Street Rap

There is a new word, apophenia, created by Klaus Conrad to describe false correlations. I propose a duality with gestalt. This isn’t fair to gestalt. Gestalt is intended to break you out of your current patterns and recognize more useful ones. Sometimes we recognize incorrectly. Let us apply this duality to the USA invasion of Grenada in 1983.

When Thatcher remonstrated with Reagan over this breach of international law and convention, Reagan responded that he wanted some nutmeg for his eggnog. This was just after England had defended the Falklands.

While this remark is appropriate within the history of the spice trade, in 1988 Grenada exported 2,230 tons of nutmeg and 256 tons of mace for a total export value of $15,761,107. This was a good year. Let us find the street value. 2,486 tons is 87,691,069 ounces. I have a price of 6 ounces is $10 listed on the internet currently. Divided by 6 is 14,615,178. Times $10 gives a markup of more than 10 times the export value. Somewhere in that 100 million there might be funds to influence policy.

The tragedy of the commons as applied to institutions, bribes, is precisely because the profit of such actions far exceeds the expense. Congress scrounging for contributions for example. Winners get to fix the game is the whole point of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Military is a sunk cost.

Take the financial value of the nutmeg. The trade in nutmeg supports various business institutions. The multiplier of financial value is constrained by the reserve requirement. If the reserve requirement is 20% then the multiplier will be 5. There is also interest and the future value of money. Taking an arbitrary value of 5 as the multiplier times $100 million, on an annual basis, almost sounds like money.

The financial value of nutmeg is constrained by its earnings and uncertainty. More fungible assets, oil reserves, undeveloped land, don’t have that limitation. Each financial transaction requires reassessment of the asset. The development of land or the pumping of oil can crash their financial value because they are now associated with earnings. Dreams sell. It is a shame that we don’t have the technology to claim oil reserves without digging and then capping a well.

In 2021, China is harassing the Philippines over their oil. This seems silly. Where is the Philippines getting the financing to develop their oil? What is the market for the Philippine oil? All that is being determined is which Chinese company will develop the oil. Until one realizes that it is the financial value of the Philippine oil reserves that turns Chinese Communists into slathering greedy imperialists. We need to find means for nations and their populations to profit from the trade in financial value of their assets.

Returning to the events of our invasion of Grenada: Maurice Bishop, the Prime Minister of Grenada, negotiated a better price for Grenada’s nutmeg. Within the month, Bernard Coard with the support of Cuba overthrew and murdered Bishop. An important American principle had been violated. It is yet another humiliation that our founders chose our name in the belief that we would one day physically cover two continents. As it is, we dominate those two continents. The principle is that if you are going to fix it in the Caribbean, you don’t go to Cuba, you come to US’ns. After the US invasion, Grenada lost Russia as the largest and most generous buyer of its nutmeg for a time.

The financial value of Grenada itself can be understood as its debt. Through debt restructuring, grants, tourism, and selling passports enterprising Grenada reduced its debt from just under a billion US dollars in 2015 to 720 million in 2019. This is an island of 112,523 people and 134.6 square miles. In 2019 unemployment was 15.2%. In 2018 debt was 62.7% of GDP. I Don’t know how the population would have fared under General Austin. Austin took over from Coard for six days before our invasion. Today the primary industry of Grenada is debt. President Reagan’s comment was factually invalid, the invasion was not about nutmeg. The statement was in the correct spirit.

Applying the principles of gestalt, the event of the Grenada invasion took place in the context of the United States of America Empire. A good example is the career of Aristide, the prime minister of Haiti. When Aristide was overthrown in 1991, the Haitians didn’t waste time singing or smuggling guns, they lobbied Washington until we sent forces to put him back. This is how to deal with Empire. Unfortunately, drug cartels and industrialists have more clout, and Aristide was back out again. Haitian debt is a fiction. As Haiti has no autonomy the debt is treated as ours and we pay the interest. Statehood for Haiti.

Whispers in the boardroom bring deaths in the jungle. If we are to get past the flutter and theater, we must understand the profit.

