At different times on this blog, readers have harkened back to “the good old days”—when people knew their neighbors, local farmers raised much of the nation’s food, doctors made house calls, and crises like wars brought people together.
Trying to make sense of the current coronavirus pandemic might seem a fool’s errand, but whether you think it’s for real or some kind of conspiracy or hoax, one thing seems certain: the spillover will change our lives in significant ways, including bring back some of the best aspects of “the good old days.” Leaving aside the controversial stuff about whether government is doing what it should be doing to contain the virus (a big thing to leave aside), we can begin to see some of the shifts.
Two of the big shifts I see seem at first to be opposites, but they are actually related in the benefits they potentially confer:
- New life for local and small food producers. Already, people are seeing the problems with the corporate food system in a crisis. The supply chains are not only long and complicated, but they are easily disrupted because they are keyed to “just-in-time” systems that emphasize minimal inventory all along the way. Thus, they are thrown out of whack during panic buying of the kind we have witnessed during the last few weeks. Many basics like rice, beans, and pasta (and toilet paper) have become unavailable from major chains like Publix, Costco and Whole Foods. The shortages beget more panic buying when stores restock, so it becomes very difficult to restore sanity to the marketplace. Enter local food. As Mark McAfee noted in a comment following my previous post, his raw dairy business, which owns and controls its supply chain, is going gangbusters, and can keep up. In an email to customers, Edwin Shank of The Family Cow in Pennsylvania, put it this way: “That is the great advantage of buying directly from our farm. The food chain is very, very short and resilient and dependable. So even though we may be out of a food item briefly, like milk on Friday evening, all we had to do was milk the cows on Saturday morning and we had milk again for Saturday store customers. And we have plenty of milk for this week too.” A New Hampshire co-op I am a member of has tried to reassure members who started panic buying that it has long favored local producers, and expects those relationships to help keep supplies predictable going forward. In the Boston area, small retailers of produce, which grow their own or have long-established suppliers, are offering home delivery and early shopping for older residents, and drawing shoppers from the big chains.
- Acceleration toward an online future. We’re all being forced to move more of our lives online, whether we like it or not. College courses have moved online, cancellation of huge trade shows has moved commerce even more forcefully online. Corporate employees are working from home and business meetings that once happened in person are now happening care of Zoom. Equally significant, health care is increasingly moving online as doctors are now handling non-corona-virus cases via FaceTime and Zoom video conferences rather than office visits. Consumers and business people are seeing that a lot of the travel, including commuting, wasn’t as essential as everyone once assumed. While we endure “social distancing,” we actually are sowing the seeds for more meaningful personal and business relationships.
So a big question: How much of these shifts is transitory and how much is permanent? I suspect it’s not entirely transitory, or permanent. The shock of the shift has been traumatic for many people. Many people never imagined they’d see out-of-stock supermarket shelves for days on end, but traumatic change often leads to significant long-term changes in behavior. Yet even if 40% or 50% of the changes stick—significant numbers of consumers stay committed to local producers and significant numbers of commuters continue working from home, for example—the effects will be huge.
The restaurant, auto, oil, and travel businesses could suffer permanent hits. On the positive side, traffic jams could become much less frequent. The climate crisis could abate.
Health care also could be transformed ever more to a do-it-yourself mode. Routine testing like blood pressure and heart rate readings have already become things consumers can do for themselves. Our electronic watches are gaining capabilities to do things like provide EKGs and before long will be providing blood sugar and other readings directly to health care providers. The less we need to visit doctors and hospitals, the better for all of us.
There is lots more that is destined to change because of this crisis, and much of it could be favorable to our lives. Maybe not exactly like “the good old days.” But a not-bad imitation. Too bad it’s taken a pandemic to spark the shifts.
David. Thx for writing about this.
When our trucks arrive at stores, the dairy case is completely empty. No pasteurized products nothing. We are told to just fill up the case with opdc raw milk and triple the order. Products all gone in 6 hours.
