Coronavirus / COVID-19

[Seamus Fermanagh]

...These last years have convinced me that we need to amend the Constitution to reintroduce attainder.

I wonder sometimes, just how much of your sociopolitical outlook revolves around the belief that any wealth is an inherent evil. Many (Most?) of the rest of your positions seem to flow from that.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is poetic, but seldom materializes in practice and then not for long. Nor can it be effectively enforced by authority.

As I am condemned to never see government minimized and localized because of the practicalities of the economy of scale, I suspect that you are condemned to never getting the governance you think we all need -- even if you get every law or change enacted that you seek. Neither of us can remake humanity in a different image.

[Montmorency]

I wonder sometimes, just how much of your sociopolitical outlook revolves around the belief that any wealth is an inherent evil. Many (Most?) of the rest of your positions seem to flow from that.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is poetic, but seldom materializes in practice and then not for long. Nor can it be effectively enforced by authority.

As I am condemned to never see government minimized and localized because of the practicalities of the economy of scale, I suspect that you are condemned to never getting the governance you think we all need -- even if you get every law or change enacted that you seek. Neither of us can remake humanity in a different image.

Wealth? WEALTH??!??!

Your comment conveys the impression that the possession of massive wealth can excuse or diminish world-historical crimes to the violation of millions. What's the relevance of someone's wealth in these circumstances, other than a reminder of the depth of their depravity - there isn't even any meaningful material standard to gain for themselves - and the stark truth that wealth translates directly to the power to avoid accountability. But most of these goons aren't even particularly wealthy, which itself is irrespective of the fact that they're not sitting around at home meticulously folding banknotes in peace.

I remind you that the Nuremberg Trials did not have any independent framework embedded in or legitimized by some system of "rule of law." Sometimes to deliver justice a bespoke mechanism suited to extraordinary circumstances is necessary. And it's abstract deontology anyway, we all know few of the principals will ever see the inside of a court, let alone a stamp of attainder.


I'm still stunned that my writing about points of political malfeasance could prompt your post, as though I were the one reducing everything to wealth inequality or class dynamics. As though someone would fundamentally need to have a different notion of just distribution of resources than you to condemn plunder and terror, rather than even the most casual shared adherence to ideals of sound government.

What an example of barking up the wrong tree. I hope by now you understand my sheer befuddlement at your post.

As for the subject of wealth per se, read these, which is ethically a little more radical than I would subscribe to but well-put in principle.




Speaking of constitutional turmoil...

Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’

California this week declared its independence from the federal government’s feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more. The consequences for the fight against the pandemic are almost certainly positive. The implications for the brewing civil war between Trumpism and America’s budding 21st-century majority, embodied by California’s multiracial liberal electorate, are less clear.

Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California “as a nation-state” to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even “export some of those supplies to states in need.”

“Nation-state.” “Export.”

Newsom is accomplishing a few things here, with what can only be a deliberate lack of subtlety. First and foremost, he is trying to relieve the shortage of personal protective equipment — a crisis the White House has proved incapable of remedying. Details are a little fuzzy, but Newsom, according to news reports, has organized multiple suppliers to deliver roughly 200 million masks monthly.

Second, Newsom is kicking sand in the face of President Donald Trump after Newsom’s previous flattery — the coin of the White House realm — failed to produce results. If Trump can’t manage to deliver supplies, there’s no point in Newsom continuing the charade.

Third, and this may be the most enduring effect, Newsom is sending a powerful message to both political parties. So far, the Republican Party’s war on democratic values, institutions and laws has been a largely one-sided affair, with the GOP assaulting and the Democratic Party defending. The lethal ruling this week by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican bloc, which required Wisconsin residents to vote in person during a pandemic that shut down polling stations, is a preview of the fall campaign. The GOP intends to restrict vote-by-mail and other legitimate enfranchisement to suppress turnout amid fear, uncertainty and disease.

At some point this civil war by other means, with the goal of enshrining GOP minority rule, will provoke a Democratic counteroffensive. Newsom, leader of the nation’s largest state, is perhaps accelerating that response, shaking Democrats out of denial and putting Republicans on notice. California, an economic behemoth whose taxpayers account for 15% of individual contributions to the U.S. Treasury, is now toning up at muscle beach.

My compliments to California and the West Coast for their recent kind gesture.

California is loaning 500 ventilators to states like New York where the coronavirus is exacting a deeper toll, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday.

The act of generosity completes a bi-coastal aid package after both Washington and Oregon lent medical supplies to New York, which is battling the nation's worst outbreak. Ventilators from California will flow into the Strategic National Stockpile. Oregon announced Saturday it was sending 140 ventilators to New York, while Washington said Sunday it was returning more than 400 of the machines.

Imagine if all the states got together and coordinated their response, forming some type of super-organization to share supplies, personnel, and information. I wonder what they could accomplish then...

