Consider that when nations go to war, they will bomb the hell out of each other's industries. So if they are willing to risk that when they go to war, why would the loss of mutual trade be enough of a threat to avert war? I don't see how the cost is increased between a bombed out factory that used to trade with you, and a bombed out factor that traded with someone else.
Similarly in wars, nations embargo each other and sink each other's shipping, so again not sure why loss of mutual trade makes the cost of war unacceptable, if this higher cost is already acceptable?
This reminds me of the Olympic games that were founded at the end of the 19th C in order to promote peace among nations. The theory was that if nations could compete on the field, they wouldn't compete in war. I think that theory turned out to be as robust as the trade-makes-peace theory, which itself did not fare well in WW1.
At the same time, the EU has created an enormous amount of resentment and animosity between nations, as Italy and Greece are forced to adopt the same currency as Germany, which hurts their economies but subsidizes the German economy. The Germans, in turn, feel resentful for bailing out the South (by buying up so many assets in the South), apparently not realizing that purchasing all these assets is what allows the trade imbalances to continue. If anything we know that these types of asymmetric cross border capital flows are highly destabilizing, and do not promote peace at all.
My guess is what keeps Europe from going to war is that it remains under the US sphere of influence, at least militarily, and so the irritations and rivalries created by the EU do not spill out into war. Basically the domestic populations hate each other much more, but the states themselves are too crippled to act with much autonomy, and so they don't really have the agency to even start a war. They are just left seething, as their capital stock is sold off to their neighbors, but there is nothing they can do about it. This will not end well.
It would seem absurd for me as a French person (now living in Portugal) to want to bomb Germany for some economics reason, given that I have worked and befriended with dozens of very nice Germans. I could say the same of any European country. I’m not even special and I have friends and ex colleagues in virtually every EU country, from Greece, Poland, Sweden to Ireland Italy, Portugal and others.
The only exceptions is war machines (guns, ships...) - you need to have that in your country just in case. Though the more trade you do with others the more nobody wants war with you because they lose both the goods you make and the market for goods you buy from them.
If you can make guns and ships but not fuel for the ships and food for the people carrying the guns and manning the ships, how far does that get you?
If you can make guns and ships domestically, but rely on a foreign power that might become hostile for the raw material, how far does that get you?
If you take the “war materiel must be domestically producable for security” position, and think it through, you will find that it is by no means a narrow exception.
> Though the more trade you do with others the more nobody wants war with you because they lose both the goods you make and the market for goods you buy from them.
The idea that no one ever wants to go to war with a major trade partner is...hard to align with history.
There's open war, cold war, hegemon bullying, and lots of other conflicts. Look at how much China tried to sabotage the Australian economy this last year (and vice versa of course) even though China NEEDED Australian coal and resources for their industry. Political considerations in the short run has priorities, even if it's economically costly.
Besides, with more capital it's going to lead into cheaper manufacturing with automatization in higher labor countries. Sometimes it's better to have redundant factories in many different parts of the world. Even if it's only for innovation.
You may not sell as many with more expensive local manufacturing prices but the goods will be of a much higher quality and so more expensive.
For comparison, the Great Financial Crisis still looms over us so much that people still anticipate another huge housing burst. And when companies like Ford announce that they aren't using FICO scores to determine if a person qualifies for a loan, people on websites start fearmongering about another sub prime lending crisis.
I don't think you're necessarily right this is temporary. But companies always have the option of just not producing. If no one has blue paint, for most uses, the consumer just buys another color and grumbles.
And the things that are most likely to have a shortage would be those things that are cheapest produce a large scale in just one part of the world, so they're things that would be hardest to replace.
The virus, the treatment are transformational. They are the catalysts to technocratic governance.
Meanwhile it's month 18 in USA because the antivax folks started with the premise of non-cooperation ("because I hate the other party") and worked from there to invent all sorts of excuses why their non-cooperation is justified, so the government, who needs to care for all, including the beligerent, have to keep policies to keep everyone somewhat protected, ie masks, distancing, and proof of vaccination checks. Compare that to Portugal with 98% vaccination rate and no more vaccine proof checks required.
Yeah yeah you can still get the virus if you're vaxed, but it'll then be just like a bad flu, actually fulfilling the mistaken belief that many deniers had in the beginning...
The scientific literature says the vaccinated have lower viral load and are less infectious, if the load on hospitals and careworkers get reduced, what would prevent the relaxation of the restrictions?
Currently careworkers have been under extra pressure for 18 months, imagine a car engine being revved too hard and too long that suddenly blows, and apply this analogy to them, obviously not the entire industry in a day, but maybe over a semester...
It appears that is not necessarily the case[1]:
> In July 2021, following multiple large public events in a Barnstable County, Massachusetts, town, 469 COVID-19 cases were identified among Massachusetts residents who had traveled to the town during July 3–17; 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated persons. Testing identified the Delta variant in 90% of specimens from 133 patients. Cycle threshold values were similar among specimens from patients who were fully vaccinated and those who were not.