Consumers arrive and buy opdc raw. They don’t know what raw is but they have zero choice. They taste it, they feel it in their tummies. They love it. It does not give them gas. They call and ask questions. We teach and make new friends
Local matters. Having 20 trucks and responding to customers directly. Resilience matters. Being adaptive matters.
I have so many big dairy friends that have plenty of milk but no processors have capacity to respond and no trucks to deliver.
Love Local ❤️?.
Not to Mention that people are googling and discovering all the Pubmed NIH published studies on raw milk and its immune building qualities.
It just got real. Being able to feed our local communities is a great honor. We are being very careful to assure that our vender suppliers keep us in stock. Making sure plastic bottles are available…. super critical. Labels. Critical. Caps critical.
The highways are wide open. Fuel is cheap.
It’s a perfect storm. Failed immune systems and a viral pathogen. Immune building gut biome raw milk superfood. Being prepared with the trucks.
From Grass to Glass. Wow.
My greatest disappointment. The FDA and CDC could careless about building immunity through gut biome food. So I guess it’s up to us.
Farmers over Pharmacies!
You are right Mark. I have not heard one news report about building our gut immunity. Thank goodness as farmers we have the chance to do that.
we have dairy shortages here in Michigan,too. We used to have over 200 small dairy farms in our county in 1983 (when we started farming) we had a cheese plant , local meat and we did not have to rely so much on the truck coming in. I make sure and mention this when I go to the store, since folks often comment on this. Our grocery stores have shortages and limits on purchases, but maybe it will open a new conversation about farming and food.I have been laughed at all my adult life by people who used to think I was crazy because I garden, put up my own food and tried to get younger folks involved in farming. I am so lucky to have a source of fresh milk, cream, and butter for my family, and 10 gallons on sauerkraut, probably the best corona defense! I agree on the failure of the medical community to build biomes!
No profit for pharma from the healthy. Peaceful behavior doesn’t favor police. Low conflict societies don’t pay lawyers, judges, etc.
David, I don’t deny that there will likely be some positive outcomes because of this overinflated dear driven crisis; that said I don’t share your overal optimism… My main concern with all of this is that the powers that be will use this situation as an excuse to institute more draconian regulatory measures, especially in the area of health care. As far as a climate crisis is concerned, there isn’t one…
I don’t have a computer at the moment (my hard drive is shot) and not that i need an excuse for typegraphical errors… my above comment should read fear driven not “dear driven”…
Thank you Ken! As always love your responses and thoughts!
Ken, I suspect we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I’ve come to accept that the coronavirus pandemic is as dire as the public health people warn. The cause may be people’s depressed immune systems, as Mark McAfee suggests, but we don’t know for sure and in the meantime, it’s a real crisis.
Just to give you one statistical comparison….If the U.S. follows the Italian path (about 70,000 cases and nearly 7,000 deaths so far, with indications it has now reached its peak), we’d be at 350,000 cases and about 35,000 deaths….with much more still to come. Doctors are making decisions about who will get respirators and who won’t, giving morphine to those who don’t. That’s pretty serious. (America is thus far following the Italian path, with insufficient testing, half measures, refusal by some to take the social distancing advisories seriously.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/world/europe/italy-coronavirus-hospitals.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
I’m not sure what draconian regulatory measures you are imagining–maybe forced vaccination when/if a vaccine against this become avialable? I guess that debate will have to await the actual circumstances. As we know, attitudes and options seem to change nearly by the day.
I won’t try to discuss the climate crisis. I learned when the deniers watched Australia literally burn up a few months back and continued to deny, that there was no way of having meaningful discussion.
Last week I encountered a doctor I am acquainted with from the North Bay hospital where a patient (so far the only one in the area) was dagnosed with covid-19… he noted that the diagnosis turned out to be wrong and that the patient had infact aquired influenza… As you stated to Joseph with respect to coronavirus… “much still remains to be learned”… indeed, yet the mainstream media and tptb seem to think that if they and I quote, “hit the virus hard” it can be “snuffed out”… a ludicrous and foolhardy notion at best.
