Is it possible to end this free 30-day trial of Communism early?
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Samizdata quote of the dayMarch 31st, 2020 |
 46 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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I think it’s more like those old record and book clubs that keep ignoring your cancellation letter.
Johnson seems bent on destroying the economy, his Party and his career.
So much for his supposed cleverness,.
The SCS have played him for a mug using their Imperial stooge Ferguson. And soon Blojo will not be in any position to give said SCS any sort of kicking. He will be fighting for his life.
The really awful thing is that he is a the best of a vile lot–not saying much–and I don’t want him replaced by trash like Gove let alone whatever POS wins the ZaNu wars.
Nope – the ratchet only goes one way. And just for the slower members of the class, it isn’t in the direction of slackening.
It is also in the direction of collapse. Trying to rule over a society that slowly cottons to the fact they have lost their former freedom and prosperity over official hysteria is not going to go well.
1) This is not a one-month trial of communism. In a very few highly-specific ways it is more restrictive and in a huge number of ways it is less so. If maintained, it could eventually reduce us to the poverty that is communism’s main experience (second only to the fear that all, even the nomenklatura feel all the time under it), but as I’ve quoted before, “There is a lot of ruin in a country.” I linked in my last post to Brendan’s Spiked article which discusses sensible how the “Brexit – we’re doomed (unless the elite take power)”, “Climate change – we’re doomed (unless the elite take power)”, “The sun rises in the east – we’re doomed (unless the elite take power)” people interact with the arrival of a real disease with a small but non-zero power to kill insufficiently cautious westerners and a possibility (also not known to be zero at this time, as it seems to be happening in Lombardy) of forcing a triage state on doctors and nurses and thereby causing some others to die of other conditions that would not have been fatal if more promptly addressed, plus making the disease more lethal than it otherwise is.
2) The models that claim the benefit of (1) outweighs its obvious costs are not yet in the same state as e.g. climate models – i.e. are not yet known (not yet known by me anyway) to be as wholly invalid as climate change models. However to the question
the answer is yes: there is good hope that in less than 30 days much more data on testing for antibodies (and other things) will be available, and in less than 30 days the idea that this is both costly and boring and getting harder to enforce will be evident to more people. If the data says the models were accurate, not far too pessimistic, we will have the right to express some surprise that, for once, the actual time of day turned out to be not so far from the time shown on the stopped clock. (I would certainly feel some surprise were that to prove wholly the case. 🙂 )
3) The more important question is whether ego, snowflakism and etc., will delay admitting a happier outcome. That we have a government elected for its will to ignore people saying “Brexit – we’re doomed (unless you let the elite ignore those peasants)” means the odds are better than they would have been under May, Cameron or anyone since Thatcher. How far ‘better’ does or does not mean ‘good’ is something one can debate, but since we suggest others not panic, let’s notice such upside as we ourselves have as well as the downsides, lest we too appear to panic.
4) Meanwhile, we get to see a little of what it was like, not under Stalin or Mao but in the old days, when no-one had cars, trains or buses and many had no horse either, and many were serfs, able to move about the local estate area but not legally permitted to leave it. We also get a hint of the black death experience, but happily without a disease of even remotely comparable lethality or infectiveness.
Niall’s comment is the best I have seen on this topic in rational and open minded treatment.
The virus cannot be ignored, it does demand some public intervention. Thank god the virus is not worse than it is, and as Niall says, Boris is the best of a very poor bunch, things could have been so much worse. You only have to imagine Gordon the Moron, or Treason May in charge. Phew, a bullet dodged.
And after it’s all over, people will have had a taste of big state socialism. If we are right in our views, they won’t have liked it. That’s good, surely?
“Johnson seems bent on destroying the economy, his Party and his career.”
How so?
https://order-order.com/2020/03/28/tories-hit-54-new-poll/
With any endeavour which has a goal, that goal has to be clearly defined with a clearly defined end-point – like the finish line in a race – otherwise how can it be known when the goal is reached?
There also has to be mile stones along the way, otherwise how can progress be assessed?
The current restrictions supposedly are to reduce the rate of infections, to ‘flatten the curve’, rather than stop the infection. The goal is ‘to protect the NHS’, not to benefit society (but that is fodder for another debate) however how will it be known the curve has been flattened, or flattened enough… what would be ‘enough’?
