Posted on 03/13/2020 6:02:01 AM PDT by SkyPilot
Fear of the coronavirus is causing shutdowns on a global scale like we have never seen before. Just about every major sporting event that you can think of has been either canceled or postponed, schools and universities are keeping students away, global tourism is absolutely collapsing, churches are being shuttered, conferences and festivals are being taken off the calendar, businesses are asking workers to work from home, and even Disneyland is being closed down. Over the past several days the wave of closings and cancellations has become an avalanche, and all of our lifestyles are going to be dramatically altered for the foreseeable future.
For the first few days, a lot of people are actually going to enjoy this “free vacation”. After all, what kid doesn’t enjoy time off from school, and there are lots of Americans that relish the opportunity to work from home.
But as the weeks drag on and the economy grinds to a standstill, this “free vacation” will start evolving into a horror show.
The more this coronavirus spreads, the more restrictions we will see on human interaction throughout the western world, and that has very serious implications.
Yes, there is much that we can do through the Internet today, but most economic activity still requires at least some actual human interaction. So when authorities restrict human interaction they are actually choking off trade.
I can’t think of too many other things that could trigger an economic collapse faster than a global pandemic could. We had better pray that life will get back to normal in a few weeks, because a complete and utter economic nightmare is ahead if that does not happen.
Unfortunately, life is not likely to get back to normal any time soon. The number of confirmed cases continues to grow at an exponential rate, and those that are getting infected now will be able to infect others for weeks to come…
Researchers looking at cases in China say patients could spread the virus for up to 37 days after they start showing symptoms, according to the study published in the British medical journal The Lancet.
On average, survivors still had the virus in their respiratory system for about 20 days and could presumably continue to spread the disease, researchers found.
So how long will it be before this pandemic is finally over?
Will it be months?
Could it be years?
Don’t forget, the Spanish Flu pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920.
I think that Wall Street is starting to grasp the reality of what we are potentially facing. On Thursday, we witnessed the largest single day stock market point crash in American history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2,352 points, and that shattered the “old record” of 2,013 points that was just set on Monday. Overall, the Dow was down 9.99 percent, and that was the biggest percentage decline since the nightmarish stock market crash of 1987.
Incredibly, European stocks did even worse on Thursday. In fact, it was the worst day ever for stock markets in Europe.
We have never seen a time when the entire western world has been in the process of literally shutting down simultaneously. The following is how a Slate article described what we are currently witnessing…
Virtually every activity that entails or facilitates in-person human interaction seems to be in the midst of a total meltdown as the coronavirus outbreak erases Americans’ desire to travel. The NBA, NHL, and MLB have suspended their seasons. Austin’s South by Southwest canceled this year’s festival and laid off a third of its staff. Amtrak says bookings are down 50 percent and cancelations are up 300 percent; its CEO is asking workers to take unpaid time off. Hotels in San Francisco are experiencing vacancy rates between 70 and 80 percent. Broadway goes dark on Thursday night. The CEOs of Southwest and JetBlue have both compared the impact of COVID-19 on air travel to 9/11. (That was before President Trump banned air travel from Europe on Wednesday night.) Universities, now emptying their campuses, have never tried online learning on this scale. White-collar companies like Amazon, Apple, and the New York Times (and Slate!) are asking employees to work from home for the foreseeable future.
On top of everything else, March Madness has been canceled for the first time ever…
The NCAA will not crown a men’s or women’s basketball champion in 2020.
Conceding defeat to the COVID-19 virus and a cascade of uncertainty about how bad its ongoing spread might impact public health across the United States, the NCAA announced Thursday all its winter and spring championships have been canceled after a series of moves across multiple sports leagues that foreshadowed the eventual arrival at this decision.
I can’t even imagine the heartbreak that many of those athletes are feeling right now.
They have been training all of their lives to fight for a championship, and now that opportunity has been taken away.
Sadly, just about every major sporting event has either been canceled or will be canceled shortly.
Of course the business world has been thrown into chaos as well. Companies all across America are going to great lengths to minimize human interaction, and all sorts of non-essential activities are being eliminated.
Even a New York seminar entitled “Doing Business Under Coronavirus” has been canceled because of the coronavirus.
In the days ahead, the list of public gatherings that are still happening will probably be much shorter than the list of public gatherings that have been canceled.
All of this is being done to save lives.
But in the process, it is going to absolutely kill the economy.
At this point, President Trump is even thinking about imposing “travel restrictions within the United States”…
REPORTER: Are you considering travel restrictions within the United States, such as to Washington State or California? [Emphasis added]
TRUMP: We haven’t discussed that yet. Is it a possibility? Yes. If somebody gets a little bit out of control, if an area gets too hot. You see what they’re doing in New Rochelle, which is — which is good, frankly. It’s the right thing. But then it’s not enforced, it’s not very strong but people know that they’re being watched … New Rochelle, that’s a hotspot.
Can you imagine the giant temper tantrum that we would see if that actually happened?
Earlier today, the top headline on CNN was “America’s way of life changes indefinitely”, and for once they got it exactly right.
As long as this virus is spreading out of control, decision makers all over the western world are going to be afraid to resume normal activities.
