Category: Uncategorized

All actions, including policies decided with COVID19, have consequences; if not intended, they were never considered or were unforeseeable. Early on there were conflicting reports, some saying that there was no real issue and others portending the end of the world.

From the medical perspective, the intent was and is containment of the contagion with careful hygiene and avoiding physical proximity, treatment of the afflicted and hopefully a cure and vaccine. These are medical protocols and should not be conflated as policy. The medical industry does not have political power, they are advisory only.

From the civil perspective, people reacted reasonably well without mandate and practiced the various measures advised, but most did not go into a bunker until forced by edict.

From the political perspective, there were two reactions, chaotic and draconian, with open conflicts among various levels of government as to who had authority, federal, state or local. There were demands from each on the others while at the same time declaring their own powers.  There were strident edicts demanding the closure of just about everything.  There was panic, hubris, snarky denunciations and mindless directives, but there was little composure. Absent rational debate, there was virtually no consideration of anything but the desire to create a perception of doing something.

From an economic perspective, establishing hygienic protocols was essential, but to place a country in house arrest is not just inhuman and likely illegal, but effectively puts it in a depression. To make matters worse, the government expands an already bloated financial system with even more debt in the name of relief and stimulus, proving that they learned nothing from past failures.  

Science is a broad and multi-discipline field. It is the role of management to seek as much information across all disciplines in order to derive a plan addressing what is known and that serves not just the present, but the future. What we got instead was a fractured environment of power grabbing bureaucrats, some elected, some not, laying out their turf. 

This is hardly new in the US history of pandemics. Similar behavior can be found with the Spanish Flu. It was not a coincidence with the end of the Great War, but likely because of it.  As the Doughboys came home from the sodden infested trenches of Europe, they brought this with them.  It did not originate in Spain despite the name of the Flu.  Spain was a neutral country during the war with the least censored press, and reported early news of the virulent influenza; it killed around 20-50M worldwide, more than the 17M in the war. The wide range of reported deaths was due to a lack of reliable data, typical then as it is now. The origins are guessed as the UK, France or China, all unproven as is the reason for its devastating potency. What is agreed is that pestilence historically follows war, and the Great War was the worst in history up to that time. While reactions ranged wildly in the US from lockdowns in St. Louis to virtually nothing at all in Philadelphia, the short term results varied accordingly, but the long term effects of the flu were the same everywhere.

Political intentions can be benign or self-serving. With COVID19, most states decided that medical preparedness, an informed public, and avoidance of devastating impacts to citizens’ livelihoods, would in the long run best serve everyone; most US states took this course.

Then there are governors that took the draconian approach with lockdowns. Some of these governors were well intended without self-serving motivations.  Then there are those like Governor Whitmer of Michigan stridently shuttering everything in sight; even with the few businesses she allowed to operate she actually dictated what could not be sold from gardening goods to American flags. 

So what motivated this later group to act so dictatorially? It was Rahm Emmanuel, COS for Barack Obama, who told him during the MERS pandemic, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”  Even a better indicator with COVID19 comes from Joe Biden’s savior, House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, telling Democratic Party leaders that COVID19 presented “…a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” On the back of these miseries they see opportunity?

Now as we hear about the plans to end the lockdowns, more and more Americans are beginning to question if not protest these policies, and not just because of money; it’s about something more basic called livelihood, a long term consideration.

I don’t subscribe to the “Plandemic” conspiracy theory, at least not based on what we know at this time.  True that the virus appears more and more chimeric with its accelerating mutations, but that does not necessarily mean it was intentionally released like some biological warfare on the world.  China is a pretty bad actor, but are they so sociopathic to commit such an act on themselves? 

More likely the trail comes back to the NIH who were conducting chimeric experiments on viruses until Congress voted a moratorium on such research; undeterred they outsourced and funded the research to Wuhan China where lax oversight is to blame. It’s disturbing that the NIH is persistently advocating against the moratorium.

Surely there’s room in the news for more about this just as much as the Trump tweets about injecting or ingesting toxic chemicals. Why instead are we bombarded with such meaningless bromides like “We are all in this together” and “We are one”? We are none of those things; we are human beings who should not be locked up and deprived of our lives and livelihoods.

Such an agenda is more befitting a Fascist dictator than a Republic, toxic to its political, economic and medical health. We can only conclude that those that advocate such policies have not let this crisis go to waste, but have taken the opportunity to satisfy their addiction to power, craving ever more control over the American people.