Since wide scale testing of the whole population is not being undertaken, if only cases presenting with symptoms or key workers are being tested, if the virus is fast spreading, the curve will only be a measure of the extent of the testing rather than the spread of the virus. The curve then will not ‘flatten’, it will continue to rise steeply until all those infected who get noticeable symptoms are tested, when the curve will just peter out.
Like a race with no stage markers, no finish line, no mile stones, the runners must keep going until, until, until…. until somebody shouts STOP!
Meanwhile: bodies are not piling up as ‘predicted’, thousands of cases requiring acute medical attention are not flodding hospitals as ‘predicted’, so can the herd stop being driven along in panic please?
@Tim, I hope you’re right that people won’t have liked the current free trial of communism, but my optimism isn’t great. At this point 90+% of people seem entirely sanguine about the current state of affairs (having freedoms of movement and association stolen from them), and a small number even seem to be revelling in it. I remember the good old days when patriotism used to be the last refuge of the scoundrel, or so we were told. But the wheel turned and “think of the children” became the first refuge of said scoundrel. And now its role has been usurped by “protect the NHS”. The deification of a public sector health care provider – indeed any public sector organisation – should worry us all.
I think that people are more than usually willing to be pushed around because they perceive a real and present danger that we are all supposedly working together to deal with. When they start to believe that the danger has passed, I don’t think it will be long before they start to get pissed off about it.
“The goal is ‘to protect the NHS’, not to benefit society”
No, the reason is to prevent the NHS being overloaded, which would cause the mortality rate to rise.
About 10-15% of people with symptoms go on to develop severe complications requiring hospital treatment. If they get that treatment, only 1% die (mainly people who were already old or ill). Nobody knows (yet) what happens if they *can’t* get that hospital treatment because the hospitals are all full, but it could potentially be that instead of 1% dying, you get 10-15% dying, and not just the old and ill.
They’ve used “Protect the NHS” as a slogan for that argument, but the reasoning behind it is not about simply protecting the NHS.
The measures are directed at keeping the peak demand for beds and equipment below the current (but ever-rising) level of supply. That’s what counts as ‘enough’.
“Meanwhile: bodies are not piling up as ‘predicted’,”
They were predicted to be piling up starting in mid-April. It’s not mid-April, yet.
I think you’re correct. Back in 1949, in the USA, Justice Robert Jackson first used the phrase “the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact” in a Supreme Court opinion, making the point that there are horrible times when safety comes first.
Hopefully we’re able to keep from declaring such times until things are as bad as they get. We may be in such times. We may not. Let’s first figure that part out, and then adjust our decisions accordingly.
When large numbers are ruined and have lost jobs/businesses etc –and the mass deaths don’t happen–people are going to get that it was all overblown hysteria over a bad winters flu–if that- then Blojo and the govt will not be enjoying their present rosy glow.
True Jizz etc not only supported the lockdown lunacy but wanted even worse–but watch how quick the leftist media forget that and hail whatever POS replaces Jizz as Dear Leader of ZaNu as being the prudent genius who knew lockdown was crazy.
The pressure on Bloj will be vast and the prospect of shite like Gove replacing him is a very bad one.
Can those free newspapers handed out to commuters carry on through this? The Evening Standard and The Metro come to mind. Come to that, pretty much all newspapers in physical form are going to suffer in this trial period. As most of them seem to be screaming for it, it would be a terrible irony….
NiV: “No, the reason is to prevent the NHS being overloaded, which would cause the mortality rate to rise.”
Odd, how in normal circumstances you’d expect folk on this group to be discussing ways the NHS could;
(a) be made more efficient. ( I’ll define efficiency as treating more people successfully, in less time, with less cost )
(b) be dismembered in pursuit of (a)
But here we are, banging and clanging our drums in the very opposite cause. Not only should the NHS consume 30 – 40% of the gdp of the economy, but we must sacrifice the productive sector of the economy to save, pretty much the worst health system in the western world.
How curious, Libertarians should advocate such a perspective.
Mr Ecks: “True Jizz etc not only supported the lockdown lunacy but wanted even worse ”
Bojo has just given him an object lesson, how to.
