[D Benton Smith]

WES

Well there’s gotta be a treasurous pile of them electrons stacking up somewhere, and if I’ve got to off a few pirates to get there then it’s all on them. (figuratively speaking, of course.)

[D Benton Smith]

WES

What if those errant electrons are just piling up somewhere in the back of God’s closet ? And we could go find them !

[D Benton Smith]

Boogaloo
Kimo
WES
Huskynut
Boscohorowitz

Same disappearing act on my posted comments from yesterday. Everything submitted after 11:34 pm just went POOOF ! I had not saved any backup copies of what I had written so consequently 3 hours of fairly careful work went bye-bye with no forwarding address. 4 long eloquently incisive essays of enormously important wisdom are now gone where ever it is that electrons go when they go missing.

I had replied to the above monikered persons, who can never know how much I basically agreed with what they said. Huskynut in particular had come to several insightful conclusions made from excellent observations . Now the thread of conversation is broken and time just keeps rolling along. Not much chance of mending it as the accelerating wave of new information pours in upon us.

My matter. I shall Copy-paste to a scratch pad from now on , as a minimum backup insurance against digital hiccups.

[D Benton Smith]

WES

Yup. Engineers answer to Mother Nature, and we all know how she is.

A good friend of mine (and a helluva an engineer) once said to me, “Ya know, I think I could make an engineer out of you !”

So I answered him, “What an awful threat to make to a friend.”

But I will say this, the disciplined fact based thinking required throughout all engineering (enforced by the ruthless judgement of a Physical Universe) tends to instill a very high standard of thinking . Reality just won’t let ’em get away with anything less.

Myself. I’m more of engineering stylist.

[D Benton Smith]

An extremely important couple of measurements and at least one major distinction is missing from recent reports out of Santa Clara County and Denmark. The distinction is whether they are testing general population for post-recovery levels of antibodies or simply “any detectable” level of antibodies.

Obviously it’s good news if significantly large swaths of the population have more or less symptomlessly recovered from the virus and will not become ill, spread it nor contract it again. But we don’t know from the published results if that’s the case at all.

The two missing measurements are therefore 1) number of days since exposure and 2) Type and Levels of the antibodies being tested for.

If antibody type and level does not show that the disease is fully behind them then it might just be showing that the disease symptoms are still ahead of them in the very near future. In other words, are they recovered or are they still in the sometimes quite lengthy incubation period?

We need to keep a weather eye on antibody testing because it could be either great news, or just more loose numbers irresponsibly tossed around to grab eyeballs and sell newspapers. We gotta know which. Solid studies good. Incomplete & Anecdotal bad.

[D Benton Smith]

Yeah, Yo Kimo ! Congratulations to you and happy belated birthday to your dad.

[D Benton Smith]

HuskyNut

The doubling rate automatically factors in a time consuming process of transmission . . . even if you can’t be sure how much time that transmission takes, or how transmission occurs. In the final analysis it doesn’t matter much. The things one needs to know are not that hard to identify or calculate. How fast is it doubling? How many people will eventually become infected? What percentage of of that number will die? How long will the process take? My numbers pencil out within specs, and I will keep my old job (even though I have retired first) because being right all the time is not just an annoying pastime , it’s lucrative.

By the way, the math error you’re making is very common because it’s so non-intuitive to non numberphiles. It’s described in formulas called Baye’s Theorem and boils down to this : in sequential calculations it is imperative that your operations begin with the true first statement in the series. In other words, make sure you’re starting at the real beginning with the correct values, which are frequently not at all obvious or intuitive.

All calculations done after the start of mitigation efforts must take the numerical effects of that mitigation into account (and remove those effects) before proceeding with the remaining series of calculations in order.

Humankind just felt the cold breath of extinction on its neck, so folks can be forgiven if they now choose to whistle past the open graveyard still awaiting them if they fuck up now. Your calculations, doubtlessly, are not factoring in how mitigation has changed, and will go on changing, all of the pertinent numbers. Therefore your algorithm returns to you garbage answers based on what did or might happen with some sort of mitigation already baked into the cake. My calculation reveals what happens if they don’t.

In conclusion : This virus is still perfectly capable of wiping us out should we fail to understand the fact that , with no mitigating actions against it , this virus simply DOES double every 4 to 5 days (mitigation slows it down, obviously) . And it kills a fuzzily estimated percentage of everyone it infects. What percentage is that ? Well, without state of the art medical treatment that death rate easily changes from a Chinese 2.3 % to an Italian 7.2% . No one has the guts to estimate what the % becomes with ZERO medical treatment. 10% ? More? I sure don’t want to find out.

In any case , even the silly optimist ONE percent comes to between 50 million and 500 million during a single 3-4 week long period starting 2 to 3 weeks after the last 2 doublings . Based on a world population of 7.5 billion relatively healthy souls, the final doubling would end in late April or early May, infecting 3 or 4 Billion people. A percentage of those billions all die in the same 2 week period 2 or 3 week later. No complex system survives such an event. It breaks. And that breakage has it’s own ‘knock-on’ domino sorts of lethal consequence like typhoid, cholera and nuclear pile meltdown from inadequately attended atomic fission reactors.

Show me a math geek who isn’t sweating bullets and I’ll show you a drug user.

I do not respond well to snark and non-logical strategies for “winning” arguments. No one wins arguments.

[D Benton Smith]

Right , Bos(s)

He’s already on my short list of who’s worth listening to in fizzix. Here’s my rule : if they’re way smarter than me I’ll listen, if they are also right I will learn from them, and if . . . on top of all that . . . they ALSO poke the ‘closed club academy’ in the eye then they are worth listening to.

[D Benton Smith]

Dear similarly afflicted,

When the math gets tough the tough get calculators.

I am forced to concede that Computer modeling has it’s place ( might I suggest a septic tank ?). Seriously, computer modeling is too easily manipulated to suit one’s wants and cannot be trusted when the stakes are this high ( too many conflicting wants).

Arithmetic, on the other hand, has stood the test of time and won’t try to change your mind about anything, only inform it.

So I ran the numbers the old fashioned way, using the murky (understatement) “Fog Of War” numbers being thrown hither and yon by indistinguishable saints and sinners since 6 weeks ago and now.

High ball, low ball, no balls at all. Run ’em all says I. (why not? all I’ve got is time these days)

Here is what the numbers said (ice blooded little sociopaths ):

Within all ranges of presently hypothesized numbers describing infection rate, lethality rate, doubling rate, proportion of non symptomatic carriers and effects of mitigation, the bottom line(s) was conclusive and stark.

If lock-downs (such as they were) had not been done, and the Wuhan virus ranged free, there would have resulted a minimum of one hundred million virtually simultaneous human deaths around the middle of May. Way more probably half a billion. Silent Spring indeed. There’s nothing to compare that to in human history. I’m unable to construct any scenario in which technological civilization continued. Anywhere.

Nuclear power plants and weapons require skilled maintenance ( i.e. a functional civilization) to avoid cataclysmic failure. There are 450 nuke plants and 4,000 bombs. How many failures equals an extinction level event ?

So, yeah, I’ld have to say that was a quite a bullet we just ducked.

Please keep these facts in mind when ragging on the totally weird combination of good guys/bad guys/whothehellknows guys who just prevented our extinction.

Nor the folks who nearly caused it in the first place.

[D Benton Smith]

Dear Bos(s),
Aw, shucks. And thank you again. I am genuinely happy to accept your appreciation but I hope that doesn’t deter you from holding my feet to the fire when I need it, which is pretty much always.

[D Benton Smith]

Hi Figmund,

In response to the question “Are We All In This Together ?” we must first appreciate that it’s actually two questions : 1) are we all in this? and, 2) are we all together ?

Here are my answers:

Yes to #1, and apparently not to #2 (but it sure does have folks talking it over, don’t it ? . . . which is a good thing.)

[D Benton Smith]

Everybody seems to be yearning for a return to normal (whatever that means) and I just can’t help but want to look them up close in the eye and ask, “Are you really SURE?”

Easiest way to make people gratefully accept miserable conditions is to give them a taste of worse.

[D Benton Smith]

They must care very much about what we think because they’re churning out so may versions of what that is, or what it should be, what it would be if Trump wasn’t such a meany , or if well known liars hadn’t fibbed. Confusing. But at least they show they care.

What worries me more is the deeply disappointing quality of the propaganda itself. It’s so slapdash and hasty. Almost perfunctory. Why if I didn’t know better (and I definitely don’t) I might suspect that their primal survival instincts are starting to fuck with their merely mercenary instinct for who to lie for.

But not to worry. It’s when they stop even bothering to lie at all that I will duck and cover.

[D Benton Smith]

boscohorowitz
Thank you, and wow. Not only do I appreciate the complement but I’m deeply impressed by how squarely you smacked a whole row of nails right on their heads. The cadence and bounce are what I strive for when editing the initial prose. In other words, it’s not an accident, but will quickly add that it’s not vanity or show boating either. I’ve found that discomforting truths are best said (if time allows) with as much style, grace, music and humor as possible. Otherwise they just hurt so much that most people will simply reject the entire communication out of hand.
For example, “… like, the perfect point spread on the probability range of various interpretations of events.” That’s perfect. It’s literally beautiful and made me aware of something I have indeed been trying to do in my thinking and writing all along, , but without fully comprehending just what that was myself.
I’ve heard that jazz musicians consider their main audience to be other jazz musicians. I get that a little better now. My word play is partly for fun, mostly for necessity, and completely as truthful as I can make it.

[D Benton Smith]

In my humble (well, to be honest, I’m not really all that humble) opinion the baddies made their play, it was evil enough but not big enough, and now they are going to pay. China has noticeably dialed back it’s universally rejected bullshit. Trump is about to repatriate a big chunk of the money they stole (reparations for the viral war crime) while Xi is a deer in the headlights (cross-hairs?) of a vengeful world. Globalist Fortress Europe tells Apple and Google to take their transparently NWO “contact tracing” software off the shelves, and the northern Hemisphere (at least) has traversed the peak of the first wave of the Wuhan virus.
All in all a pretty good week compared to what it looked like it was going to be (and nearly was ! )
Now for Act II, in which a world pushed to ( or past ?? ) the brink of economic collapse will teeter on that brink for a while as we watch in fascinated horror. Which way is this sucker is gonna fall? Into the abyss or back onto it’s butt ? I sure as hell don’t know.
Maybe it will teeter indefinitely in the perpetual cliff hanger that we’ve all gotten incredulously used to. Guess we’ll have to wait for the next exciting episode.