#bunkermentality4

Before we proceed to discuss consequences of the COVID19 policies, we will list certain facts that have been reported relative to these consequences:

1. As the economy is “allowed” to reopen, there will be an increase in the infection and death rates; inevitable given the nature of contagious diseases, and even more so a chimeric virus.
2. The current infection rate is estimated at 20%, but likely much higher; it is estimated that as many as 143K Americans will die by August, but again could be more.
3. The rapidly mutating virus is now affecting children and with different symptoms than adults; yet another indication that we are dealing with a chimeric virus.
4. The unemployment rate, already unprecedented in American history, will likely rise; even if we reopen now there are many jobs that will not come back soon, if ever. 
5. Assuming one of the two main political parties wins in November, we will not have an improvement in leadership, partisanship, polarization or civil discourse.
6. None of the drastic financial manipulations of the Federal Reserve, or federal government in general, will improve any of the above, and will actually make things worse. Most of the relief money is going to the usual suspects like large corporations and Wall Street Banks. Main Street, as in the Financial Crisis, is Tuesday’s child.

Perspective is needed when considering what governments usually do when confronted with problems; Ronald Regan clearly understood that when he said “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”  Creating “money” out of thin air is not an antidote to disease or economic ills.

We can see now some of the consequences taking shape:

1. We are in a greater depression than the Great Depression; a recession was coming anyway with the credit bubble (See earlier post, “The Perfect Storm”); COVID19 policies just pushed the metrics into depression territory.
2. The financial instability will be greater than 2008; the expansion of credit, given the trillions of dollars just created with key strokes, is actually even more debt, placing a burden on Americans that will crush them for even a longer period of economic hardship, likely into future generations.
3. While these relief and stimulus policies sound huge, the bulk of it goes to the usual government cronies like banks and corporations, little to Main Street to alleviate a moribund economy, and driving equities into even higher unrealistic and unsustainable evaluations.
4. When the unemployment benefits, including the augmented Federal funding, eventually run out, and that will be soon enough, people will be left with little to no means of support, and no health benefits to rely on, creating a health crisis greater than COVID19.
5. The food supply chain will be severely impaired, creating malnutrition, adding to the health crisis.
6. There will be increased crime and civil unrest, endemic in such crises, further impacting health.
7. Governments have seized powers by decree; they have been doing so over a long span of time since the turn of the last century, but now at a steroid like induced rate, eroding even further our civil liberties. Power mongers love the “opportunities” crises provide.
8. Politically there will be even further polarization and partisan extremism, adding to an environment ripe for authoritarianism.

The study of economics evolved from sociology.  Many people don’t realize that early works like those of Adam Smith and David Ricardo were studies in sociology, principally focused on the interrelationships among people and their livelihoods. These works gave rise to the creation of the discipline known as economics. Essentially, from a sociological perspective, suspend those relationships and you effectively destroy livelihoods. Plagues have been a part of all human history and have had critical impacts to the economic wellbeing of man, but when you suspend the ability to make a living, you are destroying the means to live and recover. Plagues do kill so people will die, but life goes on…..provided it is not suspended.

While we have discussed how long term consequences were not considered, next we should look at what was unintentionally or even intentionally disregarded or dismissed, and what this informs us regarding that.

#bunkermentality3

Applying what was discussed in the prior post to the current pandemic, a list of what is known:

