Things people panic buy

As many people have said, from last weekend, the panic buying expanded from mere toilet paper, pasta, pasta sauce, rice and disinfectants into meat and produce.   Hence, my local Coles is (as of today) still short of most meats and sold out of all chicken (and eggs).   (As others have said, surely fridge and freezer capacity is at its limits now?  People can't keep buying meat to last a month, can they?)

But I was curious as to the things that were still in plentiful supply:  dairy products being a key one.  It seems nothing will persuade people to buy much more yoghurt, butter and cheese, and the range of ready made dips were in plentiful supply too.  These are high calorie, filling foods, mostly with a good "shelf" life in the fridge too - but people don't seem to want to buy it. 

The vegan section still has quite a lot - no one is touching the fake chicken and Quorn is still available. 

The fruit and vegies got re-supplied overnight, although there was not much broccoli - it's probably gone.  

In other oddities - bleach sold out early in this panic period.  What are people doing with it? 

And now for a joke:

An explanation of sorts

I watched about half an hour of the ABC documentary Revelation, about priests convicted of paedophile offences, but didn't really feel like persisting in hearing the sordid stories.

But it was at least interesting for the (obviously controversial) explanation given by self confessed sex abuser of (from memory) 30 odd boys of age range 7 to 17?, Vincent Ryan,  as to why he did it:

“As far as I was concerned, I was in a relationship. I was getting the love and the human touch and belonging.”

To his credit, Ryan fully admits that this is something appalling for him to have believed at the time, and he understands people getting upset at hearing it.   (I don't think there is much risk that it works as a mitigating factor as far as the courts are concerned - he did serve 14 years in prison.)   But I don't see why we should disbelieve him - it is consistent with what I am sure some researchers of clerical child abuse have said about the inherent loneliness of the enforced celibate life being a recurring factor.  

It supports the view, which I think just has a lot of common sense about it, that relaxing celibacy rules for the priesthood would be a healthy thing to do for their emotional lives, and as a consequence, is likely to reduce inappropriate (and, obviously, in some cases, outright criminal) breaches of the rules which many of them cannot live up to.

Update:  here we go, a researcher into the Irish clerical abuse situation gave some evidence to the Royal Commission supports which what I said - 

To be sure, the men knew they could call children at will from classrooms or other venues and that the child would have no option but to come. However, at the level of the sexual and the emotional, their narratives paradoxically indicate that they saw children and young people as potential “friends” and “equals.” In a manner that might be difficult for many adults to comprehend, the clerical perpetrators did not countenance adequately the power imbalances that were involved in their “relationships” and “friendships” with children and young people. Their principal preoccupation was one of personal and individualised inner conflict and distress, mainly related to celibacy, sexuality and inner emotional turmoil and frustration. Many of the men did not feel powerful, despite the power positions they occupied in the communities in which they worked and in the minds of the Irish laity.

It does not appear to be the case that the abuse perpetrated by these men was about gaining power over the victims in order to feel powerful. Rather, their abusive behaviour was more likely to have its genesis in other factors: their interpretation of “friendship”; their blindness to their power position in Irish society, especially in the sexual, emotional and moral sphere; their preoccupation with Church rules and regulations; their fear of Church leaders and those in authority; their lack of empathy to childhood sexual vulnerability; and their own sexual and emotional immaturity and loneliness.  

A little bit about personal cleanliness in history

This short interview of an author of a book on personal hygiene tells us some stuff we have heard before:

The book is a history of personal hygiene in the West from the 17th century to the recent past. It’s about how people have thought about their bodies and treated their bodies. 

In the 17th century, people didn’t have baths regularly. They thought that to be clean, it was enough to change their underwear and wash their underwear frequently. 

The first person I mention in the book is Louis XIV of France, who had two baths in his adult lifetime. They were both for medicinal reasons. He had headaches and his doctors recommended baths. It didn’t work to cure the headaches, so he lived another half century and never bathed again.

but this little detail about the underwear issue was new to me:

That takes the argument back to the 17th century: People appeared to be clean by wearing clean underwear that showed over their outer clothes through collars and cuffs. If you look at Dutch art, one of those marvelous Franz Hals portraits or really any other Dutch artist in the 17th century, you’ll see these people who are very somberly dressed. But they all have something white coming out over the tops of their outer garments: a collar, a cuff. There are often slashes in the outer garments that reveal white clothes next to the skin. 