Hard to understand the comparison to communism. So DeBlasio and Khan were McCarthyists at the beginning of the month?
Are you ready to welcome them as fellow libertarians yet?
Niall and Nullius have more balanced views, but i was struck by this:
But that is normal for the NHS innit?
And in fact, it seems that in London ventilators are already being reserved for the more likely to survive.
There is also hope that chloroquine is effective and becomes widely available.
But Boris was right to say 6 months: that way people will be grateful to him for letting them out early.
I still expect that, when the bodies start piling up, people will castigate Boris for not acting earlier. Relatives of people who died just before, or soon after, an antiviral becomes available, are likely to be particularly resentful.
A commenter on Spiked just provided me with this link to HMG’s list of high consequence infectious diseases. It’s interesting reading. And it begs the question: why, if HMG concluded on March 19th that C-19 did not belong on that list, we’ve all been placed under effective house arrest? HMG clearly doesn’t think C-19 meets the criteria to be a HCID.
If the HCID list is now out of date, and C-19 is now considered a HCID why has the list not been updated? Would only take a few moments to update that page. As Carl Benjamin would doubtless say: “kinda gets the old noggin joggin’ “.
Oh, I know some will argue it’s to “protect the NHS”, but if that’s the case why no lockdown every winter when the ordinary flu causes thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, ‘excess deaths’? Is a little consistency in public policy too much to expect?
“And it begs the question: why, if HMG concluded on March 19th that C-19 did not belong on that list, we’ve all been placed under effective house arrest?”
Because the high consequence list is for diseases with a very high mortality rate and no effective treatment or test for it. Covid-19 can now be tested for, and has a relatively low mortality rate (about 1%), so long as the 10-15% of people who get more severe symptoms can be treated for it in hospital.
The lock-down is to make sure it spreads slowly enough that we can treat everyone.
“but if that’s the case why no lockdown every winter when the ordinary flu causes thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, ‘excess deaths’?”
Here’s the plot of flu and covid-19 from Italy. Does that make it clear why?
You can’t compare a week or a month to a year.
There aren’t going to be any mass deaths unless its from a collapsed economy.
Which the lockdown is bringing on.
@Ed: That wasn’t really my point, apologies for not being clearer. Perhaps I should have said:
If we are right in our views, they won’t have liked it.
Conversely, if they do indeed like their free trial of communism, then perhaps we here are wrong.
Should we then force them to stop the continuation of the communism they like, on account of them being too stupid to understand, and if we do, does that not make us the arrogant & oppressive ruling elite we so despise?
If we have any belief in the freedom and personal responsibility this site and its readership support, then we must surely hope for the former. But we cannot force that outcome without then becoming the dragon.
ONS figures for England and Wales for the week ending 20th March.
They have obligingly broken out those where COVID-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate.
Week 12,
1514 (All respiratory conditions )
-103 (COVID-19 related as the primary or a contributory CoD )
“ONS figures for England and Wales for the week ending 20th March.”
Thank you, but what’s your point?
@Tim, thanks for the clarification. I agree entirely with your last paragraph – we should avoid becoming that which we despise.
My wife frequently comments that (as I’m an opinionated blighter) I should go into politics. But I always remind her the idea horrifies me – I have no wish to dictate how others choose to live their lives, beyond asking that they respect the sanctity of persons and property, which I don’t think is unreasonable. I only ask to be left in peace to pursue my own personal bliss with no harm to anyone else. But, for too many, it seems I’m asking too much.
I’ll conclude by saying that if the public do enjoy their free trial of communism it doesn’t mean we are wrong, it just means we’re living in the wrong country…
@NiV, thanks for the link to the chart, but that’s Italy not the UK. The UK had 50k excess winter deaths in 2017 / 18 and there was no necessity for a lockdown, so you’ll excuse me for remaining unconvinced.