1. The EIS (Epidemic Intelligence Service) of the CDC expressed concerns back in 2014 about chimeric laboratory experiments by the NIH with viruses.  Amazingly in the course of the next few years Congress became aware of and legislated for a moratorium on such experiments. I say amazingly because Congress is often myopic regarding such issues.
2. The NIH however was undeterred and outsourced such experiments in the “…cause of science.” It should be noted that the outsourcing was to laboratories in Wuhan, China.  There is much conjecture as to what these experiments were or what was produced; some journalists are still investigating but such efforts in China are seldom productive, and lately the same can be said here in the US.
3. Again the EIS reported that this virus was with us much earlier than initially thought, perhaps as early as late November. Oddly enough the CDC ignored their findings, and the WHO went on to praise China’s efforts in combating the pandemic despite evidence to the contrary.
4. The administration and its various agencies apparently went along with the CDC and the WHO, allowing air and sea traffic between Asia and Europe well into February and March.
5. As we became more aware of the spread of this virus, governments went into panic mode, essentially locking down many US States in efforts to contain (flatten the curve) the spread, which we were told was by aspiration.
6. In the above, please note that the EIS was more concerned about the spread of this virus as they had found sufficient evidence to indicate that it was airborne, making it extremely ubiquitous; essentially, there’s just no stopping it considering that the air is literally everywhere. This raises the likelihood, which is becoming statistically apparent as testing becomes more prevalent, that there are far more people throughout the world who were infected; this includes those infected who are asymptomatic, or recovered even if they were unaware of being infected, or seemingly immune.
7. We heard early on the concern that we had a shortage of ventilators, which at the time was justified given that the virus attacks the respiratory functions; fortunately with increased supply and falling need we avoided that crisis, at least for the moment.
8. However, the death rate of those on ventilators was about 88%; the efficacy of that treatment is now in doubt by many doctors.
9. The virus’ death rate is dominantly with the aged and/or those with underlying chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, asthma, immune disorders, emphysema, cancer, etc.
10. As of today, the US has reported 1.2M cases. It should be noted that on testing, the positive rate is about 20%, indicating that the virus is indeed everywhere despite the lockdowns, which likely contributed little in flattening the curve.
11. The deaths due to COVID19 and the seasonal influenza appear about even at 65K; please note that 73K was reported but a significant number reported as CIVID19 were in fact due to other causes, but counted as COVID19 simply because of detected infection. 
12. The death rate for COVID19 continues to fall from about 4.5% early on to about 2% now; that will likely continue to fall as testing increases. Note that the death rate for seasonal influenza is about .1% based on approximately 50M cases. It is noteworthy that the death rate for SARS was 9.6%, but even that pales in comparison to MERS 65%.
13. There are confirmed cases of medical staff being directed to re-document prior death certificates, i.e. from whatever was initially recorded to revisions for COVID19, or to document the cause of death as COVID19 when it was apparent that there were other causes.
14. The FDA disallowed the use of testing kits available worldwide, and up to late February, the use of laboratory facilities for test analysis other than CDC and related agencies, presenting unacceptable obstacles to securing the public health and obtaining viable statistics.
15. The two leading causes of death in the US remain heart and cancer diseases, accounting for 1.25M people annually. The fastest growing disease in the US is diabetes, which now is the cause of more than 83K deaths annually and growing.
16. Economists divide the American population into quintiles. Of these five groups, the lowest includes those at or near the poverty level.  The next two up the ladder are considered low-mid middle class; the next group is considered mid-upper middle class, and the top group upper middle to rich. These are generalizations and various government agencies, private institutions and  economists define them and assign attributes variably; however, the lower two quintiles and a majority of the third, approximately 52% of Americans, carry the most consumer debt, making them highly vulnerable to negative economic conditions.

There are many more things we can list that governments should have taken into consideration as it deliberated what actions could be taken to combat COVID19, but let’s just look at what is listed compared to what they did:

1. Seek and make sure you have the all information from medical and intelligence sources; this was not done or they would have been aware of the EIS reports, informing them more intelligently and completely as to what they were dealing with.
2. Provide early warnings to the public; while criticism abounds how the administration failed back in January to heed the advice of the CDC, the fact remains that the EIS reports talked about late November.  Where was the CDC and the Who at that time?
3. Avoid panic as this leads to dire consequences, like hoarding essential goods, migrations to outlying areas, violence, etc.; while some Governors like Cuomo preached against panic, it’s not what they practiced.  Being fed the end of the world posturing of the CDC and the mass media, they jumped on the band wagon of draconian policies with lock-downs.
4. Inform the public of just how serious the virus is comparatively, meaning that they should be aware of greater threats to life that we deal with all the time without the need to resort to drastic measures; never discussed, and instead we were told to be prepared for deaths in the millions.
5. Keep the public truthfully and completely informed of all the facts, not just those that support whatever actions have been taken; never happened as politicians only spoke to whatever they perceived supported their policies.
6. Define sensible hygienic measures and protocols, and adjust these as more information is available; started out well enough given what was known with social distancing, masks against aspiration, etc. made some sense, but then again little changed, except for the worse with lock-downs. Discovery of rapid mutation, indicating chimeric characteristics, the EIS reports for airborne migration, the uneven distribution of cases around the world, etc. apparently provided no insights for reconsideration.
7. Help coordinate and expedite the supply chain of medical supplies and equipment; never happened. Consider the pathetic open conflicts between federal, state and local governments on supply chains.
8. Do not allow beauocracy to stand in the way of medical science, i.e. expedite and do not obstruct; the behavior of the FDA and CDC should be viewed as criminal negligence.
9. Avoid draconian measures that suppress the life, life years and livelihood of Americans; given the 32M Americans now out of work, worse than the Great Depression, it’s hard to think of more Draconian measures than what was done.  The long term destruction of American lives with the loss of their livelihoods affecting diet, health care, etc. will be far greater than whatever this pandemic will ultimately bring. 
10. Take into account the long term consequences of any actions over the perceived short term benefits of measures, especially any that seem to provide more of a political cover for “… having done something.” Consider the total health of Americans, including economic and psychological, both of which affect life expectancy, and do so with consideration of long term consequences; again, this is not what politicians think about as their horizon seldom goes beyond their term of office.

