Jordan Hall What are the highest priority threat vectors that you are seeing in the unfolding meta-crisis? [All of the below feed back on each-other.]
* Medical System Overwhelm. When the number of patients >> "beds" (ventilators, doctors, etc), all harm metrics shift to worse and you get spillover effects into everything else that the medical system is otherwise managing. ETA - now and expanding quickly in both beadth (# cities) and intensity.
* Resource depletion. Panic buying (resource allocation issues) combined with shut down supply chains can lead to real or perceived threat (e.g., lack of food). This can lead to crime escalating to civic unrest. ETA - 2 weeks. If supply chain / access disruption continues past 3 weeks begins to move into the red.
* Cash depletion. 70% of the population lives paycheck to paycheck. Many will see income drop over the next few days and in many cases to zero, particularly in any sort of quarantine environment. If the disruption lasts 4 weeks (and certainly by 6 weeks) you will have tens of millions of people who can't get access to resources even if the resources are otherwise available. [Special note - different resource are different. Rent and mortgage are subtle and important case likely requiring different approaches than food. Power, water, internet as well.] This cascades into civil unrest and into deeper economic harm.
* Supply chain overwhelm. A mix of systemic dynamics put pressure on supply chains. The medical vector (e.g.,) could weaken sensitive areas - either directly or indirectly. Grocery chains closing to protect their workers might exacerbate resource depletion issues. This includes physical infrastructure (i.e., utilities). Normal interruptions of service might take longer to repair - and potentially much larger than normal use of services might overwhelm infrastructure.
* Civic infrastructure overwhelm. Reduction in capacity of police, EMS, fire personnel leads to increasing gaps in civic infrastructure. More narrowly, prisons and the homeless are two major areas of concern. As effected populations, as vectors and as systemic risk accelerators.
* Pile-on and copycat events. Anyone who has been thinking about dropping an asymmetric attack (particularly biowarfare and cyberwarfare) might see this as a high leverage moment. Nature hitting us with another crisis is part of this threat.
* Continuity of governance. Iran has seen this. The relative balkanization and immaturity of the leadership system in the West (prefer inter-elite competition over leadership) means that even small numbers of specific people getting sick could significantly reduce already contingent sense/choicemaking.
* Financial System Collapse. 2008 - 2015 were never really healed. Actual systemic economic effects of the virus and the cure (quarantine) could push a number of fragile financial systems into collapse, potentially triggering a systemic collapse globally. Breakdown of global coordination capability since 2008 likely leads to substantially less effective collective response. Potential downward spiral.
* Multi-Polar Traps [Geopolitical]. Crisis creates opportunity. Everyone is looking to see how much of the board they can turn their color. Two primary risks: (1) Ordinary geopolitical strategic maneuvering might exacerbate or overwhelm systems in any / all of the above dynamics; (2) Any of the above dynamics might drive race-to-the bottom recklessness.
* Multi-Polar Traps [Political]. Same as above but intra-national particularly in the US. If Culture War 2.0 continues unabated amidst the meta-crisis a number of downward spirals can ensue. e.g., viral containment leading to shutdown of elections read as politically motivated leads to civil disobedience reaction - which violates viral containment leading to increasing militarization . . .
* Authoritarianism. It is quite likely that a very significant / novel (to our experience) level of authoritarianism will be requested to address the many different aspects of the meta-crisis. Quarantine is one obvious example. This creates a threat of intentional/strategic and unintentional/systemic phase transition into a significant (permanent) increase in authoritarianism at the political level across many different dimensions.
* Super-fragility [Whole]. Obviously, the current state is pushing on effectively all systems. From supply chains in general to mental health (watch out for depletion of psychmeds) - we've been pushing everything to the limits increasingly for half a century. More or less everything is near a critical point and as the meta-crisis unfolds, small (ordinary) perturbations could break some other system.
What have I missed? Looking for sensitive points and phase transitions and feedback loops.
