The world economy never recovered from Covid. - “Britain sank into recession this week. So did Japan, with its decline so bad that it lost its spot as the world’s No. 3 economy.”
@Brad Yes. And so bizarre they "never saw it" when literally all the regular people did!
I mean, kill off the first batch of essential workers and then disable everyone else through repeated Covid exposure, WTF did they think would happen? It's basic, not esoteric.
We were already discussing this would happen in May/June of 2020. 😤
@_L1vY_@Brad I've been saying this whole time, since like January 2020, I don't understand why people are so chill about covid. This could still bring down industrial civilization by 2030 (and not in the good way, like you want).
@_L1vY_@Brad Like people I know are waiting longer and longer for surgeries and things like that. In small towns there just aren't doctors anymore, only nurse practitioners and referrals to specialists in the city. As far as I can tell we were supposed to mask up to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing, and we collectively refused, so now the healthcare system is collapsing. I'm just not sure why more people aren't aware of this? 😂/😭
@sidereal
I have large two hospitals in my small city. Neither of them set bones in the ER anymore. You have to get referred to a specialist. It's fucking absurd. @_L1vY_@Brad@VeeRat
@noyes@sidereal@_L1vY_@Brad@VeeRat 🙄 Similar issues in the 'medical desert' that France has become. Emergency rooms close at dinner time! You must call a 'gatekeeper' number and obtain permission before you leave for the hospital because they are so short-staffed.
@sidereal@noyes@_L1vY_@Brad@VeeRat It's quite unsettling to watch the caring & reliable European-wide health care we've had in the past slipping away. Many doctors, nurses, specialists, dentists, & surgeons retired early or changed careers as soon as the pandemic was 'officially' declared over. Equally important, younger doctors or nurses are changing degree programs, avoiding medicine altogether due to 60-hour schedules & ridiculously low pay. The NHS in the UK is in a similar dilemma.
@_L1vY_
Yeah. First you go to the ER and they diagnose the fracture. Then they tell you that they don't set bones anymore and send you over to B$ne & J$int. @sidereal@Brad@VeeRat
@sidereal@Brad From what I can see, in my practice for example, each person who is waiting / going through health care travails, believes it is "just them." They think there is a working system that they personally just don't know how to make it work.
@_L1vY_@sidereal@Brad OMG I have been screaming about this too. Every time I make a call about something (health care, administrative, w/e), waits are longer, service is worse, workers are more embattled. One time a worker told me something like "no one is at work, they must all be on vacation"... Uh huh. My own workplace, more work, less resilience, no acknowledgement of long-term change to conditions, & needed accommodations denied with impunity by employer. Shitshow no one in power can see?
@inquiline@_L1vY_@Brad Yeah, it seems that many (most?) of the people in power can't see it because they don't have the interdisciplinary training to properly comprehend a true polycrisis.
@sidereal@_L1vY_@Brad I was out of characters in my last post, but not only about "can". People at the top refuse to see/acknowledge, people below them take a cue from that, & so on. Some of these people certainly have intellectual chops/ knowledge base to comprehend, but in their positions they need to maintain accord with this elite consensus
IMO there are true believers, but I also think there are others for whom no good would come of pointing out emperor's lack of clothes
And all that the tycoons see is the value of their hoarded concierge healthcare skyrocketing.
Most of the population will be cut loose, relegated to a mideival healthcare situation while the dwindling number of skilled professionals run to hide under the wings of rich benefactors.
Artificial scarcity strikes again, with the added benefit of weakening the poor so their illness and fear makes it harder for them to fight back.
I keep remembering that article where a former IDF spy was talking about how their surveillance takes note of all the illnesses in each Palestinian's friends and relatives. Treatment can be offered or taken away at a whim, tempting collaboration or punishing resistance.
@inquiline@_L1vY_@sidereal@Brad This is happening everywhere around me. I think we have a couple 24 hour pharmacies left in the state that are open, but there are no pharmacies around me open on Sundays anymore.
The pharmacist shortage hit New Hampshire pretty early on, I remember a couple years ago the Pharmacy I used just closed for months suddenly. The pharmacist gave birth and there was no one to replace her so they just had to shut down for her maternity leave.
