12 ms·

Few things have a single cause, but I think it's not outlandish to hypothesize that potential pending famines could be driven by a fertilizer shortage, driven b

Few things have a single cause, but I think it's not outlandish to hypothesize that potential pending famines could be driven by a fertilizer shortage, driven by Russia's invasion and global economic issues, driven by the pandemic. Maybe this is obvious to those smarter than I, but I'm beginning to have a sinking sense that direct deaths by SARS-COV2 will be a shockingly small minority of total deaths caused by the pandemic over the next generation. We're going to see this event loud and clear in every economic and demographic chart for the next half-century, aren't we?

djbusby 4y ago
Assuming this is the only loud event for the next 50 years. Or, this past three years event is the start of a longer, bigger event. Then, the ignition is lost in the flame.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  > Then, the ignition is lost in the flame. Goosebumps from this line. It's apt and thoughtful. I'm thinking about how these events can be fractal-like. The past few years of active pandemic have felt like the "flame" but could be seen as the "ignition" for countless other, possibly even worse global events. It's like a Great Tree Shaking: all non-resilient systems began showing cracks of one size or another, cascading stress to other systems, many of which buckle or break.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Arguably history is the study of an ever-breaking quasi-non-resilient combination of systems and arguing that your particular causal viewpoint is the One True one.
  - hammock 4y ago
    Lost ignitions: the research being done in Wuhan, the 2014-2022 civil war in Ukraine, the Las Vegas mass shooting, etc?
    - pjc50 4y ago
      Three totally unrelated things? There's no proof of the ""lab leak"" allegations (and I doubt there can ever be short of an admission by the Chinese government), the war in Ukraine was a proxy for the current invasion, and the Las Vegas mass shooting .. was just a larger incident of something that routinely happens in America that does not move the needle politically?
  - LeifCarrotson 4y ago
    We spent the first 50 years of the information age building systems to be as hyper-efficient as possible, with ruthless competition eliminating resiliency first in existing commercial, social, and political structures, and then in the education and life experience of the people that built those structures later. Like a Californian wilderness, we've been accumulating surface fuel load for decades.
    - hd95489 4y ago
      At least in the us the first thing ruthless competition does is eliminate all competition and establish a monopoly like position. Every industry wants to consolidate to 2-4 players that split the market and don’t compete
    - eru 4y ago
      If you ban 'price-gouging', you remove incentives for suppliers to be resilient.
  - tjr225 4y ago
    [dead]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
danuker 4y ago
I doubt it. In as much as they are allowed to function, markets will reward people addressing the shortages with outsized profit. Same as getting through the energy crisis, we can overcome the food crisis, one obstacle at a time. The connectedness of economies is also an advantage. Shipping rates are almost at a 3-year low: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic The greatest risk are policies forbidding "price gouging" going haywire and actually forbidding disaster response.
- brmgb 4y ago
  Having trust in the market is not a magic solution. Yes, prices will rise as they already are if there is a shortage but that's not going to make local production materialises out of thin air if there are other obstacles. At some point, you need a concerted strategic answer at the correct level if you are facing a strategic threat like disruption of food supply. That's why China restricted exports. It remains to be seen if the USA and Europe will react fast enough and appropriately enough. What happened with Covid doesn't give me much hope. Edit: As I am downvoted strongly (I imagine that it’s because the Covid answer is stupidly seen as political in the US - at least I hope so because if it’s about the ability of the market to solve issues it doesn’t bode well for us all), the EU took ages to secure first masks then vaccine supply and the utter stupidity of the US answer which avoided imposing wearing masks and making vaccination mandatory costed you hundred thousands of unnecessary death compared to country of equivalent development. Look at Taiwan or South Korea to see how it supposed to be done.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  How can you price gouge something like Sri-Lakha, that has no currency to trade with? This whole mental model just has no grasp for the moment when the rear of the car falls off..
  - danuker 4y ago
    Hire its citizens. No money means you'd benefit by sending them money. But inequality is a different problem than getting through crises. It should be addressed while leaving the production incentives intact. For example, progressive and/or negative income taxes.
officialjunk 4y ago
probably. heart attacks on the rise for covid survivors aged 25-44 https://www.khon2.com/local-news/heart-attacks-on-dramatic-rise-for-25-44-age-group/ https://www.khon2.com/local-news/heart-attacks-on-dramatic-r...
- probably_wrong 4y ago
  First, this content is locked in my region so I don't know exactly what you linked to. Second, if you are linking to a news article about that one University guy who said young people shouldn't take the vaccine, it is my understanding that his study was flawed. But again, I can't read the article so take this with a grain of salt.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    Here's the academic article immediately linked to in the above news page: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.28187 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.28187