[Pannonian]

Wealth? WEALTH??!??!

Your comment conveys the impression that the possession of massive wealth can excuse or diminish world-historical crimes to the violation of millions. What's the relevance of someone's wealth in these circumstances, other than a reminder of the depth of their depravity - there isn't even any meaningful material standard to gain for themselves - and the stark truth that wealth translates directly to the power to avoid accountability. But most of these goons aren't even particularly wealthy, which itself is irrespective of the fact that they're not sitting around at home meticulously folding banknotes in peace.

I remind you that the Nuremberg Trials did not have any independent framework embedded in or legitimized by some system of "rule of law." Sometimes to deliver justice a bespoke mechanism suited to extraordinary circumstances is necessary. And it's abstract deontology anyway, we all know few of the principals will ever see the inside of a court, let alone a stamp of attainder.


I'm still stunned that my writing about points of political malfeasance could prompt your post, as though I were the one reducing everything to wealth inequality or class dynamics. As though someone would fundamentally need to have a different notion of just distribution of resources than you to condemn plunder and terror, rather than even the most casual shared adherence to ideals of sound government.

What an example of barking up the wrong tree. I hope by now you understand my sheer befuddlement at your post.

As for the subject of wealth per se, read these, which is ethically a little more radical than I would subscribe to but well-put in principle.




Speaking of constitutional turmoil...

Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’



My compliments to California and the West Coast for their recent kind gesture.



Imagine if all the states got together and coordinated their response, forming some type of super-organization to share supplies, personnel, and information. I wonder what they could accomplish then...

On a similar and parallel note though, does it help to fill your posts with longer than necessary (and rarely seen) words, and emotional adjectives? During my educational years, I was taught to cut down my writings to be as concise as possible; convey the maximum of information with the minimum of verbiage.

[Montmorency]

On a similar and parallel note though, does it help to fill your posts with longer than necessary (and rarely seen) words, and emotional adjectives? During my educational years, I was taught to cut down my writings to be as concise as possible; convey the maximum of information with the minimum of verbiage.

Well, OK? You have your own rhetorical style, which often involves repetition and reframing for emphasis (as opposed to concision). You use formats like 'Brexit will cause this bad thing, which will lead to this other bad thing. Do Brexit supporters accept that bad thing X will lead to bad thing Y?' I have my own style, which tends to strive for including or alluding to as many relevant points as I can remember. I'm not saying one is necessarily better than the other, or that all instances are as well-put as they could be in their own right, but...

Give me an example by truncating the 270 words in my response to Seamus.

[Strike For The South]

We will not all sleep, but we all will be changed.

[Shaka_Khan]

[CrossLOPER]

Economist ANNIHILATES China, ERASING it from HISTORY - Calls Coronavirus the next HOLOCAUST x10000!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Wealth? WEALTH??!??!

Your comment conveys the impression that the possession of massive wealth can excuse or diminish world-historical crimes to the violation of millions.

...and the stark truth that wealth translates directly to the power to avoid accountability.

Numerous forms of power do this and have throughout history. Less so, though sadly only marginally, in many Western societies.

How does one negate power? Not counter it or shift it or redistribute it -- all of these have been tried, are being used and none of them answer the problem of power completely. So how does one negate it? And if successful, how does anything get done in its absence?

I remind you that the Nuremberg Trials did not have any independent framework embedded in or legitimized by some system of "rule of law." Sometimes to deliver justice a bespoke mechanism suited to extraordinary circumstances is necessary. And it's abstract deontology anyway, we all know few of the principals will ever see the inside of a court, let alone a stamp of attainder.

Some justice was meted out at Nuremburg. Some punishment and vindictiveness as well. It was, as you note, an imperfect tool. Attainder, either in the meaning of legislative determination of guilt absent trial or the confiscation of all real property and chattels has been, historically, much abused. Was your comment (which I thought a hyperbole when I read it) prompted by justice or vindictiveness? Only you know.

As to malfeasance, everything connected to this pandemic will be under a microscope for years. If such has occurred, it will out and criminal charges can be leveled as appropriate.

As to those pumps, the stated purpose was to build up a federal "reserve" that could be deployed to hot spots in danger of being overwhelmed. Mind you, setting up such a reserve in the manner it was done and with those hot spots already appearing and clamoring for resources was poorly handled -- but I am generally readier to believe in ineptitude and ham-handed reactive efforts by government in general (and this sad sack administration in particular) than I am to assume malfeasance. Hanlon's Razor is one of my favorite tools with which to analyze organizations and organizational conflict.

The man is an asshat, a poor leader, and has begat an administration which does things sloppily at best and all too often incompetently into the bargain. I will have little trouble voting for Biden come November. Though I pity the man and what he will be wading through at first.