What these people were doing were displaying their cleanliness. They were differentiating themselves from the poor, who in some cases didn’t wear a second layer of clothing and in other cases couldn’t afford to wash their underclothes. It was a social statement of a different time, one of social differentiation rather than social inclusion. But right now, we clean ourselves to make a statement of social inclusion. We’re making ourselves agreeable to each other.

For those feeling corona-ed out...

...here's a photo from yesterday of our doggo:

Still clueless

I find it hard to believe, but Catallaxy is still running posts from Currency Lad relaying American conservative scepticism that Covid-19 is a really serious issue. 

Ironically, CL, who likes to remind us that he is a smoker (it was a thing 1950's men did, so of course he does), is by virtue of that a person more likely to be at risk of serious consequences if he catches it.

Clearly, until they know a few prominent Right wing figures who get really ill from it, they just won't believe it's a problem.   Italy doesn't convince them.   Of course, other Europeans shutting down to slow its spread just makes them think it's another European socialist plot.

They are - it is impossible to repeat this often enough to match the reality - really stupid.

Update:   This is what the Right is really getting hyped about - that Covid-19 means the West is suddenly going to say "hey, we're going to pull out of getting stuff made in China, because - Communists did this".   Again, the dumb arse of CL:

Australia is a country with fresh air to spare and if we want ourselves and future generations to go on breathing it, we have to learn from this crisis. We have to stop wasting billions on the ‘climate change’ hoax and comparably idiotic extravagances of the phony moral kind and man up. By which I mean, tool up. China has been indulged as a clumsy but incrementally improving boofhead for too long. It is, in fact, a state founded on communist terrorism, built on mass murder and dedicated to global chaos. We have re-build industries and economies that quarantine us from the party (not the people). Not absolutely. Autarky works for a ‘flu-stricken person in self-isolation but not for a country. But we have to do better than this. If we’re on a war footing, let’s fight to win.

Yet, the Communists seem to have shut down their viral problem pretty effectively.  It's the Freedom loving Trumpkins who had trouble coming to grips with it.

Australia's Covid-19 response isn't impressing me all that much...

We may be doing better than the US in our response, and to be honest, I haven't put my attention on the matter of the UK response in any detail, but I can't say that I am overly impressed with the Australian response.   In particular:

a.   a key feature of the response in the countries that are considered to have been successful in containment (Singapore, South Korea, and even China) seems to have been the widespread use of temperature testing.   From what I can gather, the average person going about their day in Singapore would have been tested on entering buildings at least a couple of times a day.  In Australia, lots of people are saying that airports, or at least Brisbane International, have not been testing anyone in any fashion.  It's all down to an honour system.

What does Australia have against widespread temperature testing?

b.  I have also had the impression that there are not really enough testing kits.

c.  I don't really understand why at least high schools cannot close down, as students of that age should be able to stay at home safely and without supervision.  Also, even if "live" classes are a challenge to organise, cannot teachers record video to email out (or make available on a school website) to guide students as to what they need to be studying in their absence?

d.  The PM's "not so serious/it is serious" response has been a bit Trump-lite, but just slightly ahead of the Trump response.

e.   The government response to panic buying has been poor.   It might not be something the government can stop, I guess, but they aren't really trying hard to get the message across that if neighbours and relatives just help each other with trips to the shop for those facing isolation, there is no way urban residents are going to starve to death in their own homes.  

Donald Trump is the counter-example

An article at the BBC:  Why we get nicer as we get older.

(Actually, that's the link heading at the BBC News website, but the article itself is headed "How your personality changes as you age".)

Remember this woman?

Remember my post last week about this complete and utter Trump flunky outraged at "the left" saying that Trump needed to stop holding rallies because of coronavirus?   Here she is, less than a week later:

Well, that's weird...