Privacy

 

I spent a year in Dallas one week. Southern Methodist University had volunteered as the crash test dummy for the beta release of our library software. Wandering down the hall, I noticed a PC. I got on and brought up our company’s web site. It was 1995. When I attempted to reach our mainframe, a firewall stopped me. I knew it was possible to reach it from the internet so I called up our hex support and told them:

-The only people you are blocking are customers and employees.

Support graciously allowed me in. Normally we come back from these jaunts with scraps of paper trying to remember what we did. This time I put my changes in our source base and had it reinstalled. Monday morning, I hit the office clean. Then I made it a habit to check SMU for their dumps each day and brought them across the web.

The same situation is happening for privacy. Let us review phone surveillance. In the American Civil War, soldiers realized that rather than knocking over telegraph lines it was possible to toss a wire over the line and through inductance over hear the enemy’s messages with an earpiece. Sometimes inductance would operate the opposite way and operators would recognize that they were being monitored. Then the operators might send false information or encoded messages. Even when the code is unbroken, the fact of coded messages is useful.

In World War I communication wires were strung across battlefields.  This made it worthwhile to crawl out, splice the line and steal communications. If you could be certain of the result, this might lead to false information being sent or even giving false orders to the enemy. Sometimes they communicated audibly rather than Morse code.

The FBI made use of this technology during prohibition. They could not make recordings. Sometimes transcripts were presented in court. More often they made use of the information to provocateur or build cases. Sometimes they used parallel construction, claiming a “reliable informant”.

By the fifties phone tapping became common. Sometimes wire recorders were used. Eventually a German company came up with a phone switching device that allowed phone companies to provide surveillance as a service. In our new century surveillance is almost a by-product of digital compression and server technology. Nowadays surveillance, even video surveillance, is a matter of extending backup retention.

Old fashioned taps would be of little use on a digitized compressed signal. Even listening devices, bugs, use cell phone technology. It is much safer and more discrete to communicate as a cell phone than an analog radio signal. Why carry around some super spy recorder when you can just turn on your cell phone recording?

A major issue is identification. Traditionally credit bureaus identify us. Same name, similar birthdate, social security, address, phone, probably the same person. Credit agencies should be tracking our user IDs, IP addresses, email, but so far have not had the inclination. Marketers have developed advertising ID. Government agencies do their best. Sometimes government agencies check credit. Those requests are tracked.

For government or marketing purposes similar persons may have similar behavior and ambiguous identity is acceptable.

The only two groups that are explicitly denied our information are medical and law enforcement. This is bizarre. If you want doctors and police to behave intelligently, they have to know who you are. Just as my support people conscientiously installed their firewall, we are putting ours in the wrong place.

Pfizer Study

Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine has come out in the New England Journal of Medicine. I was wrong again. I thought the 95% was a consequence of confusion between oncology and epidemiology. The study was conducted by Pfizer. I had thought it was fortuitous that an mRNA vaccine that avoids the issue of white blood cell response was easier to develop.

The study:

 “RESULTS

A total of 43,548 participants underwent randomization, of whom 43,448 received injections: 21,720 with BNT162b2 and 21,728 with placebo. There were 8 cases of Covid-19 with onset at least 7 days after the second dose among participants assigned to receive BNT162b2 and 162 cases among those assigned to placebo; BNT162b2 was 95% effective in preventing Covid-19 (95% credible interval, 90.3 to 97.6). Similar vaccine efficacy (generally 90 to 100%) was observed across subgroups defined by age, sex, race, ethnicity, baseline body-mass index, and the presence of coexisting conditions. Among 10 cases of severe Covid-19 with onset after the first dose, 9 occurred in placebo recipients and 1 in a BNT162b2 recipient. The safety profile of BNT162b2 was characterized by short-term, mild-to-moderate pain at the injection site, fatigue, and headache. The incidence of serious adverse events was low and was similar in the vaccine and placebo groups.”

Dropping the statistical blessing they divided 8 by 162 and got 0.0493827160493827 or 5%. 100% - 5% gives 95%. Another way to say this is: 8 of 21,720 vaccinated participants, or .037% reported sick.  162 of 21,728 placebo participants or .75% reported sick.