[Montmorency]

BOY TELL 'EM (Watci this)
https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/s...98068464025606


Reporting on NY state and city preparation and response to the crisis through February and March, and what went wrong at first.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/n...se-delays.html

Even as deaths rise in New York, slack remains in the healthcare system while hospital admissions are declining. Fingers crossed - but then what?
https://twitter.com/RebeccaJarvis/st...46048291143681
https://twitter.com/brianmrosenthal/...75715465850881


Paul Romer has a pandemic phase-out proposal that relies on daily testing capacity of over 20 million. In the United States. (We've only just reached 150K/day nationally.)

And here I thought 1 million daily would be a solid achievement for this country.

Reminds me of the archmair generals who estimated that if Nazi Germany had built 20000 Tiger tanks or whatever, it could have held out.


Singapore seems to have lost containment of its outbreak. Nationals returning from abroad were not adequately quarantined, and now the disease is widespread among barracks-concentrated guest workers.

Bodies in the streets of Ecuador. Official death toll 315.


Seamus, I'll reply later. In the meantime, enjoy.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Mostly, these are coming from densely-packed migrant worker accommodation.

This is the scary part about what comes next. Not only in the US, with it's huge population of undocumented immigrants, but in areas like Africa, and especially in India, which has millions of poorly-treated migrant workers (who, btw, are making a mass exodus from the big cities to rural areas, spreading the virus wherever they go).

It [Singapore] also has one completely dominant political party and a compliant media, but Prof Dale says even with "clear, crisp messaging to a community that trusts the government" he is concerned that "the average Singaporean still isn't quite grasping the importance of their individual role".

Multiply by a magnitude of factor for the US. Which is going to make a restart that much harder.

Reminds me of the archmair generals who estimated that if Nazi Germany had built 20000 Tiger tanks or whatever, it could have held out.

And some of the currently proposed methods of restarting economies are just as unlikely as that:

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/212154...n-unemployment

Potential problems with Romer's proposal:

So far, America is struggling to get into the millions of tests per week. This plan requires tens of millions per day. Most experts I’ve spoken to doubt that’s realistic anytime soon, though some believe it’s possible, eventually. So far, we’ve added testing capacity largely by repurposing existing labs and platforms. To add more, we need to build more labs, more machines, more tests. And there are already shortages of reagents, swabs, and health workers.

But even if those constraints could be overcome, how are these 22 million daily tests going to be administered? By whom? How do we enforce compliance? If you refuse to get tested, are you fined? Jailed? Cut off from government benefits? Would the Supreme Court consider a proposal like this constitutional?

A sobering outlook:

these aren’t plans for returning to anything even approaching normal. They either envision life under a surveillance and testing state of dystopian (but perhaps necessary!) proportions, or they envision a long period of economic and public health pain, as we wrestle the disease down only to see it roar back, as seems to be happening in Singapore.

Can't keep lock-downs in place indefinitely. At some point, economies will have to be restarted. The path and methods chosen to accomplish this will determine how things will unfold.

[Shaka_Khan]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dumped-mi...160839647.html

Dumped Milk, Smashed Eggs, Plowed Vegetables: Food Waste of the Pandemic

David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkery

In Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits. An Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And in South Florida, a region that supplies much of the Eastern half of the United States with produce, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil...

[a completely inoffensive name]

Do we really need to produce this much milk in the first place?

[Greyblades]

Whats in a need? There was a massive, seemingly permanent demand and that has started to dry up in the coronavirus' wake, pun intended.

Only short term alternative to dumping milk is to kill the cows. You cant just turn off the milk making; you can interrupt the required pregnancy cycle for milk production but they're still going to make milk for the current offspring. If they dont get the milk removed regularly they are going to start developing infections, and what do you do with excess milk? Cant just stick it in a silo and wait for better times.

[Montmorency]

(Standard) eggs are now $3.50-$4 a carton. Used to be like $1.50.

As some forms (e.g. meat) of production are disrupted, food becomes more expensive. Falling incomes combined with rising food cost has typically been a recipe for riots in most times and places. Let's see how that works out.

The immediate context. I'd been posting about the colossal, civilization-shaking ineptitude, negligence, corruption, and malice of the Trump administration, the sort that led Noam Chomsky to declare Trump the most dangerous criminal in history. You quoted my sentiment regarding a mechanism to punish society's maximally-destructive actors. Under the quote you made a comment imputing a premise about the sociopolitical significance of wealth. Practically speaking, you linked the two despite them - as I pointed out - having no strict relationship to one another. That was a very strange thing for you to do. Basically it looks like me complaining that 'these crooks are a disaster' and you interjecting with 'Why are you such a Commie?' It's a non-sequitur, or if it's not a non-sequitur then you would have to be saying that criticism of Trump necessarily reduces to the belief that wealth is an inherent evil.

Either way it's disturbing. Do you get it now?

If you're interested in wealth as a separate topic though, start with the two articles I linked.

