Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

So recently, prior to Coronavirus, it was suggested by someone in the Government (or their advisors) that we don't need farms in the UK...

... there is now a headline stating there will be a veg and fruit shortage because there is no one to pick the stuff.

So the UK no longer manufactures much, how important our financial services will be post Brexit who knows, and now, apparently, we don't need to produce any of our food either.....

You couldn't make this up.

One lasting result I see coming is a move away from interdependency and toward self sufficiency.

That is only possible to the degree that the distribution of natural resources allows.

Sure, the US can move away from dependency on China for pharmaceuticals, but not away from SE Asia for rubber gloves.

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

So recently, prior to Coronavirus, it was suggested by someone in the Government (or their advisors) that we don't need farms in the UK...

... there is now a headline stating there will be a veg and fruit shortage because there is no one to pick the stuff.

So the UK no longer manufactures much, how important our financial services will be post Brexit who knows, and now, apparently, we don't need to produce any of our food either.....

You couldn't make this up.

One lasting result I see coming is a move away from interdependency and toward self sufficiency.

That is only possible to the degree that the distribution of natural resources allows.

Sure, the US can move away from dependency on China for pharmaceuticals, but not away from SE Asia for rubber gloves.

England expects that every man will do his duty. Horatio Nelson October 1805

quote:

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

In the US the money spigot has been turned on the highest it has ever been.

2 Trillion in borrowed money (at <1% 10 year T-bill rates) and another Trillion or so already in "funny money" quantitative easing by the Fed.

Right now it would seem recession is inevitable but world-wide depression can be avoided if this doesn't last too long.

The lives of billions of human beings are being overturned by tiny spheres of lipids, proteins and RNA that have no cognizance of their existence.

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"Based on the current data on the spread of 2019-nCoV [or SARS-CoV-2, which causes the illness COVID-19], we hypothesize that the lower number of cases in tropical countries might be due to warm humid conditions, under which the spread of the virus might be slower as has been observed for other viruses," Bukhari and Jameel wrote in the research paper.

But, they cautioned, "The underlying reasoning behind this relationship is still not clear." When contacted by AccuWeather this week, the researchers elaborated on their work.

"Our key findings are that so far at absolute humidity levels above 10 g/m3, the spread of the cases appears to be slower than at places with absolute humidity levels less than 10 g/m3," Jameel told AccuWeather in an email. According to the National Weather Service, absolute humidity is "expressed as grams of water vapor per cubic meter volume of air" and "is a measure of the actual amount of water vapor (moisture) in the air, regardless of the air's temperature," which is what the above measurement refers to.

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

So recently, prior to Coronavirus, it was suggested by someone in the Government (or their advisors) that we don't need farms in the UK...

... there is now a headline stating there will be a veg and fruit shortage because there is no one to pick the stuff.

So the UK no longer manufactures much, how important our financial services will be post Brexit who knows, and now, apparently, we don't need to produce any of our food either.....

You couldn't make this up.

One lasting result I see coming is a move away from interdependency and toward self sufficiency.

That is only possible to the degree that the distribution of natural resources allows.

Sure, the US can move away from dependency on China for pharmaceuticals, but not away from SE Asia for rubber gloves.

warspite1

Yes, I hope that this is a wake up call, whether its gas from Russia or food or manufactured goods from anywhere - there needs to be a certain degree of capability maintained - or where not possible, at least a recognition of who one is relying upon.

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If Garcetti had access to three mobile 200-bed hospitals with ICU units and surgical suites, “50 million N95 respirators, 2,400 portable ventilators, and kits to set up 21,000 additional patient beds wherever they were needed,” he would probably feel a bit more prepared to handle the predicted onslaught.

California had such a system, implemented by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. Schwarzenegger was troubled by the suffering he saw along the Gulf coast after Katrina and was concerned about a possible bird flu pandemic. Knowing that devastating earthquakes and “wanted to prepare the state for future calamities.”

...

During the 2008 recession state revenues plummeted, and the state faced a $26 billion budget deficit by the time Schwarzenegger left office. Gov. Jerry Brown cut the system in 2011, sarcastically remarking that “the programs had been set up to counter ‘a potential influenza pandemic which did not occur.‘”

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Ventilators and Respirators

The 2,400 portable battery-powered ventilators were donated to county health departments and local hospitals. Medical device dealers told the Los Angeles Times they “recall many of California’s ventilators being resold by hospitals and nursing homes to other dealers, who then likely shipped them out of the United States.”

