Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Unthinkable doesn’t mean unsinkable.
As we all know, the “unsinkable” Titanic suffered a glancing collision with an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. A half-hour after the iceberg had opened six of the ship’s 16 watertight compartments, it was not at all apparent that the mighty vessel had been fatally wounded, as there was no evidence of damage topside. Indeed, some eyewitnesses reported that passengers playfully scattered the ice left on the foredeck by the encounter.
But some rudimentary calculations soon revealed the truth to the officers: the ship would sink and there was no way to stop it. The ship was designed to survive four watertight compartments being compromised, and could likely stay afloat if five were opened to the sea, but not if six compartments were flooded. Water would inevitably spill over into adjacent compartments in a domino-like fashion until the ship sank.
We can sympathize with the disbelief of the officers, and with their contradictory duty to simultaneously reassure passengers and attempt to goad them into the lifeboats. Passengers were reluctant to heed the warning because it was at odds with their own perceptions. With the interior still warm and bright with lights, it seemed far more dangerous to clamber into an open lifeboat and drift off into the icy Atlantic than it did to stay onboard.
The evidence was undeniable, but humanity’s first response is denial, regardless of the evidence. The evidence that the coronavirus is contagious is undeniable, as is the evidence that carriers who have no symptoms can transmit the virus to others.
Just as the eventual sinking of Titanic could be extrapolated from the basic facts (six watertight compartments were flooding), so the eventual spread of the coronavirus can be extrapolated from these basic facts.
But the official global response is “these facts don’t matter,” and so hundreds of airline flights continue to leave cities swept by the disease. That once the virus spreads globally it will impact the global economy is easily extrapolated, but few want to consider the sinking of the unsinkable, so they don’t.
As a result, the first lifeboats left the doomed ship only partially full. Only when it became undeniable that the ship was doomed did people attempt to get on a lifeboat, but by then it was too late: the lifeboats had all been launched.
This may be an appropriate analogy to the U.S. stock market, which is widely considered “unsinkable” due to the Federal Reserve’s unlimited ability to create “liquidity” (cash) out of thin air.
The stock market just had a minor collision with the coronavirus, and few are heeding the warnings, preferring to heed the reassurances that thanks to the omnipotent Federal Reserve, the market is unsinkable, and the party in the First Class deck will continue indefinitely.
The lifeboats are already leaving, but few have escaped the doomed ship, i.e. sold all their equities.
When the crowd partying in First Class awakens to the inevitability of the stock market sinking, it will be too late to get on the lifeboat, i.e. sell out at the top.
A half-hour after the fatal collision, the reassurances are so comforting and credible: how could this great ship sink? Indeed, how could a stock market racing so confidently to Dow 30,000 sink to Dow 20,000 or even 10,000? It’s unthinkable.
Unthinkable doesn’t mean unsinkable.
Why Our Financial System Is Like the Titanic (March 15, 2016)
Here are some informative science-based links on the coronavirus, courtesy of longtime correspondent Cheryl A.:
Another Decade, Another Coronavirus
Map of Global Case of Wuhan Coronavirus
Coronavirus contagious even in incubation stage, China’s health authority says
Preliminary Risk Assessment of Coronavirus Spreading
How fast can biotech come up with a vaccine for the latest outbreak?
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who will want to thoroughly disinfect all the commercial planes, everywhere? Not just the people carriers but the ones carrying fedex and ups packages, medicines, produce, meat, clothing- anything that a germ could survive on long enough attach to a new host. Cargo container ships arriving in port with half the crew dead?
I tire of this mexi beer virus,have plans this summer including concerts with large amounts of people so just do what you have to virus and do it with alacrity,I have plans!
Talk about insouciance! Three comments so far and none show they can read. Let me help you: he says that if you are still in the market, in the words of Daniel Shaver’s murderer, your fucked.
I love insouciance first thing in the morning.
I love [the smell of] insouciance first thing in the morning.
I love to still be alive the first thing in the morning!
