Biden Less Obama More George W. Bush

Why Trump never pushed harder to deliver an infrastructure bill while he was in office baffled me. The only conclusion I could draw is that he didn't think it was important to his reelection.

I thought it was. Whether it would have a made a difference in the middle of a global pandemic the likes of which haven't been seen since the end of World War One is easy to assert but difficult to prove.

What's apparent is that Biden believes he has to deliver something on infrastructure, even if it is the shrunken bipartisan deal -- widely announced but as of Saturday afternoon the text has yet to be completed. 

The Democratic Party needs some proof of life heading into a midterm election year, particularly now that Delta is on the ascent and evidence is emerging that breakthrough infections are much more common than previously supposed.

The one feather in Biden's cap had been the rollout of vaccines produced by Trump's Operation Warp Speed. If it turns out that these vaccines don't offer a complete solution to the problem -- as I said, it is being acknowledged now that fully vaccinated people can spread the virus and end up in the hospital -- things are going to take a turn for the ugly. As Yves Smith noted last week quoting a story by NPR on the recent COVID-19 surge in the U.S. -- "[Infections] will steadily accelerate through the summer and fall, peaking in mid-October, with daily deaths more than triple what they are now."

It's not a good look for Biden. And, as Smith points out, the pandemic isn't the only bad look for Biden. Every policy area appears to be turning to shit right before our eyes. Whether it's Iran, Afghanistan, Cuba, the lapsing eviction moratorium, the false promises to alleviate student debt, Biden is looking less like the conservative, feckless Obama 3.0 and more like bumbling, incompetent George W. Bush 3.0.

So, yes, absolutely. Some sort of meaningful infrastructure bill must be passed. I'm even willing to accept the bipartisan deal as it is being currently reported if only to get the increased public transit, Amtrak and lead abatement funds into the pipeline, knowing full well that big-ticket $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation will likely never leave the launch pad.

If we use the fate of Biden's original infrastructure proposal as a gauge for budget reconciliation, the Democrats will end up somewhere around $1 trillion; at which point, I imagine, the party will be on the precipice of a free fall.

A Pandemic of Homelessness

It's that time of year. The big dark has descended upon the Pacific Northwest. Sunrise is after 7:00 AM. Sunset is 4:30 PM. 

Each year around mid-November, due to the dark mornings and dropping temperatures, I'll start replacing my weekend road runs with laps on the community center soccer pitch. 

Due to a lengthy recovery from COVID, I've been leery about recommitting to running. Last December I posted my best 5K time in years. It seemed as if I were on my way back. I followed that performance with close to a personal worst a couple months later at a leap year 5K; a performance that augured my falling ill with the coronavirus.

Slowly but surely my strength is returning. Demands at work are off the charts. So all restored vitality is being sucked up by the job. Nonetheless, with the chores of grocery shopping and laundry already expedited, and with Thanksgiving approaching, my holiday ritual for which is a long early morning run, I decided to head out to the playfield at 5 AM this morning.

I walked the steep hill up to the community center rather than run it, as I usually do. When I got to the artificial turf soccer field it was pitch black. No moonlight nor any streetlamp glow. I noticed big tarped piles dotting the perimeter. I figured it was machinery for turf maintenance. 

When I started running my square laps I could see that tarped piles were actually homeless bivouacs. Underneath the blue tarps were igloo-style camping tents. They lined the four sides of the pitch.

I've been coming to this community center soccer field for two decades, and I've never seen anything like this before. Clearly it is something that the city's parks department must have signed off on. I know from being on that field early in the morning that city workers service it regularly.

Homelessness was a huge problem prior to the pandemic, a glaring indictment of "as good as it gets" American neoliberalism and Trumpian "the greatest economy of all time" hokum. Now that problem is being mainlined. Cities are transferring homeless from barracks-style shelters to hotels in order to reduce the number of coronavirus infections. Seattle is considering buying a hotel for the homeless. 

Hopefully some sort of socialized housing safety net comes out of this pandemic, a basic right to something like a home in a tiny house village. 

After I finished jogging I walked to a nearby Safeway for some Emergen-C. On the south side of an east-west street opposite the Safeway is a little pocket city park, a patch of green grass and shade trees. It too was filled with tents of the homeless. On the sidewalk leading to the Safeway entrance homeless slept.