The failure to see the pandemic coming to the US despite the early warnings became the focus for blame, and not for solutions. When they chose to act they did so in a panic without sufficient knowledge of the problem, and in true bunker mentality mode grasped at the apparent ready solution to hunker down, coercively isolating everyone without consideration of the consequences. Those that objected were derisively labeled stupid, insensitive, selfish…and so on. The government became all knowing, the mass media bought into it, and the detractors received the vitriol that contrarians usually do.

It is becoming apparent that the long term consequences of the actions taken may be even direr than originally anticipated, which we will discuss next. 

#bunkermentality2

To understand the complexities behind this topic, we would have to start with a discussion on management, which in itself is too expansive for a blog post, so we will briefly define what it is and its main functions and styles.

In business, and for all institutions public and private, the generally accepted definition of management is the organization and coordination of activities in order to achieve defined objectives. The seven functions of management are planning, organizing, staffing, directing, controlling, coordination and cooperation.

There are also many styles of management, which generally fall into the three categories of autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire; autocratic is the most controlling and laissez-faire being the least controlling.

Regardless of management style, an analytical process is critically essential for success.  For analysis to be meaningful you need an inquiring and unbiased attitude to get the best information available; restricting that process will result in a myopic organization, a syndrome we can characterize as bunker mentality.

The term derives from military experiences, also called siege mentality; it comes about as a collective fear of being under attack.  In the military sense, that can be a very deadly reality. In management however, it is often not of a clearly defined aggressor, but the world in general, especially for causes yet unknown.  It can manifest itself as an irrational urge for isolation and extreme defensiveness; these are panic reactions to perceptions more so than realities.

Such an environment is indicative of fear. Good managerial skills include the ability to face fear, not to deny it, but in order to control it and look through it to the cause of the anxieties at play. Further, when faced with problems, good management requires an analysis of the consequences of any actions being contemplated.  Uncontrolled fear can blind you to the consequences of your reactions, often causing more damage than the problem itself.

Good management understands that a bunker mentality is a common reaction to problems outside of historical experience, causing a withdrawal from analytical processes such as consideration of the consequences of proposed solutions; inevitably this in turn increases fear, further feeding the impulse to withdraw into a defensive shell, and a heightened intolerance for any conflicting opinions as to what to do.

Often when a state of bunker mentality exists, it will seek the first solution offered to the exclusion of any alternatives; it is rushed to execution without consideration of future consequences, only the exigencies of the moment.  Soon however the future becomes the present and the consequences make the initial problem almost trivial by comparison, mostly because no one was prepared to deal with consequences precisely because no one thought about or was allowed to think about them.

Another characteristic of the bunker mentality is how it treats the unintended consequences that were never considered; basically it goes into the blame game phase. The focus then becomes how to deal with the perception of who screwed up and not on the original problem. Any critics of the decisions that led to the unintended consequences are dismissed as uneducated fools who don’t understand what the experts know and what those in power have to deal with.  Time and again, additional bad decisions follow in an effort to deflect these consequences, putting everything into a death spiral.

It is extremely difficult getting people out of the bunker mentality. The resistance to come out of their comfort zone is strong, even as the defensive shell they are in is collapsing around them; often it means reassignment or dismissal as the bunkers can be impenetrable. Working against the bunker mentality will also bring out the self-righteousness of its supporters, and those whose agenda is not about what’s best but what is expedient to their immediate benefit.

From a military perspective sieges either succeed because those besieged took no action, or fail because either the besieged are relieved and/or come out and break the siege or the reasons for the siege are themselves mitigated in some way as when peace is declared.

Similarly, from a managerial perspective, you need to overcome the bunker mentality and move forward to solve problems, inclusive of avoiding negative long term consequences, i.e. do no harm.  The alternatives are you fail and the organization or project fails also, leading to irredeemable losses. This may also happen even if the “other side” concedes the issue at hand. There is no upside with a bunker mentality, not in the long run, and if you are not managing for the long run, you don’t belong in management to begin with.

