Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

@NEStalgia Thanks 🌻

@NEStalgia
I choose one action to halt overgrowing population.
I WON'T getting married, be Single forever, Not making family, be happy to pursuing my hobbies rather than being imprisoned by engaged with someone. I have ZERO interest about having romantic relationship with other peoples, moreover an idea to have kids.

The trouble with limiting human reproduction is that people won't do it voluntarily. Like any other form of life, humans are driven to endlessly reproduce and expand their genetic footprint. This primal instinct is the unconscious base of all romantic and sexual desire. We can puff ourselves up all we like as so-called "rational actors," but at the end of the day, much of what we believe are just rationalizations for primal, Darwinian impulses.

The only option is to control reproduction through compulsion. The problem with this, as with all forms of central planning, is that people, with their necessarily limited intelligence and base of knowledge, can't foresee all of the issues that will arise from well-meaning schemes, leading to such unforeseen side-effects as have been evident, for example, as a result of China's one-child policy. I guess with sufficient power and knowledge (like, say, a muscular totalitarian state driven by rationalists who employ the use of the supercomputers to help them make their decisions alongside omnipresent surveillance), you could theoretically have a State that optimally controls population levels, but who wants to live in such a dystopic society?

A good place to start would probably be tax credits or some other financial incentive for people who engage in sterilization procedures relatively early in life, but I can't see that happening. And, again, that would like lead to unintended consequences that we're not necessarily comfortable with.

Well, it's not a place we're at yet, but 50 - 100 years down the line? I could see this becoming a very serious discussion. And that'll be even truer if a lot of current climate predictions come to pass, as there'll be even less habitable land for humans to make use of.

One thing is clear, I think: unless we're willing to set out into space, our current life-style is unsustainable in the long term, even with technological improvements. Eventually, we'll begin to run into hard limits related to availability of land, natural resources, etc. that we just can't get around. At that point, we'll need to either rapidly shift to alternative forms of social organization, or social and natural forces bigger than us will put us in check, and probably cause a lot of suffering and death in the process.

I'm an anti-natalist in spirit, so I'll not be contributing to our problems as a species in that one very specific respect.

Telling other people they shouldn't have children is morally equivalent to cheerleading mass death?

@Anti-Matter you should thank god and your parents they didn’t have your mentality or you wouldn’t be here

@La-weejee I mean, if his parents hadn't conceived him, he just wouldn't exist, and non-existent people aren't able to be thankful or sorrowful about anything.

@Ralizah your right. I have 3 brothers and 2 sisters. Big family but it was great growing up as I was one of the youngest.

@Ralizah Congratulations! Vault-tec has reviewed your application and is proud to announce your selection as Vault Overseer!

@Ralizah That's why education matters. The average number of children people have in The Netherlands is 1.6-1.7, and I assume it to be the same for comparable countries. Of course, due to immigration the overall population is still growing, but on average, people have less children. So theoretically the population should even decline if immigration stopped. Most of the population growth comes from third world countries these days. And it's often the lack of education, healthcare, proper governing, etc. that leads to an increase in children. If people, and especially women, are allowed to go to school, pursue a career, and lead a happy life without worrying about tomorrow's problems, then they tend to get less children on average.

Anyway, it's way off-topic.

@Octane Interestingly, the fertility rate worldwide has dropped pretty drastically in the last 60 years or so.

@Ralizah true, but it's also very unevenly split along octane's points, the industrial world is in sharp population decline if you remove immigration additions. The industrial world is helping, not hurting the problem. Sort of. A lot of the population boom areas are places that can't even feed our shelter the kids... Some don't even have much potable water..... The only thing sustaining the population in those places is charity from the industrial world. Have a dozen kids you can't feed, beg someone else to provide food water and clothing, pack in like sardines, wait for a plague to halt it. Welcome to 2020!