The longer the pandemic persists the more homelessness is going to be forced from the margins of our neoliberal society to its center.

COVID Long-Haulers + My Pitch for Astragalus

The New York Times published a story earlier in the month about COVID "long-haulers," people, such as myself, who continue to struggle months after being infected. The NYT story emphasizes the psychological struggles of long-haulers. 

The story re-posted today by Naked Capitalism, "Thousands of New York ‘Long Haulers’ Struggle with COVID-19 Months After Diagnosis," is much more sympathetic to the plight of the long-haulers, situating them in a larger health crisis that has to date been under-reported rather than shading the story as an example of pandemic mass psychosis.

I can bear witness to the brutal reality of the long haul. For the most part I've stopped walking home from work, choosing the bus instead, because the two-mile uphill climb is too much for me now. My heart isn't right.

After a ridiculously unproductive couple of visits to my primary care physician (and ridiculously expensive, even though I have good employer-based health insurance) I decided to forego further rabbit-holing in the corporate health industrial complex and take charge of my own recovery.

One positive that I can report is the Chinese herb Astragalus. I read online that it helped with myocarditis.  German studies published this summer revealed a connection between COVID-19 and cardiac problems. Astragalus has made a difference. Three capsules taken daily -- one morning, noon and night -- have reduced my nasty and incapacitating arrhythmia. 

Daily COVID Deaths Predicted to Climb Next Month

 From this morning's Slog:

The key question: Just how much did we fuck things up this weekend? Experts worried Labor Day weekend could cause a new surge in the virus. "The warnings came as a widely cited model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projected a worsening outbreak in the U.S. that will peak in early December at about 2,900 deaths per day, up from about 860 a day now, unless government officials take action," according to the AP. As county health officer Dr. Jeff Duchin told Slog: If we all made the same decisions on Labor Day weekend as on Memorial Day weekend and the Fourth of July weekend, we will have trouble sending children back into school this fall. “You have to think, are these social activities and going out to eat more important right now than educating our children?”

Also, from today's WSWS:

Daily deaths are projected to start climbing after October 1 and then rise sharply after November 1. By December 1, current projections for the daily number of deaths stand at 26,870. Hospital resources expected in use in December include 1.87 million hospital beds, 399,463 intensive care unit (ICU) beds and 340,307 ventilators. These projections are driven by dropping temperatures in the fall and winter season that drive people indoors, compounded by declining mask usage, which stands at around 60 percent, and declining social distancing measures.

COVID is already back on the rise in Europe. Spain and France have experienced a resurgence this summer. In the midst of this resurgence children are being sent back to school. The result is going to be an infection spike prior to the anticipated seasonal spike in October. Not a pretty picture.

Western governments have basically given up on the idea of developing a comprehensive diagnostic system of the sort you see practiced, for instance, by NFL teams: regular testing, quarantine and contact tracing. It's not even mentioned anymore, replaced by bullshit happy talk about a vaccine. 

Western governments have adopted a de facto policy of herd immunity, something that could prove to be illusory given that reinfections have now been documented.

New York City should give us a good idea. After the city's truly horrific spring, infections were reduced to such an extent that there has been speculation that it has achieved herd immunity. If this is true, there should be no spike when schools reopen on September 21.

As COVID deaths begin to tick back up markets are on their way down. The Fed's "QE forever" was able to buy all-time market highs for a spell, but the reality of long-term unemployment has finally appeared to have crashed the party.

The Decades Delayed Remote Work Revolution

I first took note of the promise of remote work when I was a lower-division undergraduate. This was probably 1984 or 1985. I saw a television news story that said in the next few years companies would be allowing, thanks to modems and personal computers, more employees to work from home. I was pleased because this meant by the time I exited the university and entered the workforce I'd likely have more freedom than those who had come before.

Needless to say the remote work revolution never arrived. Every so often another story would appear heralding a workplace paradigm shift thanks to the breathtaking speed of our digital transformation, but eventually even those petered out.

To be sure there was an elite class of workers who always enjoyed on-the-job flexibility, as well as a precariat of freelancers for whom remote work was not necessarily an enhancement, but it took the pandemic crisis of 2020 to deliver the fruits of stay-at-home work for the great mass of office workers.

