"in politics, stupidity is not a handicap"

"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap"

Napolean Bonaparte (1769–1821)

the fear, the phugoid cycle, and the price of onions

Half a million kilograms of Idaho onions being prepared for burial, 8 April 2020. Photo: Joseph Hayeberle/New York Times

Comrades,

This "flattening the curve" thing is nonsense, and whoever came up with it now has the false hopes of a nation resting on their shoulders. It won't be no curve at all, it will be more like a phugoid cycle (a fancy aviation term for the nose of an aircraft pitching up and down at a more or less constant altitude, which if uncontrolled, results in the flying machine going into an irretrievable nose dive, ending in a spectacular crash & burn). I aint no witch doctor, that's for sure, but as far as restrictions on human activity and contact go, it will be a case of relax, suppress, relax, suppress, relax, suppress ad infinitum - which is pretty much what happened in the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19, until effective herd immunity was achieved through the loss of tens of millions of lives and the virus died out. Given that the Boomers selfishly in their hoity-toity lofty high-mindedness object to that many of us being wiped out by the Boomer Remover, the end game only comes with an effective vaccine or therapy.

That 12-18 month time frame will end up looking like chicken feed in comparison to the tremendous economic and social fall out, which a little birdie has been singing privately will be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930's (which lasted for about two and half years) and could be more akin to the Panic of 1890 which devolved into the Depression of 1893 - that whole shooting match with unemployment rates peaking at 25 per cent ran for a full eight years, producing untold misery. Then, suddenly, everything was different. Flight was invented and motor cars replaced the horse. Students of Economics 101 will tell you that for every minute the economy is effectively closed, the "knock on" and "trickle down" effects will multiply exponentially just like a virus, and we'll be staring not into the abyss, but a life-sucking black hole. Whatever happens, it's a history making world changer.

Everyone is scared shitless of the Big "D" word, with good reason. But no-one at all is seriously talking in public about how we are all meant to live through this looming Great Depression that will dog us for years to come. All the economic boffins, from the IMF down, will only concede is that there will be some kind of "deep recession". Oh, really? Come on, guys. Fess up on this one. Or perhaps they don't want to alarm the population too soon in their cabin fevered stir crazed state. (Perhaps the best 'tweet' on this one: "Bored at home? Really? It's your place, you made it that way"). But soon enough there will be truth telling. If there are any journo's left to do the telling. Of course Snap Back ScoVo and his "National Cabinet" of entirely useless badass Tory ministers of the Crown and utterly hopeless state premiers way out of their depth, should be more appropriately called The Cruise Ship of Fools. Even Blind Freddy could see the Australian and US economies have been a charade of "let the good times roll" for years now. For us, that's only been possible with entirely stagnant wage growth for a full decade since the end of GFC, and exporting coal, to put it in its most simplistic terms. Treasury has been warning about this mirage for a long time now, and the Arch Conservative Govt. has done less than jack shit about it.

Perhaps a true indication of the sheer horror to come is the very sound prediction that up to 75% of small and family-run restaurants in the US of A will cease to exist. That's the end of an American institution - the diner. It's also the end of the national dish of America - the menu. You don't need me to tell you that in times of crisis, food - pure and simple - becomes the paramount consideration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic_on_the_restaurant_industry_in_the_United_States

The New York Times has been running disturbing photographs of huge tonnages of vegetables being moved by front-end loader into mass burial trenches, simply because Americans consume far more vegetables when they are dining out than they ever do eating at home - where it's all meat and carbs. So there is no market for them. And it's not exclusively an American problem. Wholesale onion prices in China have fallen by 70% since February. It's the same everywhere in the developed world. Producers, wholesalers, retailers go broke, left, right and centre, creating classic conditions for food shortages. In the short term, prices will go up, but as less and less money is being spent due to mass unemployment, deflation will set in, and prices will start to fall in a vicious cycle. No amount of printing free new money will help that, because there will be nothing to spend it on. Neither will near zero interest rates, as no one in their right mind will want to borrow or lend cash. "The Market's" hate uncertainty and instability. They are not only spooked; they have The Fear. The capitalist hurdy-gurdy knows no other way. God save us all, but here in Sydney, where the price of real estate is often the only topic of conversation, folks are totally screamingly terrified by talk of a slump in house prices of 20+%. And why shouldn't they be with horrifying mortgages in the millions? Credit crunch, anyone? Negative equity is where the GFC started after all, for Chrissake. When someone finally pushed the "panic!" button marked pandemic and they unilaterally closed all the pubs and called off the footy - three weeks and two days ago - Wall St. plummeted by a gob-smacking 10% in less then a week, and a brief price war in a massively over supplied market saw the arse fall clean out of oil. That might give you a couple of pointers to what's cooking in the "going forward" era. Bugger the virus, the number of lives ruined will be untold. The number of folks who die alone and uncounted in hungry abject poverty caused by this will far exceed any viral fatalities.