Out of the 50 million N95 respirator masks, 21 million remain – but they’re all out of date. Between 2011 and 2020 masks were used but not replaced. The expired masks have been released from the stockpile, but “are approved for use only in limited, low-risk circumstances,” according to the California Department of Health.

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ORIGINAL: Ian R

Gentlemen

Less do support situations going

Lets rock?

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ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

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ORIGINAL: Ian R

Gentlemen

Less do support situations going

Lets rock?

Huh? Maybe too colloquial, Ian. Is that a call for optimism?

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ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

In the US the money spigot has been turned on the highest it has ever been.

2 Trillion in borrowed money (at <1% 10 year T-bill rates) and another Trillion or so already in "funny money" quantitative easing by the Fed.

Right now it would seem recession is inevitable but world-wide depression can be avoided if this doesn't last too long.

The lives of billions of human beings are being overturned by tiny spheres of lipids, proteins and RNA that have no cognizance of their existence.

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

Urns in Wuhan far exceed death toll, raising more questions about China’s tally

Questions about those numbers.

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ORIGINAL: ITAKLinus

quote:

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

In the US the money spigot has been turned on the highest it has ever been.

2 Trillion in borrowed money (at <1% 10 year T-bill rates) and another Trillion or so already in "funny money" quantitative easing by the Fed.

Right now it would seem recession is inevitable but world-wide depression can be avoided if this doesn't last too long.

The lives of billions of human beings are being overturned by tiny spheres of lipids, proteins and RNA that have no cognizance of their existence.

America is fine.

Europe will be in a very, very complex situation. We have nothing even remotely comparable to the American economical answer to the emergency.

However, if Europe falls into depression, I suppose US won't be much healthier at that point.

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

With everything exploding around them - Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium and the UK - the German and Austrian numbers just don't add up to me

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ORIGINAL: Ian R

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ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


"armchair spreadsheet artists pontificating on a forum."

I just wanted to ask if I could shamelessly adopt that, use it as a put-down on another forum.

Permission to proceed sir?

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ORIGINAL: ITAKLinus

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

So recently, prior to Coronavirus, it was suggested by someone in the Government (or their advisors) that we don't need farms in the UK...

... there is now a headline stating there will be a veg and fruit shortage because there is no one to pick the stuff.

So the UK no longer manufactures much, how important our financial services will be post Brexit who knows, and now, apparently, we don't need to produce any of our food either.....

You couldn't make this up.

One lasting result I see coming is a move away from interdependency and toward self sufficiency.

That is only possible to the degree that the distribution of natural resources allows.

Sure, the US can move away from dependency on China for pharmaceuticals, but not away from SE Asia for rubber gloves.

Arguable. Just to stick to your example, you can get rubber gloves using rubber produced in Liberia (until few years ago the biggest rubber producer in the world) instead of Malaysia. They're gonna be marginally more expensive, but that's it.

It's a matter of cost. If we assume we can reduce somehow our consumption rates, we don't really need to purchase so much from Asia. Basically, we don't really need to "sub-contract" the world production to Asia if we accept that we have to lower our consumption, at least in the short-term.
In general, it's manufacturing that produces huge amounts of jobs and it's manufacturing that can help our economies to keep being relatively healthy and wealthy in the future. After this major crisis, we will enter in a complex economical situation and manufacturing is the main way to create jobs, whatever some streams of thought say.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

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ORIGINAL: ITAKLinus

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ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

In the US the money spigot has been turned on the highest it has ever been.

2 Trillion in borrowed money (at <1% 10 year T-bill rates) and another Trillion or so already in "funny money" quantitative easing by the Fed.

Right now it would seem recession is inevitable but world-wide depression can be avoided if this doesn't last too long.

The lives of billions of human beings are being overturned by tiny spheres of lipids, proteins and RNA that have no cognizance of their existence.

America is fine.

Europe will be in a very, very complex situation. We have nothing even remotely comparable to the American economical answer to the emergency.

However, if Europe falls into depression, I suppose US won't be much healthier at that point.

The economic hit for America is not at the corporate level as much as at the personal level. What do the people do who worked in industries that have closed, and won't re-open for a good while?

Social disruption caused by unemployment, poverty, hopelessness, could also be answered with other kinds of restrictions on freedoms, and force.