This morning Yves Smith, "New York City Faces Another 'Drop Dead': How Many Other Cities Will Wind Up in Distress?," takes a look at the what the long-delayed but now here-to-stay remote work revolution means for the great urban centers of the United Stated, and the news is not good for real estate.

Smith mentions that large employers are trying to bring their workers back onsite and they're facing a rebellion. I can testify when that moment arrives for my office the same thing will happen.

So cities are facing an enormous drop off in tax revenue. That's really the issue that's impeding another bailout plan passing congress. The Republicans won't backstop states, counties and cities; they want a repeat of the post-2008 layoffs of government workers that helped to created a slow-motion recovery and stoked political division that they were able to take advantage of.

I for one am enjoying the empty streets. But I realize there is going to be huge price to pay.

COVID Efflorescence

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases yesterday rocketed past 9 million as the pandemic accelerates in every corner of the world, an increase of one million cases in seven days. The number of known deaths now stands at more than 469,000. Both these figures are on track to surpass the ghastly milestones of 10 million cases and 500,000 deaths later this week.

The sharpest uptick in new cases continues to be in Eastern Europe, South Asia, North America and South America. The United States has the most new cases of any country, closely followed by and sometimes exceeded by Brazil. And while India has a lower count of new cases, that number is increasing sharply, and the official figures are undoubtedly a gross underestimate in a country of 1.3 billion people with only rudimentary health care infrastructure.

These countries similarly lead the world in number of new deaths, along with Chile, Peru, Russia, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and Iran. Globally, the seven-day moving average of daily deaths has never gone below 4,000 since the beginning of April and is again trending upwards. The seven-day moving average of daily cases has not gone below 100,000 since March 27 and will soon surpass 150,000.

The dangers of the pandemic were sharply expressed on yesterday’s edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press” program by Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “I don’t think this is going to slow down. I’m not sure the influenza analogy applies anymore,” he said, developing his position from his earlier work which attempted to model the spread of the coronavirus based on how the flu spreads. “I don’t think we’re going to see one, two and three waves—I think we’re just going to see one very, very difficult forest fire of cases.”

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, noted on CBS’s Face the Nation: “We’re seeing the positivity rates go up. That’s a clear indication there is now community spread underway, and this isn’t just a function of testing more.”

Bryan Dyne, "World coronavirus cases rocket past 9 million as pandemic accelerates"

Our Dystopian Present

Nations are ending lockdowns despite the persistence of COVID-19. The original talking points of comprehensive testing and contact tracing have been abandoned. Now the unspoken policy is herd immunity. Workers will be forced back into the job market. Auto manufacturers are increasing production despite a spike in COVID cases in their factories.

The problem with herd immunity is that we don't know what level of protection COVID antibodies provide. As Benjamin Mateus explains in "Studies on COVID-19 antibody response undermine US 'herd immunity' policy":

The immunity to the virus is not as robust as had been hoped by investigators, and no one yet knows what level of neutralizing antibodies are required to offer protection. This has considerable implications for vaccine productions, as vaccine efficacy seems to hinge on the ability to demonstrate consistently high levels of neutralizing antibodies.

As the virus expands its reach in Africa and India, it appears that after six months of COVID we are just at the beginning.

States are writing austerity budgets. There will be no let up in joblessness and apparently no further lockdowns. The only way for the state to prevent a revolution is by means of massive violence.

Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

About ten blocks south of my apartment building the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) has been created.  The East Precinct building, which the Seattle Police Department (SPD) abandoned earlier in the week after repeatedly saturating protesters with tear gas despite an announced tear gas ban by Mayor Jenny Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best, is at the center of the newly created autonomous zone.

After a few days of celebration things are starting to heat up with Trump making threats, The New York Times posting a story on its homepage, and the SPD making noises that it wants its station back. (If you want to keep up with the latest CHAZ news from local sources, let me suggest that you follow Rich Smith on Twitter and you bookmark Capitol Hill Seattle Blog. Both are excellent sources.)

Even if Trump doesn't invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and dispatch troops from Fort Lewis, it's likely, once things die down a little, that the odious Mayor Durkan will send in riot police a la Mike Bloomberg and Zuccotti Park nearly a decade ago.

I have yet to visit CHAZ despite living nearby. I am trapped in this cycle of going to the office and then recovering at home. My lungs have still not healed. If I am improving, it's in tiny barely perceptible increments. I did work four days in the office last week, and the one day worked last week from home was a full day, 7 AM to 5 PM. So that's good news. I couldn't have done it in May. Nonetheless I'm growing concerned that my lungs might be permanently damaged.

