From comments to Steve Sailer’s blog:
* This morning’s story about Bronx Zoo tigers catching the WuFlu is certainly aimed at maintaining peak public anxiety.
* Japanese television programs are now being produced by dramatically reduced skeleton staff, as few as two people, camera and director. Post-pandemic I wonder how many businesses will think, “We never really needed all those people!”? Pareto’s Law, 20 percent of the staff can produce 80 percent of the profit? Unemployment may never recover, unless the bring all that manufacturing back from China.
* So the sky isn’t falling? Bodies aren’t piling up in the streets, stadiums and parks?
Too bad, many people I know have been waiting like vultures to buy real estate once the prices go down enough. They started buying stocks about March 15.
* Brace yourselves everyone, the Chinavirus pandemic is reaching its ‘peak’. The peak is when it will be its worst. This is literally the worst time, so don’t forget to freak out.
Sincerely, the Media
Americans brace for possible approach of coronavirus peak
New York’s scramble to brace for peak crisis is warning for rest of U.S.
Americans are being advised to steel themselves for one of the most agonizing weeks in living memory as President Donald Trump and his advisers predict that parts of the country are nearing a peak of cases of covid-19
New York doctor braces for peak of coronavirus pandemic
* Spain was most overwhelmed judging by the their death rate, but Spain was too weak economically to have done things differently. America’s death rates so far are tracking Italy’s, and neither had an income tax until 1910-20. Always the outlier, Germany has a very significantly lower death rate, has had an income tax since 1880, and etaxes very heavily while spending hardly anything on defence. They prioritise education health, and manufacturing. As a result German have a gold plated health service staffed by an abundance of superbly trained individuals that usually have so little to do they have to make up illnesses like low blood pressure to diagnose.
You need a gold plated health service to cope with an emergency. This emergency will continue long after the lockdown ends, and resources re-allocation will be far more disruptive in other countries that in subtly mercantilist defence freerider Germany and its totalitarian capital goods customer China. For instance, to supply the vast number of masks required the cheapest ones must be bought and that means buying from China. Economic strength has consequences, so does long term misallocation of resources, through pressure for lowering taxes and asset stripping to increase shareholder value. The West has been exposed as like a bodybuilder in competition shape with zero per cent fat and skin like tissue paper. Sure, he appears to be strong and efficient, but in reality he is out of reserves and can hardly stand.
* We are going to have to have the mother of all public enquiries when this is over…