[D Benton Smith]

I long wondered why apocalyptic predictions never come to pass (evidence : here we are despite uncountable numbers of dire predictions made in the past. Not extinct. Apocalypse pending, I guess. Knock on wood.)
Then I gave it some brain searing concentrated cogitation and came up with what I think is big part of the answer.
Our own experiences are the only model of “normal” that we have to go on. It is literally all we have ever known and the only things we have ever done. This reality may not exactly be heaven on earth but at least it is a hell on earth that have have more or less learned how to cope with. The model is probably tinted with aspirations for a better normal, but the fact is that at least we have acquired the skills and illusions about “how things work around here” to have survived up through the present moment.
When an apocalyptic “series of unfortunate events” like wars, imperial collapses and world wide pandemics just rip the living shit out of everything, then what happens next?
Well there are only two possibilities. In the event that we go extinct then that’s that. The piles of dead will neither complain nor worry, and scavengers of all sizes and description will have a long field day.
In the alternative scenario ( in which we don’t go the way of the dinosaurs, and is the one I’m personally rooting for) then the survivors will work like never before, like obsessed maniacs, like bankers at a bailout . . . . . to put it all back to as close to the old “normal” as closely as the can, and as quickly as they can. After all, the “doings” of the old normal is the only thing they ever knew how to do. It is their ONLY model, and so that is the one they will build toward.
If the “new normal” is a bit skewed from the old one I don’t think very many people will even notice. Those that do will be regarded by everyone else as quaint old nostalgic geezers yearning for “the good old days.”
So do make plans but don’t over-worry it . Predict and prepare to the degree you think you should and then just get on with living, until further notice.

[D Benton Smith]

I am particularly grateful to WES for his “slice of daily life” observations on what is going on in his immediate environment. He’s in Toronto. I’m a couple hours from St. Louis, and know something about the “normal” conditions and relationships twixt the two places. So, from his report I can (with ‘fuzzy logic’) quickly infer a Scientific Wild Assed Guess (SWAG) about how the machinery of civilization is running in our general ‘north central sector’ of the North American Branch of the Great Western Empire. Conclusion : VERY creaky but not yet dire (mostly). Rationed Meds are due to 80 % of our meds being manufactured In China. If war comes that rationing will tighten and then stop altogether. Advice: cut dosage (with your doctors permission and advice), stockpile the remainder & start practicing a better healthstyle. Grocery Store failure to restock certain items is a quite alarming. The initial “panic buying” phase is long over with . Indeed, foot traffic and sales are down, not up, so if supply chains were normal then those shelves would have been restocked weeks ago. Trucking hasn’t stopped, so what’s going on? My best guess is that staple foodstuffs like wheat, milk, eggs, processed meats and vegetable based proteins are becoming scarcer and scarcer. The U.S. has no Strategic Grain Reserves (as in none, zero, nada, all-gone-now). That would include various grain based animal feed. That’s not insurmountable. We are all too fat anyway, and besides harvest is just 5 or 6 months away, unless something seriously disrupts planting and harvest. Like a pandemic for example.
My best nightmare is that China knows it must either move now, or put off its dreams of hegemonic world domination for at least another generation. How crazy is Xi ? Fairly rational, actually, too bad he’s not the one calling the shots. That would be our old friends who counterfeit all of our money, own practically everything and tell us what is and what ain’t in the effluvium called “The Media”. Here’s the CCP’s basic calculation : freak now or forever hold their peace. To go toe to toe with the U.S. China requires food, fuel and cannon fodder (of those, fuel is of course the weak link). To prevail in such a conflict the West ( the U.S., basically) needs food money and beachheads.
Crash the economy and spoil the North American harvest and the Commies could actually pull it off.
I don’t think they should try it, and I do think they will fail, but I didn’t predict they would preemptively strike with a world spanning bio warfare crime either. “Fool me once … blah blah blah”
The unthinkable is only unthinkable to those who can’t think (or are in denial.)
China’s formidable propaganda “machine” far far far exceeds mere weasel words in the fully suborned mainstream media. It penetrates every level of commerce, academia, politics and even Intelligence Services. And the entire focus and thrust of that giant machine has now ONE singular purpose : keep the world (and particularly the United States) in “Denial” for as long as possible.

[D Benton Smith]

Hullo gang,
I’m not actually back (having never actually gone away) , but have been lurking faithfully Lo these many years. Thought it might be a good time to start talking again, however, as there seems to be a nontrivial chance that what we humorously call a civilization is on a defective Chinese ventilator. Hopefully we can have keep ourselves occupied talking about what the hell is going on while there’s still something going on to talk about.

[Author]

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