Daniel Joseph Mezick
Re-establishment of the MSM as the most timely, authoritative and worldwide voice of "reason." Emphasis on "authoritative."
That's a very real threat right now in terms of sensitive points and phase transitions and feedback loops. It is one that can and will throttle all the other disequilibriums you have enumerated here, plus a few more.
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Nora Bateson
There is a significant mental health aspect. Depression, boredom, difficult/dangerous home life situations, epistemological earthquakes of how the world is understood. Existential crisis. Loss of loved ones and distance funerals. Just some first thoughts.
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Dmitry Shapiro
The US is exceptionally vulnerable.
- Forced quarantines are unlikely to be enforceable in US, as our armed macho population doesn't want to be told what to do. American macho/bravado/ego gets in the way of "socialist" alignment.
- Trump will do everything in his power to delay or eliminate the next election. If he doesn't he and his family get indicted.
- As you point out, Russia (and other adversaries) will take advantage of this disarray and at best undermine rapid recovery.. at worst, who knows?
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Darrell Grable
A compounding natural disaster that forces evacuations or group sheltering. For example, the 2011 Joplin Tornado was a spring event that rendered nearly 10,000 people homeless instantly. At the time, we jammed them all into shoulder to shoulder emergency shelters.Tornado season is just starting. Midwestern flood season is just starting too. Do we honestly expect citizens to peacefully accept crowding into a local gymnasium to all give each other Covid19? We need to plan for how social distancing works in a town hit by a natural disaster that causes largescale citizen displacement.
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Daniel Schmachtenberger
Like the medical system overwhelm, quarantine and infection could hit supply chains and critical infrastructure. If those go there will be cascading issues.
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Daniel Schmachtenberger
Assuming this is included in continuity of governance, but prison guards, police, first responders, national guard, military, etc getting sick...dont just leave needs unmet but create niches for bad action.
Also, gov resources redirected opens up bad actor niches, particularly cyber.
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Joe Brewer
Another category is synchronous supply chain interruption due to extreme weather events. If a statistical spread of interruptions occur within the same period of dynamic feedbacks (think of flooding in Thailand while forest fires set ablaze in Brazil as the kinds of geographically spread patterns that could do this) there could be disruptions to "just in time" manufacturing that create cascading collapses across industrial sectors.
There is so much brittle fragility in the globalized system that it wouldn't take much to trigger this cascade and intensify all of the other patterns you've named so far.
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Kurt Jensen
Pile-on and copycat events .... thats my biggest worry.
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Ted Cooke
One of the biggest concerns is ICU space that cannot be easily increased, and workforce depletion caused from nurses burning out and getting sick, who cannot be replaced so easily.
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Bonnitta Roy
Here is a rather naive question. I am posting it here because people who watch this thread have better analytic skills than me. I am wondering if there is a model of "rolling quarantine" where people with different, let's say, last 4 digits of the SS# or last 4 digits of their phone number, are quarantined in different phases at a rhythm that is correlated to the infection period of the disease.
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
Wouldn't 330 Million people, at 10 seconds for each check of SSN or Phone Number still take an eternity ?
Like · React · More · 5 hours ago Bonnitta Roy
Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes It would have to be a volunteer thing. But what it could do is spread out the flow of people and also assure them that when they go out there is, let's say, only 1/4 of the population out and about. In no way would I want it to be enforced or surveilled. I think it would decrease the anxiety and cognitive load for a lot of people. What I was wondering about is if there is an optimum formula that would make a difference in scaling. Obviously, people would still get sick. But perhaps it is a way to both allow for the "herd immunity" to take place, which is a factor when entire communities are isolated, while derisking the population at large.
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Shelley Delayne
My curiosity:
With everyone now communicating online at the same time and streaming entertainment, etc. — and with tech workers just as affected as everyone else — can the internet infrastructure and cell phone infrastructure stay functional, and/or what are the failure potentials there?
