A Spring Fever from hell

Who would have expected that in the last year of the Trump presidency with the country  pathologically divided we (the humans race) would be visited by a monumental catastrophe - a pandemic of biblical proportions. The anti-Trumpians including Never Trump Republicans and the entire punditry often wondered how DJT would fare when confronted with a real crisis rather than the ones he inflicted on himself which he could at any time turn on or off like a spigot - see Trade War with China. Now we know.  

All of the kings horses and all of the kings men cannot now put this Humpty Dumpty back together again. We live in an age when too much is recorded digitally. Even the most obscure Internet user can find his or her life unraveling due to an unwisely posted video. And many a promising career has been short-circuited by some email note, jpeg file or video from their past. So it is with DJT in spades. It's all been recorded for all to see. It is totally impossible for this ultra publicity seeking cult figure and the 'President of the Free World' to extricate himself from his digitally recorded past. The televised blustery Nurenbergesque rallies, his rambling press conferences and his morning batches of spelling/grammar challenged Tweets are all there for posterity (and future political ads).


But in this case it is not only what he said or did, it was what he did not do during that fatal fallow period of inaction as the Covid-19 pestilence ramped up its insidious momentum. South Korea saw it. Taiwan saw it, Canada saw it. Hong Kong saw it. Why not us? With 14 intelligence agencies and a constant NSC presence in the White House, it must have taken DJT and his acolytes Herculean will power (or breathtaking stupidity) to so assiduously ignore this looming hell storm. But The Donald team managed to do so for a whole month.

But Trump aside we are still in deep doo doo. The data below are from the NY Times' daily updated mapping of the numbers of the pademic's carnage extracted from Johns Hopkins University's global tracking.  Some countries below like Japan and Brazil have lower numbers than one would expect probably due to a low level of testing or an early stage in the outbreak.

 

So as this pandemic engulfs the world, our numbers (shown in red) are positively numbing. As of yesterday (4/15/20) the US by far leads the rest of the  world in both the number infected with Corvid19, with 607318, and also with the number who have succumbed to it – over 26,000 and climbing. The table above shows those countries with the most (identified) cases along with that country's mortality rate. 

 Those countries shown in green have so far seem to have responded most successfully with low mortality rates. China is not included because their figures seem suspiciously low with a 2.2 billion population and only 84,802 infections. Those in gray have been hit the hardest so far both in terms of a high infection and a high mortality rates. It is really too early to see how this plays out globally. So far the only\ main takeaway is that US has over 3 times as may cases as any other country.  Our mortality rate at 4.29% still fairly low. Some have overwhelmed their health care systems like Spain and Italy. . This means our over worked, over burdened and under protected health workers are doing a truly selfless and heroic job.

This is just health care side of it all.  As much of the world's workforce is suddenly pulled from service in a unprecedented way no one yet has any real idea of how this will change the the once interconnected global economy as well each country's relative situation - or for that matter when all of this it will end.

Our neighbor to the north

"US surpasses Italy for the most corvid-19 deaths in the world". This was the headline in today's online edition of the Washington Post.

Without any subjective or emotional commentary on my part I will simply let others speak. This is from comments on an article in today's NY Times on the terrible death toll in New York's nursing homes as this virus invades the US.

Wayne

Ontario Canada

Reading the USA stats for coronavirus is shocking & very sad. I just compared some US stats against Canada's on coronavirus tracking websites. USA has 10 times Canada's population but these comparative stats are shocking. So far USA has 18,800 deaths & Canada has 570 deaths. USA has 501,620 case of this virus & Canada has 22,200. USA's death rate per million population is 57 while Canada's is 15. The main explanation is Canada shut down all schools March 13 & all non-essential businesses soon after. Canada's 'stay at home' & 'social distancing' also began approx. 2+ weeks earlier than USA's. These sensible but difficult protocols have reduced the coronavirus cases & deaths substantially. Both countries must continue them until health experts tell us it's safe to gradually reduce these protocols.