What's particularly worrisome is that countries are ending lockdowns despite rising rates of infection. The state of Arizona might run out of hospital beds in July. The principal rationale for locking down back in March was that COVID-19 could overwhelm and collapse the health care system. I don't see how that has changed. Furthermore, what about a testing regimen as we emerge from lockdown? Nothing of the sort. It's a tacit admission, at least in the United States, that government is unable to manage the pandemic.

Silver Lining to George Floyd Rebellion

As COVID-19 spikes and the White House goes dark, consider this: This is just the beginning.

Civil unrest is our new normal. What happens when enhanced unemployment expires in July? What happens is a wave of evictions.

There is no indication that the federal government is able to provide leadership. States and municipalities will soon have to cut services and layoff workers. As we saw in post-Katrina New Orleans, police will simple vanish from their posts.

One silver lining to the George Floyd rebellion is that it has chased China-bashing from the front-pages of U.S. newspapers. It's hard to act as if you are a bulwark of civil liberties when the national guard is mustered and firing upon reporters:

In China, the state-run news media heavily featured reports about Mr. Floyd’s death and portrayed the protests as another sign of America’s decline. When a U.S. official on Saturday attacked the ruling Communist Party on Twitter for moving to impose national security legislation to quash dissent in Hong Kong, a spokeswoman for the Chinese government fired back with a popular refrain among protesters in the United States.

“‘I can’t breathe,’ ” the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, wrote on Twitter.

Sinophobia

White House trade advisor and prominent Sinophobe Peter Navarro was interviewed yesterday by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. The interview provides a convenient encapsulation of Trump's reelection strategy of scapegoating China for the coronavirus pandemic.

The United States might be a faltering hyper-power, but it remains unrivaled when it comes to capitalizing on crises. By blaming China, the Trump administration hopes to dodge voter retribution in November at the same time braking the Dragon's global economic growth.

It is unclear to me how much blame can be ascribed to China. If patient zero was diagnosed on November 17 of last year in Wuhan, what do we make of the patient in France who was diagnosed on November 16?

Much too much is unknown about COVID-19. For instance, what are we to make of the spike in multi-system inflammatory disease among children?

At this point I don't think that we can rule out a man-made origin of the coronavirus. The mainstream press dismisses man-made origin, as Mike Baker did recently in "When Did the Coronavirus Arrive in the U.S.? Here’s a Review of the Evidence":

Dr. Bedford [of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle] said there was no evidence of genetic engineering in the virus, noting that it appeared to be a genetic outgrowth of a virus circulating among bats. It probably reached humans through an intermediate animal, such as a pangolin, he said.

“There’s no hallmarks of it having been manipulated in a lab,” Dr. Bedford said. “I think that’s definitive.”

He did not, however, rule out the possibility that some version of the virus being studied by scientists in Wuhan could have somehow escaped and spread from there. But he doubts that is the case. He said that the most prevalent theory about the virus’s origins — that it spread naturally among animals at a live animal market in Wuhan, then jumped to humans — was the most likely explanation.

But Kate Charlet's point in "The New Killer Pathogens" is that no such definitive statement is possible when it comes to genetic modification in a lab:

Ultimately, the power of these disincentives hinges on the ability to determine that an attack has occurred and to identify its source. For now, investigators looking at a pathogen in the aftermath of an attack would not necessarily be able to tell if gene-editing techniques had been used.

More Bad News on the Way

It looks like more bad news is on the way. "China, Germany, and South Korea have all reported substantial new outbreaks of COVID-19 after they eased lockdowns." Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is predicting that U.S. unemployment will grow even worse in the coming months. And the U.S. and its Five Eyes partners are using the pandemic to step up attacks on China, locking in the New Cold War 2.0, as the Dragon is shunted into the corral with the Russian Bear.

For all intents and purposes the shambolic Trump administration should be on its way out the door. The problem is that the Democrats are equally shambolic. Biden is a joke, and if he chooses the uniquely unappealing Kamala Harris as his running mate, don't be surprised if Trump can stumble into a second term.