Leadership must be clear minded and be well informed. Leadership can not make fun of serious things. Leadership should read. Leadership must choose words carefully. Leadership can not say Coronavirus is Fake News. Leadership can not say that it’s all a hoax. Trump did this many times!
A large sector of our society does not actually believe we have a crisis. A country must act together to lessen impact in times of need.
Trump has completely failed as a leader by calling this a hoax. Now we have 30% of people failing to join in on cooperation with a unified effort.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that large sectors of society have awoken and are going about building their own gut biome and immune strength.
Those that wanted and voted for pure chaos in America sure got it. Now it’s hell to pay. Chaos was not required. Clear thinking with intelligent strategy was needed. Now we have a $2 trillion dollar bill and human and economic damage beyond comprehension. You don’t fire the agencies that are in charge of pandemics ! That’s what he did. Then claim…. “WHO would have ever thought this could happen?? “
I got news for you Mr President. Very smart people that specialize in epidemics know about this stuff and plan for this stuff. You are not smart.
Mr President those are the WHO that knew about this. You fired them and defunded their departments. Now we all pay dearly.
No leader is without fault Mark… that said however, there is no room for fear and superstition with good leadership… Based on my experience with political leaders, those that choose their words carefully tend to be deceitful…
below is an item further in the logic? of Mark McAffee when he lapses-in to his Mister Hyde persona, wherein “it’s ALL the fault of PRESIDENT Trump” regardless of how far-fetched
for 2 decades, he castigated the Centres for Disease Control for dis-informing the country about raw milk. And quite rightly so. Yet suddenly, the CDC’s proclamation re Corona-mania, is the Gospel Truth. And Marky throws in his lot with the high priests of the Cult of the White Robe
I go back so far I recall the punchline from the old Vaudeville routine ” don’t eat that Elmer”.
As one of Canada’s Dissident Voices, I wait patiently for the facts to come out, and this thing exposed as distraction from realization the US dollar is imploding before our very eyes …. the financial equivalent of the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers on 911 … the entire pension scheme of the nation > vaporized.
>>>>>>>>>> <<<<<<<<<<<<
from Canada’s Communist Broadcasting Corporation
The CBC has published a story blaming U.S. President Donald Trump for the death of a man who drank aquarium cleaner believing it would prevent COVID-19.
On Monday, a man from Arizona died after he and his wife consumed aquarium cleaner that contained chloroquine, a drug that Trump has been promoting as a possible treatment for COVID-19.
However, the couple was not drinking the medicinal form of chloroquine, but rather fish tank cleaner containing chloroquine phosphate – leading to immediate poisoning.
The man’s wife was able to vomit much of the cleaning agent and survived the incident.
Despite the unnamed woman giving a lengthy interview to NBC, the CBC only shared one quote from her, where she bashes the president.
“Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure,” the woman said.
“Don’t take anything. Don’t believe anything. Don’t believe anything that the president says… call your doctor.”
since folks have all this time on your hands … sittin’ ’round under medical martial law …. I urge you to spend a few minutes viewing the video, link below. After so many years being sneered-at, artisanal farmers / “preppers” are now vindicated.
it’s an interview with Bix Weir … the first 7 minutes are all that’s needed to grasp how Corona-Mania is an utter hoax. What’s really going on, is : from Sept. 11th 2019, onward, the US banking system is imploding before our very eyes. The governments of the world … especially the US / Canada … are running their propaganda outfalls full-on confusing the herd to avert resistance, while the Monetary Re-Set happens.