....an article at The Conversation in which a group of Western academics defend the Chinese practice of snake farming (for food.)

No.  I reckon the one thing they don't factor in is this:  we should want Chinese and Asian people to stop believing that specific animals have specific beneficial medical effects if eaten.   Encouraging eating snakes (which are considered one of the traditional medicine animals) only encourages them to yearn to eat other animals which are endangered or, for disease vector reasons, best left alone.

Yes, so much for biggest populist reason for Brexit

A rotten Army culture

Tonight's 4 Corners story on the war crime incidents involving the SAS in Afghanistan was a devastating indictment of a rotten culture within the "elite" end of our Army, and it's unfortunate that it probably won't get the publicity it deserves due to the Covid-19 concerns. 

You would have to be a Catallaxy level idiot not to see a huge problem with the way some members of the SAS were operating, and how others were letting it slide, as well as how the Army could initially credulously accept version of events which let them label a killing as self defence.   I mean, there was even audio of other SAS members saying they knew that what one of their guys was doing was wrong and he was crazy to let anyone else see it happen.    They also knew it was counter-productive to winning the PR war with the locals.  


I know it's true that the Army - and the SAS in particular - gets to experience the worst of wars by being so "up close and personal" with the death and destruction.  But I also found years ago, from personal experience, that Army officers generally were easily the most "up themselves" of any in the ADF,  with a somewhat obnoxious belief in their being the only really "serious" arm of defence.  It doesn't surprise me that they would be the service with the biggest cultural inclination to excuse themselves of criminality.

A major reckoning is coming - and is well overdue.

Update:  took him a while, but Catallaxy level idiot CL weighs in with a post which is essentially a complaint about how dare the ABC expose a likely war crime.   I doubt he actually watched the 4 Corners program itself, which makes clear the whole internal culture issue, and I also have no doubt he has no personal experience of the defence force.   Just a culture war idiot whining.

Update 2:  read the comments following the thread, and how patently obvious all (or nearly all) have not watched the ABC program in question.   (One points out he hasn't watched 4 Corners since 1997!  Another claims that you just can't trust anything the ABC says, clearly ignorant of the fact that she  can watch the video killing with her own eyes!) 

CL himself, displaying his routine level of ignorance and supposition, opines:

I assume the man was shot because it was a very hot op, he was considered a spotter/combatant and they couldn’t wait around for MPs to arrive. Being tied up with him for any length of time may also have made them sitting ducks.

They deliberately stay ignorant, but are sure that it must all be a beat up anyway.  Because ABC. 

A useful recommendation

I read this on the weekend on Twitter, but here it is written up in The Guardian:  the Europeans think it is safer to take paracetamol if you think you may have caught Covid-19; rather than ibuprofen or aspirin. 

Coronavirus humour

I thought this was amusing:

[For those who need guidance:  it's the house in Parasite.  You would need to watch the movie to know why that's funny.]

The continuing crisis (not Covid-19)

I mentioned last week that I had liked parts of an esoteric book by DT Suzuki about Swedenborg.  Actually, it was mainly the translator's introduction, which gave a short account of the cultural concern in Japan in the early 20th century, as the nation came to the end of the Meiji era with its rapid industrialisation and social changes.

I thought it serves as a good reminder that:

a.  worrying about cultural and social change, as is common in the Western world today, is something that has been around a long time, and is shared by countries that don't have a Christian background.  (I generally like to think that the increasing number of atheists and agnostics in the West is a long lingering effect of the scientific revolution of Darwin, and the discovery of the vast age and size of the universe - remembering that the very nature of galaxies was only realised less than 100 years ago - but Eastern nations whose religion did not carry a key creation creation story had the same social worries); and/or

b. maybe at every period in history, people worry that things are changing for the worse and that they are in the midst of cultural or societal degradation of one kind or another.

Anyway, at the risk of upsetting a publisher, I am just going to cut and paste some relevant pages, and sorry about the size difference (I might try to fix this up later):

There's a gap now, but here's another high profile Japanese suicide from the period:

Well, I had not heard of either the famous suicidal teenager, or General Maresuke killing himself as a sign of loyalty to his boss.