Just think about it. If you are a decision maker and you resume normal operations too quickly, someone could get sick and die. Not only could that cost you your job, but it could also get you sued into oblivion.
In our overly litigious society, the threat of lawsuits is going to play a major factor in this crisis. In fact, I am sure that some people are already in contact with their lawyers.
Hopefully the measures that are being taken will help to reduce the spread of this virus. But as one of my good friends has pointed out, even if the U.S. was totally locked down for 30 days, this virus would just keep coming back into the U.S. from other countries that are not locked down.
So the truth is that we would need the entire globe to be completely locked down for an extended period of time to really defeat this pandemic, and that simply is not going to happen.
Many among the elite can see what is happening, and they are taking off in their private jets to their “holiday homes or specially prepared disaster bunkers”…
Like hundreds of thousands of people across the world, the super-rich are preparing to self-isolate in the face of an escalation in the coronavirus crisis. But their plans extend far beyond stocking up on hand sanitiser and TV boxsets.
The world’s richest people are chartering private jets to set off for holiday homes or specially prepared disaster bunkers in countries that, so far, appear to have avoided the worst of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Of course most of us do not have that option.
Most of us are going to have to ride this thing out right where we are, and that reality is causing a lot of people to completely panic. Just check out what is happening in New York…
Panicked New Yorkers rushed to stock up on essentials forming long lines and clearing shelves of produce as Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency in the city due the coronavirus outbreak.
He made the decision on Thursday afternoon saying the last 24 hours had been ‘very, very sobering’ and that the world had been turned ‘upside down’ in just a day.
The announcement immediately sparked furious panic shopping from New Yorkers as grocery stores across the city saw chaos and frantic stockpiling with residents fearing the worst.
Sadly, this is just the beginning.
As things go from bad to worse, we are likely to see fear and panic on a scale that is absolutely unprecedented.
But as I discussed yesterday, now is not a time for fear.
During any major crisis, cool heads and calm hearts are needed. The days ahead are going to be full of challenges, and by God’s grace we shall do our very best to meet those challenges.
A catastrophy for planet earth is about to bring the greatest part of the nations to a hard stop. The snatching away of all who believe and call upon the Lord and all down through History of the same pedigree will do it and reverberate world-wide for a time unspecified. But a great lie will cause those not snatched away to fall in line behind a super naturally directed leader. Satan is preparing the peoples of the earth for his day of greatest deception. And it will happen, will begin in the twinkling of an eye. Then will come the Jerusalem ‘treaty’.
They’ll need it...hourly too, considering what is in store for them.
Luke 21:26
Remember the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010? It was caused by the H1N1 flu virus, which “infected nearly 61 million people in the United States and caused 12,469 deaths” and up to 575,400 deaths worldwide, according to the CDC. What were the lying media saying back then? Nothing even approaching their current bid to provoke mass panic, economic disruption and a negative view of Trump based on 26 fatalities to date from COVID-19, nearly all of them elderly or immuno-compromised patients. No one in the DMC accused Obama of failing to act quickly enough, even though his declaration of a national emergency did not come until after 1,000 people had died from swine flu. But then 12,469 deaths from the swine flu was actually on the low side of US death tolls from influenza since 2010, as noted above.
What about the rest of the world? According to the CDC and the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, worldwide “[s]easonal flu kills 291,000 to 646,000 people… each year.” That is, the greatest viral threat to human life on the planet, by many orders of magnitude, is and always has been the common flu, not any strain of coronavirus. By comparison, the more virulent but far less contagious coronaviruses causing MERS and SARS have claimed lives only in the hundreds worldwide with very few or zero reported cases after the initial outbreaks in 2012 and 2003, respectively.
Here too the lying media bury the truth. One has to scour the Internet to find in the obscure journal Stat the telling comment by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that “We don’t even talk about containment for seasonal flu — it’s just not possible. But it is possible for Covid-19. We don’t do contact-tracing for seasonal flu — but countries should do it for Covid-19, because it will prevent infections and save lives. Containment is possible.”
But why should the lives of individuals and nations be turned upside down to contain a virus far less lethal, or at least no more lethal, than a typical flu, which cannot be contained? There is no sensible answer other than the promotion of a panic narrative that clearly serves aims other than those of public health and safety.
Amen.
And so few see what's coming.
1 Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, 2 for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. 5 You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. 6 So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. 9 For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. 10 He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5: 1 - 11
Solar UV radiation may greatly reduce the risk of transmission through contaminated surfaces, but it doesn't help much in a densely packed society with Third World sanitation standards and a lot of close physical contact.
I would expect warmer weather and intense sunlight will help keep the spread down in places like the Southern US or Singapore, perhaps, but not in some of these other countries.
What is TMNI? Why do we have to ask. there is a place to fill it in.
Some info on temperature and COVID-19:
“Temperature significant change COVID-19 Transmission in 429 cities”
- see https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v1
“Temperature and Latitude Analysis to Predict Potential Spread and Seasonality for COVID-19”
- see https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3550308
“Seasonality of SARS-CoV-2: Will COVID-19 go away on its own in warmer weather?”
- https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-own-in-warmer-weather/ (not peer-reviewed or submitted for peer review, so read with the appropriate caution)
There’s nothing definitive, yet.
Don't know, never heard of that.
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