We’re entering a world where sanctions to countries might start disappearing.
They never were very successful anyways. Look at Cuba, North Korea, Iran. Did they really change behaviors?
Not much.
Did their elites suffer and feel pressured? Much less than the ppl
Sanctions were always a pretty bad deal.
Now on top of that, they will be unenforceable.
The US based its ability to sanction based on its grip over the global financial system. That is disappearing.
It won’t be able to size the assets of elites, safeguarded in Bitcoin.
It won’t be able to freeze the pipelines of global trade, because DeFi will replace the legacy use of systems like SWIFT. The requirement to buy oil in dollars will likely suffer workarounds, if it doesn’t simply disappear as the % of US’s global GDP shrinks.
Traveling for business deals won’t be as necessary as before, because of new remote tools and trust from smart contracts.
And some countries will specialize in being safe havens with high quality of life, to attract all this capital.
Sanctions will keep a high (human) cost, further lower their benefits, and become largely unenforceable.
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This reversal is truly ground-breaking. We could be getting out of the woods much faster.
It doesn't mean we stop the 2nd dose, but by postponing it we build up production capacity for when it's needed, and protect many more ppl in the meantime
I was looking at some maps for a future article and saw something interesting about Italy.
The Po River Valley is the richest and highest-density area because it's the most fertile.
But then there's this line of cities. That's so weird. Why?
So I turned to look at what's there, and a bunch of cities are on a near perfect line! From Piacenza to Rimini through Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna or Forli.
They're all connected by the E45. So I wondered: What's the history of E45?
Turns out it was the Via Aemilia that Romans built to control the Po Valley.
They built it on the mountainside of the Appenine Mountains, as straight as they could for efficiency, and then built cities along its way! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Aemil…
The main concern I'm hearing right now: What if new COVID variants keep evolving so much that vaccines can't keep up and we end up in a situation like the flu?
It's possible, but I think it's unlikely. Here's why:
The flu has 2 advantages: 1. Other animals can be reservoirs, so even if you stop it in humans it could go back from them,
Do you remember avian flu? Swine flu? Animals that carry the flu include ducks, chickens, pigs, whales, horses, birds.. cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/v…
Meanwhile, so far COVID has only been witnessed to easily jump between humans and minks AFAIK. There's not much data on this yet, but it's very hopeful
1. 60% higher transmission rate 2. 30% higher fatality rate 3. 35% more vaccines will be needed 4. The herd immunity threshold goes from 60% to ~75% 5. A few more months before everybody is faccinated 6. ~60% stronger containment measures are needed to stop it
Vaccines won't arrive in time to stop it. So we need to prepare for another wave.
Instead, the effect will be really felt this summer: between immunity through infections, through vaccines, and outdoors activity, the pandemic will die down btw June and September