Happy New Year. You survived to the end of another grim week.
This is Last Week in Collapse, a long post I’m trying to make at the end of every week, summarizing some of the most interesting, tragic, resonant, surprising, ironic, or otherwise notable events in collapse. It’s like a curated weekly doomscroll.
Last week’s entry here went completely under the radar here because the mods didn’t approve it for the first 48 hours or so. Please check it out. December 25-31, 2021. Anyway, moving on:
You will never escape COVID-19. That’s the message that society seems to be saying these days. Omicron is setting records, day after day when it comes to new cases. On January 3rd, 2022 alone, more than 1,000,000 new positives were recorded in the USA! Until two weeks ago, we had never before reached ⅓ of that in a single day. The head of the CDC in the U.S. announced that we are not yet at the peak.
But we can only judge the situation based on the data we have; I read that the Covid death toll in India could be 6,000,000+ people. India’s “official” number is currently 483,000 deaths. So gaslit. Well, at least the WHO admitted Omicron isn’t “mild” this week. I think the damage has already been done. Australia’s health system, like so many other countries, is at the edge of collapse. And in Africa, where supposedly fewer than 10% of people have the vaccine, the Africa CDC said lockdowns don’t work anymore.
Most of the new deaths in the West are unvaccinated, and deaths are down from their all-time high. Yet COVID-19 is raging across America’s dysfunctional schools, and Chicago teachers are refusing to teach in-person because of pandemic safety concerns. Countries that had their worst Covid case totals on record for this week include France, the United States, Australia, Iceland, Canada, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Italy, Cyprus, Ethiopia, and the Netherlands, among others. China locked down another city this week too.
Even in Antarctica, people test positive for Covid. Maybe Covid will join all those other ancient diseases, frozen in the ice somewhere. Probably not, since it’s all melting.
I spent my January 6th following a different country’s political violence: Kazakhstan, known only to people as that country from Borat, is erupting in general anti-corruption protests. Their President said, “whoever does not surrender will be destroyed. I have given the order to law enforcement agencies and the army to shoot to kill, without warning,” and compliance seems to have been re-established by force. But I don’t know what to believe. This is a good case study for how a government might react to anyone who threatens the system.
Speaking of political violence, on Tuesday, Haiti’s PM survived an assassination attempt . This comes about 6 months after their President was assassinated by insurgent gangs in the collapsing country.
Let the greenwashing begin! The European Commission — that’s the executive arm of the EU — announced plans to label natural gas and nuclear power as “green.” What’s next, calling schnitzel vegan? At least Germany is cutting its nuclear power down and shutting some old plants.
Our ocean continues to die in the background. Nobody is doing anything about it. Chinese fishing fleets ravage the shrinking world fish stock. They are basically doing this to the ocean floor. Beware: that video, and its comments, are hella depressing.
You might’ve had your worst year in 2021, but Coal had its best year ever. Coal production and prices went to all-time highs in 2021 and are expected to break more records in 2022. Tell me again how committed we are to a zero-carbon future?
In Turkey, inflation is destroying the Turkish lira. “The lira shed 44% of its value against the dollar last year,” according to the article. The Lebanese Pound lost 90% of its value over the last 2 years; will the Turkish lira be joining it later this year? And what will happen when several nearby nations all experience currency collapse at the same time?
In Ethiopia, foreign observers fear the warring landlocked country may set its sights on Somaliland in an attempt to acquire a path to the sea, even as the Tigray conflict unravels regional stability further. Climate change aggravates famine, which builds economic tension, which provokes political unrest, which drives war, which drives disease, and the doom spiral becomes inevitable.
On January 1st, according to the BBC, Kim Jong-un has said the faltering economy will be the national priority this year as the country faces a "great life-and-death struggle". Interesting how the article phrases the economy as the top issue in North Korea, since nobody in the hermit kingdom has much of anything and its economy was always quite poor. Compared to the raging coronavirus pandemic or the growing famine, the economy ought to rank rather low. But I digress.
India’s unemployment rate is higher than ever in the last 30 years. American job reports claim that only 199k jobs were added in December. Meanwhile 207k new jobless claims were filed last week in the U.S. Pretty consistently, the number of jobs we gain in a month is about the same as the number of jobs we lose in a week. And yet the unemployment rate is still artificially set at only 3.9% which is code for full employment. I myself have been at my new job for about 2 agonizing months, and I desperately want to quit. I am burnt out, like this columnist.
If you need a small dose of hopium to sweeten the week, Greenland is banning oil, gas, and uranium exploration. And if you want a good laugh, try this article about an Indian fella who got the vaccine at least 8 times—he claims 11. If it’s any consolation, the Nasdaq had its worst week in 11 months. Bitcoin is down about 10% this week, too.
Selected comments/posts from the subreddit this week suggest:
-A mystery illness is afflicting people in Canada. Some suggest a prion disease. I’m not a doctor. I wonder how many more new illnesses we’ll discover/create in our lifetimes, with microplastics, cognitive warfare, pollution, radioactivity, engineered illnesses, new pandemics, etc. Some of us may even one day succumb to one of these future diseases.
-More people were killed in the Kazakhstan protests than officially reported now; people make great comments on this r/collapse video from Kazakhstan. It’s gonna be hard to put that brief revolt behind them as a country.
-The 1% are going to leave you behind and glide away on their super yachts. This post takes aim at the ostentatious billionaires (and the growing business that supports them) and their yachting hobbies. Has anyone here ever worked on a super yacht?
-Political violence is also [rising in France](https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ruz68t/weekly_observations_what_signs_of_collapse_do_you/hrh7vhb/) in opposition to vaccine restrictions, according to this insightful comment. I don’t know why but I find France to be a very interesting place to observe.
-People on r/nursing sound the alarm on the healthcare system collapsing and collapseniks weigh in. Another subreddit with a front row seat to collapse has been r/teachers, which has become so doomy that I’m starting to think foreign agents are trying to co-opt the messaging there for a massive long-term demoralization campaign.
Did you appreciate this Collapse Report? Do you have any feedback, questions, comments, hate mail, recipes, etc.? I want to do these kinds of summary posts once a week. What did I miss this week?
Previous Week: December 25-31, 2021.
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