The study was monitored by survey:

“With the use of an interactive Web-based system,”

According to the protocol, blood samples were taken. I see no record that positive results were excluded. I see no reporting of the blood immune results at all. Swab tests are unreliable.

“Overall, BNT162b2 recipients reported more local reactions than placebo recipients.” 

Participating in the study is itself a selection factor. The participants knew by their reactions whether they had received the placebo or the vaccine. Those who thought they had received the vaccine were more likely to dismiss symptoms. Those who thought they received the placebo were more likely to report them.

Everyone vaccinated should then show a positive blood test, presence of antibodies. It is more certain that a placebo candidate is sick. Vaccinated candidates who report sick have to report and get accurately swabbed within four days.

 This is a busted study.

At this point you may wail:

-OK, forget the study! Look at the science!

The research money was sucked up by the drug companies. There is no science. All we have is your recipe.

Speculation: (This is where I will be wrong again.)

1.    I speculate that our infection by Sars-Cov-2 of our symbiotic or pathogenic cells creates the virus that provokes our immune response. I am trying to explain how a glycan coated virus triggers immunity. Do mRNA vaccines communicate to our foreign cells?

2.    Are the adverse reactions a consequence of prior infection? I bet that the 8 infected vaccinated participants did not have adverse reactions. I am sure that they had prior negative blood tests. This study may have been an expensive survey of prior infection.

3.    Does the vaccine treat existing illness? Obviously not, or it would have been reported. Why not? Does it make the illness worse? I predict this question will be the source of most resistance to vaccination. Please don’t compare to existing vaccines. Creating mRNA should be palliative.

Recommendations:

1.    Proficiency in Statistics must be a requirement for the medical profession.

2.    Reported blood immune tests before and after such studies. I expect that all vaccinated participants will have a positive test. This would be a good audit.

3.    Disaster that all the research money was given to drug companies. First look at the problem, then examine the problem, when you are done – study the problem.

I am a courteous person. I won’t refuse a vaccine. I have little hope for them.  

Covid19 Infects Foreign Cells

 

Foreign cells have the ability to resist our immune system. When Sars-Cov2 infects a foreign cell, it will be coated in that cell’s glycan. Depending on the cell that is infected the new virus will either awaken our immune response or avoid it. In those cases where the glycan is part of the foreign cells immune defense, the new virus will also have that capability. This speculation is to explain why some people are more infectious.

When Sars-Cov2 infects strep for instance, those virus particles may be transmitted more easily.

 

Covid19 Questions

1. What events pop the heads? Give specific events, no mumbling about ACE2 receptors or glycan reactions.
2. Why don’t owls eat all the bats? No mightabes or whatabouts. It mightabe my ass.
3. Do the heads have to pop for infection to occur? As a male, I would think so. We don’t even know that much.
4. What is immune memory? Thymus is involved.
5. Why is there any immune reaction? Covid19 is covered in our glycan.
6. How are we infected by a virus covered in foreign glycan?
7. Is there any distinction between the glycoprotein covering the virus and our own? If there is such a distinction, is it consistent?
8. What are the specific immune events at the cell wall? Again, no mumbling about pathways or mightabes.
9. What clears the virus?
10. Does the virus clear? Please don’t test this with immune reaction.
11. What is the progression of the disease?
12. Is HIV a coronavirus?

Get your flu shot. Get a Covid19 vaccine when it comes. Stay away from people. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t argue by metaphor or analogy. Every illness is different.

Covid19 Isn’t Cancer

 Crossing disciplines can be a source for inspiration and embarrassment. BioNTech recently made an announcement of 90% effectiveness. I suspect that the oncologists meant 90% in the body and the virologists heard 90% in the population.

BioNTech, as everyone else, is targeting the heads that pop up on the virus when it is about to infect. They have recognized that the white blood cell response is inadequate and they are conflicting with the virus at the cell wall. The company’s specialty is provoking this cellular response without the mediation of white blood cells. This makes perfect sense with tumors. 

The white blood cells keep immune memory. Covid19 virus coats in our glycan and thereby avoids white blood cell response. The BioNTech candidate avoids this issue but it can’t confer lasting immunity.