Here's a different translation of the angsty teenager Misao's suicide poem, from Wikipedia:

Thoughts on the precipice

How immense the universe is!
How eternal history is!
I wanted to measure the immensity with this puny five-foot body.
What authority has Horatio's philosophy?^*
The true nature of the whole creation.
Is in one word – “unfathomable”.
With this regret, I am determined to die.
Standing on a rock on the top of a waterfall.
I have no anxiety.
I recognize for the first time.
Great pessimism is nothing but great optimism. 

I don't know - I guess you had to be in Japan at the time to understand why this would cause a sensation.   Also, as I have noted above, this guy is fretting about the size of the universe before scientists even had a clue as to how big it really was.    And that last line if a bit too Zen paradox-y for my taste. 


There is more from the book I want to talk about, but later.

A great take down of Fox News

At Slate, a good article:

Fox News During the Coronavirus Pandemic Is Awful Even by Fox News Standards 

accurately sums up the network  -

The Trump-boosting minimization of the novel coronavirus pandemic may well be a new low for Fox News—but it’s also a logical extension of the network’s decades-long war on objective reality. 

Ever since Fox News launched in 1996, the network has labored to construct its own closed epistemic system, underpinned by a variety of questionable “facts” and baseline assumptions that validate right-wing viewpoints while demonizing liberal values. The point is to prop up right-wing politicians by training its viewers to hate, fear, and distrust anyone who leans even the slightest bit left. Critical to the success of this initiative has been the discrediting of traditional authorities, such as mainstream journalists and academic scholars, that traditionally take a more liberal view on the world. Since Trump became president, this reflexive anti-intellectualism has redoubled as the network has engaged in an all-out campaign to support and bolster Trump by discrediting his many enemies. Who are Trump’s enemies? Anyone who contradicts, criticizes, or disagrees with him, for one thing; anyone who insists on citing objective, observable facts to challenge the president’s narcissistic, narrative-driven worldview. 

Seen through that lens, the network’s subpar coverage of the coronavirus is just another example of Fox doing what it does best: carrying water for a dangerously unqualified president by encouraging their viewers to believe that Trump’s personal grievances are and should be their own.

Virus watch

* As Axios notes:

Trump made 3 false claims in his Oval Office coronavirus speech

* Why aren't more mainstream media making this observation in their reporting on the Trump speech?:

Donald Trump looked sick and terrible during his recent coronavirus speech 

* The Trump travel ban means crowds rush counters in European airports, which is not exactly helpful from a contagion point of view:

'It's ridiculous': Trump travel ban sows panic in European airports

*  But Steve Kates, conspiracy nut and economics lecturer, has a theory:

The media’s hysteria about coronavirus is intended to destroy the American economy because media types are focused single-mindedly on defeating Trump.

There is therefore no longer any independent source of information you can trust since the media is now fully corrupted by its political messaging. Who can you turn to?

*  Tom Hywood in the SMH writes a totally tone deaf piece about how, despite the coronavirus giving him intense headaches for three days which were serious enough to have a heap of tests in a hospital to rule out a brain tumour, he wishes people would stop being "hysterical" about the fact they're worried they might have caught it from him(!).   As someone on Twitter summarises:

 And another:

Updates:

*  The transparent appeal to xenophobia by Trump in his speech is all about his ignorant "base", and is an embarrassment to all serious people.

Which means the Catholic who is only serious in the degradation he causes to the reputation of Catholicism, CL, has another go at his trademark "Whataboutism".   "Oh look, CNN once referred to it as the Wuhan virus, so it's OK for the President to keep pandering to xenophobia." 

*  You would have to suspect the virus would hit India hard, but so far, it's hard to know what is going on.  But nationalist Hindus with their faith in all things "cow" (promoted by government officials?!) indicates problems ahead:

India has conducted nearly 5,000 COVID-19 tests so far, according to the World Health Organization, which says that the “country is responding with urgency as well as transparency.” But so far, India has only reported 74 confirmed COVID-19 cases and one death, on Thursday. Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute tells TIME that count is “just not right.” He believes there must be many more cases, but they have just not been identified. “I’m deeply worried that there’s a lot of community transmission and we are just not aware of it because there is not widespread testing,” he says.

