I recently learned a rule of thumb: a day in the ICU translates to a week in recovery.
The west has been in the ICU for 3 years, we’re talking about 21y of recovery already
If you think that’s an over-estimate, the former USSR has still not recovered from ICU years (1988-92)
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Replying to
I like this idea but can you define “the ICU”?
(Was China was “in the ICU” 1840s-1970s and so we shouldn’t expect recovery until the year 3000 or so?)
(Was Germany in the ICU only 1942-46, or 1933-45? Or 1917-51?)
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However you define it, I’m not sure the West is in the ICU quite yet. Extremely ill, yes, but not yet in critical.
For example: Britain’s *constitutional order* has been in the ICU for 3 years, but so far there has been very little social disruption, merely a political farce.
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Replying to
You’re ruining my poetic-allegoric buzz here 😂
Making a social organism metaphor precise is fraught with risks, but I’d map institutional order to major organs (central bank = heart, political system = brain), circulation systems to public health, and construct indicators.
Probably doable but would take a computer model with the right balance of poetry and data. For a while I was trying to build one and owned electricleviathan.com to host it. Then I gave up. Spencer’s social organism model was not bad though it devolved into social darwinism.
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Trump years have been ICU-like not because of the severity of the crisis itself, but because of the weakened resistance of the body politic (aging population, slowing innovation, climate change as a growing infection risk...). A younger, less stressed body would bounce back.
Replying to
By that set of metaphors, Britain appears to have had an aneurysm and the US has dementia with some vasoconstriction—the former might be ICU worthy but the latter is not (yet)