Numerous forms of power do this and have throughout history. Less so, though sadly only marginally, in many Western societies.

How does one negate power? Not counter it or shift it or redistribute it -- all of these have been tried, are being used and none of them answer the problem of power completely. So how does one negate it? And if successful, how does anything get done in its absence?

First of all, I object to taking for granted the idea that there are no answers to the question of the distribution of power. There have been different distributions of power in this country within living memory, albeit flawed in many dimensions. I swear, there is this conservative tendency to act as though things that have been tried and succeeded are impossible, in order to justify persisting with systems that are continuously failing right now. To wit, how many thousands of years of failed conservative policies does it take? This exchange unavoidably reminds me of the other one in the Democratic primary thread, where you seemed to be saying - I still don't quite understand - that because resources are not unlimited, it is impossible to adequately prepare for disasters and crises. Even though that seems to me so obviously, demonstrably wrong at face value at all levels and forms of governance, on the personal and institutional levels, and in all places.

The deeper leftist dream of spreading power out as widely as possible has indeed never been achieved comprehensively, but the case against trying to do even what we know can be done is the circular logic of futility, that there are always budding or resurgent oligarchs and aristocrats lurking somewhere like thirsting Chaos gods. It's an argument that amounts to humanity being eschatologically-doomed by its flaws (as opposed to redeemed by its virtues), which is like, maybe, but don't take pleasure in being part of the contras, and fully accept the ramifications of syllogistically-inevitable self-destruction (as some on the alt-right do).

At the top of the thread you referenced an ideal of "local control." Many leftists do explicitly organize their ideas around that concept, but there's a more general form of the argument that every individual should have some input on the local conditions that affect their lives. I oscillate on what this should mean in practice, since time and again we have seen "local control" mean space for parochial racists, NIMBYs, and cushy insiders to run rampant over their petty fiefdoms (thiefdoms).

Maybe you'd like to talk to the anarchists. (Is this what you mean by local control?)

Some justice was meted out at Nuremburg. Some punishment and vindictiveness as well. It was, as you note, an imperfect tool. Attainder, either in the meaning of legislative determination of guilt absent trial or the confiscation of all real property and chattels has been, historically, much abused. Was your comment (which I thought a hyperbole when I read it) prompted by justice or vindictiveness? Only you know.

If you want to have a conversation on what actual mechanisms are either abstractly desirable, or practically available, for extraordinary cases of wrongdoing, that is naturally a very complex topic and I'm not comfortable carrying on about it in this thread. There are so many considerations. It could be that the law does not capture the nature of the crimes committed, or their scope is so vast and destructive and the need for resolution so acute that no preexisting process is adequate to the task (e.g. Nuremberg).

In Trump's case it's more a matter of his insulation from all accountability. Trump ought to suffer something like attainder based on his world-historical record of carnage, but the availability of attainder to Congress would not ensure its correct application for the same reasons that Trump achieved and remains in a position to perpetrate attainder-worthy deeds.

So yes, it's basically just venting.

As to malfeasance, everything connected to this pandemic will be under a microscope for years. If such has occurred, it will out and criminal charges can be leveled as appropriate.

Continuing the above, we are a broken society, so it will never happen on any scale. Generally, a society that produces great crimes and the criminals who do them will not in the first place have what it takes to reckon with those symptoms - without revolution. As far as I am aware that is simply a descriptive fact of life; there is no specific form of either reform or revolution that I can think to advocate for to fix that.

Another aspect to the attainder, etc. discussion is that there is probably no way to engineer legal or institutional failsafes for extraordinary social circumstances, because those circumstances will tend to overwhelm pre-existing structures. If attainder became available tomorrow it would only become another tool for bad actors to subvert and abuse, for example by trying to strip Barack Obama of US citizenship for being a Kenyan Muslim or something.

In another callback to earlier in the post: it's very common to successfully prepare for natural disasters, but I don't think there is a way to plan for fundamental social disasters, those disasters being chronic and constitutive of human actors. In these social disasters the problem itself recursively handicaps any self-correction without a disruptive force majeure. Or to paraphrase HL Mencken, maybe we get the government we deserve, good and hard. I would rephrase that to say in a degraded environment all of us are subjected to the government deserved by the worst.

Look at those who reflexively say that the President must not be criticized during a time of national emergency, for the sake of preserving norms of comity.

They are incapable of admitting that the COVID emergency supervenes on the Trump emergency. For the existence of Donald Trump, the worst man ever elevated to high office is an emergency, an ongoing and overlapping one. But how did that come about?

Trump as emergency can only unleash the devastation it does because of its enabling by the whole Republican Party, so the Trump emergency supervenes the emergency of the Republican Party, of the biggest right-wing party in the world embracing fascism. But how did that come about?

If Republican politicians represent their voters well, and Trump represents them perfectly, then these voters being (at best) political nihilists in the 19th-century sense, who revel in cruelty and mysticism to the point of willingness to die if they can take down some Others with them, then the incentives that make all the preceding possible are established upon the common Republican individual. The emergency of the Republican Party supervenes on the Republican base at the bottom of it all. But the existence of such people in such numbers is itself an emergency whose effects are magnified over time.

In the space of a single generation, Republican leaders, by Republican politicians, by Republican voters, have brought this country - and so much of the world - to its knees. How much more can we survive?

When there is such a fundamental underlying conflict, everything else follows from it, and to surmount the latter is conditional upon surmounting the root. If we were the sort of country to elect Biden-type centrists to every single political office, then we would be the most progressive and prosperous country in the world - and I admit that as a leftist.

In conclusion, there is arguably no greater human threat to the average person than the existence of the Republican base. Americans have a duty to themselves and to the world to reckon with that gutting reality.

As to those pumps, the stated purpose was to build up a federal "reserve" that could be deployed to hot spots in danger of being overwhelmed. Mind you, setting up such a reserve in the manner it was done and with those hot spots already appearing and clamoring for resources was poorly handled -- but I am generally readier to believe in ineptitude and ham-handed reactive efforts by government in general (and this sad sack administration in particular) than I am to assume malfeasance.

Hanlon's Razor is defeated by the coexistence of incompetence and malfeasance, which are both in evidence in the administration's handling of the pandemic, and in basically every aspect of its policy agenda from Day 1. The benefit of the doubt applies only when you don't know the score, or else it's just an unconditional allowance.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Whats in a need? There was a massive, seemingly permanent demand and that has started to dry up in the coronavirus' wake, pun intended.

Only short term alternative to dumping milk is to kill the cows. You cant just turn off the milk making; you can interrupt the required pregnancy cycle for milk production but they're still going to make milk for the current offspring. If they dont get the milk removed regularly they are going to start developing infections, and what do you do with excess milk? Cant just stick it in a silo and wait for better times.

Blades, please stop it man. Just google once before shooting from the hip.

US Dairy is one of the most regulated and controlled goods by the USDA, we have several policies mandating minimum levels of prices, production, and subsidization of milk and dairy products.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/anim...ry/policy.aspx

You can go on the official website where they track supply and demand on a monthly and annual basis:
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/dairy-data.aspx

We have American milk consumption per capita decreasing since the 1970s, but our policies have only pushed production higher and higher per year.

The farmers are not even profiting from the subsidies now that this discrepancy is so out of wack, so even they don't want to be producing this much:
https://www.realagriculture.com/2018...ys-new-report/

So again, I ask the question. Do we really need to make this much milk?

Also, you can store milk 6-12 months by pasteurizing with an ultra high temp process and then aseptically filling into a tetra-pak or similar container.
https://scidoc.org/IJFS-2326-3350-09-001e.php
You could also just turn it into cheese or butter.

[a completely inoffensive name]

words

I'm looking at what the local Republicans are saying on FB. CUrrently holding a poll on whether they would take Bill Gates vaccine or Hydroxychlorquine.

The unproven drug is winning 228 to 24. These are the same people saying that not being allowed to go on the beach is one step away from willingly hitching a ride to a concentration camp.

Seamus says similar things that my parents say, which to me is not so much being blind to the reality but simply not willing to accept the implications it entails.
It always has to be a problem with 'both sides' or some intrinsic sin of humanity that we are facing our current problems because how can you even acknowledge living in an America where a specific segment (that you may still nominally identify with) has devolved so far underneath your nose.

[Greyblades]

Blades, please stop it man. Just google once before shooting from the hip.

Good job covering for your failure to communicate by blaming the reader for not picking up a context you made no effort to allude to. Doesnt make you look like an asshole at all.

Also, you can store milk 6-12 months by pasteurizing with an ultra high temp process and then aseptically filling into a tetra-pak or similar container.
https://scidoc.org/IJFS-2326-3350-09-001e.php
You could also just turn it into cheese or butter.

All of which requres production capacity that didnt exist when the drop in demand came. Even were the pasturisers, cheese and butter makers inclined to keep processing with little guarentee of even breaking even let alone turning a profit you would be bottlenecked by the need to process much more milk than the existing infrstructure is capable of, thats not even getting into storage of both milk waiting to be processed and the finished product.

Fortunate then that milk production can be stalled through holding off on the next cycle of insemination instead of something drastic like a culling. Less traumatic for aĺll involved to be disposing of milk than bodies.

[ReluctantSamurai]

but our policies have only pushed production higher and higher per year.

Probably true for more than just dairy. Certainly corn is in that category, especially with the asinine use of corn to make ethanol.

Btw, panic-buying is not restricted to the average city-dweller:

https://www.feednavigator.com/Articl...emand-globally

And a possible use for the excess milk:

https://www.feednavigator.com/Articl...e-surplus-milk

[edyzmedieval]

As a European, I'm shocked at the labour practices in the USA.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Monty is right that a longer reply on any number of issues are not germane to this particular thread. So I will opt out of such here.

As to the current pandemic, I am of the opinion that pretty much every government malf'ed this one. As with all "black swan" events, the warning signs were mis-read or ignored, the potential for a crisis of this kind was known in advance -- but the specific occurrence itself so infrequent -- that complacency set in and preparation levels were allowed to slip. So collectively nobody was prepared for when the, in retrospect clearly inevitable, crisis arrived.

This is a norm of human history and human nature (only partly answered by Santayana's advice), for we are flawed beings however good our intent and our workings are flawed as well.

Last I say on this vein in this thread. Open a political philosphy line or summat if you wish for other stuff.

I pray daily for those affected by this virus and for us all to weather this crisis as best may be. I will social distance and wear a mask to protect my family and immuno-compromised mom-in-law. I will grade my students' assignments. I will adjust to what comes and make the best of it.

[Pannonian]

Probably true for more than just dairy. Certainly corn is in that category, especially with the asinine use of corn to make ethanol.

Btw, panic-buying is not restricted to the average city-dweller:

https://www.feednavigator.com/Articl...emand-globally

And a possible use for the excess milk:

https://www.feednavigator.com/Articl...e-surplus-milk

It has long been a common practice to turn waste food into pork. It might be worth looking at turning fresh food into shelf stable versions as well.

[Pannonian]

This is a norm of human history and human nature (only partly answered by Santayana's advice), for we are flawed beings however good our intent and our workings are flawed as well.

I will grade my students' assignments. I will adjust to what comes and make the best of it.

Did the first come from the second? Are you going to make your students aware of their flawed workings, or are you going to adjust to what comes in front of you and make the best of it?

Advice: make a potato stamp with "Must try harder" etched in it.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Did the first come from the second? Are you going to make your students aware of their flawed workings, or are you going to adjust to what comes in front of you and make the best of it?

Advice: make a potato stamp with "Must try harder" etched in it.

Deadlines have essentially shifted to "anything that doesn't have me issuing an 'incomplete' for the course. My required live observation assignment went to livestream acceptable, etc. Conditions are as they are. My single mom students are now at home teachers, still working online like me, and trapped with their children. To not respect that would be unkind.

Generally, "try harder" is a waste of time. The ones who try hard will do so under almost any adversity. The ones who want to skate whenever possible will do so regardless. The ones who are truly trying but floundering we can help out a bit and/or refer to counselors etc. They are my clients and I am there to help them as best I may.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Anybody else besides me see legal proceedings being brought against the USN as a result of this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52272249

With 585 more sailors having tested + for SARS-2, chances are good that more deaths will follow.

And yes, military personnel can sue the navy (unless I'm reading this wrong):

https://www.jurist.org/commentary/20...doctrine-ndaa/

The NDAA [for fiscal year 2020] created a limited exception to the Feres Doctrine “for personal injury or death incident to the service of a member of the uniformed services that was caused by the medical malpractice of a Department of Defense health care provider,” provided that the “act or omission constituting medical malpractice occurred in a covered military medical treatment facility.” The term “Department of Defense health care provider” means “a member of the uniformed services, civilian employee of the Department of Defense, or personal services contractor of the Department [of Defense] …” while a “covered military treatment facility” includes certain military medical treatment facilities maintained by the Secretary of Defense.

And this is how bad it's gotten here in the US:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...094_story.html

Elsewhere, some governors and lawmakers have watched in disbelief as they have sought to close deals on precious supplies, only to have the federal government swoop in to preempt the arrangements. Officials in one state are so worried about this possibility that they are considering dispatching local police or even the National Guard to greet two chartered FedEx planes scheduled to arrive in the next week with millions of masks from China, according to people familiar with the planning. These people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, asked that their state not be identified to avoid flagging federal officials to their shipment.

"This is Blasphemy. This is Madness!"

[a completely inoffensive name]

Good job covering for your failure to communicate by blaming the reader for not picking up a context you made no effort to allude to. Doesnt make you look like an asshole at all.

When you jump in with an opinion that has zero research, you are the one putting yourself in the position to be called out. If you asked "who will be the next Labour leader" and I start talking as if it was a US style open primary with Lib Dem and Tory moderates voting, you would rightfully tell me that I have no idea what I am talking about and that the UK operates on 'one member, one vote'.

All of which requres production capacity that didnt exist when the drop in demand came. Even were the pasturisers, cheese and butter makers inclined to keep processing with little guarentee of even breaking even let alone turning a profit you would be bottlenecked by the need to process much more milk than the existing infrstructure is capable of, thats not even getting into storage of both milk waiting to be processed and the finished product.

Fortunate then that milk production can be stalled through holding off on the next cycle of insemination instead of something drastic like a culling. Less traumatic for aĺll involved to be disposing of milk than bodies.

A few things:
1. We shouldn't have been producing this much milk anyway because the demand wasn't actually there and we have known this for decades now. Counter to original point that there was a 'constant, permanent demand'. This was incorrect. If you check the stats, there is always surplus carried over from the previous year for several years which indicates a consistent over production of product. We should have done what the UK has done recently: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/milk-pro...e-how-to-apply
2. Production machines are typically not running 24/7. This would inhibit the ability to perform proper preventative maintenance activities and increase the need for labor to operate and monitor. There is always the potential to increase output without having to buy a whole new machine by paying for the labor costs associated with the higher run rate. It's an over simplification that increased production comes from new machinery.
3. Both UK and US have programs to pay cheese and butter makers for their surplus and store it for long period in order to ensure they stay afloat during high surpluses: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/interven...ge-aid-schemes

So again, its a matter of being defiant in pushing your intuitive thought without following-up. 'They can't make a profit with such surpluses, they don't have the machines, how could they anticipate such a drop in demand.' All of these issues were tackled by farm bills in the US dating back to the 1930s and for the UK even earlier.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I will admit now looking back I was a bit of dick in how I worded the response last night.

[Pannonian]

When you jump in with an opinion that has zero research, you are the one putting yourself in the position to be called out. If you asked "who will be the next Labour leader" and I start talking as if it was a US style open primary with Lib Dem and Tory moderates voting, you would rightfully tell me that I have no idea what I am talking about and that the UK operates on 'one member, one vote'.



A few things:
1. We shouldn't have been producing this much milk anyway because the demand wasn't actually there and we have known this for decades now. Counter to original point that there was a 'constant, permanent demand'. This was incorrect. If you check the stats, there is always surplus carried over from the previous year for several years which indicates a consistent over production of product. We should have done what the UK has done recently: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/milk-pro...e-how-to-apply
2. Production machines are typically not running 24/7. This would inhibit the ability to perform proper preventative maintenance activities and increase the need for labor to operate and monitor. There is always the potential to increase output without having to buy a whole new machine by paying for the labor costs associated with the higher run rate. It's an over simplification that increased production comes from new machinery.
3. Both UK and US have programs to pay cheese and butter makers for their surplus and store it for long period in order to ensure they stay afloat during high surpluses: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/interven...ge-aid-schemes

So again, its a matter of being defiant in pushing your intuitive thought without following-up. 'They can't make a profit with such surpluses, they don't have the machines, how could they anticipate such a drop in demand.' All of these issues were tackled by farm bills in the US dating back to the 1930s and for the UK even earlier.

Can't you blame the EU for any inefficiencies like we do here in the UK?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Can't you blame the EU for any inefficiencies like we do here in the UK?

I actually refrained from talking about EU and tried to focus solely on US and UK because I am not entirely sure EU agricultural policies are based on sound principles.

Not sure if you want to take the Brexit route on this topic...

EDIT: Well, let me rephrase. EU policies are very confusing to me and although I can from a high level understand the goal and method of many policies (many which the US and UK also have implemented individually), I can not wrap my head around the implementation of those policies. In particular how the EU does not pick and choose winners and losers and whether it is allowing individual states to internally compete and specialize in agriculture sub-fields.

[Montmorency]

I for one appreciate ACIN's dairy industry knowledge, and would say it's an honor to be corrected by someone who knows their stuff.

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1248700582120042496

Trump says it's true that opening up could lead to death, but: "Staying at home leads to death also. And it's very traumatic for this country. Staying at home, if you look at numbers, that leads to a different kind of death, perhaps, but it leads to death also."

Staying at home is the mindkiller, the little death that brings total obliteration.


How this Texas grocery chain was more prepared for the pandemic than most national states.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/he...irus-pandemic/

A nurse revealed the tragic last words of his coronavirus patient: 'Who's going to pay for it?'

Certified registered nurse anesthetist Derrick Smith is no stranger to the horrors of losing patients. But now, the coronavirus pandemic has pushed him into a completely different, "much more terrifying" reality.

Smith, who is predominantly treating Covid-19 patients at a hospital in New York City, revealed the tragic last words of a dying man he was about to place on a ventilator: "Who's going to pay for it?" the coronavirus patient asked Smith in between labored breaths.

Beyond satire.

Report: Stockpile of 39 million masks exposed as fake

A major California labor union that claimed to have discovered a stockpile of 39 million masks for health care workers fighting the coronavirus was duped in an elaborate scam uncovered by FBI investigators, according to a newspaper report Sunday.

Investigators stumbled onto the scheme while looking into whether they could intercept the masks for the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the Defense Production Act, the U.S. attorney’s office said Friday.

The federal government has been quietly seizing supplies across the country as the outbreak spreads. But in this case, there was no warehouse, and there were no masks to seize, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Also beyond satire.