Keep in mind that goes with jax's graph morbidly:. Those old fertility numbers were curbed by mortality rates... Large families were common, in a sense, to have spares.....a lot of kids didn't make it to adulthood, and many that did died to wars or prior plagues, so while fertility was much higher, population growth was a much shallower curve than birthrate.

There's always the other idea of birthrate control. Devise a biological agent that could reduce fertility rates drastically across the majority or all of the world's population without being able to point fingers at any one actor for interfering with birth rates. If i could think of that.... Someone with the ability to actually do it probably thought of it too.....

Doesn't mean it always works as planned though....

My state finally started adding more data. It used to just be the number of people.

https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report

I just want to add, in case it hasn't been said, that education isn't the only limiting factor of lower birthrates. Cost of raising children is a big factor as well. Take Japan, there are a lot of issues causing their aging population, but one of the biggest - though least talked about - is the extremely high cost of raising children in Japan. My Japanese coworkers have told me how much of their money goes to it and it's an enormous margin. Having more than one or two children in Japan is nearly impossible for the average household if they want their kids to have access to the same things their peers will have for schooling, club activities etc...

Back on topic, as the numbers of cases sore past 720k globally and America continues to spiral out of control breaking 140k ( https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ) I find my worries about the future growing more each day.

One thing I can say about being younger - in a way, ignorance really was bliss. I kind of wish I could go back to the teenage mentality of not caring about the news...

Teenage? That mentality goes from 1 to 100

I’m getting out of the stock market. Can’t do anything about the 401(k) but, The money I do have in my individual Fidelity account and Robinhood, I’m pulling it first thing Monday morning. I’ve been doing a little bit of daytrading riding the swing highs and lows, making sure I sell the stocks before the close, just in case stocks shoot dramatically lower in the open. It could mean missing opportunity but it also protects against loss. But I’m taking it all out, paying off debt, and hunkering down to brace for unemployment.

I’m not sure how things are going to pan out, but it’s not looking good. Just like back in January when everyone was blissfully ignorant of what was coming, even now I think people, myself included, are blissfully ignorant about how bad things are really going to get. The average small business only has enough cash to last for about 3-4 weeks. What’s going to happen two months from now when, even if we’re not under ordered lockdown, people aren’t going to restaurants or spending in half the economic sectors? What about 6 months from now?

We could be looking at 1/3 of all US businesses going under, permanently. With similar effects all around the world. I think right now is a good time to own gold and, despite the massive future devaluation from unbridled printing, spending beyond means and now, “QE to infinity” policies, the US dollar. Yes, ultimately this unfettered printing and expanding of the monetary base will doom the dollar and ultimately, gold will be the only safe haven but, between point A (now) and point C (dollar hyperinflates, only hard assets and gold preserve wealth) I think we’ve got a wild ride ahead to point B, where the demand for US dollars skyrockets in the short term.

My priorities, in order
1 Paying off all debts ASAP
2 Getting US dollars, hard cash, in hand
3 Getting US dollars in the bank for digital transaction
3 Buying gold.

I’m going 1/3 in each. Third in cash, third in the bank, third in gold. I don’t know which way this thing is going to go, but I think that’s the safest way to hedge.

Update 3/29

@JaxonH what debts? If any is credit card debt, screw that. Pay the minimum balance due. If in 6 months, things are worse, you can always walk away from that debt. They will have so many millions of default credit accounts, they won't have time to go after any except for the largest ones. BK is always an option to wipe the slate clear, too. But immediately paying those off serves no purpose right now. Obviously, student loans are forever and a mortgage is important to keep up, but even medical bills can be put off.

@SkullDragr
😁 I appreciate the advice, really, but... there’s no way I’m filing bankruptcy (besides I only owe like $9k, not counting the $6k left on my car payment). I always pay my debts. I borrowed the money and as such, I owe it. And they will get their money back in return. Plus, bankruptcy is one of those things where you can’t file again for X amount of years, that’s something you really want to keep in your back pocket for when you actually need it. And I don’t need to file right now.

I used to have a credit score below 500 back when I was a hard-core addict and partying every night in my early twenties. I’ve spent the last 10 years building my credit record and I’m above 800 now. I’ve worked very hard for my credit score. Even if there’s a possibility I could get out of paying my CC, That’s not really an avenue I wish to pursue. Delaying with minimum payment also means paying interest.

@JaxonH Yeah, you know your own situation better than anyone. Just saying, if times are bad, really really bad, having money to buy food, pay rent/mortgage, car payment is far more important than paying down debts that can be written off. If it gets really really bad, if you have a credit card with a 10k credit limit, they may drop it to 2k simply because they don't want people running up debt knowing they will not pay it back. So the last thing you want to do is start using your cash savings to pay the less necessary things.

Sounds like you have it managed, though. I was pretty bad with it all when I was young as well. Credit too was around 500. I started small, took out some secured cards, used them instead of my debit card and immediately paid it off. Slowly but surely, I was into the 600s, 700s and last year was over 800 as well. Getting pre approved for a home loan and taking that subsequent loan dropped me down, but it's still solid, in the 760s.

@Heavyarms55 the global numbers are going to become irrelevant as it enters the third world for real. It's going to spread at such an extreme rate, and death percentage will be much higher, but that's due largely to the conditions and population density and doesn't apply much to the situation in the industrial world. 1.3b in India all confined to cramped shared quarters. The only reason the number there won't read 1.3b is a fraction will never actually be tested.

Similarly the numbers in general don't mean a ton right now in that, like I've said, they've already stated everyone will get it. At least regionally. So the "number" by the end should rightfully match the total population, but won't because most aren't getting a test.

Also with 2 week incubation remember the skyrocketing numbers in the us still mostly reflect infections that occurred BEFORE the lockdowns. That both means that this thing was WAAAY in the wild before anyone noticed anything. But it also means we're not seeing the effect of the lockdown in these numbers yet: numbers show what happened weeks prior.

Italy is showing a drop. That's big news.

@NEStalgia First you say how people have said the numbers don't really matter but then you point out a drop in Italy. What exactly do you mean is going on?

@Heavyarms55 the numbers don't matter in the sense that the global number is now unhinged from what is relevant in the countries most of us are located in -what it will show now is something different than what developed countries are dealing with. It's going to be much worse there. Even if a vaccine appeared tomorrow it would still look bad there, but that's not necessarily relevant for us. Their density, raw population count, sanitation, medical infrastructure etc make wider, faster spread inevitable. And a lot of their ability to handle such things at all comes from medical volunteers from wealthier countries helping out and bringing supplies, which isn't going to happen this time as they're beyond limits on their own countries already. It isn't too meaningful in our situation to track global numbers after this point beyond knowing that a lot of dense countries need to be fully quarantined for quite some time, probably until this thing can actually be halted.

The us numbers matter but don't. It looks extreme but it's also showing the infection rate from 2 weeks ago (nobody is testing without symptoms for the most part), before lockdowns. If the lockdowns have indeed already started "flattening the curve" at all, we aren't going to see that in the current numbers. I.e. the important numbers for us aren't how many new cases test positive with sy.ptoms today. It's how many new infections are occurring today. A data point we won't have for 2 more weeks or more based on how many symptomatic positive tests are found then. Today's numbers could be a bad sign, or just reflect a past that already changed due to the prevention measures. We can't know. So in that sense the numbers don't matter. They either mean doom or they mean nothing at all. 50/50. What they do mean though is that 2 weeks ago when everyone panicked that it was coming, it was already here in a big way. We were very late to respond. BUT we were faster than Italy.

Italy, one of the worst case countries showing (potentially) it is past peak and slowing is significant (if that blip holds as trend in coming days.) If that number keeps dropping, that means new infections started slowing weeks ago, which means the lockdowns are helping even in big epicenters.

The numbers for this always show the past, not the present.