Peqqer- Not to be insouciant but please stop winking at me, it’s creeping me out dude.
More and more I’m thinking this event was an “accidentally on purpose” event to push a new vaccine on us and here’s why. He’s not the only one talking about this I just think he presents it better in a short time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1FfYzLhViA
“an “accidentally on purpose” event to push a new vaccine on us”
vaccines take time. if they have significant quantities of vaccine after only a few weeks, then yeah, it’s a conspiracy – but a blatantly obvious one.
Good little video, MC……..but W.H.O. is behind it?
https://www.activistpost.com/2020/01/did-bill-gates-world-economic-forum-predict-coronavirus-outbreak-an-inside-look-may-shock-you.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10814760/bill-gates-predicted-coronavirus-simulation-33-million-die/
Hmmmm…..’33’…..kind of a masonic thing ?
and debunked by buzzfeed and politifact:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/qanon-supporters-and-anti-vaxxers-are-spreading-a-hoax-that
https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/article/2020/jan/24/fact-checking-hoaxes-and-conspiracies-about-corona/
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum <—–=
You can bet your bippy this viral outbreak is as random as "elections"……don't forget, Epstein killed himself
I can vision cash going away as it may be a carrier.
I was in Bode’s class in ’72 when Christine Pasanen read her award winning short story, it was about a future school where kids wore starwars stormtrooper uniforms and read from monitors on their desk. Today it would hardly win a participation ribbon.
I agree that currency carries germs as well as cocaine dust and it will become anathema as an infection hysteria unfolds.
“The evidence was undeniable, but humanity’s first response is denial, regardless of the evidence.”
actually many people’s first considered action is to extrapolate or outright make up evidence to support what they want to believe in the first place.
“The evidence that the coronavirus is contagious is undeniable, as is the evidence that carriers who have no symptoms can transmit the virus to others.”
… well lordy. talk about stating the obvious. but it’s a necessary first step up the ladder from normal flu statistics to arriving at “we’re all gonna die!” again.
You know, I commented about a week ago on a thread that this had a strange “feel” to it. That feeling has done naught but grow.
1) Five cases in the US in a week, two in Canada. The last reported were the Canadian couple a couple days back. The reports, of course, lagged in time behind the actual diagnosis and patient isolation. Since then, nada, zip, zero. Okayyyyy…
2) This thing has an R0 variously reported between 2 and 5.
3) Also, it is reported to have a long incubation time with patients shedding infectious virus even when not symptomatic.
4) Taking the last two points together, it borders on the unbelievable that we have no new cases reported. We should have expected at least another 3-4 cases by now.
No new cases reported by Friday?
Then this is a complete nothing burger OR the authorities have clamped down on reporting. I am tending toward the former but have limited risk if I am wrong.
Da P
Who can worry about a potential global killer pandemic when instead we are nearly compelled to observe 24 hour media coverage plus mourn the passing of a jungleball player who was all too important to worry about IFR ( instrument flight rules) conditions?
Priorities, Perfessor, priorities.
I imagine it was pilot error. He was going to follow the freeway but ended up flying over the mountains, how did that happen? He said he would climb and then began descending at a rate of 45 mph while doing nearly 200 mph. over hilly terrain. He was told to keep under 2500, he was at 1400 when he dropped a bit and hit the ground at 1050 feet. Not a lot of room for error. An earwitness said he heard the craft flying low, then a sputter and an explosion. I imagine the helo hit the ground before the engine sputtered and died. There were white people on board also, in case you can’t feel sympathy for a black baller.
One person is in isolation in Lawrence, Ks at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. This was reported on the local news. Patient returned from Wuhan last week, coincidentally, the week classes resumed at KU. Labs were sent off yesterday. That is all that has been reported.
Someone showed up yesterday in the ER of the hospital where my daughter is a nurse that was supposed to be a suspected case. She doesn’t work in the ER so this is hospital gossip. Her hospital is small and has one negative pressure room. These things are bound to be happening all over the country in college towns that have more than couple Chinese students. Her hospital is not a college town.