And that's just the 1st world. The poor joints with marginal food security as it is will wind up thoroughly rat-fucked. The entire existing food chain will come under severe challenge, and in the denouement will change forever. Never mind the big smoke, everything west of the Divide is under threat too. How are country towns meant to survive this? The monied will be no better off either, Lord help them. Fine dining - barely profitable at the best of times - will no longer be an option, so they might as well just pulp all the Good Food Guides and forget altogether about chef's hats let lone the constellation of Michelin stars. How miserable. People will have to find other ways of "having the long lunch". Restaurant chains were going broke at a rate of knots after illegally underpaying their workers for yonks just to survive, well before all this blew up, and many many more will now bite the dust. The huge international fast food conglomerates may just survive in considerably reduced circumstances, as their usual clientèle will no longer be able to afford to gobble their execrable offerings anyway. The closing of pubs and bars is another kettle of fish altogether, but it will see a major shake out in the craft and small batch brewery business at a bare minimum. Gastro pubs and obscure IPA's will vanish. Pokies will proliferate. There is no such thing as going broke graciously. Ironically, prepare for a return to times of yore; cottage industry pulp paper mills turning out the rolls and a boom in home brewing and the illicit distilling of moonshine. Amid all the doom and gloom, you have to find your jollies somewhere.

Perhaps it's worth remembering that during the 46 month Siege of Sarajevo (1992-96), only two businesses managed to remain operating on every single day without interruption: the radio station and the brewery. That was isolation and desolation on an epic scale, all the time being shelled by artillery fire. And we think things are dire? Never mind the war crime, there were a few long winters of bitter discontent involved there.

Lion Cemetery, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2016. A former soccer field, now the final resting place of most of the 13,952 killed in the Siege of Sarajevo (1992-96)

The Donald does a first class impression of Nero - fiddling while Rome burns

Comrades,

Last word on the plague, promise. At least the bell tolling, anyway. Who knows where the Miracle of Democracy is going now? Democratic Pinkoness seems to be all the rage at the minute, so maybe there is hope for a more equitable future where the capitalist running dog is no longer bowed down to in reverence.

When everything old is new again - something look familiar here? Seven weeks of greatest prevalence, Spanish Flu outbreak on the east coast of the USA, August-September 1918.

(Source: Philadelphia Public Library)


This too shall pass, but eradication is terribly difficult, effective vaccine is the only long term solution, and then you've got a Great Depression to live through. That's unmitigated disaster. Just ask New York City.

Everything was changed and different after 1918-19 too, so bring on the Roaring Twenties! The well regarded Woodrow Wilson was POTUS at the time until ill-health forced him out of the 1920 election, and was succeeded by the dead-set hopeless Republican, Warren G. Harding - consistently ranked among the worst US President's, ever. Harding was a filthy pantsman and as corrupt as buggery (like someone else currently occupying the Oval Office), and served only one term. History might just well repeat on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2020. Who knows. Anything and everything is a day to day proposition at the minute. Time for re-imaging the world will come during the years-long Depression.

News is now only emerging via the New York Times that DJ Trump! was warned by his trade adviser Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, “The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil.” That was Jan 29; New York City is now a war zone, and the South is about to blow up, not to mention Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles all going to hell in a handbasket. In the meantime, The Donald does a fantastic impression of Nero - fiddling while Rome burns.

Who knew that your life could be turned upside down by a single sub-microscopic virion cell? Sneaky-as-fuck they are.
Shit happens - in this case - explosively.