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- dehrmann 4y ago
  That's not what the study's abstract said. It said heart attack deaths increased during the pandemic. It could be due to covid itself, fear of covid while seeking treatment, worse quality treatment, lifestyle chances, social isolation, others, or some combination. One of the study's authors did say there's a link, but I have to wonder why it wasn't in the abstract.
ajross 4y ago
I don't see how that's sustained by the article. This is just another face of the energy crunch. Oil and gas are somewhat rarer more expensive, and so everything made from them is more expensive and the economy needs to seek to a new price equilibrium. In this case, that mostly means "reduced travel and air freight" and "reduced gas heating usage". But as a side effect farmers need to scramble to match their own market. So some of this will end up meaning "more expensive fertilizer-heavy crops". But at the economic level farming is less able to tolerate volatility (you can't JustInTime a soybean, literally farmers reap what was sown months ago), so there's need for some assistance at the regulatory level. Which is what this article is about. Basically, no. No famines. Just pricing and regulatory changes.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  There is a famine in Madagascar now, although not related to fertiliser. The system is fragile
  - eru 4y ago
    That's entirely the fault of their inept and corrupt administration there.
    - ajross 4y ago
      Well, and also a big drought. Economies (and weather) are indeed unstable in general. But per the upthread hypothesis there's no particular instability in the food supply caused by fertilizer/energy/covid disruption that seems notable. We've been here before and we'll be here again.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      United Nations says it's "first climate change famine". Why are you blaming administration? I am not sure how corrupt they are, but how do you deal with drought in a country that has GDP per capital of $520? Like you can't afford to do much with that. https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/10/1103712 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/10/1103712
xadhominemx 4y ago
That seems very outlandish actually
bryanlarsen 4y ago
What does COVID have to do with this? The fertilizer shortage is caused by the war in Ukraine. This war will cause more deaths indirectly than it does directly, just like almost all large wars.
- afarrell 4y ago
  Arguably the war in Ukraine was influenced by the unrest against Lukanhesko after his poor handling of covid-19...and by Russians thinking that was yet another example of NATO attacks against their security.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    This war has one primary cause: Putin. Anything else is a very distant secondary. COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault, not COVID's.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Putin's motivations predate the war, too; the invasion of Crimea was in 2014, and before that was Georgia in 2008.
      - knewter 4y ago
        I always find it interesting when people being up the 2014 Ukraine situation without referencing the call from Victoria Nuland discussing who the US was going to put in charge ("surprisingly", those ended up being the government the people elected) https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-Call-To-Ukraine-Geofrrey-Pyatt-(2014):2 https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-C...
        mikeyouse 4y ago
        Likely because people who know anything about the region know that that supposedly damning call happened after three months of violent protests against the most corrupt government in recent European history.. the reference to Klitchko being made deputy PM means it was recorded after Jan 26th which was when Yanukovych was trying everything to stay in power, including bringing opposition leaders into his government (and working with Russian intelligence to bug US diplomatic phones). He was doing so because many regional offices had already been taken over by protesters and his police forces had already shot several people. The leader who the US diplomats were talking about was already a popular opposition leader, so it's entirely unsurprising that Yatsenyuk was part of government post-Maidan. I think I'm mostly annoyed with these dumb conspiracy theories because they deny agency to the millions of people who actually cast out a criminal and democratically elected their own leadership. "hurr durr, the CIA did it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state_administration_occupations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state...
heisenbit 4y ago
Sooner or later energy prices will increase and fertilizer will get more expensive. Step functions and impulses are useful ways to probe the inner working of a system and in this case helped to highlight the dominant role energy plays everywhere. We re-learned what we forgot or ignored since the last energy aka. oil price shock in the '70. In the long run the situation for food security is challenging unless we switch to a different paradigm of farming and population control.
- kragen 4y ago
  energy prices are decreasing, not increasing; solar power is half as expensive as coal power in most of the world already, and it's likely to get even cheaper over time as pv production scales up (of course in northern europe this year that is not the case because they were relying on russian gas, but that's not 'sooner or later', that's just right now)
