Wall Street Crash (October 1929) ; https://www.marxists.org/

…we recognize that social isolation for millions of Californians is anxiety-inducing, but … we need to meet this moment head-on and lean in,” Newsom said…

Coronavirus forces radical changes to California with sweeping restrictions on life

By PHIL WILLON, ALEX WIGGLESWORTH, TARYN LUNA, LAURA NEWBERRY

MARCH 16, 20208:59 AM

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-16/coronavirus-newsom-bar-closures-seniors-medical-conditions-self-isolate

SACRAMENTO  —  In a sweeping effort to slow the spread of coronavirus in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday urged people 65 and older and those with chronic health conditions to isolate themselves from others — a directive that reflects the fast-moving nature of a public health crisis that threatens the well-being of some 40 million Californians.

Hours later, Mayor Eric Garcetti said Los Angeles bars and nightclubs will close and restaurants must halt dine-in service and limit their business to takeout orders until March 31. The order became effective at midnight Sunday.

Movie theaters, gyms and fitness centers also will be closed, Garcetti said in a video news conference Sunday. Grocery stores, pharmacies and food banks will remain open. And Garcetti announced a moratorium on evictions for renters.

As businesses across Los Angeles took action, more than 50,000 of the city’s government employees are still being asked to go to work.

City employees can’t refuse to go to work out of fear that they’ll be infected with the virus, Wendy Macy, general manager of the city’s personnel department, wrote in a memo to department heads Friday. Telecommuting options are available for some employees and some exceptions are allowed, according to emergency guidelines issued by the city’s personnel department.

Newsom also called on bars and brewery and winery tasting rooms statewide to close their doors to patrons as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the state continued to rise.

“We recognize that social isolation for millions of Californians is anxiety-inducing, but … we need to meet this moment head-on and lean in,” Newsom said.

But Newsom again stopped short of using the full force of his authority to mandate response measures to protect Californians from the virus that causes COVID-19, a global pandemic that has resulted in six deaths and 335 confirmed cases in the state.

Instead, the governor said his request of bars and pubs is akin to an announcement he made last week asking for the cancellation of gatherings of 250 people or more. The governor is allowing restaurants to remain open and advised customers to practice “deep social distancing” when dining out — in effect, a recommendation to reduce occupancy by half.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has introduced even more stringent recommendations, suggesting that events of 50 people or more should be suspended for about two months. When feasible, organizers could modify events to be virtual, but in-person events of that size should be canceled or postponed, the agency said Sunday.

The efforts come as more coronavirus cases were reported, including a positive test for a police officer at Los Angeles International Airport. Los Angeles County reported 16 new cases Sunday, bringing the county’s total to 69.

A USC student who had recently returned from international travel but has not been on or near the USC campuses — also tested positive for coronavirus, the university said Sunday. The student was reportedly in good condition and self-isolating at home.

San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and San Bernardino counties recorded their first cases of the virus over the weekend. Santa Clara County, which has been the hardest-hit county in the state, announced 23 more cases for a total of 114.

Of California’s confirmed cases, 70 are believed to be from community transmission, the state Department of Public Health said. The rest are a mix of confirmed person-to-person transmissions related to travel or patients returning to the country after contracting the disease elsewhere.

Newsom’s guidelines follow other broad efforts announced in recent days to combat the virus in California. Most of those have been taken on the local level, including the decision by dozens of school districts to shut down for the next two weeks or longer.

The governor said he would issue additional directives on Tuesday to schools that remain open and said he was especially focused on providing support to low-income families.
He suggested some local school officials had not fully thought through the consequences when closing their campuses, including how to continue providing meals to students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and how to ensure that students with special needs receive adequate care and supervision.

The virus also has disrupted college entrance exams. The company that administers the ACT announced Monday that it has moved its testing date from April 4 to June 13 in response to concerns over the pandemic.

“ACT is committed to making every effort to help those students impacted by this test date change, particularly those high school seniors who are facing deadlines for fall 2020 college admission,” ACT Chief Executive Officer Marten Roorda said in a statement.

Newsom estimated that his directive to seniors would affect 5.3 million Californians. While that number includes those most at risk simply due to their age, he said it does not include the millions more who have underlying health conditions that would make them vulnerable.

The governor’s office said his request for seniors to remain at home also extended to residents with underlying health issues, such as chronic kidney disease, asthma, chronic liver disease, pregnancies in the last two weeks, metabolic disorders, heart disease and other conditions that make them more susceptible to serious illness from the coronavirus.

In a statement, Garcetti commended Newsom’s guidance.

“Everything we do right now will determine the outcome of this crisis, and we can save lives if we stay calm, care for one another, and take forceful steps to protect our communities,” Garcetti said. “That’s why we must follow the guidelines laid out by Gov. Newsom, build on them for local needs, and put the health and safety of the most vulnerable above all else.”

The governor also announced that the state’s 108,000 homeless people would be the top priority for mitigation policies, with a significant push to move them indoors.
Though details remained unclear, he said the state had hotels and motels that could be used to provide shelter, along with an additional 450 state-owned trailers sent to “critical points” to supplement those that were deployed in Los Angeles, Stockton, Sonoma and other places before the outbreak.