Because the internet makes a crucial difference.
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Euvie Ivanova
This is a longer term vector, and was somewhat addressed in some of your points, but the opportunities for increased totalitarianism look massive to me. These changes can be implemented by authorities fairly quickly and then reverberate for decades. Vulnerable populations have much less bargaining power in a crisis like this, and are more willing to accept solutions that take away their freedoms.
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
To use Jordan's term: The Galvanization of Dictatorships all around the world and the full implementation of generalized AI-Based control mechanisms seems to be almost granted ?
Note that Venezuela's interim-president Guaidó, called a massive march as recent as last week, where most of the population (hundreds of thousands) participated... This seems "too weird to me" must have been some kind of conspiratorial event.
Consider that venezuela is already almost completely out of resources.
This congregation of hundreds of thousands of people on March 10th is something really sinister, I can't make sense of this.
Asi fue la marcha de Guaido contra Maduro hoy 10 Marzo 2020 youtube.com
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
The stoppage, disruption of Communications & Internet ?
This could be one of the most severe IMO.
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Shelley Delayne
Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes That’s one of my concerns as well. I was reassured that the basic communication infrastructure is capable and resilient.
As long as governments don’t decide to shut them down, that should be ok. 🙏
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
Shelley Delayne If bad Actors start attacks on the network, the capabilities of defending are more diminished with every day that passes.
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Jason Hughes
I second the mental health variable. Jordan, your point about supply chain of psycho-active medications on a previous post is incredibly relevant. But also, the combination of all these variables is going to put a large chunk of the population in a PTSD daze in which there decision making goes sideways.
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Kira Mosher Kroger
This is one of my biggest concerns. I went through severe withdrawal from psych meds 6 years ago it's not pretty. I think beyond the physical triage there is going to be an emotional triage that's going to come next.
2 · Like · React · More · 5 hours ago Dux Garnifex
Jason Hughes i jave anxious friends already taking worry to an exponential space. They didnt prepare and are seeing others already stuggle with no toilet paper.
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James Burns
Cash depletion to civil unrest. People already have been driven towards narratives that support violent action. Most of them have been symbolic but the rhetoric of violence leads to the reality.
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Lynne DeSilva-Johnson
I’ve been throwing out the idea of systemic actions if the US doesn’t have the sense to freeze. There won’t be distribution. If we collectively use our resources both to infuse funds directly to those losing work and / or create supply chains for those at most risk it could be a workable strategy
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Jordan Hall
I hear you. Please say more. Expected consequences downstream?
Like · React · More · 6 hours ago Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
In the beginning of the Cuban revolution people were given the ownership of the houses they were rented in, and that created a SENSE OF BELONGING AND OWNERSHIP... ( but landlords were never compensated )
I think we have to look at the possibility of giving ownership to people who rent, because "those-who-have-nothing-to-lose" will probably be the most violent and corrosive for stability that we need.
The "State" could implement payment formulas for the owners, but in an Scenario where police is overwhelmed and evictions can't be implemented, the smartest move could be to re-distribute resources over which there is no enforcement of ownership rights anyways.
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
I already can't make it to next month rent & Utilities, since I have spent almost everything on water & food.
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Lynne DeSilva-Johnson
I’m sorry to hear this. You and so many others. The idea is that other ppl saving huge amounts for this could give it to you instead. More to come.
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Dux Garnifex
Lynne DeSilva-Johnson the minite uncle Sam freezes anything you'll get state sponsored hoarding and reduced capacity b/c of no market incentives. Always bad like food in Venezuela.
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Dux Garnifex
Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes democide is consistently the greatest danger to people
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Jordan Hall
take this offline
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
Jordan Hall Can I ask what do you mean by "take this offline" ?
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James Burns
Following up, civil unrest to infrastructure failure (water, power, waste) is my current worst case. Hungry, thirsty, angry people who are used to thinking in us vs them will not hesitate to burn stuff down, even stuff they need.