- Sakos 4y ago
  This is such a weird comment. For much of the world, food security is an ever present problem that is heavily affected by energy prices (among other things). Fertilizer prices are already up significantly. This isn't something we have to wait for. It's already been happening for the past decade and it's going to keep getting worse. You're fortunate that you live in a country where food security on a population level isn't a constantly relevant concern.
ajmurmann 4y ago
Well, 20.8% of goal potash production comes from Russia and another 18% from Belarus. It's a key ingredients in making fertilizer. There is your single cause. Source: https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/minerals-metals-facts/potash-facts/20521#L2 https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-minin...
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Have they stopped producing? Don’t think any of the big buyers are resisting purchase from those two countries.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    They've stopped exporting to western countries.
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      After the US (which I’m assuming imports from Canada, the largest exporter), the next 6 largest importers aren’t western countries (if you exclude Brazil in that): https://www.nationmaster.com/nmx/ranking/potash-fertilizer-imports https://www.nationmaster.com/nmx/ranking/potash-fertilizer-i... https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/minerals-metals-facts/potash-facts/20521 https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-minin... The biggest issue is that Belarus has restricted access to euro seaports, but Belarus and Russia have extensive rail networks.
      - sudosysgen 4y ago
        Reduced supply to Western countries would still push prices way up.
hedora 4y ago
The big lesson from the 1918 flu pandemic was that lockdowns didn’t really work. The scientific consensus after that was to isolate the highest risk populations, and let it run through the rest of the population. That way, it hits herd immunity / becomes endemic without infecting people that are likely to die from it. For COVID, the conventional approach would be to lock down nursing homes and provide shelter in place orders / resources for the top 1-5% risk groups for 3 months while otherwise ignoring the pandemic. If it were not for RNA vaccines, that approach certainly would have been better than what we did with COVID. Economic disruption would be minimal, per case fatality would be cut significantly, and the tripledemic / avian flu / 2021 famine / rebound of malaria, etc. probably would not have happened. With the vaccines, it is unclear if the lockdowns helped or hurt average life expectancies. We will know in a few more years.
- lukas099 4y ago
  > If it were not for RNA vaccines, that approach certainly would have been better than what we did with COVID. I know that 'flatten the curve' largely left the public consciousness, but wouldn't letting the virus run largely unrestricted have overwhelmed the health care system?
  - arghnoname 4y ago
    The curve flattening was initially proposed for a short period of time. Maybe weeks or a few months, I forget. I think some initial panic is forgivable, even if it led to actions that were counter to previous guidance. We were ventilating patients early on, for instance, and we later learned that this causes more harm than good for many patients and should be deferred if at all possible. I think it's arguable that a short term lockdown was the right call. It's arguable it wasn't, but in my opinion it wasn't crazy. During that initial period we were supposed to be increasing capacity and learning treatment. Encouraging people to lose weight and improve their health during this time would probably help with outcomes as well. Capacity was increased to some extent. Remember the tents and the medical ship in NYC? I think neither were used at all. We don't seem to be having conversations now about more long-term increases in health care capacity. It's just like nothing was learned. It all just became political and like all things political in the US, incredibly stupid and tribal. For what it's worth, when DeSantis started relaxing Florida lockdowns I thought the death toll in Florida was going to be sobering and it was reckless. I now think it was the right thing to do. DeSantis seemed to be following the pre-COVID playbook. I was scared and clung on too much to the status quo procedure on COVID.
bruiseralmighty 4y ago
It's not really the conflict directly so much as the sanctions campaigns that followed. Russia and Belarus are the number one and two suppliers of a basic fertilizer component, but now Western aligned nation cannot import from them and the Brits have gone further by making it harder to insure the shipments which affects the ability for Russia (and by extension Belarus) to export to anyone by sea. The Germans _could_ have helped make up the difference since they can make some amount of fertilizer using natural gas, but some terrorist state (we still don't know exactly who) blew up NS1 and NS2 which makes this basically impossible. Germany now needs to preserve all its gas just to keep some manufacturing going, heat people's homes, and run the lights. The pandemic has had some effect, but a lot of the fertilizer being sold internationally goes to Egypt, the Middle East, and North Africa. It doesn't actually have to go all that far in the global scheme of things. The conflict itself affects wheat prices, since Ukraine is a major wheat exporter (as is Russia), but the fertilizer issues are due primarily to Western sanctions and Kremlin counter-sanctions.