Glad we agree C-19 has a low kill rate, but are we really sure 10 – 15% of cases will require hospitalisation? Particularly when there are no reliable data on how many infections there’ve actually been. Around four weeks ago I had what I put down to ‘the flu’, but, with hindsight, it could well have been C-19. Until someone gives me an antibody test we’ll never know. (My wife was ill shortly afterward with even milder symptoms). I’m long past the first flush of youth (though not in my dotage yet!) but I recovered just fine after a few days in bed and I’m not typing these words from the hereafter. My point is we don’t know many cases we’ve had, or will have – the estimated deaths from Imperial College seem to be constantly revised down the way (as they should be as more concrete data become available). So I question whether we can reliably estimate how many cases will require medical intervention, as opposed to just sweating it out at home. I fear the over application of the precautionary principle, driven by shrill voices from the media and commentariat, will lead to ‘treatment’ that’s far more injurious to our society than the disease which it’s meant to address. In fact, one could argue (as many here have) that we’ve already reached that point.
NiV: “but what’s your point?”
You object?
I think it’s on topic.
“@NiV, thanks for the link to the chart, but that’s Italy not the UK.”
It’s not happened to the UK yet.
“The UK had 50k excess winter deaths in 2017 / 18 and there was no necessity for a lockdown, so you’ll excuse me for remaining unconvinced.”
Italy generally has roughly the same number of excess winter deaths as the UK. https://jech.bmj.com/content/57/10/784
If we can keep the deaths down to under 50k, that would count as a success. But we can only keep it down to 50k *with* the lock-down. *Without* the lockdown, the best of the hypothetical ignoring-NHS-overload scenarios estimated about 250k deaths, and with the overload you can probably multiply that by 5.
Be careful what you’re comparing. You can’t argue that the lock-down is unecessary by pointing to the low number of deaths that would result with the lock-down in place. You have to consider how many would die without it.
“Glad we agree C-19 has a low kill rate, but are we really sure 10 – 15% of cases will require hospitalisation?”
Are we really sure they won’t? That’s the current best estimate, given the data everybody else has got, and based on the experience in other countries ahead of us on the curve. Do you have any better data to say different? Or is this a case of wishful thinking?
Here are two of the ‘Regulations‘ restricting movement in England under The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020: Restrictions on movement and restrictions on gatherings.
“You object?”
No, but it’s not a surprising or significant comparison.
If you look at figure 1 on page 7 of the paper, you can see that the prediction (even in the hypothetical ‘do nothing’ scenario) was basically zip in March; it only starts ramping up in the middle of April, and only really gets going in late May/early June. Since the peak is at about 16 per 100,000, we can multiply that by 650 to get 10,400 deaths per day, or 72,800 deaths per week at the peak. It would, of course be higher with the NHS overload, potentially a lot higher.
Figure 2 indicates how much lighter mitigations would flatten the peak, and bring it down. Again, note that all the curves are virtually zero in late March.
So if you’re trying to say something like the observed number of COVID-19 deaths is small, or less than predicted, or not worthy of alarm, then the answer is of course the COVID-19 deaths are a small number – that’s exactly what the predictions for March say we should expect.
But if that’s not what you’re trying to say, then I don’t understand why you gave the numbers. What’s your point?
NiV: “No, but it’s not a surprising or significant comparison.”
OK.
NiV: “then I don’t understand why you gave the numbers.”
OK. But I still think it’s on topic.
Ed T:
That’s not what Nullius said: he said that 10 to 15% of cases with symptoms require hospitalization.
APL:
Deaths up to now are completely irrelevant. You might as well post stats for purchases of toilet paper. The only figure that matters right now is the doubling time of deaths; or if the number of deaths is small, then the doubling time of number of confirmed cases is a (questionable) substitute.
The worst affected towns in Italy might be an exception: since the number of deaths/day seems to have stopped increasing, we might surmise that the total number of deaths will be about twice as much as it is today. In the worst affected towns.
Stats from China are even less relevant (or rather, reliable) than stats on purchases of toilet paper.
If they can guarantee to leave us out of their plans, then, certainly, we should leave them to their own choices.
But it never seems to work that way.
Not only can you not end it early, they’re going to keep billing you for it after the end of the trial period.
You can cancel only in person, with a notaried letter delivered to the cancellation department, located in an undisclosed, unlighted, cellar, behind the door with the sign that says ‘Beware of leopard!’
Bring a gun.
Snorri Godhi: “Deaths up to now are completely irrelevant.”
But you’ve no objection if I post the figures occasionally?
Agammamon: “the door with the sign that says ‘Beware of leopard!’”
Don’t forget the stairs, there are no stairs.
APL: no, go ahead.
But don’t bother about me. I already log deaths into my spreadsheets (in selected areas of interest to me) to keep track of the doubling times. I can find them in Wikipedia and other sources, you don’t need to bother.
Snorri Godhi: “But don’t bother about me. ”
Sorry, but I wasn’t bothering about you.
I have another question. We’ve all been clapping the NHS staff who are, it is true, dealing first hand with this issue.
But here is an unpleasant question. If the government is truly concerned about contagion of the CoVid-19 virus. Why are they allowing medical staff to return into the community?
Aren’t medical staff (bless them) a primary vector to carry the virus into our towns and cities?
in switzerland the hospitals offered to pay for hotels for hospital staff, though that was mainly to keep Italian and French hospital staff in country if the borders were closed
So the solution is that all medical staff should be isolated for two weeks on, two weeks off, on a rotating basis! Or allow involuntary euthanasia to old people, more likely to be the carriers. Or allow every citizen a free trip to the White House so Trump can personally bless them, thereby curing them. And your shoelaces are undone! (Made you look!) Happy April Fools Day! (I have always felt that April Fools Day should be a natural day for libertarians to celebrate liberty and diversity- the right to do nonconformist deeds is a freedom to be cherished.)
They are also a vector to carry the virus into hospitals. Not all people in hospitals are there because they are infected.
Over here, daycare centers are open round the clock for children of medical staff, and the staff is not allowed to get close to their children.
Indeed not. The whole point of socialism is not to leave anyone alone. Mentally and governmentally, there’s no social distancing in socialism. 🙂
If you have read Dorothy Thompson’s 1941 essay “Who Goes Nazi?”, you may recall the last guest at the party – the blond blue-eyed German refugee who, alone of all his extensive acquaintance, did not go Nazi.
Contemplating his circumstances can, I think, help resolve the phoney moral dilemma (about on a level with the phoney moral dilemmas of old Dr Who episodes 🙂 ) that appeared in the tail end of this thread.
Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray: “So the solution is that all medical staff should be isolated for two weeks on, two weeks off, on a rotating basis!”
No, simply that medical, related professionals and ancillary staff, should be accommodated in isolation – until they are tested and the test returns positive for antibodies of COVID-19, at which point they can resume their normal routine.
Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray: ” Or allow involuntary euthanasia to old people, more likely to be the carriers.”
Catching a condition that associated with other pre-existing conditions ends up killing you. Is that your definition of ‘involuntary euthanasia’?
Where do boomers get their guaranteed ‘no death’ policy?
Snorri Godhi: “They are also a vector to carry the virus into hospitals.”
Yes, so? The goal of your preferred policy – lockdown, is to restrict the spread of COVID-19. I’m suggesting a better way that doesn’t involve reducing our economy to rubble.
And, yes they do. And that’s why the wisdom of the old until recently was, ‘don’t go to hospital, that’s where people go to die’.
There are loads of other relatively minor ‘hospital acquired infections’ that may kill you when coupled with the condition you present with at the hospital. MRSA, C.Dif, CRE, Necrotizing fasciitis, and so on, and so on.
Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray: ” Or allow involuntary euthanasia to old people, more likely to be the carriers.”
That is just a grotesque distortion of the situation. Either through ignorance or malice, who knows?
When I wrote that, it was April Fools Day here in Australia! Or is that just an Australian custom?
April Fools Day? Huh?
Must be an Australian thing. Sort of like Opposite Day?
. . .
. . .
(April Fools!)
Under Soviet “Communism”, actually Socialism (they never claimed to have “achieved” Communism) there was restriction of CONSUMPTION (sometimes to the point of mass starvation) – but they most certainly did not go around deliberately trying to end PRODUCTION.
As far as I know the only regime on Earth (at least in my life time) that had a deliberate policy of closing down modern PRODUCTION was that of Pol Pot in Cambodia (his mutant Marxists went around closing factories and driving people from the towns – in a would have baffled Karl Marx, and overjoyed the “Greens”).
This policy did not turn out well.
Where in the F**** did you get this from Nicholas? Old people are more likely to die, not be carriers.”Or allow involuntary euthanasia to old people, more likely to be the carriers.”