If we surround an Ebola spot outbreak with this type of intervention, it should be effective. That doesn’t mean that the population can go back to passing around dead bodies. In the United States, we have 10 million reported sick. Using the multiple of 10 given by various studies, we have 100 million true infected, or about one third of our population.

The danger is in the use of the word vaccine. People hear vaccine and they think the epidemic is finished. Please use the word treatment. This is not a vaccine. It is an immune response treatment.

Sars-Cov-2 Update

 Pandemic means that we don’t know anything. If we knew how to cope, it wouldn’t be a pandemic. The drug companies got all the research money. The few researchers who remain have cobbled together a few studies. One of the studies is a computer model showing how the heads pop up on the virus when the glycan stimulus occurs. We don’t know what events raise the heads. Given that the virus leaves the bat on two ends, I suggest that two of the events are loud noise and bile. Infection must occur when the virus is inside us. Another event must be a cell nibbling on the virus glycan. It seems reasonable that the heads have to rise for the virus to infect.

When you encounter a foreign virus where the heads haven’t popped, your white blood cells should recognize foreign glycan and consume the virus. Once the heads have popped it should be possible for the virus to encounter one of your other cells before your white blood cell and infect it. The virus produced by your cell would have your glycan and be ignored by your immune response. When one of your cells nibbles the virus glycan and pops the heads, it is too late for your immune response. How do we get an immune response? Foreign cells coexisting in our body would not produce virus with the correct glycan coat when they are infected. White blood cells consume the foreign virus and coagulation occurs. I suspect that in bats Sars-Cov-2 favors foreign cells. Perhaps it gets confused in us. Eventually liver function recognizes aged glycan and diminishes the viral load.

Just as conservators strip varnish applied by the artist so that we can admire the colors, researchers wash away the glycan to show the virus structure. A coronavirus is different. The glycan defends the virus from the protein immune response. All the suppositions based on influenza are invalid. Simply raising the immune response will fail. Is HIV a coronavirus?

Drug company executives, recognizing futility, are shoveling their stock out as fast as they can. SEC criticized this as unseemly, giving away the game.

There is a new paper about bradykinin storms as opposed to cytokine storms. The argument is about the nature of the immune response crisis that occurs and their associated therapies. Whether it is a B-storm or a C-storm, I ask what distinguishes our interior from that of a bat. The virus appears to coexist amicably in bats. I am hanging on to the idea that these storms result from medication.

As population increases, more pandemics will occur. There will be pandemics after this one. The first major change we must make is that statistics, I hate statistics, has to be a premedical qualification. I’m talking about a full-throat course, designing studies, making statistical arguments, at least as difficult as biochemistry. Doctors’ deficiency in statistics makes them easier prey for drug companies. The surgical textbooks are particularly egregious. Thoroughly slap anyone who says medicine is an art. Just because someone gets better doesn’t mean it worked. If you release the results of your study early, that demonstrates bias and your study is bogus.

We must immediately pull the licenses of the killer quacks. They are not getting any smarter. There is no shortage of doctors. Everyone who prescribed garbage has to go. We cannot leave them for the next pandemic.

If you do not have a real study or are emptying the sick ward, then shut the fuck up. Please don’t give hope or find things for hospital personnel to do.

Stanford started with a reasonable study demonstrating that more people were sick than were reported. They then used that revelation to spew hokum. Raze Stanford and plant it to roses.  There is no shortage of Universities. The University of Pennsylvania gave a degree to someone who can’t read. I know it was a joke degree in real estate but it had their name on it. We can survive without the University of Pennsylvania. Even Harvard didn’t admit Joe Kennedy.  There is a questionable study from St. Louis University. I expect that after review the University will call to account. It is difficult to conduct a study in a war zone when one wants to free up beds. Yogis, not pragmatists should administer studies.

Occasionally I scrape the Worldometers site for the sick data and paste it into a spreadsheet. I then create columns for crude mortality rate, medical efficiency, growth, testing effectiveness and true sick rate.  Medical efficiency, dead over sick, gives a sense of testing coverage and medical response. Deviation from 4% medical efficiency suggests under reporting of dead or sick. Crude mortality is percentage of deaths over closed cases. It is interesting to see who blocks reporting of crude mortality. Growth is what I call active over total cases. For true sick multiply ten times reported sick over the population. Testing effectiveness is tests over cases. If testing effectiveness is high, they are only testing the dead. Too low and they are indulging the privileged. It is clear that the data is sketchy.  The results determine policy.

