For 2020 I’ve probably had an unhealthy obsession with Covid-19. But you need to read and watch other things too. Staying with the “plague” theme, Plagues and People is probably the most important book in terms of influence on me.
– The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. In my “to read” pile.
– The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. Again, in my “to read” pile.
Latest on Sintashta-Petrovka chariots. David at Eurogenes is going to keep “truckin'” as they say, even through COVID-19.
SoftBank Won’t Buy $3 Billion in WeWork Stock. Remember when WeWork was important?
‘We Are in a Cage:’ Spanish Town Lives Under a Lockdown Within a Lockdown. I think the USA needs targeted quarantine.
Virus Soars Among Ultra-Orthodox Jews as Many Flout Israel’s Rules.
Talking about “quarantine reading” I think Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800 shows how a complex and monetized civilization “unwinds” and regresses toward a simpler modality. I don’t see the “fall of Rome” as a good prediction for what’s going on with us, but it’s a cautionary tale because the Romans began to view themselves as an eternal civilization.
How Coffee Became a Modern Necessity. It’s probably not optimal, but mostly I drink coffee rather than water (this is a habit I developed when I lived in Davis, CA, because the water in Davis was so bad).
The Probability of Fusions Joining Sex Chromosomes and Autosomes.
Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium. Economic history is always interesting. I got into the topic in the lead-up to the 2008 recession. Now that we might be facing a depression, I guess it’s time again.
‘They see my blue eyes then jump back’ – China sees a new wave of xenophobia.
They Can’t Afford to Quarantine. So They Brave the Subway.
France’s Forever War in the Sahel.
Sexually Antagonistic Selection on Genetic Variation is Rare in Humans.
Pablo Escobar’s Hippos Fill a Hole Left Since Ice Age Extinctions.
Bedrock radioactivity influences the rate and spectrum of mutation.
What is the difference between the blue thumbs and the other one? Like are they supposed to be there for different reasons? I used to think that the other one was for people viewing the website indirectly through another source.
Remember when WeWork was important?
Oh, its still very important – its the largest single office tenant in NYC. Given that office demand is likely to generally decline post-COVID, this will cause some havok the commercial real estate world…
The Chinese classic novel “Outlaws of the Marsh” describes a plague that struck the country in the 27th year of the reign of Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song dynasty. That would be 1049 AD. I was pleased to see that William McNeill in fact confirms that date, in Appendix A of his book “People and Plagues,” which lists some 291 epidemics in China between 243 BC and 1911 AD.
It is moving to read how, within the scientific and state capacity limits of their time, the scholar-officials of Renzong’s government labored to find ways to “save the people.” It’s also interesting to to compare Renzong with two other data points, the response to the coronavirus in the PRC ‘party-state’ and in Taiwan.
For anyone who is interested, I go into these comparisons at probably excessive length here: https://naimisha_forest.silvrback.com/two-epidemics-in-three-chinas
What changes in the world order do you see coming after COVID-19, if any? Will China continue to rise unabated or will we start to see some sort of pushback from the world (business) community? Will India/South Asia be able to benefit in any way?
Razib, above you linked the book:
“The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History Revised Edition” by John M. Barry
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000OCXFWE/geneexpressio-20
Today the book was discussed in a very interesting article:
“George W. Bush in 2005: ‘If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare’: A book about the 1918 flu pandemic spurred the government to action.: by Matthew Mosk on April 5, 2020
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-bush-2005-wait-pandemic-late-prepare/story?id=69979013
In the summer of 2005, President George W. Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he began flipping through an advance reading copy of a new book about the 1918 flu pandemic. … John M. Barry’s “The Great Influenza,” which told the chilling tale of the mysterious plague that “would kill more people than the outbreak of any other disease in human history.”
“You’ve got to read this,” Fran Townsend remembers the president telling her. “He said, ‘Look, this happens every 100 years. We need a national strategy.'”
Thus was born the nation’s most comprehensive pandemic plan — a playbook that included diagrams for a global early warning system, funding to develop new, rapid vaccine technology, and a robust national stockpile of critical supplies, such as face masks and ventilators, Townsend said.
* * *
In a November 2005 speech at the National Institutes of Health, Bush laid out proposals in granular detail — describing with stunning prescience how a pandemic in the United States would unfold. … “A pandemic is a lot like a forest fire,” Bush said at the time. “If caught early it might be extinguished with limited damage. If allowed to smolder, undetected, it can grow to an inferno that can spread quickly beyond our ability to control it.” …
“To respond to a pandemic, we need medical personnel and adequate supplies of equipment,” Bush said. “In a pandemic, everything from syringes to hospital beds, respirators masks and protective equipment would be in short supply.”
Bush told the gathered scientists that they would need to develop a vaccine in record time.
“If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine on line quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain,” he said. …
“If we wait for a pandemic to appear,” he warned, “it will be too late to prepare. And one day many lives could be needlessly lost because we failed to act today.”
Obviously, the pandemic and the Federal response to it will be major issue in the fall election.
Trump’s actions and omissions will be chewed over by the media and the Democrats until they are very fine powder.
But, there is a legitimate question to be asked of Joe Biden: “You were the number 2 officer in the Federal government from 2009 through 2016, why wasn’t the plan honed to a sharp edge and shined to a gleaming polish on your watch?”
I suspect that the Obama-Biden Administration got distracted by the Panic of 2008 and let the more remote threat disappear below the waves. That is an explanation, not an excuse.
i wrote something for city journal https://www.city-journal.org/decay-of-the-american-system
Nice article, Razib. But I have to take issue with one passage:
“Economists, those apex predators of social science, marshaled the evidence for efficiencies and gains in productivity due to trade and international supply chains. “Just in time” inventories reduced waste and made modern retail a lean, mean prosperity machine. Plentitude wasn’t some miracle achieved through hard work and focused attention; it was our birthright, a steady-state condition of the universe that we inhabited.”
Economists are right that there are lots of efficiencies due to trade and international supply chains and “just in time” inventories. However, they were almost willfully blind to how easily all that could be disrupted (virtually inevitable) and how costly that could be. Economists do know that plenitude is achieved by hard work and focused attention. That is one reason they often bring up the potential cost of political proposals.
The idea that prosperity just happens is much more common among ordinary people–and much older than recent times. I have a memory of attending some event at Harvard Stadium in the early 1970s and being annoyed at two young women who talked as if affluence was something they were entitled to.
Razib: I just saw your link to the CJ article. My quick take is what I wrote a couple of years ago:
My conclusion is that I am not worried about China, I am worried about an American system that seems pretty close to death by paralytic incompetence.
Item: The NSA got hacked, and lost control of its cyber weapons.
Item: The F35 is years late, billions of dollars over budget, and threatens to be the airplane that does more damage to the US Air Force than any other in History.
Item: the littoral combat ship. Years late, billions of dollars over budget, the US Navy is building the perfect ship for the Vietnam War.
Item: More than 50 calls are made by citizens to government agencies to warn them that Nicholas Cruz is a homicidal maniac. They do nothing to stop him. While he is in the act of shooting 17 kids, law enforcement officers cower outside, and inside building, unwilling to try to stop him.
Item: The California High Speed Train to Nowhere.
Item: The Second Avenue Subway
The NYTimes ran a three part series on what a clusterfarrago the Second Avenue Subway has been:
System Failure: A series of stories examining the reasons behind problems plaguing New York City’s subways.
A Litany of Errors: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-system-failure-delays.html
Neglecting the Basics: Lax Subway Upkeep Leads to Crippling Breakdowns
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/nyregion/system-failure-new-york-subway-maintenance-misery.html
Excessive Costs: The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html
The COVI-19 fiasco is just another item on the list. Read what I posted above. Why wasn’t the plan that had already been made in place and ready to go?
Why worry about China?
In a strange turn of events, twenty-first-century American elites turn out to resemble the Chinese mandarins of yore, absorbed in intricate intrigues at court to advance their careers while European gunboats prowl the waterways.
That was very apt and, as a fellow American, it stings.
In a strange turn of events, twenty-first-century American elites turn out to resemble the Chinese mandarins of yore, absorbed in intricate intrigues at court to advance their careers while European gunboats prowl the waterways.
America is good at three things: 1) military tech, 2) propaganda, 3) liquid financial products. 3 is BS so you can ignore that. America still leads the world in 1 and 2.
The story about rising xenophobia in China (including *shocked face* against people of a Euro background), combined with your article in City Journal, should put the lie to those who claim that China has no intent to spread its ideas, ideology, mode of governance, political philosophy, etc. The idea that because “they don’t care about human rights or democracy, so long as you do business with them”, that it therefore somehow isn’t an ideology or political philosophy is ridiculous in practice, because as we have seen in parts of Southeast Asia and in East Africa, establishing these economic relations, along with political state-to-state relations, eventually necessitates beginning to mimic CCP models, or appease the CCP and Chinese merchants and investors. We actually don’t even have to look this far if we really want: consider the NBA controversy over Hong Kong protests, or how increasing numbers of Westerners who work in tech or finance have stated their admiration for China’s “decisive” mode of governance and its advanced technocracy; even Justin Trudeau has gotten in on this manner of praise, and not just because of China’s (seemingly) more proactive approach to climate change than we see elsewhere, particularly in the US. I can imagine that there were those in the Indian subcontinent as the 18th Century passed into the 19th who found remote rule by the East India Company personally preferable/more socially, economically, and technologically advantageous to rule by the nizam, Mutual emperor, local rajput, or Deccan king. After all, the Company just wanted to do business.
Given that the age of conquest and direct colonial or indirect imperial administration is (for now) over and no longer viable politically, China’s approach isn’t terribly different than that that the US took to Latin America prior to (and often during) the Cold War. If the current American-guided global order we’ve had for (depending on your POV) 75 to nearly 100 years falls apart, it wouldn’t be surprising to see China using these older means to spread its political, social, and economic models.