Back to Work

Today I head back to work after a three-week convalescence. I'm not 100%, but I am feeling better. The lockdown is still in effect in Washington State. Governor Jay Inslee has promised to extend the lockdown when it expires on Monday, but he says he is shifting to a "phased-in" approach, which means that sectors of the economy will be reopened piecemeal.

May Day signals a back-to-work push. More than a dozen states are reopening. The question is how many coronavirus infections will result. Another question: Has the virus mutated to something less deadly?

Given my experience, I am skeptical that the virus has simply faded away after a couple months. COVID-19 is not to be dealt with cavalierly, as some states, like Georgia and Texas, appear to be doing. I expect to be in pain and my internal organs to be healing for next month or two.

What's most troubling about the back-to-work push is that there is still very little understanding how the coronavirus spreads. As The New York Times summarized in "What 5 Coronavirus Models Say the Next Month Will Look Like":

However good the modelers’ mathematical strategies may be, many of the descriptive facts about the virus are still unclear. Researchers aren’t sure about the rate at which people who become infected die, or about the rate of transmission to other people. They don’t know for sure how many people have already been infected and have some immunity to the disease — or how long that immunity will last. Even the count of coronavirus deaths itself is uncertain.

In other words, we know too little to lift the lockdown.

Maybe if lockdowns were lifted but strictly enforced mask and social-distancing requirements were implemented, then a return-to-work order could be justified.

Testing everyone doesn't appear to be on the horizon. Diagnostic tests need to be applied broadly to everyone -- both those with symptoms and those without (most who tested positive in the Ohio prison system were asymptomatic) -- but our public health system has nowhere near the ability to accomplish something like that. To date, there is no universally recognized, reliable antibody test. And even if antibodies are present, we don't know what sort of immunity those antibodies provide.

If you go out, wear a mask.

"Unfinished Business"

Marshawn Lynch, one of the few heroes remaining in the United States, has a small role in the third season of Westworld. Lynch, alongside Aaron Paul and Lena Waithe, plays an app-based contract criminal.

Seattle critic Charles Mudede evaluates Lynch's performance as follows:

Now, to ask if Lynch is a good actor or not is like asking if this cloud is good at being a cloud or not, or if that stream is good at being a stream or not. Lynch can be neither bad or good at being all that he can ever be, Lynch.

The third season of Westworld premiered a month after the Super Bowl. The Seattle Seahawks were knocked out in the divisional round, losing at Lambeau Field to the Green Bay Packers. Marshawn Lynch returned to the Seahawks after more than a year in retirement, scoring four touchdowns in three games. Lynch's motto for his return to the NFL was "Unfinished Business."

What a perfect motto it is. For life in general. So I wouldn't forget it, I did myself a favor and purchased the Beast Mode t-shirts

Coming out of the other side of the coronavirus -- not 100% but with enough chi to finally communicate here after three weeks away -- one of the great motivations to stay alive, to not give up, was the thought that there is unfinished business.

For starters, I couldn't foist on my sisters the responsibility of shoveling up the squalor of my life: tracking down my bank and brokerage accounts, figuring out what kind of insurance I kept, disposing of my books, etc.

It must have haunted my father, who died at the end of summer in 2018. He didn't get to his unfinished business. After his death, when my sisters and I were cleaning his house, preparing to put it on the market, we would come upon these little scraps of paper that he had left, notes to himself of ideas that had to be developed and projects that need to be completed.

We glanced at them, and, then, sadly, tossed them in the trash.

Origin of the Coronavirus

I think Michael Klare is basically right here (see "What Planet are We On?") except that I'm a bit hesitant to baldly accept that the origin of the coronavirus started with bats. AIDS is supposed to have started with chimps in the Congo. I remember reading an interview with Fred Hoyle, English astrophysicist, where he speculated that AIDS was probably man-made; either that, or from outer space. Hoyle believed in panspermia, or life from outer space. Pandemics originate when the Earth passes through a cosmic cloud of dust containing the virus.

Climate Change and Pandemics

Back in 2014, the IPCC did not identify human pandemics among potential climate-induced tipping points, but it did provide plenty of evidence that climate change would increase the risk of such catastrophes. This is true for several reasons. First, warmer temperatures and more moisture are conducive to the accelerated reproduction of mosquitoes, including those carrying malaria, the zika virus, and other highly infectious diseases. Such conditions were once largely confined to the tropics, but as a result of global warming, formerly temperate areas are now experiencing more tropical conditions, resulting in the territorial expansion of mosquito breeding grounds. Accordingly, malaria and zika are on the rise in areas that never previously experienced such diseases. Similarly, dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease that infects millions of people every year, is spreading especially quickly due to rising world temperatures.