The tests are inadequate. Fecal tests may be the most accurate.

Once saturation has occurred, there will be a constant mortality rate and we can await the next pandemic.

How SARS-Cov-2 Works

Building out my five earlier posts, one mistake is framing as influenza. SARS-Cov-2 is a coronavirus. Those little arms aren’t sexual selection. They aren’t cute. They hold onto glycan. My frame bases on two facts, glycan and bats.

If you are into rage, rage pleases some people, consider all the researchers staring into the abyss, making their tiny incremental gains in knowledge and technique. They were reserving their lab equipment, writing their grant proposals, studying HIV, Ebola, H1N1, etc. The discovery they were converging on was the relation between glycan and protein along the cell wall. This molecular process is complex and difficult to discern. Glycan is just as complex as protein. The research is cancelled. Government gave the money for all those projects to drug companies.

Drug companies are drug companies. They are perfecting their manufacturing process to be ready for the vaccine. They are doing clinical trials for various expensive cocktails of treatments. If something doesn’t work, they combine it with something else. They do not stare into the abyss and try to figure out what question to ask. I sometimes encounter a desperate research article trying to show how understanding the interaction between glycan and protein is essential to this problem. Those articles don’t come from drug companies. Recently Chinese spies were trying to steal drug company research. They must be communists. I doubt there is anything worth stealing.

Coronavirus has evolved to shield itself with glycan from the immune system. You don’t want our immune system to attack our own glycan. The various vaccines predicate on protein interaction. That is not how coronavirus works. SARS-Cov-2 has evolved in bats to have long arms and a very thick shroud of glycan, so that no protein is exposed.

A study, Shielding and Beyond: The Roles of Glycans in SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein, was published on bioRxiv.org June 12, 2020, gives a computer model of the heads extending above the glycan.  It doesn’t explain what triggers the extension of the heads. If a virus is inactive, that is its heads haven’t popped, our white blood cells recognize foreign glycan and consume it. How do the heads pop?  SARS-Cov-2 leaves bats as fecal and saliva aerosol. I think SARS-Cov-2 has a molecular memory from bats of vibration and bile. Bats shriek to echolocate. This might explain Manhattan. Manhattan hum raises the sound level.

Once the heads have popped, SARS-Cov-2 may encounter one of our other cells before it encounters a white blood cell and we are infected. Those viruses shroud in our own glycan, ignored by our immune response. Eventually the liver should clean them out as old glycan. Notice that this in no way is similar to other immune response. If the virus encounters or attracts a cell that consumes the viral glycan, it then will infect that cell. If the infected cell is local, we ignore its viral load. If it is foreign, there are many foreign cells within us; our immune system will recognize foreign glycan and coagulation may be extreme.

As with most coronavirus, we usually encounter this infection and ignore it. Covid19 may have stronger latency. I have noticed Covid-head, a certain dullness and irrationality.

If we vaccinate someone, we increase the viral response. The viral response will not be sufficient to interdict a cloaked virus. The white blood cells were already doing their function whenever they encounter a coronavirus. It is a matter of which cell they encounter first. Increasing immune response is dangerous. Usually the white blood cells recognize viral particles, but they cannot and should not recognize their own shrouded viral particles.  Infected then subject to vibration, would pop the heads and could be dire.  

There was a protocol that the first test is on the researcher.  I beseech you. Abandon the philosopher’s stone, the vaccine; pursue science.

Why haven’t owls eaten all the bats?

Take reported sick times 10 divided by world’s population I get 2.3%. United States is 14%. Divide US population by 10 apply the crude mortality rate of 6% to the sick and I get 2 million dead. Ten is the current true sick ratio. One to seven, in the US, that you are infected.

 

Further Covid19 Speculation

If this crowd had been in charge during Ebola, we would all be dead. If it were Clinton elected, she would be tearfully tragically sorry for the hundreds of dead in New York. If, by some miracle, the Golden Child had a third term, they would fiercely pillory him for the billions he had wasted in China. If the Federal government had existed during the bubonic plague, they would hand out rats.