Bix Weir has been at the financial game for his adult life… +30 years. He has as good a grasp of the fundamentals as anyone you can name. Bix Weir is one of the major cheerleaders for crypto-currencies. On that topic, I disagree with him 180 degrees. Yet he certainly is a man of good will. He does know whereof he speaks when it comes to the machinery of US banks vis a vis the government of the US of A … not least – silver and gold
in this interview, he is not going on about cryptocurrencies. He delivers the facts of the matter in plain language.
The US of A is on a war footing with Red China. Things are never going back to the way they were, mere weeks ago. Local producers of REAL MILK > get ready
Gordon S Watson
March 26 2020
During this crisis, I am especially grateful for the small farmers in my area who grow food and provide dairy and meat. May our local food systems continue to thrive.
New York hospitals treating coronavirus patients with vitamin C
https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-coronavirus-patients-with-vitamin-c/
Thanks, Joseph. Here’s something related–about the immune response of people who have had the coronavirus. They seem to have immunity for relatively short periods of a year to two years, although much still remains to be learned.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/health/coronavirus-immunity-antibodies.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
“Antiviral Substances in Raw Bovine Milk Active Against Bovine Rotavirus and Coronavirus”
G. PANON’*, S. TACHE and C. LABIE
H1DAOA, Ecole Nationale Veterinaire, 31076 Toulouse Cedex, France (January26, 1987)
“After experimental contamination of bovine raw and heat- treated milks with bovine rotavirus and coronavirus strains, we observed a strong viral inhibition only with raw milks”
Ken,
I want a copy of that article. “Antiviral Substances in Raw Bovine Milk Active Against Bovine Rotavirus and Coronavirus”
Here’s a link Pretty interesting.
Joseph, I tried posting three links to the article but that did not seem to work… I will post one at the time and see if that makes a difference…
National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30978786
David, I can’t open the link you provided…
For whatever reason, that link seems to be unstable, stops working very quickly. My best advice is to put the title of the study into google and let it find the study. ““Antiviral Substances in Raw Bovine Milk Active Against Bovine Rotavirus and Coronavirus”
Here is a more recent article describing in detail why milk (breast milk) has antiviral properties…
“Milk Derived Peptides with Immune Stimulating Antiviral Properties”
https://www.intechopen.com/books/milk-protein/milk-derived-peptides-with-immune-stimulating-antiviral-properties
Yes, their following China’s lead whose hospital began administering intravenous vitamine C earlier this month… I wonder if the mainstream media is going to change their tune about bad mouthing the use of vitamine C and other natural remedies such as D3!!!
David, I recieved a call from an individual inquiring if I had any more straw availlable for sale… I replied that I did and asked him if he had run out of toilet paper…
“A model predicting the progression of the novel coronavirus pandemic produced by researchers at Imperial College London set off alarms across the world and was a major factor in several governments’ decisions to lock things down. But a new model from Oxford University is challenging its accuracy, the Financial Times reports.
‘The Oxford research suggests the pandemic is in a later stage than previously thought and estimates the virus has already infected at least millions of people worldwide. In the United Kingdom, which the study focuses on, half the population would have already been infected. If accurate, that would mean transmission began around mid-January and the vast majority of cases presented mild or no symptoms.
‘The head of the study, professor Sunetra Gupta, an Oxford theoretical epidemiologist, said she still supports the U.K.’s decision to shut down the country to suppress the virus even if her research winds up being proven correct. But she also doesn’t appear to be a big fan of the work done by the Imperial College team. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” she said.”
https://theweek.com/
In deed and as Dr Suzanne Humphries states with respect to covid-19… “Remember your immune system is quicker at adapting than the microbe is. What are you doing for your immunity? Worrying and being fearful or raging with anger? Self fulfilling prophesy. Those with rage and fear will be the first to get sick from anything”.
George Orwell was certainly correct… “Big Brother is Watching You.”