This is all a worst case scenario, but it's possible with a lasting emergency, lockdown, unemployment, and the same kinds of reactions happening in Southern Italy. Only with more guns.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

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ORIGINAL: obvert

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ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

You know, I am pretty sure that is a pangolin fetus in the soup.

Angry yet? Turns out the Chinese ATE all their pangolins so they smuggle them in from Myanmar

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989415300342

Study in Nature suggests pangolin may be an intermediate or additional mammalian host. There may be another vector or "amplification" species involved. What is known that the greatest sequence homology between SARS-2 and other known Betacoronaviruses is with horseshoe bat and pangolin strains.

For SARS-1 it was civet and bat.

I would wager not one in this forum could sneak in a half-eaten candy bar into China but somehow live pangolin are backpacked in from Myanmar over mountains and jungles with no roads.

This is an interesting article that brings a bit more of the industrialised food industry under scrutiny as related to this outbreak. We now it's not just the wild, but the domesticated, that can bring about these kinds of outbreaks.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/is-factory-farming-to-blame-for-coronavirus

Sorry, obvert. That article is rubbish six ways from Sunday.

The main factors with the rampant spread of human H5/H7 avian influenza in China are not CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation-I won't use the same inflammatory language as they repeatedly choose to descibe these operations), but small 'backyard' type operations, their abominable biosecurity and anachronistic use of wet markets. Same story with African Swine Fever (ASF) that has decimated their swine herd there for the last year and a half and caused the price of pork there to skyrocket. And don't even get me started on bats/wildlife/coronaviruses. I'm just curious how many epidemics this sort of behavior has to start in China for the leadership to modernize? I guess five is not enough?

If people have an ongoing demand for consumption of animal protein, the best thing for the world is efficient production of well-regulated, clean and professionally tended flocks/herds. How else to feed 9 billion (2050 estimates) people? Resumption of anachronistic bronze-age animal husbandry and farming practices would be disastrous.

You don't bring up the point that in fact a lot of the backyard producers of wild animals were forced into that practice to make a living because they could no longer make it in an industrialised farming world with a small family farm. So there are knock-on effects, and we know western industrialised farms are not pristine, beautiful oases either. (NC hog farming?)

The point this article brings up is that human activity is bringing us more into contact on a large scale with previously isolated "wild" animals and their diseases. The needs of the 7+ billion people on this planet are increasing. The way to feed those predicted 9 billion people by 2050 is to transition to more vegetables and not so much meat. It's less resource intensive and the yield per area is much higher.

quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

So recently, prior to Coronavirus, it was suggested by someone in the Government (or their advisors) that we don't need farms in the UK...

... there is now a headline stating there will be a veg and fruit shortage because there is no one to pick the stuff.

So the UK no longer manufactures much, how important our financial services will be post Brexit who knows, and now, apparently, we don't need to produce any of our food either.....

You couldn't make this up.

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ORIGINAL: Encircled
We as a family now eat about 1/2 as much meat as we used to, and make stews/curries/bolognese type dishes with lentils and meats.

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

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ORIGINAL: Encircled
We as a family now eat about 1/2 as much meat as we used to, and make stews/curries/bolognese type dishes with lentils and meats.

Aye. Ours too. That's great. But it's a far cry from 'diversify your diet' to 'meat=murder' and 'big=bad'. Unfortunately, the militant vegan screed preys on an uncertain public to opportunistically promote their drivel.

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

With everything exploding around them - Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium and the UK - the German and Austrian numbers just don't add up to me

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ORIGINAL: Encircled

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

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ORIGINAL: Encircled
We as a family now eat about 1/2 as much meat as we used to, and make stews/curries/bolognese type dishes with lentils and meats.

Aye. Ours too. That's great. But it's a far cry from 'diversify your diet' to 'meat=murder' and 'big=bad'. Unfortunately, the militant vegan screed preys on an uncertain public to opportunistically promote their drivel.

Aye, all they have to do is look at how much has changed over the past ten years and realise that the message is getting through and eventually we will be eating a lot less meat.

But their lifestyle choice is fine, its just one that isn't for me!

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ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake
Yes, you need the Army but they need to BRING something with them to eat. That is skirting close to a breakdown in social order. If the infrastructure still works the UN brings in bakeries (like they did in Sarjevo).

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In Italy, authorities have conceded that their coronavirus death toll did not include those who had died at home or in nursing homes. Similarly in France, officials have said that only those who died in hospitals had been recorded as pandemic-related — a practice they said would change in the coming days.