The Coronavirus Thread

[Brian Peacock]

... Went the same way as the plastic fried egg I guess.

[laklak]

Rubber vomit, ceramic dog shit, they just don't make them like they used to.

[Brian Peacock]

Ceramic dog shit luxury! We had to make do with scrunched up mars bar.

[laklak]

Chocolate? Luxury. When I were lad we got two brown pebbles for Easter and an orange rock for Christmas.

[Seabass]

The hell is fart powder?

[Sean Hayden]

Culero hash's harder cousin...

[Brian Peacock]

[JimC]

There have been some interesting articles on the effects of the virus on global supply chains. This is an excellent article, IMO:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-02/ ... y/12206776

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed some of the downsides of the "just-in-time" economy — a defining feature of capitalism during the past three to four decades.


The term "just in time" was popularised in the 1980s and 1990s to describe a system of production and a management philosophy which aimed to cut costs and eliminate waste by procuring and delivering everything just when it's needed — or "just in time".

Toyota was a leading proponent of "just-in-time production" — its factories and supply chains engineered from the 1970s so that components arrived just as they were needed for assembly.

Avoiding the costs of holding inventories and warehousing was a key part of the strategy.

This required the development of sophisticated logistics to manage often global supply chains to ensure "just-in-time delivery".

All good … until supply chains are disrupted, as they have been in the pandemic that has hit myriad businesses from tech giants such as Microsoft, Apple and Samsung, through to the makers of critical medical supplies.

But then it goes on to discuss how global capital did much the same to its workforce:

Casualisation, labour hire, self-employment in the so-called "gig economy" and zero hours contracts are all manifestations of a "just-in-time workforce", where the worker becomes an economic buffer, absorbing the risk of variations in demand.

As with just-in-time or "lean" production, the trend towards a just-in-time labour force accelerated in the 1990s.

In response to recessions around the world in the early years of that decade, employers who'd been stuck with fixed labour costs when demand and revenue fell responded by cutting back their ongoing workforces.

A core of ongoing employees was surrounded by an expanded periphery of part-time, casual and contract labour who could be upsized and downsized as required.

For business, there is an obvious cost advantage in being able to tailor work hours by the day and by the hour to meet demand.

Like widgets on the assembly line, workers are sourced and delivered "just in time".

The just-in-time workforce also shifts power from labour to capital: people in insecure jobs are less inclined to speak out, push back or unionise.

Business groups like to argue that the flexibility is a two-way street — and it is the case that some workers do enjoy the freedom that gig work or temp work offers — but there's no denying that in aggregate it represents a massive shifting of risk from capital to labour.

In effect, the risk of variations in demand has been shunted on to working people, who in turn face increased financial risk as they try to navigate bills and mortgages without security of employment or income.

And this means that households are quickly in trouble when a crisis strikes:

It's contributed to the rise of "just-in-time" household budgets where people live hand to mouth, with more than a quarter of Australians households reporting they have less than a thousand dollars in cash savings.

In good times, this is a risk to individuals and their families. In bad times, as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates, it can quickly become a systemic risk.

"Those people who are absorbing the risks of business now become in their large numbers a systemic risk for the overall economy," says Dick Bryan, an emeritus professor of political economy and co-author of Risking Together: How finance is dominating everyday life in Australia.

"Because if these people aren't working, if these people aren't spending and these people can't pay their bills, then we find a big cascading of insolvencies running through the economy."

[Cunt]

Perhaps the nutters pushing the Global Villiage Construction Set are finally going to start making sense.

[Scot Dutchy]

Does anyone remember the Asian flue of 1957? I was only one of three left in our class of 40 coming to school. Nothing was closed down then and no talk about vaccine.
A famous tory leader was in charge then:

A cavalier Tory leader and a botched pandemic response? It must be 1957

Then, as now, a government responsible for a disaster tried to change the narrative. We shouldn’t let history repeat itself

Harold Macmillan was British prime minister from 1957 to 1963. A charming Tory with a patchy record, he’s usually remembered for saying that during his government Britons had “never had it so good” in their standard of living. What has been forgotten, almost completely, is that he said this in the middle of a pandemic.

Macmillan made his claim on 20 July 1957, at a party rally in Bedford. Like Boris Johnson, he was a new premier with a preference for optimistic public statements. In 1957, the British economy was actually quite fragile, and Macmillan acknowledged this in his speech, but the idea that Tory rule kept Britain prosperous and safe was central to his premiership. As now, the party had already been in power for years, and needed to present a Labour government as a terrible risk.

The pandemic, of a new strain of flu, had started in China the previous winter. During the first half of 1957 it steadily moved across Asia and then the rest of the world, killing hundreds of thousands of people, to the alarm of the world’s media, including the British press. In June, the first cases appeared in Britain. Yet that month, and again in July, Macmillan’s health secretary, Dennis Vosper, refused to make a public statement setting out the threat the flu posed, arguing that it was not spreading in the UK.

The same old story. The rich were fine and the proles suffered. Nothing changes.

The World of “1984”: Class System. The world of “1984” is divided into three main class systems: The Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles. Big Brother is at the top of the pyramid. Only making up 2% of the population, the Inner Party is the ruler of Oceania

Notice something?

[pErvinalia]

You're paranoid?

[Tero]

In 1957 my parents went on a camping trip. I was left with grandma. We went to Tampere to visit with her relatives. I had to ask grandma to ask the driver, a guy who lived in our apt building, to stop the car a bit. I threw up a bit. We went on to Tampere. I was 3. That is the only memory from that year. Oh, the kids at the cabin, second cousins, had wooden toys.

In 1959 we moved from Turku to Helsinki, I got the first friends I still remember.

[Scot Dutchy]

You make me feel so old. I had just moved to Edinburgh and was going to the local dump of a primary school. I could not speak to anyone as my West London accent made me an alien and a real prole.

[laklak]

I don't remember anything from when I was 3. Hell, I can't remember much from yesterday. It's all good, though, I meet interesting new people every day and try new foods and drinks, go to new places. It's fun!

[Tero]

I have some few memories from 4, and from 5 when I first got sent to the store with a bill and some coins to buy bread or something. I also pushed a kid on a scooter and fell, scraping knees and chin. We had to go to the clinic. The nurse cleaned the chin and decided no stiches. I was from then on envious of kids who had stiches.