“Toronto is gathering cellphone location data from telecoms to find out where people are still congregating amid coronavirus shutdown”
https://business.financialpost.com/technology/city-of-toronto-gathering-cellphone-location-data-from-telecoms-in-bid-to-slow-spread-of-covid-19-tory?fbclid=IwAR1JpW2rKfvIePxwh9kbI0pa8MWN0IlU5YrtgKTmI__Fd-Zwin3WnRJUYVk
From my very unique perspective I am seeing things I only imagined I would ever see.
Having come from the modern medicine paradigm, I have lots of very close doctor friends.
For 15 years I have been teaching and preaching Gut Biome and immune system strength. I have done my best to invite these doctors to the narrative. Virtually none have joined the conversation. It’s like I speak another language. A language that is so foreign…. it can not be understood at all. Literally.
Now…. tragically, they are scared to death. Their families are scared to death. These are the families of the best doctors. They have been pill poppers and antibiotic takers and have done little to address their gut. In fact they have tried our products only to say… they are lactose intolerant. A true indication of dysbiosis.
It’s no wonder. All the Z-PACs they have taken. Their guts are totally trashed. All the Zantac!
Now they are coming to the farm. Families are crying. They are desperate for help.
It is nothing short of fascinating to me to see this total conflict in belief. Doctors going to work in hospitals knowing they will get sick. But not having an open mind to even read Pubmed NIH research about gut biome and immune resilience and adaptation.
Nature is merciless. She is culling the herd.
The gut biome is the center of her selection criteria.
I can not say…. I told you so a million times. I can not suggest reading peer reviewed NIH published research. It would be an indictment of them as humans. That’s just not fair in an emotional time of need.
Now is a time for true compassion. Teach ( lightly ) but do it with love and true empathy. ❤️?
Show them how to make super gut biome raw Kefir smoothies. These medical people are terrified.
If your gut is well…. you will be well.
Mark
21,297 – Deaths by Coronavirus
113,034 – Deaths by Seasonal Flu
228,095 – Deaths by Malaria
249,904 – Deaths by suicide
313,903 – Deaths by Traffic Fatalities
390,908 – Deaths by HIV/AIDS
581,599 – Deaths by Alcohol
1,162,481 – Deaths by Smoking
1,909,804 – Deaths by Cancer
2,382,324 – Deaths by Hunger
9, 913,702 – Deaths by Abortion
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUSc13gXsAEzjGX.jpg
The above chart represents “Worldwide Deaths from January 1st – March 25th 2020”
Source: http://www.WORLDOMETERS.INFO
That list is a false comparison, and it’s the kind of denial approach by American leaders that is largely responsible for the fiasco the U.S. finds itself facing. For every one of the other causes of death you list, there is a treatment or cure, even if it is mainly education (for smoking and suicide). For coronavirus, there is nothing, except avoidance via effective public health mobilization. Moreover, it’s not over. At this stage of the game, the U.S. has twice as many coronavirus cases as Chine, even though the U.S. has only one-fourth the population. And as I said, the U.S. is still at the early stages of the curve, while China is at the back end of the curve. It’s a total disaster for the U.S., in particular, from a public health and economic perspective, and it could have been substantially mitigated with smart and early public health measures of the kind employed in China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. You might want to read this account of the disaster so far. When all is said and done, I am afraid this will be at a level of incompetence rivaling or exceeding Pearl Harbor and 9-11. And all because of this kind of incomprehensible denial.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/03/23/us/politics/ap-us-virus-outbreak-testing-missteps.html
I’m not so sure about that David… It is difficult to get a good read on this covid-19 scenario since much of what is being fed to us by the media is governed in large part by the overall frenzy surrounding this novel corona virus. The protocols used to prevent influenza would be virtually identical to that for covid-19, so one would expect that all these covid-19 restrictions put in place limiting movement should also help to mitigate the incidence of influenza, do you not think? However, according to the following article written on March 3rd, that does not appear to be the case, the article states, “By some indicators, this season is worse than last. For example, the data shows the cumulative hospitalization rate for the flu is 52.7 per 100,000 people this season, compared with 33.5 per 100,000 at the same point last season… While the 2019-2020 flu season isn’t letting up yet, it’s largely been overshadowed by the novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19. Since making headlines in December 2019, COVID-19 has infected 89,800 people and killed 3,056 people worldwide… As public health experts learn more about COVID-19, many are asking, which is worse: the flu or COVID-19?” Indeed, that is a good question! The article then goes on to state, “Public health experts have warned that discrepancies in how different countries report individual cases and determine how contagious the new coronavirus is makes it hard to determine a precise global case count, and as a result, we don’t yet have an accurate mortality rate. For instance, research published last week in JAMA suggests the mortality rate for the virus currently is around 2%, while a report published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) estimated the mortality rate is 1.4”. Although the article does state that “Based on the latest data, the coronavirus appears to be deadlier” and that “Early data also suggested the new coronavirus may be more contagious than the flu” it also states, “According to an editorial published in NEJM by Anthony Fauci and Clifford Lane from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and CDC director Robert Redfield, the true death rate for the coronavirus could end up being below 1%, which would make it similar to the death rate seen in a severe flu season”.