I doubt you develop immunity to Covid19 in the normal sense. This doesn’t demand that it persist forever. If you are not reinfected it may be that over some time your liver will recognize large, elderly glycan balls and dispose of them all.

Perhaps Covid19 is advantageous in bats. It avoids immune response and may target foreign invaders. This is not ridiculous there are anticancer viral therapies. Bats don’t get cancer. This coronavirus may coevolve with future human generations. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to get it. 

In a few years, after the 100 million have died in the world, we will develop a social tolerance for this new disease. People will go on retreats or to spas and periodically rid themselves of it. Screaming, singing, farting, religious events and concerts will be passé.

Our sense of privacy has to change. Bear in mind that every police agency has intelligence coordination and data is forever. Somehow, we have to make a distinction between courts, health, police, marketing and surveillance.

Covid19 Observations

The Wuhan bat lady recently got out of jail. Her first speech was to the effect:

-You ain’t seen nothing yet.

See why they jailed her. Her group’s first new paper nailed it down that Sars-Cov-2 comes from bats. They needed to put that marker down. Extrapolating from that information, bats are healthy. They have a protein rich diet. Bats have plenty of vitamin D. They are active. There are no fat bats. Covid19 is all up in bats. Just because something is logical, does not make it so.

In desperation, I smoked a cigar in the park. I was uncomfortable after that. The catch in my throat declined, but now it’s back. Is there any correlation to tonsillectomy?

Coronavirus arms hang onto their glycan coat. Glycan is encoded. Your body can detect foreign glycan. So when a coronavirus from someone else gets in you, your body says:

-Not my glycan.

The white blood cell or whatever chomps it down. Your immune system isn’t notified. It’s just another foreign invader:

-Nothing to see here. Move along.

Covid19 is different. Maybe it holds more glycan or holds its coat tighter. Covid19 had to survive in bats.

Bats echo locate. Maybe if someone is yelling, singing, or fecal aerosol it disturbs the coat enough to be infectious. Depending on the state of its coat, your immune history, frequency and severity it infects you. Once that happens it should have your glycan coat and your immune system is none the wiser, perhaps some lassitude or sterility but who notices?

I’m speculating that to fire things off the virus has to attack a foreign body that has residence in you. Those new viruses would lack the correct glycan encoding to shield them and you will be sick. When things get too fierce you choke on your coagulation. Maybe they should investigate dialysis.

South Korean researchers have contended that people shed “dead viruses” as different from infectious ones. I don’t know what dead virus means. The researchers are expressing their frustration that once people have been sick they continue to shed virus but no longer seem infectious. Unless those people sing, yell, spray fecal matter or are otherwise intimate, depending on the immune capability of their associate, they may not infect.

The virus persists in bats. Why would it behave differently in us?

I haven’t heard any mention of thoracentesis.

Worldometer has an article making use of New York data, which comes to 1.5% infection mortality rate. I tried to do something like it with Spain in my previous post and got 2%. Point being, you can be dumb as you want to be, and still get close. Even my first ignorant post was close. Worldometer is properly critical of the measure they call crude mortality rate. I think we should still propagate CMR as it identifies obvious issues of state reporting.

-Georgia, what kind of quack killing floor are you running?

-Illinois, are you missing deaths or false positives?

You are allowed to read and you are allowed to calculate.

There Will Be No Covid19 Vaccine

The virus spikes hold on to glycan. Glycan, sugar molecules, cover everything. Glycan is how all cells interact. Sars-Cov-2 has evolved in bats to conceal itself with glycan from your body. Search on glycan coat Sars-Cov-2 and you will find all these research articles, trying not to be snarky, not wanting to bust rice bowls, explaining the difficulty. You would think they would be more explicit in these circumstances.

Why are we getting immune reaction? How about the virus infecting foreign bodies, those viruses lack the correct coat and activate immune response? We don’t know that immune response means immunity.

We finally have some data as to morbidity. We don’t have exposure or infection but of cases resolved 20% die. A million sick means 200,000 will die. Easy bar bet, if the bars were open. 80% remission is still opportunity for delusion and quackery.