                        Replies to Wayne's comment 

 

Wayne:

Actually, the main explanation is that Canada is governed by intelligent, humane leaders who understand the value of society. And the USA is governed by a cult of selfishness, greed and cultured "We're #1" ignorance supported by many Americans who lack the critical thinking to grasp the basic meaning of the word 'society'. America is about to become #1...in Coronavirus deaths....because it rejects society.

                          Socrates

Downtown Verona. NJ

                                       
                                         Wayne:

In the 2008 financial crisis Paul Krugman wrote an Op-Ed about how the banks in Canada had fared much better because they were more tightly regulated. One reader's comment came in from a Canadian: "It's simple - Canada is a community. America is a market."

                                              

                                      Ruskin

                                         Buffalo, NY

Ruskin:

Correct. During that financial crisis NO Canadian bank failed while over 2000 US banks failed. There was over 11 million home foreclosures in USA & in many states the price of homes declined 40% to 50%. Canada did not have any of those dire consequences. BTW, Canada's 5 major banks actually bought out numerous US banks. Most Americans are unaware that Now many of USA's largest financial institutions are owned by these 5 major Canadian banks. EG's: TD Financial is Toronto Dominion Bank. RBC is Royal Bank of Canada, Scotia is Bank of Nova Scotia etc.

               Wayne

              Ontario Canada

Beware the Ides of March

                                         Assassination of Julius Caesar


March 15^th, The Ides of March for the Romans was a big day - religious observances were held and debts came due. But in 44 BC it was a bad day for Emperor Julius Caesar. Nineteen centuries later March 15th 1918 was also a bad day for Czar Nicholas II who was forced to abdicate. And now this year's 15^thof March we found ourselves also in our own 'Ides of March'. Things are so bad that some believe it will never be same again. Very much like the days after September 11, 2001 when our vulnerability to asymmetric jihadist warfare became tragically obvious. Now a global pandemic is triggering a monumental reset of everything.

To make matters worse this crisis would be difficult enough under the best run Executive Branch one could imagine, but we have the extreme misfortune to have it hit us under the worst run one imaginable. Fortunately the States are taking forceful initiatives on their own. But that will not be enough. We need strong, intelligent, decisive leadership.

We in the Bay Area have been in 'shelter-in-place' since early last week. It feels like it's been a month. When I go to the grocery store I now try to envision others I encounter to be surrounded by an invisible cloud  of Covid-19 viral particles waiting to infect me and myself also surrounded by such a cloud waiting to infect them. And yet I can't. They all look like normal healthy people.

We are told one of the key means to lowering the soaring infection rate is to drastically reduce human interaction. A radical reducing of exposure means practically shutting the whole economy down, Nobody politically right, left or center; religious or atheistic; PHD or high school dropout really has a clue as to where the f**k we're headed. Capitalism in one country much less globally can (painfully) come back from world wars, revolutions, depressions and of course the regular garden variety recession. But what does it mean to have to idle a huge portion of much of the global work force almost simultaneously? Remember, China although claiming 'recovery', still has over 81,000 cases three months into this. As of last Friday (3/20/20) stock markets around world were still in free fall. That means bits and bytes on computers representing trillions and trillions of dollars, euros, yens, whatever of wealth have vanished into cyberspace. In addition to the speculative wealth of all sorts of one-percenters, plungers and assorted fat cats who use the stock market as their Great Casino having taken gotten serious 'haircuts' , the rest of us have also had eaten shit. All of our 'well performing' mutual funds or our cautiously researched favorite stocks that seemed stable and might someday even soar have been pulled into this black vortex.. But what about most Americans who never have enough extra income for such amateur speculation and rely on their 401K stock portfolios managed by 'professionals' for their retirement plans?. Add to that all the state, county  and municipal civil servants with their  retirement plans with managers' who are charged with investing those massive funds in the 'the markets'. And of course there are the insurance companies, and so on.

We are in a 'fine mess' and it wasn't Oliver Hardy's fault..