Last week, Newsom issued an executive order allowing the state to commandeer some private properties to provide beds for isolation. Newsom said the goal of the newly announced measures aimed at the unsheltered population was to “get people into environments where we can address their growing anxiety and our growing concerns.”

He stopped short, however, of saying the attempt to bring people indoors would be mandated or require law enforcement intervention.

In recent days, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the CDC have also detailed guidelines for homeless shelters and encampments, many of which include increasing sanitation and providing detailed suggestions for handling ill people in shelter settings.

“I am not ratcheting up a mind-set of enforcement,” Newsom said.

Sacramento mayor Darrell Steinberg, co-head of Newsom‘s statewide task force on homelessness, said Newsom‘s move to bring homeless people inside was crucial.

“They are very susceptible to disease and infection,“ said Steinberg of unsheltered populations. Leaving them outdoors, he said, is “really an invitation for a more wide spread of the disease.

Randy Simonsen, a 65-year-old homeless man in Sacramento, said that he would like to go indoors during this crisis. He listened to the governor’s speech on a transistor radio and heard the call for older residents to stay home. But “I don’t have one,” Simonsen said.

In L.A. County, Dockweiler State Beach may be used to temporarily house people who have been ordered to isolate or quarantine because of the coronavirus. The beach’s RV park on Vista del Mar is one of several locations the county could use for that purpose, according to a news release from the City of El Segundo. Officials said the public should avoid the area.

Anxious Californians continued to clear the shelves of local grocery stores. The Los Angeles Police Department assured residents on Twitter that there is no food shortage and stores will restock.

“The water supply is clean & safe to drink, so there’s no need to buy water in bulk,” the department said.

Grocery chains have announced changes to deal with the relentless throngs of shoppers.

Ralphs, for example, said it is working with suppliers to replenish high-demand products, and its store hours have been curtailed so employees have more time to restock. Albertsons — which operates the grocery chains Vons, Pavilions and Safeway — said it is taking similar steps.

Starbucks announced new efforts to limit the number of people gathering at its coffeehouses. All of its stores in the U.S. and Canada will move to a “to go” model for at least two weeks and will remove all seating in cafe and patio areas, the company announced Sunday.

As airports across the country were thrown into chaos this weekend because of hastily rolled-out health screenings for travelers returning from Europe, LAX remained relatively calm. But average wait times were still about 30 minutes longer than usual, said LAX spokesman Heath Montgomery.

Though many businesses have been affected by a slower streams of customers, bars in West Hollywood were packed on Sunday afternoon.

At Rocco’s WeHo and Flaming Saddles, drag queens danced to deafening music as they were cheered on by crowds handing them dollar bills on the stage. In these places, at least, life seemed to go on as normal.

Not everyone was proceeding with business as usual. At the Abbey, West Hollywood’s most popular gay bar, the gates were closed. On each door, a sign read: “As we continue to navigate the rapidly changing conditions with COVID 19, the Abbey is closing temporarily. We plan to open as soon as our public health officials tell us it is safe.”

Jimmy Han, who owns Frank ‘n Hank bar in Koreatown, said he decided to close his bar down Saturday after seeing customers not follow the 6-foot social distancing rule he tried to implement.

“I’ll be losing a lot of money and so will my employees, but honestly, that’s the least of our concern right now,” he said. “We’re more worried about public health and how this is going to impact the economy long term.”

Times staff writers Suhauna Hussain, Alejandra Reyes-Velarde, John Myers, Anita Chabria, Benjamin Oreskes and Hannah Fry contributed to this report.

 

On Guy Fawkes Night in London in 1997, a financially desperate 16-year-old, Evey Hammond, sexually solicits men who are actually members of the state secret police, called “The Finger”. Preparing to rape and kill her, the Fingermen are dispatched by V, a cloaked anarchist wearing a mask, who later remotely detonates explosives at the Houses of Parliament before bringing Evey to his contraband-filled underground lair, the “Shadow Gallery”. Evey tells V her life story, which reveals her own past as well as England’s recent history. During a dispute over Poland in the late 1980s the Soviet Union and the United States, under the presidency of Ted Kennedy, entered a global nuclear war which left continental Europe and Africa uninhabitable. Although Britain itself was not bombed due to the Labour government’s decision to remove American nuclear missiles, it faced environmental devastation and famine due to the nuclear winter. After a period of lawlessness in which Evey’s mother died, the remaining corporations and fascist groups took over England and form a new totalitarian government, Norsefire. Evey’s father, a former socialist, was arrested by the regime.

