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Musings Report 2020-36 9-5-20 Uncertainty Will Reign Supreme: Normal Is Gone for Good
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Uncertainty Will Reign Supreme: Normal Is Gone for Good
Normalcy depends entirely on life being predictable. To be predictable, life must be stable, which means that there is a high level of certainty in every aspect of life.
The world has entered a period of profound uncertainty, an uncertainty that will only increase as self-reinforcing feedbacks strengthen disruptive dynamics and perverse incentives drive unintended consequences.
A key driver of uncertainty is the Covid-19 virus, which is a slippery little beast. Eight months after its emergence on the world stage, discoveries are still being made about its fundamental nature.
Humans crave certainty, as ambiguity and uncertainty create unbearable anxiety. This desire to return to a predictable "normal" drives us to grasp onto whatever is being touted as a certainty: a cure, a vaccine, a policy to restore the "Old Normal" economy, etc.
But none of these proposed certainties is actually certain, and those touting these certainties are non-experts who latch onto an "expert" opinion that resolves their need for certainty and predictability.
What we want, of course, is a return to old certainties that we're familiar with. In the context of pandemic, the model most people are working from is a conventional flu pandemic: a certain number of people get the virus and become ill, a certain number of then die, and those who survive soon resume their old life.
But there is mounting evidence that Covid-19 doesn't follow this neat pattern of "the dead are gone and everyone else picks up where they left off." Counting the dead (and concluding Covid-19 is no big deal because so few die, and only the old and chronically ill die) as the key statistic completely ignores the long-term consequences of Covid-19 that include permanent organ damage.
How many people who get the virus, even asymptomatically, and who end up with damaged heart muscles or other permanent organ damage is unknown. Why is it unknown? Because the system is set up to only count the living and the dead. Chronic disability among the survivors isn't even being monitored, much less counted.
So the longer-term consequences of the pandemic are not even being tracked yet. Please read these articles and then ask: is this really "no worse than a cold"?
A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 — and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged: A closer look at the Bradykinin hypothesis
New Insights into How COVID-19 Causes Heart Damage
What if a significant number of otherwise healthy people who get the virus suffer long-term organ damage? What if another set of people suffer disabling exhaustion, brain fog, etc. for months on end? Are there no economic or behavioral consequences to these lingering effects?
Of course there are, and that is a source of great uncertainty that won't be dissipated for months or even years, as all this isn't even being tracked. We have essentially no data because none is being collected.
Then there's the inherent uncertainties of vaccines and treatments. There is essentially zero evidence to support the claim that a 100% effective vaccine is just around the corner--or even possible.
Let's say whatever vaccine (or vaccines) are 80% effective for X length of time in 80% of the patients. That means 20% of those getting the vaccine could still get the virus. And of those who are protected by the vaccine, 20% will not know that the effectiveness ended long before the claimed duration of the vaccine's effectiveness.
A significant number of people will refuse to take the vaccine, and should even one person who took the vaccine die, this number will increase.
Then there are the cures being touted as certain, for example, Ivermectin. It sure sounded good to me, but then as I asked professional scientists/clinicians with no axe to grind what they concluded, I received articles calling the certainty of this "cure" into question:
Ivermectin is still not a miracle cure for COVID-19, despite what you may have read
Surgisphere Sows Confusion About Another Unproven COVID-19 Drug
Ivermectin: a systematic review from antiviral effects to COVID-19 complementary regimen
As non-experts, we're quick to conclude a cure is certain. We assume it will be like all the other miracle drugs of the past 50 years. But it's increasingly evident that there is no 100% cure for Covid-19.
The effectiveness of various medications depend on how soon the patient gets the treatment, which then depends on how soon the patient got tested and received the test results.
It also depends on the dose, which must be Goldilocks: not so small it doesn't work, but not so large that it causes side-effects.
Many of the heavily touted anti-virals only work if they're administered very early in the infection. After that window closes, then other medications are more effective. But none of these "cures" offers 100% certainty that the patient won't die or suffer some longer-term consequences.
Case in point: author David Graeber, from whom I learned so much about money via his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, just died in Venice, Italy at the age of 59 from what was clearly Covid-19, as the symptoms of his month-long illness he tweeted match Covid's symptoms. All the experience that Italian doctors gained earlier this year, and all the latest treatment protocols, were unable to save a 59-year old. So much for certainty of outcomes.
And again, the point here is that the patient surviving doesn't mean there is certainty that they will suffer no long-term consequences of the infection.
There is also no certainty that those who get the virus cannot get re-infected later. Maybe the number of people who will get it again is small, but what this percentage might be is completely unknown.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously differentiated between "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns." The vast majority of the media, mainstream and alternative, is working on the assumption that we know all the unknowns, and it's just a matter of time before it all gets sorted and we return to normal.
I am focused more on the unknown unknowns, of which I see an entire universe of possibilities. The evidence coming to light strongly suggests that Covid-19 is not just another flu that's "no worse than a cold." It's increasingly apparent that it's a very slippery snippet of RNA, and everyone assuming it's just another flu virus and certainty will soon return will be proven wrong.
Meanwhile, other uncertainties loom large. The U.S. has fractured into warring camps very reminiscent of the final days of the Western Roman Empire. Rather than unite to save the core, factions are expending their last reserves on in-fighting and internal jockeying for the rapidly diminishing power of the central state/Empire.
Those concerned about a potential constitutional crisis or recount in the presidential election are merely extending what's already visible: fractures have widened to the point there's no middle ground.
The emergency financial policies that were intended to restore normalcy--printing $3 trillion and throwing it around as recklessly as possible to bail out all the speculators who'd left the U.S. economy fragile and vulnerable to any shock--these policies are no longer working, and claiming they are working just fine only deepens the future waves of volatility.
There is no economic or financial certainty. Anyone claiming they can project the trajectory of the U.S. and global economy is deluding themselves. Where the economy will be in 9 months or 18 months, never mind five years from now, is not a known unknown, it's an unknown unknown.
Certainty and "normal" are gone for good.
It takes a different kind of mindset to become comfortable with the permanent ambiguity and uncertainty of unknown unknowns playing out, very likely in increasingly chaotic waves of increasing amplitude. Letting go of certainty is difficult because it's so comforting. But there is another kind of comfort that comes with embracing uncertainty as a state of being and a state of awareness.
Highlights of the Blog
Podcasts:
The Ochelli Effect 8-31-2020: first half: Charles Hugh Smith
posts:
5-part series by Zeus Y.:
Plugging into "Small Everything": Wake Up and Smell the 3 Cs--Community, Cash, and Coin (Coffee optional) 9/4/20
Fighting and Winning against "Big Everything" 9/2/20
Extorting the "Little Guy": The Special "Screw You" of Junk Bond Bailouts 9/1/20
Deflation of the Citizenry's Hard Assets Will Be a Huge Buying Opportunity for Insider Power Elites 8/30/20
Nihilism Embodied: Our Lawless Financial System 8/29/20
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Completed the slog of final editing and cover design for my new book.
From Left Field
How (Not) to Run a Modern Society on Solar and Wind Power Alone
What 'transition' are the Germans up to exactly?
The Ides of Autumn (Tim Morgan)
6 million white-collar jobs could be at risk in second wave of coronavirus layoffs (via Brandon R.)
Giving Up on God: The Global Decline of Religion
Meet the Philosopher Who Is Trying to Explain the Pandemic
15 years undercover on the trail of the global meat industry
The Thin Veneer of American Civilization
What Do We Get From a Barrel of Oil?
The Triumph of Catastrophism. How Greta Thumberg Carried the Day
Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fuelling
The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods (via GFB)
"The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself." Noam Chomsky
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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