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
How resilient is Nuclear-Based Power Generation to the lack of maintenance personnel ?
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Jamie Wheal
someone asked me "how likely is it that the lights go out?" --folks here have noted bad actor cyber, grid attacks etc, but there's also the simple fact that any interruption to timely maintenance on a janky AF patchwork grid due to loss of qualified workforce could crash sections of power supplies simply because there aren't enough fingers in the dike. So we should expect degradation of public utilities due to combo of load (everyone at home, everyone using bandwidth and juice) and under/non-responsiveness to incremental system failures
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Jamie Wheal
FWIW, we have 2-3 months of grace(ish) on this one, before possible interruptions to air conditioning create mortality events through entire southwest and south . https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/climate-crisis-goodell-survive-extreme-heat-875198/Can We Survive Extreme Heat? rollingstone.com
Edited · 1 · Like · React · More · 7 hours ago Euvie Ivanova
Jamie Wheal can confirm. This happened a bunch growing up in the USSR. Utilities were patchy. One time we had no power for nearly a week in the dead of winter because some dumbass with an excavator accidentally cut the cable that brought power to a whole neighborhood, and it took that long to get someone to fix it.
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
Assemblage of BAD-MILITIA / ORGANIZED GUERRILLA ?
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
Will the SOUTH BORDER be Overwhelmed ?
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Mark Frazier
HOAs, condo associations and housing co-ops provide a layer of local capability and self-governance. They could expand - https://is.gd/seedingrecovery cc Patri Friedman Tom W. Bell #yournextgovernment
Seeding Grass Roots Recovery: New Catalysts for Community Associations (ACIR) academia.edu
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
Capacity of LAND & WATER BORDER PATROL drastically reduced ?
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
Will PIRACY reign on INTERNATIONAL WATERS ?
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Eli Call
All Great points Jordan Hall. Some sub points to add
1. From my experience with being a first responder in natural disasters, a HUGE problem is People becoming Numb, dumb, dazed and confused: Think about how people are the day the “unthinkable happens” in Normal everyday life. Like someone dies or is laid off, or runs out of money or food. In my experience in disaster relief this is always a huge problem with people just wandering around in a stupor and causing all kinds of problems and COMMON SENSE goes out the window.
2. Katrina: it took less then 48 hours for people to start fighting and rioting for food and water. 48 Hours.
3. Flow Over of this “Katrina Effect”: When Katrina happened, we all watched on tv the mess, and thought “those poor people in Louisiana.” What happens when the masses watch what happens in ____________ and realize “oh shit, that is about to happen here.” Humans evolved to know what is going on within say 10km. When EVERYONE can see the mess and the masses start freaking out… (yes I said START freaking out)
3. Guns: Depending on what count you read there are about as many guns as there are people in America. Scared Numb, dumb, dazed and confused people with Guns. I’ve never seen that mix before in mass.
4. Food is not grown near where the masses live.
5. By day 2 of the natural disasters I have been to, transportation fuel runs out. Vehicles plug roads so even when fuel is in the region it can’t get in which obviously exasperates Many things.
6. Humans innate desire to survive: For many people that comes at any cost to the detriment of others.
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Douglas Morris
Thanks for post!
Cultural Trends These may not be crises in short term, but could be crises in long term:
(Note: much of the following could be countered by richer online social interactions and communities.)
Social movements - interruptions and losses (given urgency due to environmental emergencies), for example, cancellations of major environmental activist events planned for spring; partial replacement of eco-justice media with pandemic response media; movement growth waves interrupted so momentum, networking, identification and resource gathering may decease. Of concern: Declines in movement and NGO activities providing and advocating for various social services.
Mental health care interruptions (covered in first point but to emphasize) — medication and therapy (individual and group) decreases may lead to more serious illnesses and symptoms expressing, including alienation, resentment and anti-social personality disorder symptoms; this could exacerbating any of above. More serious in prolonged isolation and distancing. Care giver economy contracts and/or shifts to other exchange system. Decline in religious and spiritual meetings may decrease social support, moral communication and meaning making.
