horsemouth and his struggle for dignity and status

outside it has clearly rained. it is due to rain pretty much all day tomorrow. at some point horsemouth will have to go for a walk.

'when this bloody 'demics over (oh how happy we shall be)'

big party with cake horsemouth reckons. but will that be enough to refloat the economy? time will tell. 

meanwhile he may have been being too pessimistic about things. the admissions rate has been falling for about a week (the number of people getting sick with the virus) this means that in about another week the death toll will start falling. we will have reached peak with the virus 'controlled' by the lock down. it will then die back until we free up (at which point it will all kick off again at least until such point we have a significant proportion of the population vaccinated). 

it will take a couple of (non monday) days of declining deaths to be confident we have reached peak. 

in fact there's not really a post-covid (in the sense of eradicating the virus). in the sense that we don't know even when twice vaccinated how long immunity lasts (it lasts until the news tells us it has stopped working). further we don't know that immunity will be maintained give new mutations in the virus as it becomes endemic in the human population in the poorer countries (i.e. the vast majority of the human population), the people it would require a concerted global effort to vaccinate.

there used to be a term third world that described a structural relationship with the western world where the poorer countries are kept poor (and not just somehow by accident the poorer countries) but apparently it is not PC to say it anymore. please pardon horsemouth for this slip of the tongue he's an old man. 

this is because, vaccinating the adult human population of the planet (twice), it is a huge world historic task and yet it is a minimum to avoid the risk of another pandemic. and indeed the health measures necessary to deal with further pandemics (that elusive test, track and trace) would need to be put in place on a global scale also. 

of course this is if anyone is serious about it. of course the governments of the world could merely take measures to vaccinate their own flocks and then slouch back into herbivorous pastoralism and the sheering of the sheep. 

horsemouth regrets to say the most likely outcome is some kind of bodge between the two. 

the virus has acted as a most excellent shock therapy to move society (and by this horsemouth means the middle classes) to working from home/ consuming at home, the working classes (the ones we don't mention) still have to travel and work face to face (they are in the meat/meet world of virus transmission and death). and thus it has always been since the masque of the red death (horsemouth's only piece of historical evidence). 

there has, of course, been disaster capitalism style looting by the ruling class and their mates (they have activated their networks and pulled out some plums) in the sourcing of PPE for example, in test, track and trace,  in stimulus packages. but that's not the big change (it's just a continuation of how they are). 

horsemouth suspects that even in their myopia the chattering classes have it right - it's the working from home.  

the other big change is the rerun of the operation of 2008 where the bill for this crisis is bounced on the poor instead of the rich. there again what is ideological is likely to take precedence over what is actually in the economic interest of the ruling class. it is in their interest to run the economy hot but can they get over the ideological hurdle of  allowing the poor to get a 'free ride'. 

beyond this (and coming down fast) is the climate crisis and the measures that will be necessary to deal with that. 

horsemouth's mum is reading head hand heart: the struggle for dignity and status in the 21st century by david goodhart. this is a future of work type book published in 2020. 

in fact, having done a (cursory) bit of reading, rather than on relying on a five minute chat with his mum during which he didn't listen properly, horsemouth finds the classic metropolis strategy of reducing social tension by recognition of the value of the work of others in society - the head must learn to recognise the value of the work of the hands  and the heart. (and you know this is important because it is a member of the head telling you this).

goodhart (is it really just a name) is a head-shrinker. by which he means we have put too much effort and resources into educating too many people and in fact society would run better if less people were educated to such a high standard. (this may well be true of post brexit britain - that we must all learn to be grateful - horsemouth couldn't possibly comment). 

now horsemouth is not interested in recognition and status. he is interested in cold hard cash, in the worker's share of GDP,  in improved pay for nurses and careworkers and the dude who delivers the pizzas. in this way we can measure how well we are doing and also by means of political struggle  necessary to achieve this approach a condition where the workers have power and agency (blah blah). 

anyway horsemouth will have a crack at head hand heart when his mum is done with it to see what the contemporary styles in futurology say. (until then he'll have to make do with the daily torygraph business section).