rise of the importance of overseas students put increased strains on the rental market. The competition for available rental properties became fierce. Then the arrival of the Air b& b era made things so much worse. By allowing property owners to engage in short term rentals for overseas tourists, governments robbed rental markets of much of its supply stop gaps. The decline of rental accomodation supply became a slump.
In 2024 all these issues have now resulted in one of the toughest rental markets in Australian economic history. The government response has been laboured, slow and inadequate. The federal government made things worse by opening the immigration flood gates after 2022.
It now remains to be seen if any government can get the rental market in particular, and the housing market in general, back into equilibrium. They cannot just sit back and wait for another catastrophe like the COVID-19 pandemic to solve the problem.
IPCC linear growth projections towards tipping points are done for. It’s exponential or quadratic, of course. No matter which of the two the world is surely done for, and quite soon.
Climate Doomsday 6 Years From Now – YouTube
Premiered Nov 25, 2024. 41 minutes.
Prof. Jerry Kroth makes a shocking revelation about new climate data that has emerged.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ0JDk1p6Zg
Some of the above content taken from here:
The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand | Johan Rockström | TED
Premiered Aug 15, 2024. 18 minutes.
We’re nearly halfway through the 2020s, dubbed the most decisive decade for action on climate change. Where exactly do things stand? Climate impact scholar Johan Rockström offers the most up-to-date scientific assessment of the state of the planet and explains what must be done to preserve Earth’s resilience to human pressure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl6VhCAeEfQ
Gregory J McKenzie,
The only way to get perspective in housing matters is to look at the historical long run. In addition, it is of great assistance to see the comparative trajectories of multiple countries over that long run from about the start of the 20th C. The following is the best I can find at short notice and with me not having access to academic databases. The follownig Guardian article is very good and has some excellent graphs.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/sep/14/australia-housing-crisis-home-ownership-data
The graph “Australia’s home ownership rate has stalled” shows data from about 1900 to 2020. The USA graph starts at 1900 and Australia’s graph starts at about 1910. Australia’s graph is pre-highlighted and the USA’s graph (or another country’s) can then be highlighted by hovering the cursor. Australia and the USA show a steep rise in home ownership in the period of Keynesian spending from 1940 (US) and about 1943 (Australia). Astonishingly, the rises start during a period of full war effort in WW2. Perhaps taking lags into account this means New Deal spending (USA) and Keynesian spending on housing in Australia started before 1940 and 1943 respectively.
If that lag theory holds then New Deal / Keynesian spending was clearly able to fund increasing housing ownership and a war effort / recovery effort right through and beyond WW2. We see the rises in home ownership are uninterrupted through the 1950s as well. Clearly, the power of Keynesian spending was immense in the era in question. Australia’s home ownership rate peaked in about 1965 and has been on the decline ever since. It would be instructive to fully analyse the reasons for that. I would suggest the decline of Housing Commission schemes and then the rise of anti-Keynesian monetarism leading into neoliberal market fundamentalist economics were the main factors.
Now, I want to examine the differing assumptions we can make concerning what is the best housing and home ownership policy for Australia. It is my observation that the great majority of economically independent adult singles and the great majority of formed couples ideally want to live independently in a flat, unit, apartment or house of their choosing within their means and preferably which they own or are purchasing via an affordable mortgage. They do not want the inferior familial or mendicant position where the patriarch, matriarch or landlord “lords it” over them. This has been and is still is true in Australian society, in my observation as I say. They do not want, in my opinion, rampant landlordism and rentier capitalism.
The best way to solve Australia’s housing crisis would be to revive State Housing Commissions with Federal funding injections and to boost both private and social housing spending with large Keynesian style, MMT style or functional finance style spending. The term matters not. These are functionally similar policies. Negative gearing should be abolished and replaced with deductions for the mortgages for home ownership (owner-occupiers) as has been the case in the USA. Negative gearing is severely market distorting in a way that inflates housing prices and creates a relatively small wealthy landlord and rentier class to lord it over the poor and the struggling middle. We will never solve our housing and homelessness crisis under negative gearing, neoliberalism and the general subsidisation of the rich over the poor.
“The best way to solve Australia’s housing crisis would be to…” cut immigration.
TINA: end ponzi immigration. Return immigration to Australia to the century long average that existed prior to the 2004 introduction of the neoliberal ponzi Big Australia scam.
By the way, distortion of the housing market began with Hawke-Keating (mainly Keating) long before negative gearing of investment income and concessional half capital gains tax on investment asset appreciation was introduced by Howard-Costello. Keating removed capital gains tax, if memory serves in circa 1985, on the principal place of residence. The neoliberal ALP at a stroke turned a house, the principal owner occupied dwelling, ie a home, into a tax haven, into an investment vehicle, into an appreciating asset class far more attractive to big end of town lenders, developers, builders, house flippers and the FIRE sector generally than before. Of course, in hand with that crime against the state went ALP increased cutting of public housing funding.
Svante,
Immigration needs to be trimmed for sure. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition to solve our social, housing and ecological crises in Australia. I have argued for some time for zero net immigration. That is for the application of the formula:
Immigration + Refugee Intake + Births – Emigration – Deaths should be close to net zero over suitable averaging or smoothing periods. It is easily possible to construct such a policy in a non-racist manner and to also meet a reasonable refugee intake commitment which is sensible relative to our modest capacity as the driest populated continent with an already largely wrecked environment.
It is not “either/or”. A sustainable immigration and ecological policies plus state support for private owner/occupier housing and social housing are all required. This needs to be coupled with ending negative gearing and other subsidies which assist the rich to get ever richer while the poor become homeless.
Of course, this is just me talking, or rather typing. Words are forceless. Nothing will change until mass demands become effective as mass action. The elites are perfectly happy with the current system. However, the entire system or set of systems (human and natural) are so close to a string of catastrophic collapses that the entire game is going to change, likely within a decade or less. The world is very close to the brink. Australia is too.
The disgraceful denial of the seriousness and severity of COVID-19 disease continues. COVID-19 is still killing and harming many people. The latest available consolidated data for Australia (about June this year) showed that COVID-19 was, in the measured year, the equal third biggest killer of Australians. It probably ranked and ranks higher as a disabler of Australians and as a cause of further consequent diseases like heart disease, inflammation and immune dysregulation.
This denial of the seriousness and severity of COVID-19 disease is carried out and carried on by people best called “infectionists”. That is, they are in favour of infecting people with at least one dangerous disease. The infectious disease they are in favour of selectively infecting people with, essentially meets all these criteria;
(1.) It is airborne and very infectious. Therefore it takes a little extra expense and a little extra effort and inconvenience to stop the infection chains.
(2.) It is relatively new to science and to the public, so its newly discovered (in peer reviewed science) yet still rapidly evolving, dangerous characteristics, can be denied or minimised in policy and communication.
(3) Its more subtle and far-reaching effects and even its deaths, mainly in the older cohorts but now also beginning to increase among very young children, can be swept under the carpet, minimised and denied for a long period: for four years so far.
We need to ask ourselves this. Why are the infectionists doing this and why have they singled out COVID-19 to give it a special pass to kill and disable people while we still fight other “traditional”, better known diseases? What are the ideological dimensions of this policy of exception? It is certainty not a scientifically based or caring based policy.
The policy is based on denial of scientific facts; facts now definitely clear despite the still evolving nature of the pathogen and the pandemic. Facts and “fact precursors” or potential fact indications which our best thinkers (medical and economic) predicted right from the outset were a real and very high risk of empirically coming to pass; facts which are now clearly verified and have for a few years at least. The infectionist policy is based on authority, subservience to authority, careerism, conservatism and a lamentable ignorance about pathogen evolution and evolutionary punctuated equilibrium events and as such is unable to comprehend and empirically analyse a sui generis event; in this case a sui generis, novel zoonotic pathogen, possibly human engineered, and the ensuing sui generis pandemic (of a novel, highly infectious and still rapidly evolving pathogen) which creates, essentially, an evolutionary punctuated equilibrium event.
All the “smart” minds working from authority, outmoded scientific knowledge and a lack of understanding of the profundity and far-reaching powers and effects of evolution have completely failed to understand this event. They lack the breadth of understanding, the imagination and the compassion to understand what is going on. They employ great levels of denialism to deliberately avoid understanding what is going on. Either that or there are (in some cases) far more perfidious reasons for their denial, inaction and selective infectionism.
End of Part 1. I will come back later with Part 2 of this analysis.
Part 2 of my COVID-19 update as started above.
I referred above to all the (so-called) “smart” minds working from positions of authority, outmoded scientific knowledge, careerist motives and plain denialist ignorance. They lacked a proper understanding of saltation (biology: abrupt evolutionary change; sudden large-scale mutation), punctuated equilibrium evolution in general (or evolution at all) and of the likely sui generis nature of a novel zoonotic disease and its processes and outbreaks. They also lacked the rigorous deductive powers, the wide learning (generalist as well as specialist), the imagination and finally the humanity to tackle anything of a sui generis nature.
As the opposite of “Renaissance Man” they had failed to embrace, at the least, the fundamentals of all branches of knowledge and to develop themselves as fully as possible as thinking, feeling and empathetic. They had become narrow technical, scientific, political, public policy and administrative specialists. These shuttered and siloed elites failed themselves and us, scientifically and morally.
There were notable exceptions. In Australia, in the Medical Sciences, one can note Dr David Berger (activist doctor, emergency specialist), Professor Raina MacIntyre (Professor of Global Biosecurity, Emerging infectious diseases, infection, biosecurity etc.), Dr Mary-Louise McLaws deceased (epidemiologist), Professor Brendan Crabbe (Malaria Virulence and Drug Discovery Group, Chair Australian Global Health Alliance and Chair Pacific Friends of Global Health). These are a just a few. In economics, I can name Professor John Quiggin and Professor Bill Mitchell as two who clearly understood all or most of what was essential in all required fields to form a considered position: fully rounded and humane thinkers in other words: not just narrow financial and marker economists of which there are sadly too many.
But by far the great majority of our prominent people were opportunists, blind followers, narrow, ideologized technical people easily cowed or seduced by authority, careers, fame, notoriety and money: a veritable conga line of …… Well, some of us know the Keating quote. The populace were in general sadly fooled by these false leaders, fakers, shallow influencers, denialists, infectionists, false prophets and all the false profits. The costs of these false profits are delayed but they will come.
I will finish with Part 3 by briefly referring to COVID-19 minimisation and the UK situation, which is already dire.
COVID-19 – Part Three.
The exceptional treatment of COVID-19, in the negative, minimising and infectionist sense, has become ever clearer here in Australia. We now treated to media, medical and public health messaging about the concerning rise in outbreaks of other diseases: like flu, RSV, walking pneumonia, pertussis, measles and cryptosporidium to name a few. All these diseases are concerning, dangerous at times to certain groups and cohorts, and should be watched, vaccinated against, treated promptly and met with behavioural changes as well to minimise spread. Their rise is porably in part due to immune system damage from rampant COVID-19. But, oh dear, contrast that focus and sometimes hyper-ventilating concern with the complete lack of focus on COVID-19 and its dangers. It’s not the done thing to mention COVID-19 except to minimise it and often the authorities ir their spokespersons dismiss it as virtually nothing, a “little cold”.
The UK is further down the path of COVID-9 minimalization and infectionism. We at least took the disease seriously in 2020 and most of 2021. In the UK the results are now clear. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic the change in economic activity from 2020 had created 900,000 “missing workers” by the beginning of 2024.
Look at tern’s thread for the relevant information and graph.
https://threadreaderapp.com/user/1goodtern
This represents a shocking amount of human and economic damage. We are now headed on the same path albeit later and maybe our better vaxing (maybe), lesser crowding, hotter climate and outdoor habits give us some hope. Maybe but we are in for ever trouble from COVID-19 too. Broad eradication of COVID-19 in Australia (not impossible extinction) was and remains our only real hope of escaping an ever worsening and endless C-19 pandemic future with many other outbreaks and pandemic riding on the coattails of C-19. The reality still is that concerning.
COVID-19 Update – Long COVID may be long infection.
“New insights into post‐acute sequelae of coronavirus disease 2019 (PASC) or long COVID are emerging at great speed. Proposed mechanisms driving long COVID include the overlapping pathologies of immune and inflammatory dysregulation, microbiota dysbiosis, autoimmunity, endothelial dysfunction, abnormal neurological signalling, reactivation of endogenous herpesviruses, and persistence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2).1,2 In this commentary, we describe some of these advances that indicate that long COVID may be driven by “long infection” and that persistent replicating SARS‐CoV‐2 may be the potentially mechanistically unifying driver for long COVID. Long COVID is a large and growing concern
The United Kingdom (UK)3 and United States (US)4 report that substantial proportions of their populations are affected by long COVID, and that these proportions have remained at similar or slightly elevated levels across the past year at around 3% in the UK, and 5.5% in the US. Factors likely driving this include the chronic nature of long COVID lasting several years in some, and the high number of ongoing infections and cumulative risk of long COVID with each infection,5 even in highly vaccinated populations.6 Individuals in low income countries also suffer a substantial, albeit less defined, long COVID burden.7 Moreover, children are not spared,8 with up to 5.8 million children estimated to have the disease in the US alone.8 Using the UK and US figures to extrapolate the global prevalence of long COVID generates an estimate of several hundred million people with long COVID.” – Michelle JL Scoullar, Gabriela Khoury, Suman S Majumdar, Emma Tippett and Brendan S Crabb.
Med J Aust || doi: 10.5694/mja2.52517
Published online: 25 November 2024
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2024/221/11/towards-cure-long-covid-strengthening-case-persistently-replicating-sars-cov-2
Long COVID issues, like health damage, ongoing illness and inability to work or even recreate in many cases, illustrate the imperative need to reduce infection rates. The most likely cause being long infection (a key “suspect” with more research needed) also highlights the crucial need to reduce infection rates. Chronically infected people can unintentionally evolve new mutations in their systems: mutations which might not occur in infections which do not persist in bodily infection reservoirs long term.
The more we learn, the more we can see that COVID-19 should have been and still should be controlled more stringently right up to effective and realistic eradication. Note, by epidemiological definition eradication is not extinction which latter is impossible now. Until we achieve effective eradication by realistic multiple protections (vax, mask. filter, test, trace, isolate and quarantine), we face ever present multiple possible dangers going forward. These include an endless increase in COVID or at least in Long COVID, ever increasing inability of people to work, rising costs of treatment and finally present dangers of new forms of COVID with new virulance and new forms of attack on human physiology and maybe on domestic animal, farm animals and wildlife.
Until we amend the egregious mistake of regarding COVID-19 infection as “inevitable and necessary” for all, we remain on an unsustainable path in terms of individual wellbeing and public health. Indeed, we remain on a very risky path. The “variant from hell” (maybe severe gastrointestinal COVID-19 for example) remains an ever present possibility of evolving, especially since we have given it potentially 8 billion human reactor vessels to run multiple trials in.
I had never thought that privileged, educated Western citizens (who at least had the financial, scientific and technical resources to do the logical, scientific and humane thing) could ever have been so foolish. But then I had the example of inaction on climate change to look at. I should have known.
I suppose when we reach the point that people are dying daily in the streets from the “climatocene” and “pandemicene” at annual decimation rates, then something might, I say just might, be done, if it’s not way too late.
Strategies of Annihilation and Strategies of Attrition
(J.Q. may wish to put this in a new Sandpit.)
It appears that Russia originally intended to capture Ukraine more or less intact. The Russians were after the cities, infrastructure, industry, rail, power grid and power stations, especially the operating nuclear power station(s). Russia was also after the productive lands, especially the wheat growing areas. The dams and water were intended prizes too. To that end, they launched an attempted blitzkrieg to take Ukraine rapidly but failed badly. What has come next, once the front more or less stabilized, is attrition warfare which takes on a very different character.
Russia has stepped up missile and drone production its plus imports of same and/or parts from or through Iran, China, Nth Korea and other nations and entities trading with Russia in defiance of Western sanctions. Russia has embarked on a heightened missile and drone war targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure, especially its power infrastructure before the winter of 2024/25. Russia has adopted, or been forced to adopt, longer term strategy of attrition.
A conventional strategy of annihilation seeks to annihilate, or push aside as ineffectual, the enemy’s main army and to take control of the conquered territory by occupation. This is followed by mopping up operations and defeats in detail if necessary. The people and resources of the territory are then open to exploitation in the absence of any successful irregular, guerrilla or partisan resistance. Failing this sort of straight forward victory by superior military force and manoeuvre, the struggle can settle into a ground battle with more or less static front lines which are only moved with difficulty and slowly by costly attritional ground battles. Artillery, air power, missiles, drones and aerial and satellite surveillance make the ground force concentration-in-depth and attacking manoeuvre necessary for breakthroughs, difficult to impossible to generate without suffering high human causalities and great losses of mobile ground assets.
With static lines achieved (more or less) it may well prove more cost effective in the attrition war phase to use missiles, drones and stand-off aerial bombing with guided bombs to inflict damage not just on the lines and immediately behind the lines but deep into the enemy territory striking at economic infrastructure: power being one key target. This is the mode of war Russia has shifted to while still being prepared take high losses while pushing at the front. Wars of attrition become protracted.
“If the West is serious about the possibility of a great power conflict [even by proxies], it needs to take a hard look at its capacity to wage a protracted war and to pursue a strategy focused on attrition rather than manoeuvre.” – The Attritional Art of War: Lessons from the Russian War on Ukraine, Alex Vershinin.
Russia is now prepared to fight this attrition war and has clearly given up on taking Ukraine intact. However, nuclear installations may be left intact (by tacit mutual agreement) and a certain amount of infrastructure will be left and the agricultural land, if Russia wins.
As Vershinen says, if the West is serious about the possibility of a great power conflict [realistically not directly but by proxies], then it needs to take a hard look at its capacity to wage a protracted war and to pursue a strategy focused on attrition. The West has to be prepared economically, politically and psychologically to fight war this way for a very long time. Of course, one would wish the reality was otherwise since we have climate change and the pandemicene to fight, to name two other existential challenges.
But autocracies, at least of the Russian type, are clearly prepared to fight in any way necessary for any prize they deem necessary and to do iso for as long as they can sustain it. In that case, the democratic west (of which the US may now be a very temporary member) must be prepared to do likewise, supplying (in this case) Ukraine until Russia collapses both economically and militarily. The alternative is worse. Russia will take Ukraine and then very likely has its sights on Georgia and possibly Poland. Offensive and belligerent dictators and autocracies usually don’t stop at the first conquest.
If I may just interrupt this continual stream of gloom and doom 🙂
We drove from Murray Town to Burra SA and holy moley, Hornsdale wind farm is enormous. To get an idea of the scale of these beast, they are using enormous cranes with multiple extensions to hoist the blades up. SA is moving ahead in leaps and bounds.
Over in WA plans are afoot for two mega projects, 53 and 23 GW. That’s enough juice to power Australia.
AGL are going to instal a 500MW battery at Tomago and Origin a 2GW battery at Eraring. There’s serious money being spent on renewable energy, $100B in the Hunter alone.
https://intercontinentalenergy.com/portfolio-of-projects/
Roger-f,
Causatively, it’s doom and gloom. 😉
Defeatism is on par with denialism – they both hand victory to the opposition.
Roger-f, you drove not rode what? Your route must have skirted all the newly permitted massive ALP expansion for Australian coal and gas extraction, offshore seismic explorations, and foreign produced (Japan, Sth Korea) carbon seabed sequestration. See here in Germany for just one example of how the gaslighting ALP’s product ends up:
Mark Nelson on X: “Looking at German electricity this week you could be forgiven for forgetting they’ve spent FIVE HUNDRED BILLION € on a renewable energy “transition” They’re just straight up fossil powered! With high costs, high carbon, and a shrinking economy. I labeled it for you below. https://t.co/1uyNAtE2iu” / X
Sorry, there are no post carbon transitions happening in aggregate. Instead, there are plenty of what may be fittingly called “post turtles”. A description of another drive will explain:
While suturing a laceration on the hand of a 90-year-old man, the doctor asked his patient how he thought Albanese was doing as PM.
The old man said, “Ya know, like the rest of ’em Albanese is a post turtle.” Not knowing what the old man meant, the doctor asked him what a “post turtle” was.
He said, “Did you ever drive down a country road and come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top? You know he didn’t get there by himself, he doesn’t belong there, he can’t get anything done while he’s up there, and you just want to help the poor thing down. That’s a post turtle.”
And that today applies to most pollies anywhere! Especially in regard to managing a way out of our imminent extinction.
The world faces a rising danger from increasing diseases and pandemics. Our neoliberal governments – and the oligarchs and corporations who are taking over the control and direction of our governments – do not care. Not only do they not care, the policies they implement are actively working to promote an increase in the incidence and severity of disease outbreaks and pandemics. It is difficult to tell if this neoliberal (market fundamentalist) promotion of disease is intentional or simply the result of greed, short-sightedness and perhaps a monumental indifference to the lives and fates of ordinary people, of the 99%.
As to evidence for the rising danger of increased disease and pandemics, it is now very strong. I am of the opinion it is already incontrovertible. From the UK ONS data, which is still available and surprisingly not yet rigged, this disease and disability increase is becoming very clear in this the 5th year of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This is terns’s graphing on ONS data.
As tern points out:
“In 2021 in England, public health decided that the way to get well was to get sicker, and that the way to get rid of disease was to catch it.
It’s official policy.
They write it down and everything.
Since then…” – tern.
We can be close to certain that these type of data are replicated in other countries that have handles the pandemic badly, which is the whole globe basically.
I expect our GBD (global disease burden) to get a lot worse yet. Without a complete change in global and national health policies how can it ever get any better? When we are faced this endless neoliberal pro-capital, anti-people, anti-ecological idiocy (as with climate change too) how can there be any hope? There simply cannot be.
The world faces a rising danger from increasing diseases and pandemics. Our neoliberal governments – and the oligarchs and corporations who are taking over the control and direction of our governments – do not care. Not only do they not care, the policies they implement are actively working to promote an increase in the incidence and severity of disease outbreaks and pandemics. It is difficult to tell if this neoliberal (market fundamentalist) promotion of disease is intentional or simply the result of greed, short-sightedness and perhaps a monumental indifference to the lives and fates of ordinary people, of the 99%.
As to evidence for the rising danger of increased disease and pandemics, it is now very strong. I am of the opinion it is already incontrovertible. From the UK ONS data, which is still available and surprisingly not yet rigged, this disease and disability increase is becoming very clear in this the 5th year of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This is terns’s graphing on ONS data.
As tern points out:
“In 2021 in England, public health decided that the way to get well was to get sicker, and that the way to get rid of disease was to catch it.
It’s official policy.
They write it down and everything.
Since then…” – tern.
We can be close to certain that these type of data are replicated in other countries that have handles the pandemic badly, which is the whole globe basically.
I expect our GBD (global disease burden) to get a lot worse yet. Without a complete change in global and national health policies how can it ever get any better? When we are faced this endless neoliberal pro-capital, anti-people, anti-ecological idiocy (as with climate change too) how can there be any hope? There simply cannot be.
Ah yes covid. I tried to buy a mask yesterday, to use in public transport since infection rates with various diseases more or less serious are up. And well, i´m not alowed to miss a single class. No normal store was stelling them anymore.
My Profs attendance policy: If you don´t come you get zero points no matter if you can certify you are sick. You might say mandatory attendance is not allowed in the first place? But its not mandatory attendance, you just get zero points.
(Unsurprising, i´ve also never seen as unfair grading as this one, or as bad course materials full of far right prophaganda. Ok once, that was the Israel can do no wrong Prof which would give an A if you write Israel is great and a D if you might say someting like “i got relatives in Gaza they are not well” and then write the same as anyone else, that is Israel is great).
The sad thing is, if people even notice and don´t agree with the nonsene, it is obvious they do not care at all or find such things remarkable. All of them, not just the Business students that attend the course who are hopeless anyway, left right etc… “that is just how it works, you write/tell the Prof what he wants to hear”. I won´t have it anymore, that is how you just “go along” with Trump or however that Korean guy is called. And i´m pretty sure Profs did not get away with quite that level of multi dimension impossible 20- 30 years ago, when students had more choices to study slower or avoid the particular problematic ones in courses. And it´s not like students are particular peaceful when it is about their indivdualistic advantage. Sueing against a B- if telling the Prof what he want´s to hear (on a horrible low academic level), that of course is normal.
Hix,
You might need to buy N95 masks or reasonable equivalents from a reputable supplier over the internet and have them delivered. You can usually order a box of 50 or 100. Order a couple of boxes if it is cheaper by the 200 etc.
https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/n95-vs-kn95-vs-kf94-masks/
It is very concerning that the great majority of people follow arguments and advice from authority figures, talking heads, influencers, charlatans and liars rather than assessing facts and probabilities from the peer reviewed science and then making their own decisions for action. We have become a society ruled by weaponised ignorance.
It seems to me that for every 1 good professor (ethical, unbiased, sound in their discipline, not careerist and not giving opinions for reward and advancement) there are about 4 who are unethical etc. as per that list. My sampling is no doubt biased by watching the professors platformed by the mainstream media. Perhaps in academe itself the ratio is better than that. There is also a lamentable amount of “unscience” in the social sciences, again in my opinion. The hard sciences are somewhat safer ground. However, neoliberal capitalism is geared to ignore or inadequately fund hard science that gives (peer reviewed) answers it doesn’t like. Or the answers themselves are buried.
We are definitely in the post-truth world, in terms of policies. A great price will soon be paid for ignoring climate science and epidemiological science (to name just two).