Combined with mechanized agriculture and deforestation, climate change is also undermining subsistence farming and indigenous lifestyles in many parts of the world, driving millions of impoverished people to already crowded urban centers, where health facilities are often overburdened and the risk of contagion ever greater. “Virtually all the projected growth in populations will occur in urban agglomerations,” the IPCC noted then. Adequate sanitation is lacking in many of these cities, particularly in the densely populated shantytowns that often surround them. “About 150 million people currently live in cities affected by chronic water shortages, and by 2050, unless there are rapid improvements in urban environments, the number will rise to almost a billion.”

Such newly settled urban dwellers often retain strong ties to family members still in the countryside who, in turn, may come in contact with wild animals carrying deadly viruses. This appears to have been the origin of the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014-2016, which affected tens of thousands of people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Scientists believe that the Ebola virus (like the coronavirus) originated in bats and was then transmitted to gorillas and other wild animals that coexist with people living on the fringes of tropical forests. Somehow, a human or humans contracted the disease from exposure to such creatures and then transmitted it to visitors from the city who, upon their return, infected many others.

The coronavirus appears to have had somewhat similar origins. In recent years, hundreds of millions of once impoverished rural families moved to burgeoning industrial cities in central and coastal China, including places like Wuhan. Although modern in so many respects, with its subways, skyscrapers, and superhighways, Wuhan also retained vestiges of the countryside, including markets selling wild animals still considered by some inhabitants to be normal parts of their diet. Many of those animals were trucked in from semi-rural areas hosting large numbers of bats, the apparent source of both the coronavirus and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, outbreak of 2013, which also arose in China. Scientific research suggests that breeding grounds for bats, like mosquitoes, are expanding significantly as a result of rising world temperatures.

The global coronavirus pandemic is the product of a staggering multitude of factors, including the air links connecting every corner of the planet so intimately and the failure of government officials to move swiftly enough to sever those links. But underlying all of that is the virus itself. Are we, in fact, facilitating the emergence and spread of deadly pathogens like the Ebola virus, SARS, and the coronavirus through deforestation, haphazard urbanization, and the ongoing warming of the planet? It may be too early to answer such a question unequivocally, but the evidence is growing that this is the case. If so, we had better take heed.

Lockdown Extended to Early May in Washington State

With the lockdown in Washington State extended until May 4, the longevity of the coronavirus has yet to be determined. We now know that this is at least a two-month virus. I've had those before. In the second month your mental health comes under increasing strain as you ask yourself, "Will I ever feel better?"

One thing is for sure. The longer the virus and the lockdown last, the greater the social breakdown will be.  Already, going to the grocery store has gone from a mildly pleasant chore to a toxic run of the gauntlet. People under stress tend to show their true colors. While many are gracious and decent, a lot are nasty, brutish and selfish.

The story of the Navy firing the commander of the U.S. aircraft carrier who spoke out on behalf of his sailors (see "Navy fires captain who warned of COVID-19 spread on aircraft carrier") points to the direction we are headed. The national government will take whatever steps necessary to shield itself from accountability and deny its loss of credibility.             

Unprecedented Unemployment

More than 6.6 million people filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, setting a grim record for the second straight week.

Added to 3.3 million claims for the week ending March 21, it means nearly 10 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in two weeks.

The speed and scale of the job losses is without precedent. Until last month, the worst week for unemployment filings was 695,000 in 1982. 

"Weekly Jobless Claims Rise to 6.6 Million: Live Business Updates," The New York Times

Even if the pandemic miraculously disappears by the end of this month, everyone will not be able to return to work. A lot of small businesses will remain shuttered. It has only been two weeks since most mandatory shelter-in-place edicts have been issued. Another four-to-eight weeks of lockdown will deliver another Great Depression. Pensions, already shaky, will disappear.

Either there is going to be a massive redistribution of wealth to cope with the crisis or we're headed for a Mad Max world.

"Neoliberalism Kills"

It's difficult to imagine any return to normal once the coronavirus pandemic peaks and recedes. If a beltway television show like The Hill's Rising with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti is raising an alarm that sounds identical to radical Marxism, something is happening.