@_L1vY_@Brad I guess this is like my chronic illness privilege showing because I've been going to the doctor's office more frequently than once a month this whole time, since before covid. So I've had like a front row seat to watching things collapse in real-time. Things which used to be simple and routine are now like pulling teeth because EVERYWHERE is understaffed. Every clinic, every pharmacy, every specialists' office. Chronic lack of doctors, nurses, even admin staff, at all levels.
@sidereal@Brad 💔 This is not a privilege dear heart, it is that being marginalized is having a front row seat on the Titanic. And it means repeated increased risks for you. I am so sorry.
@_L1vY_@Brad Oh that privilege comment was sarcasm 😅
Of course I also haven't gotten covid despite all of these appointments, and despite being immunocompromised, because I lucked into apparently one of the only clinics in North America where everyone has been chill about masking this entire time.
I haven't been knowingly exposed to covid since 2021. N95s are cool.
Like I appreciate your concern! But don't worry about me. I'm fine. At this point I'm far more worried about everyone else.
@sidereal@_L1vY_@Brad Yes I agree. But there is also Long Covid. Many people don't know or don't care about it but a survey shows that some 18 million Americans state they have LC. In many cases that is 18 million basically out of the work force. I suspect there probably is many more BC so little is known about it and its symptoms can easily be assumed to be some other medical problem. I know because I've had since Dec 2020.
@Monolecte@_L1vY_ yes, agreed! Rough translation- “But so much! We've been shouting at them in every tone for over 3 years and they: "well, we didn't see it coming!”
@_L1vY_@Brad I keep meeting people who say they haven't had it, but they don't connect with the fact it's asymptomatic much of the time. I know of people who didn't have any symptoms but tested positive. It makes this virus double dangerous.
@Scienceisnotopinions@_L1vY_@Brad Also, the tests for having had the disease are lacking in sensitivity (not the statistical kind, they just can't sense it) after a short period of time.
That is, you can have COVID. Never have symptoms. Be tested to see if you have a history of it and it shows negative.
The current belief is that long COVID is more prevalent with less symptoms. That is why some people who never have had COVID, Test to never have had COVID, yet have long COVID.
Sewage analysis indicates COVID is much, much more common that the reported cases.
I've asked this before. Is there any test that can say if you've had Covid at some time in the past? And if there is, does the test get confused by multiple vaccinations?
ISTR, BUPA did offer one for a while but it's no longer available.
There are lots of us who have never tested +ve but have had episodes of something (one bad cold, bout of V&D) that might have been Covid. And now feel ... different.
@jbond@Scienceisnotopinions@_L1vY_@Brad They only way I know of that could detect a history of COVID is an antibody test. It will tell you if you have been vaccinated or have had the disease but, to my knowledge, cannot discriminate and say that you have had COVID.
I saw a paper that showed there were slight differences in the oligos produced from vaccination and those produced with the disease. The testing process is simply not sensitive enough to tell those variations in the fragments (oligos).
@_L1vY_@Brad I don't see direct mortality as the cause of economic downturn so much as business closures and other quarantine measures. Leading to conservative complaints that we sacrificed our own economy in the name of combatting COVID.
@60sRefugee@Brad I don't know man. A shit ton of workers died in 2020. Bus drivers, line cooks, delivery workers, crucial health care workers, teachers. And a bunch more are now disabled and falling out of the market, not to mention the trailing deaths.
There is a reason those businesses closed.
It's so crazy-making how the most obvious conclusions/concerns we had in 2020 are being retconned simply because economists are conditioned to deny/ignore anything they don't already have a longitudinal chart for.
Or because the vast majority of them have a vested interest in denying reality if it benefits Wall Street sociopaths to do so.
One of my very best friends in grad school was in an economics PhD program, and they are trained to be ignorant & dismissive of the contributions of older fields, particularly social sciences & humanities. She had to fight so hard against it. It definitely comes with the program.
@Brad I'm convinced that one of the side effects of getting a degree in economics is to filter out students (and therefore future economists) who are willing and able to contemplate the role of economics in the broader human context. The survivors are mostly blind to humanist concerns and prioritize financial returns over any greater meaning in life.
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