Everyone divides dead by sick. I have taken this measure as medical effectiveness. It gives a sense of testing and ER load. To get morbidity look at cases resolved. You need the recovered measure. Recovered may need air quotes. The virus is persistent. Yet those who have been sick do not relapse or infect. So sum the recovered and dead then use that number to divide the dead and you get morbidity.

In Spain they appear to have a reliable LA Roche blood test and they are getting 5% exposure, good social distancing. Five% of population gives 2,340,000. Divide cases by exposed gives around 10% for serious infection.

Multiply current U.S. cases by 10 and we have 15 million exposed that is we expect antibodies. Divide by US population and we have 4.5% exposed. Return to my ridiculously wrong assumptions in the two earlier blog entries, which weren’t very different on results. This time we will take 70% of US population for exposed, some drivel about immunity. Times 10% serious infection, times 20% morbidity, I’m getting over four million dead.

Morbidity rates vary. US-23%, NY-40%, IL-41%, GA-84%, some states have zero recovered. Since it ties to reopening, reporting is suspect. States may not realize that their poor reporting inflates their morbidity, another good reason to emphasize morbidity.

The real point is if you don’t feed the fire, it should go out. As I pointed out earlier, hope it goes out before it mutates and/or the secondary infections take hold. We haven’t seen white nose yet. It might mutate in dogs.

Covid19 Facts

Distance is it. Distance is all we have. The more we play with it, the longer it takes. Too long and the virus twitches. I hate to say mutate, sounds like a comic book. The meaningful virus change is to attack a different population segment. This sounds likely, I don’t know when, but that is how nature works. Even without Covid19 changing, once the herd is sickened, opportunistic infections increase.

There will be no vaccine. The glib, confident, hardworking, energetic, smart people who get the money are not the ones who make discoveries. The Ebola people, with the hot hand since they actually created a successful vaccine, took decades, got their funding cut. The one lab in the world that knows anything, in Wuhan, got their funding cut and their principles are in jail. The HIV people who have been staring into the abyss and making their incremental discoveries got their funding cut.

They are trying to find the coconut chocolate in the sampler. A good analogy because the virus is sugar coated. If these cookbook hamsters know what they are doing or are extremely lucky, they may find a unique identifier. Bat immune systems have been trying forever. Bats are fragile densely packed animals; their immune systems are ferocious.

The immunity has to be lasting. Rule out anyone announcing immediate promising results.

Statistics must be mandatory and qualifying in physicians’ curriculum.

            Sulfur molasses has a terrible smell

            Whatever I had, it would make me get well

            Sulfur molasses, the old country style

            Together with goose grease and turpentine oil

If you don’t have a study with a control group, you don’t have anything. Early announcement proves bias. Most people get better. We don’t know that alcohol is a factor. How can a scientist tout vitamin D without a study? Is HIV a risk factor? Do asthmatics and aids shelter more aggressively? If there is a correlation with melanin, examine it not debate it.

Refusing to experiment on people means that you experiment on the entire population. Some of the poor consequences may be due to treatment. Don’t just do something stand there. Is anyone checking the numbers?

The shame of this stupidity is that it distracts from distancing. Take your hope and the Blue Angels and put them somewhere uncomfortable. 

Covid19 Speculation

I am not an authority.  Anyone who does speak with authority on this subject is lying. It is too new. The federal government just released a projection of 200,000 deaths. This is close to my own calculation. Given the federal governments history of guidance and information, perhaps I’m wrong. I’m getting the same order of magnitude without an engineering degree. The federal government did not show its work.

Presumptuous to call this a model, start with a 330,000,000 population in the United States. How many people will be exposed?  I am impressed with social distancing. Even if only half the states are sheltering in place, those states seem sincere. In Illinois, Pritzker has been good. It is difficult to make decisions with insufficient information. I doubt I would have his courage. Let’s say half the population becomes exposed.  This gives 165 million.

Of those exposed how many become infected?