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta#Book_1:_Europe_After_the_Reign-

Even a limited India-Pakistan nuclear war would bring global famine, says study

MARCH 16, 2020

by Columbia University

https://phys.org/news/2020-03-regional-nuclear-war-global-food.html

The concept of nuclear winter—a years-long planetary freeze brought on by airborne soot generated by nuclear bombs—has been around for decades. But such speculations have been based largely on back-of-the-envelope calculations involving a total war between Russia and the United States. Now, a new multinational study incorporating the latest models of global climate, crop production and trade examines the possible effects of a less gargantuan but perhaps more likely exchange between two longtime nuclear-armed enemies: India and Pakistan. It suggests that even a limited war between the two would cause unprecedented planet-wide food shortages and probable starvation lasting more than a decade. The study appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Of an estimated 14,000 nuclear warheads worldwide, close to 95 percent belong to the United States and Russia. India and Pakistan are thought to have about 150 each. The study examines the potential effects if they were to each set off 50 Hiroshima-size bombs—less than 1 percent of the estimated world arsenal.

In addition to direct death and destruction, the authors say that firestorms following the bombings would launch some 5 million tons of soot toward the stratosphere. There, it would spread globally and remain, absorbing sunlight and lowering global mean temperatures by about 1.8 degrees C (3.25 F) for at least five years. The scientists project that this would in turn cause production of the world’s four main cereal crops—maize, wheat, soybeans and rice—to plummet an average 11 percent over that period, with tapering effects lasting another five to 10 years.

“Even this regional, limited war would have devastating indirect implications worldwide,” said Jonas Jägermeyr, a postdoctoral scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies who led the study. “It would exceed the largest famine in documented history.”

According to the study, crops would be hardest hit in the northerly breadbasket regions of the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia and China. But paradoxically, southerly regions would suffer much more hunger. That is because many developed nations in the north produce huge surpluses, which are largely exported to nations in the Global South that are barely able to feed themselves. If these surpluses were to dry up, the effects would ripple out through the global trade system. The authors estimate that some 70 largely poor countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people would then see food supplies drop more than 20 percent.

Some adverse effects on crops would come from shifts in precipitation and solar radiation, but the great majority would stem from drops in temperature, according to the study. Crops would suffer most in countries north of 30 degrees simply because temperatures there are lower and growing seasons shorter to begin with. Even modest declines in growing-season warmth could leave crops struggling to mature, and susceptible to deadly cold snaps. As a result, harvests of maize, the world’s main cereal crop, could drop by nearly 20 percent in the United States, and an astonishing 50 percent in Russia. Wheat and soybeans, the second and third most important cereals, would also see steep declines. In southerly latitudes, rice might not suffer as badly, and cooler temperatures might even increase maize harvests in parts of South America and Africa. But this would do little to offset the much larger declines in other regions, according to the study.

Since many developed countries produce surpluses for export, their excess production and reserves might tide them over for at least a few years before shortages set in. But this would come at the expense of countries in the Global South. Developed nations almost certainly would impose export bans in order to protect their own populations, and by year four or five, many nations that today already struggle with malnutrition would see catastrophic drops in food availability. Among those the authors list as the hardest hit: Somalia, Niger, Rwanda, Honduras, Syria, Yemen and Bangladesh.

If nuclear weapons continue to exist, “they can be used with tragic consequences for the world,” said study coauthor Alan Robock, a climatologist at Rutgers University who has long studied the potential effects of nuclear war. “As horrible as the direct effects of nuclear weapons would be, more people could die outside the target areas due to famine.”

Previously, Jägermeyr has studied the potential effects of global warming on agriculture, which most scientists agree will suffer badly. But, he said, a sudden nuclear-caused cooling would hit food systems far worse. And, looking backward, the the effects on food availability would be four times worse than any previously recorded global agriculture upsets caused by droughts, floods, or volcanic eruptions, he said.

The study might be erring on the conservative side. For one, India and Pakistan may well have bombs far bigger than the ones the scientists use in their assumptions. For another, the study leaves India and Pakistan themselves out of the crop analyses, in order to avoid mixing up the direct effects of a war with the indirect ones. That aside, Jägermeyr said that one could reasonably assume that food production in the remnants of the two countries would drop essentially to zero. The scientists also did not factor in the possible effects of radioactive fallout, nor the probability that floating soot would cause the stratosphere to heat up at the same time the surface was cooling. This would in turn cause stratospheric ozone to dissipate, and similar to the effects of now-banned refrigerants, this would admit more ultraviolet rays to the earth’s surface, damaging humans and agriculture even more.

Much attention has been focused recently on North Korea’s nuclear program, and the potential for Iran or other countries to start up their own arsenals. But many experts have long regarded Pakistan and India as the most dangerous players, because of their history of near-continuous conflict over territory and other issues. India tested its first nuclear weapon in 1974, and when Pakistan followed in 1998, the stakes grew. The two countries have already had four full-scale conventional wars, in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999, along with many substantial skirmishes in between. Recently, tensions over the disputed region of Kashmir have flared again.

“We’re not saying a nuclear conflict is around the corner. But it is important to understand what could happen,” said Jägermeyr.

The paper was coauthored by a total of 19 scientists from five countries, including three others from Goddard, which is affiliated with Columbia University’s Earth Institute: Michael Puma, Alison Heslin and Cynthia Rosenzweig. Jägermeyr also has affiliations with the University of Chicago and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

More information: Jonas Jägermeyr el al., “A regional nuclear conflict would compromise global food security,” PNAS (2020). http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1919049117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences