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.
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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.

