Nothing shouts "Showtime" like a Pandemic

I was thinking about how climate change was somehow involved in this shift.  It certainly started the Oligarchs moving towards just seizing control world-wide.  Holy shit.  This is where the IDU fits in.

Ok Ok Ok
I'm stoned

The effect of climate change has always been presented, at least in the presentations that reach me, as some catastrophic change, where coastal cities like Vancouver, Seattle, New York, Miami, would be inundated and flooded out. Of course, that's silly.  In reality, it more subtle, more gradual, more 'boil the frog' kind of change.   Weather and seasons always oscillate, and we get a nice, long, warm summer, and the next year, cold, wet, short.  A winter that has 8 weeks of -35c temperatures, and wind, then a winter that rarely hits -2, and ends around March 1.

So we expect and hope, that maybe it will be a good summer and we can have lots of BBQ's, and hope that we get a good winter, where the air doesn't hurt my face every time I go out.

What climate change is recognition that we are adding energy into the system.   And we equate energy to power.  The oscillation is more powerful.  The hot stretches last longer.  The storm season creates more powerfull storms, and more of the hurricanes and Cat 5, and more of the Tornados are F5's.  The winter storms drop and larger amount of snow, we continually break records.  Once in a hundred year storms and rainfalls are happening every decade.

I think it was Warren Buffer commented on 9/11 and the losses to business incurred there.   "They didn't properly price the risk".  They knew terrorist attacks where rising, and that the chances of an attack with catastrophic consquences were rising.  But they didn't change the rates they were charging, and the insurance business lost a bunch on 9/11.

Pricing insurance for climate change could be tricky, but is there a more concrete example and edenville.  The insurance (and premiums) are probably no where near enough to cover the damages, and the insurance company might take a bath, as climate change causes a once-in-a-hundred year storm to take out a bunch of dams, and flood the countryside, in the middle of a pandemic.

Climate change has to be where our change starts.  The recognition that we are causing changes to weather, and we might have to change our ways.  And to pay for changing our ways, we might have to tax the rich.  And they were having none of that.

So here we are.  A pandemic pushed up the schedule.  The IDU is pushing to get right-wing govts in power around the world.   There has been a campaign to break up NATO, by separating Britain from the EU.  There is dictatorships in China, Russia, and the USA on the verge of becoming one.  South America, and Central America and a mess of right-wing dictators, and weak lefties.  Mexico might turn out a hero, but the rest our troubled.  There was a valiant effort in install a right wing government in Canada, which failed.  They continue to try to fracture Canada by weakening Alberta to the point of failure.

The passing of my Father-in-law

My father-in-law passed today.  March 24, 2020.  He was kind enough in the end, to delay his passing until after his daughters birthday.

Birthdays and Death both suck during a pandemic.

Its the Economy, Stupid!

The economy slowed down as soon as we realized the threat of COVID-19, and began self-isolation. Schools, post secondary closed, followed swiftly by entertainment business (Theatre, orchestra, cinema, bars & pubs).  Soon it became that only essential services should stay open, that is, food, medicine, liquor.

I ran today.  Just a short run to try to get back to normal.  It was quiet, almost no cars during a wednesday rush hour.  Erie. Weird.  Saw another runner, and chatted, his run was a stress reliever as well. 

The economy grinds to a halt, and we realize that this is an opportunity to talk about how our economy should work.  It's always easier to examine an engine when its not running with a foot pressed on the gas.  Don't think that will happen.  People will demand their rights.  Rights to healthcare.  Rights to food, and shopping.  And Partying.  Eventually when they are told that no, you don't have a right to healthcare, that's when the violence will start. America has never seen a problem that they couldn't solve by apply a little bit more violence.  So it has to be a goto strategy here.

Defenders of the 2A

I want to start a betting pool.

How long after the medical system is completely overwhelmed, until the first Defender of the 2nd Amendment demands, backed by force, that the doctors treat his loved ones. How long until the next Defender of the 2nd Amendment sees a rich person, or a politician, jump the queue, and take exception to it.

Winner gets to be more uniquely horrified that they were right.

The oft-predicted Pandemic is now real, and has a foothold on the North American continent

Covid-19 has its foothold.  If pandemic doubling holds at 6 days, the United States as a whole, is out of hospital beds at the beginning of May 2020.  Some counties will be run out in the next week.

Panic buying has already started.  Costco is sold out of toilet paper, some people buying pallets of it, and trying to sell it at inflated prices on Kijiji or Craigslist.  No one wants to buy vegan products, they are never sold out.  Why toilet paper. No one knows.  This is a respiratory disease, doesn't affect your digestion.

What should have been frightening people this week is that President Trump is clearly in poor physical and mental health, and under increasing stress.  There is better than even odds that he bursts a vessel, and we have President Pence.  No one really gave much thought to the Rapture, other than the evangelicals, of who the new president was one. 

And the stress skyrocketed as the stock market and oil prices all tank.  Russia and Saudi Arabia conspired to depress the price of Oil, by getting into an argument about quotas, then flooding the market with cheap crude. The additional shock of the oil price war, on top of Covid-19, will hit the USA hard.  We kept forgetting that Putin didn't have his money yet, and was still out for revenge.  There was no normal estimate to when prices would stabilize, they would stabilize once the USA was beyond stabilizing.

Comes a Crisis

The timing of COVID-19 was almost perfect.  The impeachment acquittal was now finished, the Trump purge was underway, and we were settling into a very normal fascist dictatorship.  Then came COVID-19.

So many world governments didn't learn the lessons on the Spanish Flu.  Iran lied about how hard they were being hit. It exploded there in early March.   The first deaths started happening in early March in the US as well. There was no credible plan for quarantine or containment.

When it exploded in North America, it was with a bright flash across the continent, with very little slow burn leading up to it. With the glaring incompetence of the administration in full display, panic was really the only logical course of action.

Alberta Energy

Turns out Alberta was the first domino to fall.  People got angry that the boom had not come back, and a Huckster help them figure out they were mad at Trudeau.  And boy were we angry! Of course, if you ask anyone Why they were angry, and bitterly angry at that, you got excuses.  They just wanted to be angry.  They didn't even seem to mind being hustled. "We needed to do these things, because our government was bloated and expensive and I pay too much taxes and and and".  We wanted these changes, but who has time to check. Economics is confusing. We gotta get outta debt, that's the biggest problem. I heard this over coffee with a friend, smart fellow.  Absolutely convinced that our debt was far too large, we were massively overextended.  At the time, our debt-to-GDP ratio was one of the best in the western world.  Our credit rating was fine and in no danger.  And we were slowly getting out of the hole that the oil collapse brought.   Nope.  Hard cuts were required.  And hard cuts we got.