F2F culture (especially youth culture) moves from organic to virtual at a time when current youths are developing more interest in social justice and social goods. And: Virtual gaming and entertainment media use increases; expressive and social benefits of expressive arts (such as dance, music and theater) decrease — Increasing addiction and escapism and isolation. More shifting from from political-economic and cultural agency to ludic (self-expressive and experiential) consumption and expression.
Education and Legal Systems — extensive disruptions feed into above and vice-versa.
There are, of course, creative adaptive responses to some of above.
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Dux Garnifex
Jordan, when a vaccine comes out b/c people will be begging for it-- its fast-tracked safety status may decrease fertility rates. Noting the interested parties have a population control agenda. I hope it may NOT be like MMR for men in 1990s, Tetanus/Dip for women in West Africa, and Gardisil
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Mark How
Current establishment realizes they’re going to lose power, so starts a war with Iran, etc.
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Eugenio Battaglia
one word: poverty
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Brett Alton
Good time to buy a Vette.
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Brandon Hayes
LET'S GET A HANDLE ON ALL THE VECTORS: CoronaVirus HQ
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Bob Reid
I think it's worth taking every one of those a layer deeper and playing out how it will culturally change us. The economic, political and bio/tech systems are very fragile as you correctly note. It begs the questions of will neighbors and colleagues defend, lend, support each other when the national guard is late delivering food? How will people trust each other? Are the guarantees by a govt credible to the population and how will we react to that lack of credibility?
And what is the next, next phase? The central government will wrangle this to the ground, and then what kind of central government will we have? Remember the Patriot act?
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Albert Sanchez
On the #FoodSecurity front think hyper local. Urban farming, organic farming, container gardening, vertical farming, hydroponics, etc.
Micro greens & baby veggies have quick 3-4 week grow cycles. Mushrooms are also quick growers.
Watch this video 👇 its how Cuba survived food & fuel shortages during the early 90's as well as economic collapse.
Key take away: local urban/organic farming. #Organoponicos https://youtu.be/xhfpmKAEfy4 How Cuba Survived Peak Oil youtube.com
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
I am Cuban, people went blind in the 90s due to severe lack of nutrients. The model of "Agricultura Urbana" in Cuba is valid, but extremely limited in Scale, not nearly close enough to what is required.
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Ernesto Eduardo Dobarganes
Also, in times of severe Scarcity these Formulas would require security to restrict access from vandals
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Albert Sanchez
The reestablishment of Victory Gardens! It worked during WW1 & WW2. A farm in every yard and every unused lot. #FoodSecurity https://youtu.be/uBg1ND5X3tA The Gardens of Victory (WWII film) youtube.com
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Adam Paquette
Mid-Long term (assuming general recovery): small & medium businesses fold due to inability to weather the storm, these sectors are bought up by corporations, further centralising politicised supply chains (feedback loop into Authoritarianism). It is crucial to support independent businesses through a medium term transition. Possibility: Smaller food stores, organic co-ops etc vulnerable to a single infection/having to close and threatened by influx of customers could close retail and set up a safe delivery service, or a pre-paid pickup service to avoid point of contact. In general, rapidly transitioning to indirect service in key (food, medical, etc) supply chains.
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Adam Paquette
"*terminal cleans (inc UV light) for ER COVID rooms are taking forever Enviro Services is overwhelmed. Bad as pts are stuck coughing in the waiting room. Rec planning now for Enviro upstaffing, or having a plan for sick pts to wait in their cars (that is not legal here, sadly) "
needs solving
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Poster Comment:
Jordan Hall is a graduate of Harvard Law. He is among my acquaintances which I regard as "mainstream smart". Typically more establishment than outlier. The rest range from think they are smart to smartass.