We were walking around Wells marketplace yesterday. Everything normal: the market stalls were all in place, crowded with people; the high street was full of passers-by.
No masks of course.
My estimate is that there will just be a handful of people with the infection at the moment: no-one here will know anybody who has a real problem (above the noise level of normal winter illness).
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The criticisms of the Government's policy are largely idiotic. They remind me of the apocryphal
Star Trek quote: "
We gotta slow down, Cap'n, the crew cannae take any more!"
Despite the robust pronouncements of
an excitable Greg Cochran, Europe and the States
can't get R0 below 1 - the political institutions and popular mandate don't permit it (nor is it desirable given the risks of further outbreaks). So the infection will run its course at a rate which is subject to only marginal re-engineering.
Despite the polemics, UK policy is essentially the same as that being applied in Europe, factoring in the time-lags. I'm expecting the UK peak to be mid-May (if delays don't really work) to mid-June (if they do). The earlier date is 60 days from today: eight and a half weeks.
We will soon find out what 400,000 dead looks like: [67 million * 60% * 1%].
Note that the background death rate in the UK is around 100,000 per month.
[70 million population divided by 70 years of life = 1 million dead/year; 100,000/month].
"
Fifty percent of cases would be within two thirds of a standard deviation from the central point, which gives 2 * (2/3) * (2.25) = 3 weeks."
So during the peak three weeks, the death rate will be 275,000/ 75,000 =
3.7 over normal.
We will notice when every 'normal' dead body is accompanied by three additional ones..
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I read a couple of books where the first half - analysis - was
excellent while the second half, conclusions and recommendations, was rubbish. It's what happens when somewhat-bright people review the work of people who are really smart - but then expose their own lack of insight.
Great analysis of Marx's sociological and economic thinking. Best summary if you are already familiar with the economic concepts (
c + v + s etc). But his conclusions, where he indicates why he is no longer a Marxist, are just ... terrible. Not wrong: just superficial, lacking insight.
Example thought: '
Marx's economics work is not used by modern economists: it's like it never existed at all'.
Right.
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Kagan has a good, clear-eyed analysis of the basis of the post-WW2 order. American hegemonic power created a global Hobbesian state in which lesser (but historically dangerous) powers - Germany, Japan - were disarmed and prevented from rising again. A somewhat demilitarised non-American capitalist world gained the benefits of trade:
Les Trente Glorieuses.
The unravelling of neoliberalism, dominated as it was by globalisation, financialisation and a growing separation between the elites and the masses, has refracted itself into political crisis everywhere together with the fraying of the 'American mission to the world'.
Kagan is broadly correct in this analysis and his writing is historically-informed: '
the jungle always grows back'.
At this point his intelligence fails him. He confuses the epiphenomenal role of elite institutions (EU, IMF, UN) with those real global, historical forces which are transforming class and inter-state relationships. His tail wags his dog - a paradigm which the first half of his book has already decisively refuted.
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What I'm reading now
Ten volumes (out of twenty) so far published (
Wikipedia article). I'm on
volume three.
This is good old-fashioned SF on the grandest scale with a cast of thousands - most of whom end up horribly dead.
A frightening view of a future dominated by China with its traditional Confucian culture of Han superiority, disdain for 'Barbarians' and a preference for a life of regimented stasis.
Nope. Will never happen.