djbusby 4y ago

Assuming this is the only loud event for the next 50 years. Or, this past three years event is the start of a longer, bigger event. Then, the ignition is lost in the flame.

Waterluvian 4y ago
> Then, the ignition is lost in the flame. Goosebumps from this line. It's apt and thoughtful. I'm thinking about how these events can be fractal-like. The past few years of active pandemic have felt like the "flame" but could be seen as the "ignition" for countless other, possibly even worse global events. It's like a Great Tree Shaking: all non-resilient systems began showing cracks of one size or another, cascading stress to other systems, many of which buckle or break.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Arguably history is the study of an ever-breaking quasi-non-resilient combination of systems and arguing that your particular causal viewpoint is the One True one.
- hammock 4y ago
  Lost ignitions: the research being done in Wuhan, the 2014-2022 civil war in Ukraine, the Las Vegas mass shooting, etc?
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Three totally unrelated things? There's no proof of the ""lab leak"" allegations (and I doubt there can ever be short of an admission by the Chinese government), the war in Ukraine was a proxy for the current invasion, and the Las Vegas mass shooting .. was just a larger incident of something that routinely happens in America that does not move the needle politically?
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago
  We spent the first 50 years of the information age building systems to be as hyper-efficient as possible, with ruthless competition eliminating resiliency first in existing commercial, social, and political structures, and then in the education and life experience of the people that built those structures later. Like a Californian wilderness, we've been accumulating surface fuel load for decades.
  - hd95489 4y ago
    At least in the us the first thing ruthless competition does is eliminate all competition and establish a monopoly like position. Every industry wants to consolidate to 2-4 players that split the market and don’t compete
  - eru 4y ago
    If you ban 'price-gouging', you remove incentives for suppliers to be resilient.
- tjr225 4y ago
  [dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

danuker 4y ago

I doubt it. In as much as they are allowed to function, markets will reward people addressing the shortages with outsized profit. Same as getting through the energy crisis, we can overcome the food crisis, one obstacle at a time. The connectedness of economies is also an advantage. Shipping rates are almost at a 3-year low: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic The greatest risk are policies forbidding "price gouging" going haywire and actually forbidding disaster response.

brmgb 4y ago
Having trust in the market is not a magic solution. Yes, prices will rise as they already are if there is a shortage but that's not going to make local production materialises out of thin air if there are other obstacles. At some point, you need a concerted strategic answer at the correct level if you are facing a strategic threat like disruption of food supply. That's why China restricted exports. It remains to be seen if the USA and Europe will react fast enough and appropriately enough. What happened with Covid doesn't give me much hope. Edit: As I am downvoted strongly (I imagine that it’s because the Covid answer is stupidly seen as political in the US - at least I hope so because if it’s about the ability of the market to solve issues it doesn’t bode well for us all), the EU took ages to secure first masks then vaccine supply and the utter stupidity of the US answer which avoided imposing wearing masks and making vaccination mandatory costed you hundred thousands of unnecessary death compared to country of equivalent development. Look at Taiwan or South Korea to see how it supposed to be done.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
How can you price gouge something like Sri-Lakha, that has no currency to trade with? This whole mental model just has no grasp for the moment when the rear of the car falls off..
- danuker 4y ago
  Hire its citizens. No money means you'd benefit by sending them money. But inequality is a different problem than getting through crises. It should be addressed while leaving the production incentives intact. For example, progressive and/or negative income taxes.

officialjunk 4y ago

probably. heart attacks on the rise for covid survivors aged 25-44 https://www.khon2.com/local-news/heart-attacks-on-dramatic-rise-for-25-44-age-group/ https://www.khon2.com/local-news/heart-attacks-on-dramatic-r...

probably_wrong 4y ago
First, this content is locked in my region so I don't know exactly what you linked to. Second, if you are linking to a news article about that one University guy who said young people shouldn't take the vaccine, it is my understanding that his study was flawed. But again, I can't read the article so take this with a grain of salt.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Here's the academic article immediately linked to in the above news page: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.28187 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.28187
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dehrmann 4y ago
That's not what the study's abstract said. It said heart attack deaths increased during the pandemic. It could be due to covid itself, fear of covid while seeking treatment, worse quality treatment, lifestyle chances, social isolation, others, or some combination. One of the study's authors did say there's a link, but I have to wonder why it wasn't in the abstract.

ajross 4y ago

I don't see how that's sustained by the article. This is just another face of the energy crunch. Oil and gas are somewhat rarer more expensive, and so everything made from them is more expensive and the economy needs to seek to a new price equilibrium. In this case, that mostly means "reduced travel and air freight" and "reduced gas heating usage". But as a side effect farmers need to scramble to match their own market. So some of this will end up meaning "more expensive fertilizer-heavy crops". But at the economic level farming is less able to tolerate volatility (you can't JustInTime a soybean, literally farmers reap what was sown months ago), so there's need for some assistance at the regulatory level. Which is what this article is about. Basically, no. No famines. Just pricing and regulatory changes.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
There is a famine in Madagascar now, although not related to fertiliser. The system is fragile
- eru 4y ago
  That's entirely the fault of their inept and corrupt administration there.
  - ajross 4y ago
    Well, and also a big drought. Economies (and weather) are indeed unstable in general. But per the upthread hypothesis there's no particular instability in the food supply caused by fertilizer/energy/covid disruption that seems notable. We've been here before and we'll be here again.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    United Nations says it's "first climate change famine". Why are you blaming administration? I am not sure how corrupt they are, but how do you deal with drought in a country that has GDP per capital of $520? Like you can't afford to do much with that. https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/10/1103712 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/10/1103712

xadhominemx 4y ago

That seems very outlandish actually

bryanlarsen 4y ago

What does COVID have to do with this? The fertilizer shortage is caused by the war in Ukraine. This war will cause more deaths indirectly than it does directly, just like almost all large wars.

afarrell 4y ago
Arguably the war in Ukraine was influenced by the unrest against Lukanhesko after his poor handling of covid-19...and by Russians thinking that was yet another example of NATO attacks against their security.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  This war has one primary cause: Putin. Anything else is a very distant secondary. COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault, not COVID's.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Putin's motivations predate the war, too; the invasion of Crimea was in 2014, and before that was Georgia in 2008.
    - knewter 4y ago
      I always find it interesting when people being up the 2014 Ukraine situation without referencing the call from Victoria Nuland discussing who the US was going to put in charge ("surprisingly", those ended up being the government the people elected) https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-Call-To-Ukraine-Geofrrey-Pyatt-(2014):2 https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-C...
      - mikeyouse 4y ago
        Likely because people who know anything about the region know that that supposedly damning call happened after three months of violent protests against the most corrupt government in recent European history.. the reference to Klitchko being made deputy PM means it was recorded after Jan 26th which was when Yanukovych was trying everything to stay in power, including bringing opposition leaders into his government (and working with Russian intelligence to bug US diplomatic phones). He was doing so because many regional offices had already been taken over by protesters and his police forces had already shot several people. The leader who the US diplomats were talking about was already a popular opposition leader, so it's entirely unsurprising that Yatsenyuk was part of government post-Maidan. I think I'm mostly annoyed with these dumb conspiracy theories because they deny agency to the millions of people who actually cast out a criminal and democratically elected their own leadership. "hurr durr, the CIA did it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state_administration_occupations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state...

heisenbit 4y ago

Sooner or later energy prices will increase and fertilizer will get more expensive. Step functions and impulses are useful ways to probe the inner working of a system and in this case helped to highlight the dominant role energy plays everywhere. We re-learned what we forgot or ignored since the last energy aka. oil price shock in the '70. In the long run the situation for food security is challenging unless we switch to a different paradigm of farming and population control.

kragen 4y ago
energy prices are decreasing, not increasing; solar power is half as expensive as coal power in most of the world already, and it's likely to get even cheaper over time as pv production scales up (of course in northern europe this year that is not the case because they were relying on russian gas, but that's not 'sooner or later', that's just right now)
Sakos 4y ago
This is such a weird comment. For much of the world, food security is an ever present problem that is heavily affected by energy prices (among other things). Fertilizer prices are already up significantly. This isn't something we have to wait for. It's already been happening for the past decade and it's going to keep getting worse. You're fortunate that you live in a country where food security on a population level isn't a constantly relevant concern.

ajmurmann 4y ago

Well, 20.8% of goal potash production comes from Russia and another 18% from Belarus. It's a key ingredients in making fertilizer. There is your single cause. Source: https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/minerals-metals-facts/potash-facts/20521#L2 https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-minin...

Scoundreller 4y ago
Have they stopped producing? Don’t think any of the big buyers are resisting purchase from those two countries.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  They've stopped exporting to western countries.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    After the US (which I’m assuming imports from Canada, the largest exporter), the next 6 largest importers aren’t western countries (if you exclude Brazil in that): https://www.nationmaster.com/nmx/ranking/potash-fertilizer-imports https://www.nationmaster.com/nmx/ranking/potash-fertilizer-i... https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/minerals-metals-facts/potash-facts/20521 https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-minin... The biggest issue is that Belarus has restricted access to euro seaports, but Belarus and Russia have extensive rail networks.
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      Reduced supply to Western countries would still push prices way up.

hedora 4y ago

The big lesson from the 1918 flu pandemic was that lockdowns didn’t really work. The scientific consensus after that was to isolate the highest risk populations, and let it run through the rest of the population. That way, it hits herd immunity / becomes endemic without infecting people that are likely to die from it. For COVID, the conventional approach would be to lock down nursing homes and provide shelter in place orders / resources for the top 1-5% risk groups for 3 months while otherwise ignoring the pandemic. If it were not for RNA vaccines, that approach certainly would have been better than what we did with COVID. Economic disruption would be minimal, per case fatality would be cut significantly, and the tripledemic / avian flu / 2021 famine / rebound of malaria, etc. probably would not have happened. With the vaccines, it is unclear if the lockdowns helped or hurt average life expectancies. We will know in a few more years.

lukas099 4y ago
> If it were not for RNA vaccines, that approach certainly would have been better than what we did with COVID. I know that 'flatten the curve' largely left the public consciousness, but wouldn't letting the virus run largely unrestricted have overwhelmed the health care system?
- arghnoname 4y ago
  The curve flattening was initially proposed for a short period of time. Maybe weeks or a few months, I forget. I think some initial panic is forgivable, even if it led to actions that were counter to previous guidance. We were ventilating patients early on, for instance, and we later learned that this causes more harm than good for many patients and should be deferred if at all possible. I think it's arguable that a short term lockdown was the right call. It's arguable it wasn't, but in my opinion it wasn't crazy. During that initial period we were supposed to be increasing capacity and learning treatment. Encouraging people to lose weight and improve their health during this time would probably help with outcomes as well. Capacity was increased to some extent. Remember the tents and the medical ship in NYC? I think neither were used at all. We don't seem to be having conversations now about more long-term increases in health care capacity. It's just like nothing was learned. It all just became political and like all things political in the US, incredibly stupid and tribal. For what it's worth, when DeSantis started relaxing Florida lockdowns I thought the death toll in Florida was going to be sobering and it was reckless. I now think it was the right thing to do. DeSantis seemed to be following the pre-COVID playbook. I was scared and clung on too much to the status quo procedure on COVID.

bruiseralmighty 4y ago

It's not really the conflict directly so much as the sanctions campaigns that followed. Russia and Belarus are the number one and two suppliers of a basic fertilizer component, but now Western aligned nation cannot import from them and the Brits have gone further by making it harder to insure the shipments which affects the ability for Russia (and by extension Belarus) to export to anyone by sea. The Germans _could_ have helped make up the difference since they can make some amount of fertilizer using natural gas, but some terrorist state (we still don't know exactly who) blew up NS1 and NS2 which makes this basically impossible. Germany now needs to preserve all its gas just to keep some manufacturing going, heat people's homes, and run the lights. The pandemic has had some effect, but a lot of the fertilizer being sold internationally goes to Egypt, the Middle East, and North Africa. It doesn't actually have to go all that far in the global scheme of things. The conflict itself affects wheat prices, since Ukraine is a major wheat exporter (as is Russia), but the fertilizer issues are due primarily to Western sanctions and Kremlin counter-sanctions.