Pinned toot
Obligatory: complaints about the coronavirus aside, understand whether you or anyone you come in contact with is in a category of particular risk and prepare accordingly. Don't panic. Don't buy all the toilet paper.
Proclamations of ‘stay home’ are the latest virtue signal
I’m not sure if rona will cause remote work to take off long term, but having basically all knowledge workers in most western countries do it for even a few weeks will make it extremely visible. Policies and attitudes will change.
Companies supporting this will boom for years, and a significant increase in remote work is very, very likely. As with all things, it will only increase so much, and the conventional office will not be replaced.
Rona presents us with both threats and opportunities
Threats:
- The disease itself
- Our liberties being taken away
- Short term economic crisis
Opportunities:
- Preparedness for a plague that is actually terrifying (ie smallpox)
- Rise of remote work, letting us apply to jobs anywhere and liberating us from awful commutes
- Cities become more suburban
- Identifying new treatments for the common flu
- Growth of online buying, which can operate at a lower margin — good for the consumer
There’s something very cyborg about this rona vacation. We can stay home by ourselves but still manage to:
- Do work
- Attend meetings
- Get food, groceries, and any misc amazon junk delivered to us by the gig economy
- Complain to the world on social media
- Drink wine with friends over zoom
There is significance here. Remote contact now gets us about ~60% of what in person does. How long before VR and Elon Musk shenanigans make that 90%? Or 110%?
What do we call it?
How do we explain the rona panic?
“Because DC courts are operating in a limited capacity due to the virus, it’s unclear when arrested people would be able to be released, Hopkins said.”
Off to gulag now! <Stalin.jpg>
- Incentives (all) — Authorities may be reporting the most cynical statistics possible to convince the public to comply with recommendations.
...
And there are many more I am sure. Each of these causes some small drift. In aggregate, it makes the entire situation fishy.
- Centralization (beds / PPE) — patients may be centralized in one or two area hospitals, making the problem seem worse there
- Warehouses (beds / PPE) — Some supplies are in storage and not yet distributed to hospitals
- Inaccurate projections (beds / PPE) — shortages are reported on the basis of future projected demand, not actual demand.
- Poor tracking (all) — there are enough different authorities involved that double counting or reporting inaccuracies are likely.
Factors that make Rona stats look worse:
- Misattribution (deaths) — any patient with fever, cough, etc may be reported as a Rona death without firm test results
- Hysteria (beds / PPE) — Public fear results in unnecessary ER visits & hoarding
- Thin capacity (beds / PPE) — the system normally runs on thin margins
- Overtesting (infections) — more tests performed = higher known number of infections
- Not counting recoveries (infections) — how do we know when a patient recovers?
Groups extracting advantage from the crisis:
Banks — Buy low sell high
Governors — Expand their own powers and look decisive
Republicans — Decouple from China and shut down the borders
Democrats — Trumpbad
Progressives — Tack the green new deal onto aid bills (partial failure so far but something probably got through)
Media — Crisis bux
CDC — Increase their own funding and power
Corporations — 2 Trillion dollar payday
Everyone — free excuse to work from and stay home
Meanwhile, stay in doors and watch the fear porn, citizen!
So many parties are not letting this crisis go to waste for different reasons that it’s indistinguishable from an actual conspiracy
Once the stock market is done surfing, day traders will lose their lunch, banks will be giving out record bonuses, and anyone who ignored it with their savings in funds will not notice a difference.
Producer and Knight.
Joined Apr 2017