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/03/03/flu-update
As with any flu like virus the infection rates mentioned in the article are relative to how well the virus is established in the general population… The more established it becomes less virulent it is.
I posted the list in order to provide some much needed perspective to this current fear driven craziness that we are all caught up in at the moment and which is destined to cause more harm than good… “Hunger” as the chart points outs is a real problem in the world and it is most certainly going to get worse with all of these covid-19 restrictions on movement…
here’s some much-needed perspective for you :
introductory lesson in = how to lie with statistics
Numbers are being cooked so that anyone who dies is tested, and if coronavirus is present, the person is counted as a CORONAVIRUS DEATH, even if they died from cancer, or a head injury, or… seasonal H1N1 flu. Remember, in the U.S., in an average flu season year, 150 people die EVERY DAY from seasonal flu. But that’s different. That’s a different sort of dead – the sort that doesn’t matter.
Here is an Italian pundit pointing this up – of the 627 that died that day, the Italian I.S.S. (Instituto Superiore di Sanità) freely admitted that only TWELVE – 12 – a dozen – died FROM coronavirus. The other 615 all died from something else.
“The media are reporting that today 627 people died from coronavirus. The I.S.S. has explained that only 12 people had no other pathologies. To attribute all the deaths to the virus is not only false and unscientific. It’s more than that. It is psychological terrorism.”
Same happened during the first few years of the AIDS panic. Unscrupulous actors attributed the cause to all kinds of unknown boogeymen and even those who died in accidents were listed as AIDS deaths if they tested positive for HIV while Duesberg was vilified when he suggested AIDS was a lifestyle illness just like cancer from smoking.
New York hospitals giving patients 16 times the daily recommended dose of vitamin C to fight coronavirus
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/new-york-hospitals-giving-patients-16-times-the-daily-recommended-dose-of-vitamin-c-to-fight-coronavirus
Indeed, “How fickle is the retail customer?”
https://www.thelunaticfarmer.com/blog/4/1/2020/is-this-april-fools
Where’s the Evidence Supporting the Drastic Measures Against COVID-19?
https://torontoniansfortransparency.wordpress.com/2020/03/29/wheres-the-evidence-supporting-the-drastic-measures-against-covid-19/
“Death rates in China, Italy, South Korea from COVID are in the range of only 0.002% to 0.025% of the population.
‘Data being gathered about numbers of cases and deaths are severely lacking in quantity and quality. In addition the numbers that are available appear to be inflated by influential groups and websites, and then echoed by media.
‘The draconian measures being put in place for reducing COVID spread such as stringent ‘social distancing’ requirements combined with fines up to $100,000 for people who violate them, and also lock-downs in place for billions of people, are not evidence-based.
‘The societal and economic costs of these measures vastly outweigh their benefits to the population.”