#bunkermentality1

Why is there increasing noise in social media about the topic of secession?  In order to discuss secession itself, we need to understand this question and the answer; that can be difficult given all that “noise”, and the fact that civil discourse is absent from any debate, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored.

Let’s not get hung up on the simplistic notion that this is just another crisis of the Age of Trump; this goes back much further than the current administration. The list of significant such movements in the US is about a dozen and range geographically across the country from Vermont to Hawaii. The impetus for such movements range from cultural, social, political and economic issues, and support secessions of counties within states all the way to groups of states seceding from the Union.

A common theme is the reaction to the imposition of culture, laws and attitudes dictated from above, meaning not representative of a particular local area.  The “above” is perceived as Washington DC, i.e. the Federal Government. The imposition resented comes from the politically elite in the urban areas of the Northeast and Pacific Coast.

The resulting social and political dynamic reviving and driving these movements is polarization. With the advent of social media, these movements have grown and the synergy created with technology back feeds into even more support; it’s like a chimeric growth with an indeterminate evolution, but decidedly alienating.

So this in turn leads to the issue of secession itself, an issue that we assumed was settled with the Civil War.  However, from a constitutional perspective, that may be only an assumption.  The Constitution provides a clear path for a territory to become a state of the Union, but is silent on the issue of secession. That curious fact has been explained variously by many scholars, but not conclusively.

Foremost against secession we have the Supreme Court 1869 ruling in Texas v. White; the case was about US bond sales and redemptions by Texas during the Civil War, and not specifically about Texas’ right to secede from the Union. However the case presented the Supreme Court with an opportunity, so it ruled that the sale was illegal because it occurred at the time of secession, which in turn it deemed illegal stating that the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from the United States. That is true as the Constitution says nothing about secession, so unilateral or not, permission or prohibition, it is not addressed.  

Some scholars have argued that the court should have gone further as it did not address the fact that the Constitution did not speak against secession. Obviously, having just had a bloody civil war about secession and with the South still under Reconstruction governance, the court found itself compelled to take a stand against secession or put the entire outcome in jeopardy. However, by not addressing the issue of the Constitution’s silence on secession, it lost the opportunity to resolve that issue in regards to powers not expressed and therefore reserved to the States.

Regardless of which way you may argue the issue, it remains that the Constitution to this day is silent on secession, does not provide an expressed power, and has not had an amendment to resolve that. On that basis those promoting the right of secession make their case.

Taken all together, we have a Balkanization of America.  I chose that phrase based on its definition, i.e. a geopolitical term for the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or uncooperative with one another. The term evolved during the many periods of fragmentation of the Balkans from the time of the Byzantine Empire’s collapse to that of the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

Well by definition we certainly have Balkanization going on in America today, and the current economic collapse will only exacerbate the underlying causes even further. It is difficult to separate the growing polarization from this issue as therein lay both the cause and the possible solution.

Let’s start with the simple premise that when developing policies of governance, especially for a country as large and diverse as America, we can’t take an approach that one size fits all; by definition it can’t work in governance any more than in shoe making since no matter what you’re excluding more people than you are serving.

Government works best to serve the people when it operates at the most localized level to the people involved, i.e. state and county, city and town.  This is how the US was originally constructed through the constitution and therein lies the way to understand how polarization starts and grows to the extremes we have today.

With the growth of the Federal government, specifically its assumptions of powers despite restrictions within the Constitution, we have conflict through intervention in areas of governance that belong at the state and local levels, an assumption of powers never intended even by the Federalists and certainly feared by Jeffersonians.  It is this growth of the Federal Government and its attendant powers that is the underlying cause of the alienation tearing the Republic apart.

Knowing the problem and its cause informs us for a solution. We need to face and collegially embrace the fact that we are a union of various States, each representing its own unique history, culture, social and political characteristics. We must acknowledge and respect our differences, not ridicule them from partisan perspectives. We must embrace our common values, chiefly our respect for individual freedom as guaranteed by the Constitution, the rule of law and the protection of individual lives, liberties and private properties. There should be no more debate about the Bill of Rights; it was the one thing that enabled the ratification of the Constitution, thanks to the insistence of the New England states, the birth place of the Revolution.

This means an existential shift in the direction of our political institutions away from nationalistic agendas to localized prerogatives; for a truly civil society, when it comes to government, less is truly more.

This should not be dismissed as wishful thinking as this is what our Republic is based on, what the Revolution was fought for, and what the Civil War was intended to preserve. If we do not do these things, polarization will only get worse and we will face the inevitable prospect of Balkanization.

#balkanizationamerica