₿oogaloo
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I am not sure if it has been posted here yet, but here is a site that collects all of the data for the US by state:
https://covidtracking.com/
It is not as up to date as some of the other sites, but if you click “show me the raw data (spreadsheet)” and then the tab for “states current” it shows the number of positive, negative, and pending test results. What jumps out to me is that there has been very little testing so far in DC, Maryland and Virginia. I wonder if anything will change once testing ramps up at and around the capital.WES, it is disheartening to hear the situation in Ontario. It seems that Sweden, Norway and Denmark have decided to follow the “stop testing” path. Their recent numbers look wrong — most countries near the top of the list have been growing at 10-20% per day. That was true of Sweden, Norway and Denmark until a couple days ago. But now suddenly low numbers…. very suspicious.
I suppose this is inevitable? Once you give up on containment, testing loses a lot of its value. Once you have throw up your hands, it makes no difference if your daily total is 1,000 or 1,000,000. There are other tasks competing for attention, like building more ICUs and recruiting more doctors and nurses as fast as possible. Not that I see enough of that either . . .
Dr. D asks the question: How do we have apparently two diametrically different fatality rates?
Part of the answer might be hereditary immunodeficiency that affects some ethnic groups more than others. From the former head of the Korean Center for Disease Control:
“A lot of people in the medical community do not know about such an issue, but Iran has a lot of hereditary immunodeficiency patients, and many Korean companies export antibodies to Iran,” Professor Jung Ki-seok at Hallym University Sacred Hospital said during a recent interview with MBC Radio. “It is necessary to look at such ethnic characteristics.” While Korea does not have many people with hereditary immunodeficiency, those who have this problem need to be doubly cautious about coronavirus, he added.
A couple weeks ago someone raised doubts about the effectiveness of masks. I posted a reply recalling what I learned in university from a virology professor I worked under — that dosage is important in determining whether you become infected and how bad your case becomes. Chris Martenson makes the same point today in making the case for why everyone should be wearing masks.
I think masks make a huge difference. China reversed the trend not only by the lockdown, but also by requiring that everyone wear a mask in public. In Korea 90% of people wear masks in public these days, though this is not required. Testing a contact tracing have made a big difference here, but I am sure the masks are also a big part of it. Only 74 new cases today, and only 6 in Seoul. Although I think Japan is under-reporting because it is not testing enough, the Japanese were among the first to pull out the masks, and I am certain that has helped slow the spread.
I understand why the US Surgeon General lied to the public to say that masks are not effective — it is because of the shortage. But even if everyone starts wearing a home-made mask that would be a major improvement. I see the lines at the US airports, and that is a major scandal. But just as scandalous is that fact that almost nobody is wearing a mask.
And I would add that in Korea there was a quick spread among the members of the Shincheonji Church because they were opposed to wearing masks because they considered it disrespectful . . .
I appreciate John Day’s comments, and I will add that I never realized how often I touch my face until I started wearing a mask. That suddenly made me conscious of it. Now if I have a little itch near my eye, for example, I scratch it with a disinfected pen cap rather than my finger. And I do that at least twice per day. Never thought about it before I started wearing the mask.
I also brought several spray bottles to the office and made my own bleach-based disinfectant. I thought it would be a good idea to have several of these around so that people can spray down the things that everyone touches. But that is a long list of items: doorknobs, copy machine touchscreen, refrigerator door, coffee pot handle, button for automatic doors, cupboard doors, elevator buttons, conference room phone. The more you think about it, the more items you think about. And these should be disinfected regularly — a monumental task. But going through that exercise made more more diligent about just washing my hands after I touch anything.
Now that we have a big cluster in Seoul, it looks like it is only a matter of days before I am working from home. Although this has all been a sudden change, I have to admit that I have been able to catch up on my sleep over the last few weeks. And I suddenly have time to read some books that have been on my “to read” list — though I have not had the time or energy until now. My wife is not an instinctive prepper. It has been a battle to convince her to stock up on things. She is used to the Korean way, where 85% of grocery shopping here is now online. Every day we get at least half a dozen boxes delivered, usually more than that.
I am inclined to agree with bosco.
The last time I voted in an election (and the last time I probably ever will vote) was to vote to Obama for his first term. My vote was not so much a vote for Obama as it was a vote to repudiate Dubya. Similarly, I think a lot of people voted for Trump as a repudiation of Hilary and the DNC. Although the DNC is still worthy of repudiation, I think the country’s mood will change significantly between now and November. I expect that the populace will be ready to repudiate Trump for his incompetence and total failure to take the necessary steps to contain this when it was still possible. Then again, I would not be surprised if the election is canceled and the US is under martial law by that time.
The numbers seem to be all over the place. Germany has more than 1000 cases, but not a single death. Yet the first African fatality was a German in Egypt.
In most countries the virus seems to affect men more than women. But in Korea 63% of the cases have been women, with women in their 20s seeing a higher infection rate than other age groups:
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2020/03/197_285817.htmlAlthough I do not believe the official Chinese statistics, air pollution level in Wuhan have crept back up, and they seem to have shut many of the makeshift hospitals. So the measures they have taken have indeed brought down the R0.
The superspreaders who ignite the clusters seem to be the danger.
Now here is a new theory from a virologist who has close connections to Korea. He believes that the virus may have a symbiotic relationship with (otherwise) harmless bacteria in the environment. He notes that in some ways the spread of the virus is similar to bacterial diseases. If this is true, the virus can infect the bacteria and “hide” in the bacteria — before it reemerges. Fascinating theory.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/03/119_285655.html
WES, if you download the PDF at https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwaa036/5775463, you will find that the paper itself is easier to read and understand that the short abstract I cut and pasted. The discussion begins on page 6.
Yes, WES, that appears to be the case. Here is the abstract:
https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwaa036/5775463
Population genetic analyses of 103 SARS-CoV-2 genomes indicated that these viruses evolved into two major types (designated L and S), that are well defined by two different SNPs that show nearly complete linkage across the viral strains sequenced to date. Although the L type (∼70%) is more prevalent than the S type (∼30%), the S type was found to be the ancestral version. Whereas the L type was more prevalent in the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan, the frequency of the L type decreased after early January 2020. Human intervention may have placed more severe selective pressure on the L type, which might be more aggressive and spread more quickly. On the other hand, the S type, which is evolutionarily older and less aggressive, might have increased in relative frequency due to relatively weaker selective pressure.
So it turns out that genetic sequencing shows that are two different strains of the virus after all, a more aggressive L-cov version as a less aggressive S-cov version. S-cov is the older version. L-cov became more prevalent during the Wuhan outbreak.
Dr. D asks where are the bodies? I ask where is the smoke?
The air has not been this clean in central China for years:
http://aqicn.org/city/wuhan/TonyPrep,
Face masks are effective for at least three reasons. First, they are a reminder not to touch your face. Second, if you get infected, it can help prevent you from passing it to others. Third, even if the mask cannot block out all of the virus particles, it can still limit the dosage of how many you are inhaling. For viral diseases generally, how much you are exposed to impacts your likelihood of infection.
They say to effectively wash you hands you should scrub for 30 seconds. Yeah, right. I’m just not going to do that, especially now that I am washing my hands every half hour or so. Do I give up and stop washing my hands because I lack the patience for 30 seconds each time? No way. It’s no more than 10 seconds for me. Might not be perfect, but I am trying to limit potential exposure rather than thoroughly disinfect myself every time.
I think the same principle applies to face masks. If the mask only blocks half the droplets, fine, I’ll settle for half the dosage I would otherwise get.
Although this post likely will not inspire many comments, I think it may be the most important of last year or two. This touched on many things I have been thinking lately, but have been struggling to articulate.
Kosmos has a long way to go in his education. In addition to Kunstler and Orlov I suggest the badass Jimmy Dore. The world is not as binary as Kosmos would like to believe, and at least Jimmy could provide some laughs along the path of enlightenment.
Hello Raul, I checked in today after a few days away and wondered what happened to the Debt Rattle. After reading the story, I have decided to double my monthly contribution from $20 to $40. Long live TAE.
Not a Vietnam-era song, but from the Cold War instead. Hard to believe that this song is 34 years old:
In Europe and America there’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mister Khrushchev said, ‘We will bury you’
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
It’d be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children tooHow can I save my little boy
From Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?
There is no monopoly on common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children tooThere is no historical precedent to put
The words in the mouth of the president
There’s no such thing as a winnable war
It’s a lie we don’t believe anymore
Mister Reagan says ‘We will protect you’
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children tooV Arnold, part of my commitment to this blog is the active contribution of others, including you. I am sorry that I am too busy with work to contribute on a daily basis, as you do. But when TSHTF and I have more time, I have every intention to be a more active participant.
I should add that my ears also perked up by zerosum’s insightful comment in this thread. I am thankful for the awareness that I am not alone. In my real life interactions with real people I do feel very much isolated and alone. For now, I can only find like minded people online. I think that means we need to support one another as long as we can.
DS, the hyperinflation has already happened. The money has been printed. Too much money for the US economy to absorb. It just hasn’t been spent into the economy because we have not yet reached the psychological tripping point, the sudden loss if confidence. It may be that the trigger is a deflationary collapse first, followed by a repeat of the 2008 playbook, but on an even larger scale. The establishment institutions remain confident in the system, at least as measured by their behavior so far. The little guy might have lost confidence, but who cares? He is a slave to the system. Where can he go? I see a huge pile of tinder but no sparks anywhere on the horizon.
“What exactly is the sin of John McCain that brought on this stoning? ”
The sin was a sin of omission. I do not really see it as a stoning, as much as a lament that he never became the man that he should have become. That’s true for us all, I suppose, to one degree or another. But McCain is not like you and me, because he craved power, and when he got it, he used it to kill, maim, and destroy without reservation, without restraint, and without boundary. He describes Putin as evil, but without decrying the plank in our own eye? He has nothing to say worth listening to, and I will not miss him.
The dollar will not be revalued against bitcoin. It will be revalued against the only non-fiat asset on central bank balance sheets — and we all know what that is.
When that happens, the only way the military industrial complex will survive without downsizing will be to use its war toys to steal the shiny rocks from countries that cannot defend themselves.
So what happens when central banks buy up all the bitcoin with their unlimited fiat so they can try to control it? What happens to the price of bitcoin then?
If you really think about it, buying Bitcoin is not so crazy if you own the printing press for ordinary fiat currency. If you can produce an endless supply of fiat and buy a finite number of bitcoins, why not? It’s trading one form of ethereal money for another. A dollar is no more real than a bitcoin, but at least the world will not see more than 22 million bitcoins.
Dr D, I think you are close, but a little off the bullseye.
If prices fall, triggering a wave of defaults and triggering a cycle that grinds lower and lower, the rich do in fact lose money. They lose money but they do not lose power. Some of them get wiped out if they were leveraged, but there are enough unleveraged players that they will never all be wiped out in the first leg down. They are losing money, they get defensive, they start making phone calls to get the government and the central bank to do something to save the system. And that’s exactly what the banks want. The last thing the banks want is a growing pile of collatral with no buyers to buy their stuff. Defaults at the margin is one thing. Massive system wide defaults are completely different. This can never be allowed to happen. Deflationists believe it is inevitable. Those who understand the underlying power structure understand that this will never be allowed to happen. They will destroy the currency before they allow it to happen, because at least nominally that keeps the system alive. And that allows the rich to point the finger at governments and central banks.
At the end of the day, the rich will still be rich. They will believe that they made great sacrifices and suffered greatly, but they will still be rich.
Krieger is spot on. This is the trend of the future. As things get worse and worse, more people are going to start saying “To hell with this. Nobody up there is looking out for me. Let me join with my neighbors and let us find a better way. Let us secede.” In years past after every presidential election, there has a disappointed group that declares they are ready to move to Canada. And every time the disaffection seems stronger than before, and now after the last election a few actually seriously started to talk about secession. This is natural, and I expect it to grow, and to eventually go mainstream.
Diablo, I wholeheartedly agree with you that gold is not what you want to be relying on in the midst of crisis. It can get you killed. Rather, gold should be lying still, untouched, unseen, unknown, out of sight and out of mind until the transition to the next system is complete. There is a coming revaluation. Not a bull market, but a night-and-day one time revaluation. I have no idea when it is coming, but it will come. The reserve asset that central banks have on their balance sheets is the same reserve asset you should have buried in the back yard under your chicken coop.
Nassim, term limits do not solve the problem of the revolving door between government and big business. If anything, they only strengthen the hand of big business. What are elected officials to do after a single term? That’s right: Go to work for the people they were supposed to regulate while in office.
The only cure to restore democracy is decentralization. That is the only meaningful way to restore decisionmaking to the local level. That means that secession movements are here to stay.
Diablo, with your clarification of definitions I find little to object to. As you say, people do not use the terms consistently, which adds to the confusion of people trying to figure things out, and doesn’t really matter to people who do not care. If Antifa is anti-fascist, then sign me up. But then, like Andre the Giant in the Princess Bride, I feel compelled to say to the Antifa warriors “I do not think the word means what you think it means.”
I am not a socialist, but I thought the Socialist candidate was the best candidate by far in the last US Presidential election. I am not a socialist, but i think a major redistribution of wealth is in order. But talk like that sounds socialist to a lot of people — because of conditioning.
I hear people talk about freedom and the Constitution, and that sets off my bullshit detector. My antennae come out and I start sniffing around for Koch and Mises Institute propaganda. Because a lot of these freedom and Constitution types want to use that as another form if propaganda to perpetuate the status quo.
The only way out of this is is a jubilee. But centralized power will never accept that. So for now I think the focus needs to be on rebuilding local communities. Local identity and local self-control. Secessionist movements and direct participation democracy. Break up these corrupt power structures and repudiate the debt that props them all up. At some point I would like to see an aircraft group parked off the Cayman Islands to reclaim some of what has been looted, but I am not holding my breath.
Diablo, what is socialism? I am not sure what that word means anymore. You mention the Soviets. But what about the Germans? Are they socialist? What about the Scandanavians? The Venezuelans? There are a lot of diverse systems that have been labeled socialist, some more successful than others. America is now a banana republic crony capitalist system. Is that any better? If so, for who?
I would like to keep property in private hands, but I think that tax policy should operate to prevent extreme concentrations of wealth. Rather than blowing up the Middle East and stealing Libyan and Iraqi gold I would like to see a US aircraft carrier park off tax havens like the cayman islands. Let’s instead steal all of the money illegally stashed offshore and distribute it all back to the American people. Is that a socialist idea?
Disblo and Diogenes,
I think you both approach the subject with too much commitment to an ideological position. I think this is a mistake. I think the focus should be on what actually works. I have lived in the US, Austria and Korea. The US system is a complete disaster in my opinion, and the sooner the whole system implodes, the better. Then we can finally start with a new foundation. The Austrian system is a hybrid system. There is univeral health care, but there is also an overlapping private system that gives you more choices. And if you don’t want to wait in the doctor’s office for more than an hour, with private insurance you can cut to the front of the line. Everyone gets basic care, but it’s not a purely socialist system. The Korean system relies on price controls. If you are on the government plan, it only costs $3 for a doctor office visit. Some procedures like an ultrasound will cost closer to $50. An MRI will be about $400. A two week stay in the hospital will be about $2000 in a shared room. If you are a visiting foreigner not on the government plan, the prices are higher but still reasonable. Care is good quality and affordable. There is also private insurance, but most people just rely on the government plan. Almost everyone likes the system except the hospitals and the doctors. But there are still plenty of qualified people eager to become doctors. Both systems work 1000x better that the US system and give good care without pushing middle class people into bankruptcy. Kunstler is spot on that the US system is one big racket. Single payer raises obvious ideological issues, but it would work much better for most people. I can understand why hospital, insurance and pharmaceutical executives want to keep yhe system just as it is.I used to think like Diablo, but rising inequality has forced me to rethink my views. Now I hear “the right to be left alone” as code words of the Kochs. The system is rigged. As Kunstler constantly emphasizes, many of our institutions like health care and higher education have become criminal rackets to extract every last dime from the people. The billionaires promoting the austerity propaganda don’t really believe in balancing the budget for the common welfare. Rather, they have every intention of using the government’s improved balance sheet for their own ends. In an ideal world everyone should pay their own way for healthcare, housing, and education. But what about when the system is rigged?
Will F, Private property is a good thing, but it needs to be accompanied by tax policy to prevent overconcentration of wealth. Tax policy makes it extremely difficult to accumulate $1 Million because it taxes the hell our of wages, but makes it a lot easier to accumulate the second million, and then the third, and so forth. That’s because once you get over the hump you can live on the labor of others. That’s what needs to change.
V. Arnold,
Korea suits me, but it certainly isn’t for everyone. Speaking the language helps a lot, but no matter how well I learn to speak the language, I will always be regarded as an outsider. I am fine with that.