American Exceptionalism is officially dead, killed by the coronavirus; peak neoliberalism is dead too. Furious efforts will be made by the ruling elite to keep the zombie ambulatory. Massive propaganda combined with total surveillance and dire economic precariousness are on our horizon.

What we the people need to do first is check our head. There must be a broad acceptance of the obvious: The political economy not only failed us, it is killing us. Then we have to figure out a way to replace the system without capturing Washington, D.C. The Republican-Democrat duopoly needs to be destroyed. But that's a generations-long project, and we need transformation now.

The people need to capture a state or two -- the West Coast  (California, Oregon and Washington) is our best bet -- and pursue some sort of nullification.

"Back to Work" Recedes to May/June

"Back to work" declarations by state officials have gone from mid-April to some unknown date in the future. Trump now says that we should expect great things by June 1. New York City's public health system is teetering.

World Socialist Web Site sees the coronavirus pandemic as the end of the current system:

The economic and social consequences of such a public health catastrophe are incalculable. As production and the real economy continue to contract, not even the trillions in cash infusions approved by both big business parties will be able to stabilize the financial markets, the central preoccupation of the financial oligarchy and its representative-in-chief, Trump.

Social and class tensions will continue to build, leading to an inevitable explosion of popular opposition. And the utter discrediting of all of the political institutions of American capitalism—which has proven incapable of preparing for or responding to a long predicted flu pandemic—is fueling an enormous exacerbation of internal tensions within the ruling elite and its state.

The entire constitutional framework of the United States, including the relationship between the federal government and the states, is showing signs of fracturing.

It's noteworthy that nature had to intervene to remove the well past its sell-by-date socioeconomic paradigm which dates back to Thatcher-Reagan. 

Of course neoliberalism is not gone yet. It's going to take a lot more pain and suffering, and, inevitably, a complete economic collapse to usher in something new, and there's always the possibility that what's new will be be even worse.

Though the whole planet has been in pandemic crisis mode for a month now, there is still much that is unknown about COVID-19. Why so many asymptomatic positives? Some reporting casts doubt on China's amazing turnaround because of its practice of refusing to report asymptomatic positives in the overall COVID-19 numbers.

My feeling is that I must've been asymptomatic positive sometime in February. How do I know? I ran a horrible 5K on February 29. The only other times I performed worst in a 5K in the last ten years were 1) when I had a bad case of food poisoning and 2) when I had the flu. So something was wrong. Then in March I was mildly symptomatic. You couldn't get a test in Seattle. So I didn't try. Most people at work were already self-quarantining, so I didn't really worry about infecting others. And as for social distancing, I am the king and have been for years.

But here's the problem. While I feel much better than I did earlier in the month, I think the virus is hanging around in my body. So who is to say the coronavirus won't (re)emerge the next time all these asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic COVID-19 people are immune system zapped? Who can say that when the order to return to work is given that it won't set off another cycle of infection?

That being said, other than answering the phones, I am enjoying the time alone in the office.

One Month of Plague

The big construction sites remain open in Seattle, as does the building where I work (because it houses a food bank on the first floor). I can still get a lunchtime coffee at the corner cafe. Not much if anything changed the first day following the statewide lockdown announced by Governor Jay Inslee.

I was the only one in the office all day, a day spent routing frantic calls from workers affected by the pandemic. Some were panicked by the prospect of a furlough with no income; others, by the fear of having to continue to report to work and risk exposure.

This is a tricky virus. We'll see how tenacious it is. I figure it has been present in King County since February. My guess is it takes about a month for the body to handle (or not). For those of us living in Seattle and its suburbs, we should be reaching the virus peak in the next week or two.

Soft Lockdown in Washington State

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee announced last night that all "non-essential" businesses must close for two weeks. Businesses can continue to function remotely and restaurants can remain open for takeout. All in all Inslee's order does not move the goalposts very far. Most offices have already shut.

I'll see this morning on my walk to work if the huge commercial construction sites on Denny Way are still bustling. Outside of maybe a day or two during the last couple of weeks they have remained humming. Scores of tradesmen tying rebar, pouring concrete, etc.

Inslee announced 48 hours until implementation. So there is a chance that activity, the reduced amount that there is, will initially be unaffected.