5X5: #1--Since We Been Gone

Thinking about The New Life

A comment line I had today with another at the site of Political Wire, an ongoing, lively discussion of the latest political news.

(mi5scents)Likely changes from this--1. a greater re-evaluation of having so much manufacturing in China--including medical items and pharmaceuticals, 2. a greater willingness to accept tighter border controls and 3. a greater appreciate among many of the importance of a strong public health system and those who work in it. In Europe, Italians are likely to long remember the EU's response to their request for help, and not in a good way. Bottom line--it isn't likely to advance globalism.

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  chinshihtang  mi5cents • 2 hours agoUpvote for your thought piece, and I agree with 1. and 3. As for 2., though, border controls don't mean shite to a virus. I'm serious.
  Here's my shot: Big changes to airlines, which will have to change their Coach seating patterns (thankfully so, though it will cost us more), and to food production/consumption, which will become more local. Cruise lines will downsize their ships or disappear, with those monstrous boats re-purposed for something. Many people will fear to join in large gatherings for a long time, which will have some subtle effects (another blow to the rock music industry--rent those boats for "cruises to nowhere"?).

  
  

  What I'm praying for is that global capitalism will be replaced by global community as civilization's guiding force.

As a retired statistician, there's a lot I could bore you with regarding my study of the curves, but I will summarize and say that the second derivative of the number of new cases is a good leading indicator for the key statistic, which is the change over time (first derivative) of the net number of cases (active minus cured). 

The number of deaths follows from that, subject to adjustment for the quality of life-saving healthcare and the comprehensiveness of testing.  Based on that, and my assessment of the quality of the US' response to date, I estimated a few days ago that the number of deaths due to the coronavirus in the US for 2020 will be 80,000.  I'd call that a "good job" for Trump--a 3 on a scale of 5.   Or on a scale of 20,000 to 5 million.  So, yeah, a lot at stake.

One piece of good news (for me):  New Mexico seems to lead the nation in tests per capita to date, and our Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is suddenly emerging as a potential VP nominee for Joe Biden.  I endorse the idea wholeheartedly; in fact she is my first choice, given that Pete Buttigieg seems to be out of the running.  She has stayed well ahead of the curve in terms of her communication and the clarity of her executive orders.

Trump's administration defines the curve, for better or worse. Mitch's point that it (Trump/Mitch/Congress/whatever) got distracted by the meteoric news cycle of the impeachment and critical Democratic primaries has some merit*.  That is no kind of excuse, though, not for an individual, and certainly not for a Federal government.  That is kind of the problem, though--the effort has been 'federated" way too much.  Granted, I wouldn't want Trump making life-and-death decisions for others, given his ethics, but this is a real good example of how bad states' rights thinking is in critical, national policy-making.

That is no criticism of the governors themselves.  As I have already suggested, there have been true standouts.  If this pandemic had just hit the US so hard a month sooner, we'd probably be seeing Draft Andrew Cuomo sweeping Super Tuesday (in the guise of "Undecided")--once again, for better or worse.  If we were a tree, we'd be looking pretty thin at the top, though our trunk be solid.


I aim to follow up with four more posts this week on possible divertissements, notwithstanding.


*I have elaborated somewhat to improve his argument, which failed miserably.  Hope remains alive to eliminate directly all possibility of Mitch pulling off a Netanyahu.