Certainly, the experience in Israel and the debate in the UK at the moment over more lockdowns would indicate that even very high levels of immunity (from either vaccination or infection) do not necessarily correspond with an easing of restrictions.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm...
I wonder how many more would've been sick without the vaccine. There were 469 cases, but how many showed up to those events?
Reading the study further, 4 vaxed people (and 1 unvaxed) were hospitalized and there were 0 deaths. I'd say a great result for the vaccine, but to be objective we'd have to see how it'd be different with the same set of people (same health status, etc) but without the vaccine.
I think/hope the goal isn't the eradication of the virus or its spread, but rather reducing the number of hospitalizations. The virus will probably stay with us, but if hospitals are no longer overwhelmed (since people aren't getting very sick and dying) then the governments will probably drop restrictions. Although mask mandates for some places like hospitals or old people's homes will probably remain for a long time...
They were using a measure called Ct cutoff, which (if used that way) is a crude measure of viral load, as the CDC points out in its own literature[1]:
> Since Ct values can vary based on many factors, it is not a good indicator of how infectious a person is or how much virus is present in a person (known as viral load).
However, it also points out in the sentence prior:
> It is still unknown how much virus is needed to transmit the virus from person-to-person and cause new infections.
What no longer needs to be ascertained is how this data has been interpreted by the experts, which is that the vaccines do not confer much, if any, advantage against transmission. There was the hope before the vaccines came out that they might but it was pointed out repeatedly that it would be unlikely given the nature of coronaviruses, and that has come to be the case.
> if hospitals are no longer overwhelmed (since people aren't getting very sick and dying) then the governments will probably drop restrictions
I hate to repeat myself, but the examples of Israel and the UK should also remind you that it is mere hope you are expressing, not anything borne out by experience. I hope you are right but my experience of people and how loathe they are to relinquish power - especially people who seek it, like politicians - tempers that somewhat.
[1] https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/health/documents/cedep/nov...
That would mean on average an infected person would infect less than one person and thus after a short while we converge on a zero infected population; as an infected person you either get well and unlikely to get infected again or die.
Vaccines work probabilistically and at scale. You need everyone to get the vaccine. If you have pockets of "inoculation" and give enough space to the virus to evolve through retransmission or too long to live, well tough luck.
This is the tool we have. And historically pandemics destroyed us. Not sure what we hope for here.
Some countries have had absolutely disastrous bouts of covid this past year (like Vietnam) and it screwed up supply chains a lot. Companies canceling orders because of expected drop in demand that didn’t happen are all rushing to put those orders back in, and it turned into a mess. There are plenty of factors at work here because each country that contributes to the chain had some different sort of problem.
A coworker gave me a graphics card, too!
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/xls/pswrgvwall.xls
Adjusted for inflation that's about $5.15/gallon.
I don’t even really like working from home(been remote since 2018) so when I want to go into the office I take the train into the city.
Very unlikely. 2020 was beginning of a super crisis caused by several reasons:
1) Depletion of fossil fuels which are used to produce consumer goods, e.g. to heat factories and provide electricity for the factory machines. Also fossil fuels are used to transport produced goods around half of the world. It was all possible due to abundant and cheap energy. But that energy source is no longer there.
2) Inability of capitalist economy to grow more. Capitalist economy must constantly expand to new markets but there're no more new markets as amount of markets on planet Earth is finite. Last huge market was created by destroying USSR and USSR industry: it postponed the super crisis by 30 years by giving capitalist system more space to expand to. But there's no longer any place for further expansion.
All will be going downhill from now on. Also, rising economic problems will prompt governments to start wars to exterminate "superfluous" population that cannot be fed in the new dark ages. There're other reasons for new war also. If you capture the country with still remaining fossil fuel resources and exterminate its population, you'll have more time to prepare for the inevitable.
Isn’t cause 2 basically agreeing “it was the pandemic”?
We're almost there. E.g. in Russia all new oil deposits found in recent years are in polar areas where extracting is difficult and expensive.
2. It is amazing how beginning of the super crisis coincided with the pandemia. I remember that in the beginning of the 2019 I said to several of my friends that huge crisis will hit the world at the end of the year. But I couldn't even imagine what would happen in the beginning of 2020.
Anyway, governments would want to get rid of extra mouths, especially young people with lots of energy but no way to put it into something productive.
It's especially clear when you start noticing that NATO forces are concentrating near Russian borders and amount of NATO military exercises on Russian borders has increased several times.
Russia has a big population and huge amounts of mineral resources. If NATO manages to capture Russian territory and exterminate most of the population in the process, it would give maybe 10-50 more years for Europe to adapt (e.g. build thermonuclear or some viable green energy sources), because currently Russia uses much of oil and gas and other resources for its own consumption.
There're other countries that could be the next potential targets. Two birds with one stone: turn young people who can't find a place in life into war into cannon fodder and potentially capture resources to extend the agony of the over-consuming economy.
The US is already doing this. The wars of extermination on the middle East are motivated by the desire to control the sources of oil, and when people react they're labeled as terror threats and eliminated. It is also not a new phenomenon, as it was already practiced to control the whole of north America and Australia in the past.