Jha expects there will be a large uptick in cases over the next two to three weeks as testing capabilities improve. Jha and other experts worry that misinformation from government officials and BJP lawmakers touting cow products and unproven homeopathic remedies as ways to prevent infection add to the country’s challenges in containing an outbreak.

The potential Tom Hanks crisis

I think it obvious.  If:

a.  Tom Hanks were to die of the coronavirus, and

b.  Donald Trump never catches it,

it would be a convincing proof that there really is no God.  Lisbon 1755 would have nothing on that inducement to a crisis of faith.

Depending on mood, my seriousness here ranges between 50 and 95%.

And by the way:  I just checked on Google Maps, and he's barely 62km from me as the crow flies.   I feel I should go and stand on the footpath with a sympathetic placard during the weekend.   I hope he tweets something positive about his treatment at what is, after all, a pretty new and modern hospital. 

And one final thing:  can you imagine what his death in Australia would do to our tourism industry after the appalling fire and smoke apocalypse of early 2020? I think we should all just start growing potatoes and chickens and back yard now, just in case Australia has to permanently close for business....

Virus has driven them mad

I am gaining some sense of schadenfreude from watching the wingnut residents of Catallaxy work themselves into a frenzy caused by the attempt to reconcile their fantasy belief that Donald Trump's presidency was and is a glorious success with the unavoidable reality that his performance in the face of a genuine emergency has been as terrible and utterly embarrassing as every Never Trumper always knew it would. 

Steve Kates hasn't been posting much, and seem truly confused as to who to believe, seeing his Dear Leader's early denial of seriousness of the issue has now been transformed into a foreign invasion crisis with an ill-considered response that has hurt the markets more.

Currency Lad, forever stuck in 1950's era nostalgia for Mums who stayed at home and men who went out in the world to do men's things, even said yesterday, after a brief uptick in the stock market, that "Looks like Trump was right again".  Hilarious.

[He operates now as a pathetically predictable, culturally anachronistic, unpaid, completely unconvincing political shill, whose speciality in all matters is "whataboutism." (He cannot write anything more that about 200 words on any Democrat without mentioning Ted Kennedy's unfortunate history.)  Sometimes I suspect he doesn't really believe some of the guff he writes, but then again, he might also write so to convince himself and starts buying into the one-eyed fantasies.  As I have often said:  pretend something for long enough and you can start believing it.]

There are many others who are crapping on there - some are critical of Trump on this issue, but very few.    And the nonsense that some are spouting is profound.

We also have the spectacle of waiting to see if the chronically insecure and needy Lizzie and her high risk husband can get to and from an American based cruise ship without catching the virus.  Look, they deny climate change and think all of Australia's eucalyptus forest should be replaced with foreign trees that don't burn as well - we're not talking sensible people here, but they have money to burn and are a living example of Dunning-Kruger incompetence to judge risk wisely.   They'll probably make it back, but it's clearly a high risk enterprise.  

Anyway, it's - sort of - entertaining.

Update:  here's a quality [sarc] contribution to the blog.  Literally, a man bragging about beating up a woman (petty thief or not - it's wrong.)  

Easiest money ever

Noted at the ABC:

Kristy Wildy did not know she could get paid for donating her poo, but it was an unexpected bonus for the 55-year-old who has been contributing for the past 12 months.

Ms Wildy has been a blood donor for years, and she said donating her stool was a no-brainer.

"I wanted to become a donor because I thought I was a fairly healthy person and I would have something to contribute," she said.

Ms Wildy donates about three or four times a week and said the process was quick and easy.

She said the $25-per-donation payment was a bonus and could be lucrative, depending on donation rates.

Who would have thought...

...that Democrats voting in the primaries might not care for the candidate who kept going on Fox News repeatedly to diss Obama and Hillary Clinton?: