“You just bet against the American economy. If we’re right people lose homes, people lose jobs, people lose retirement savings, people lose pensions. You know what I hate about fucking banking? It reduces people to numbers. Well here’s a number – every 1% unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die. Did you know that?”
The Big Short.
Lockdown will lead to 29 times more deaths than corona virus.
“The actuaries then used the figures predicted by the National Treasury to model the impact on poverty. On Friday, the Treasury estimated that between 3-million and 7-million jobs will be lost due to the measures taken to combat the virus. The actuaries then work out that, conservatively, 10% of South Africans will become poorer, and as a result, will lose a few months of their lives.”
The model shows that the number of years lost due to the economic collapse caused by the lockdown will be between 14 million and 24 million, which means the 29 times figure is on the low end and could be even higher.
The model also showed that based on European data, “90% of Covid-19 deaths were in people 70 or older with one or more comorbidity, while the relative risk to the young and healthy is negligible.”
I think that the vast majority of models are bullshit and most of them are deliberately fraudulent. But if we have to put up with bullshit models proclaiming that 3000 people will die a day in the USA from the Chinese pox, then I’ll take a different bullshit model that supports the economic reality that I see happening.
The Australian has a headline today that reads, Suicide epidemic outstrips virus. It’s behind a paywall though so don’t bother with it. The point is that countries have not been devastated by the virus; they have been devastated by panicking governments’ reactions to the virus.
In the beginning I gave governments the benefit of the doubt, but no more. Apart from some notable exceptions, they were lethargic to act and then draconian when they finally did so. They did this in order to be seen to be doing something; to make up for their preceding poor performance; and under pressure from the usual mix of professional advocates, agitators, and karens.
Their lethargy in acting when the virus first became a threat pales into insignificance in comparison with their lethargy to roll back their own lockdown measures which have seen most nations on the planet reduced to a state that most likely gives Kim Phats pause for thought.
In four months’ time this virus will not even be mentioned on the news. Hopefully it will have been replaced by something more worthwhile. Such as multiple uprisings around the world to end the ongoing farce that is democracy.
Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill. You can purchase Adam’s books here.