Monty is right that a longer reply on any number of issues are not germane to this particular thread. So I will opt out of such here.

As to the current pandemic, I am of the opinion that pretty much every government malf'ed this one. As with all "black swan" events, the warning signs were mis-read or ignored, the potential for a crisis of this kind was known in advance -- but the specific occurrence itself so infrequent -- that complacency set in and preparation levels were allowed to slip. So collectively nobody was prepared for when the, in retrospect clearly inevitable, crisis arrived.

This is a norm of human history and human nature (only partly answered by Santayana's advice), for we are flawed beings however good our intent and our workings are flawed as well.

Last I say on this vein in this thread. Open a political philosphy line or summat if you wish for other stuff.

I pray daily for those affected by this virus and for us all to weather this crisis as best may be. I will social distance and wear a mask to protect my family and immuno-compromised mom-in-law. I will grade my students' assignments. I will adjust to what comes and make the best of it.

We can continue by PM, but here we should distinguish between material and institutional preparation, and deployment in the actual time of need. As I said in another thread (or earlier in this one), you can truly have unlimited resources, but if leadership refuses to make use of them then they are trivial. Few countries have had "good" responses to the pandemic through and through, and those that have have been clustered around past experiences with both the Chinese state and local epidemics.

But here in America, based purely on our material and institutional readiness on paper, we should have been one of the best-placed countries on Earth to contain the disease. Never forget. That we failed was not due to any shortage of money, time, expertise, planning, nor was it a function of inauspicious geography - just the opposite.

Deadlines have essentially shifted to "anything that doesn't have me issuing an 'incomplete' for the course. My required live observation assignment went to livestream acceptable, etc. Conditions are as they are. My single mom students are now at home teachers, still working online like me, and trapped with their children. To not respect that would be unkind.

Generally, "try harder" is a waste of time. The ones who try hard will do so under almost any adversity. The ones who want to skate whenever possible will do so regardless. The ones who are truly trying but floundering we can help out a bit and/or refer to counselors etc. They are my clients and I am there to help them as best I may.

Lot of professor stories on Twitter about how hard this transition has been for many students, from their financial or living arrangements to their ability to follow the coursework.

Anybody else besides me see legal proceedings being brought against the USN as a result of this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52272249

With 585 more sailors having tested + for SARS-2, chances are good that more deaths will follow.

And yes, military personnel can sue the navy (unless I'm reading this wrong):

https://www.jurist.org/commentary/20...doctrine-ndaa/

Mmm. Like the cruise ships, it does form a sort of ad hoc test chamber for observing the spread of the virus. I may have seen the story of a contagion on a naval vessel play out in fiction too.

These look like good expert reads on the Theodore Roosevelt situation. The outbreak began with the reactor team.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/u...r-crozier.html
https://twitter.com/KimWooster11/sta...80330404417538

[ReluctantSamurai]

Well, Fearless Leader finally did it. Declared himself absolute ruler of the United States:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52274969

"The president of the United States calls the shots," Mr Trump said during a combative press conference in which he feuded with reporters.

But when journalists queried whether he had the authority to over-ride stay-at-home orders imposed on a state-by-state basis, Mr Trump said: "When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. "It's total. The governors know that."

I think Fearless Leaders' actions meet the criteria of Section 1088 of the USN Regulations:

1088. Relief of a Commanding Officer by a Subordinate.

1. It is conceivable that most unusual and extraordinary circumstances may arise in which the relief from duty of a commanding officer by a subordinate becomes necessary, either by placing the commanding officer under arrest or on the sick list. Such action shall never be taken without the approval of the Commandant of the Marine Corps or the Chief of Naval Personnel, as appropriate, or the senior officer present, except when reference to such higher authority is undoubtedly impracticable because of the delay involved or for other clearly obvious reasons. In any event, a complete report of the matter shall be made to the Commandant of the Marine Corps or the Chief of Naval Personnel, as appropriate, and the senior officer present, setting forth all facts in the case and the reasons for the action or recommendation, with particular regard to the degree of urgency involved.

2. In order that a subordinate officer, acting upon his or her own initiative, may be vindicated for relieving a commanding officer from duty, the situation must be obvious and clear, and must admit of the single conclusion that the retention of command by such commanding officer will seriously and irretrievably prejudice the public interests. The subordinate officer so acting

a. Must be next in succession to command.

b. Must be unable to refer the matter to a common superior for the reasons set forth in the preceding paragraph.

c. Must be certain that the prejudicial actions of the commanding officer are not caused by instructions unknown to him or her.

d. Must have given the matter much careful consideration, and have made such exhaustive investigation of all the circumstances as may be practicable.

e. Must be thoroughly convinced that the conclusion to relieve the commanding officer is one which a reasonable, prudent and experienced officer would regard as a necessary consequence from the facts thus determined to exist.

God I hate this stupid megalomaniac....