 I’m hesitant to discuss the virus structure. My impression is that immune response is against the spike rather than the package within the cell. Once the package enters your cell, that cell is a goner. Neither your immune response nor the spike signature is consistent. I have little hope for vaccine, particularly now that Ebola research funding has been cancelled. Ebola vaccine took two decades to accomplish. The most promising research has been suppressed and the plug and chuggers don’t seem to understand the difficulty.

We know that severity and frequency of infection overwhelms immunity. This suggests a dialogue between your immune response and the spike signature. There is variation in immune response across generations, gender and locale. This variation would be determined by your immune history. If you have recovered with immunity, you should still use protective equipment when you reenter the fray. Conversely it is unlikely that a whiff will get you.

A simple estimate of infection is to take the number of tests against the reported sick. This has tremendous variance. Today I got near 20%. Whenever you need a WAG, 20% is as good as any. An engineer named Thomas Puyeo published Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now on medium.com. He argues based on illness duration that he can determine the true sick number from deaths. He gives a rule of thumb of 800 times deaths gives the true sick rate. Working backwards maybe you can get 16% for infected to those exposed.

Take 20% of 165 million and you get 33 million sick. 16% gives 26,400,000.

Take 1% of either number to get the dead.  I hope the federal government’s difference has more than a quibble of 16 to 20%. In either case you now have a sense of the order of magnitude and the underlying logic.

The 1% is a ratio of sick to dead. This has become the measure of health care effectiveness. It means we are doing enough testing and keeping enough people on ventilators to hover around 1%. Currently we are doing 2% so double the previous death estimates.

Take my bare bones, optimistic, easy to do calculation against world population of 7.8 billion gives 78 million dead.

Worst case estimate for the US, take 80% exposed, 20% infected and 5% dead gives 2,640,000 dead. That really owns the libs.

The even worst case is the virus mutating, nextstrain.org is sampling the variety. If the virus twitches more fatal it will burn out quickly, less fatal is less fatal. The fear is different population segments. We need testing outside the impact group and mapping of those strains. The Kansas 1918 virus had a W distribution. It was going down, then hit a different population segment and shot up, declined and shot up again. Expect nature to seek opportunity. Multiply worst case by three.

8 million dead raises the issue of social disruption. I don’t foresee extreme piercing, grunge and battle wagons. We may have dynasty failure, increased social mobility and innovation. Human population increases when stressed. The Thanos snap fails. Prosperity constrains human population. We will see population break the 10 billion mark, which was the hoped for limit.

More likely that distancing works. It is amazing how well people respond once they have information.  Testing gives people better information to base their behavior on. Paid days off gives them greater ability to act on that information.  Testing, paid days off and distancing is the only way to deal with the virus. Everything else is noise. It may have benefits but it doesn’t stop the virus. Distancing is the difference between thousands and millions.

There are no treatments. If they are doing a trial it is not an obvious treatment. Until they can empty a ward they don’t have a treatment. It is insulting to the doctors and nurses to imply that they enjoy their aching feet and are denying you a treatment. There is a 95% to 99% remission rate. This means that there will be all sorts of treatment success stories. You tried something and got better. China’s belief system is based on trying all sorts of treatments. They are total cowboys on this and they are not terrified of legal liability. If there was such a thing, they would have found it.

When I was a kid, mom broke the fever with whiskey. I knew someone who got drunk and walked in the cold, it worked for him. Mustard plaster, vapor rub, you can see why doctors hate patients. If you must try things, at least do something different. I haven’t seen any mention of HGH or gamma globulin.  Just because you got better, doesn’t mean it worked.

Anecdotally, flu therapies may aggravate Covid19. More doctors get sick. I thought this was because of greater exposure. Doctors are notorious for self-medicating.

Interest rates, Federal Reserve shenanigans, subsidies, none of these things have anything to do with the virus. I would starve rather than give Boeing money.

Some people are behaving foolishly. It occurs to me that this may be an effect of the virus. Toxoplasmosis and rabies influence behavior. Perhaps Covid19 encourages foolhardy antics and speech. Do these behaviors correlate with infection? It will be difficult to prove after the fact.

The grocery store demonstrates how dependent we were on restaurants. I guess everyone was dropping it at work or at the bar. It’s sad we only know how to cook pasta. It is becoming obvious that work is just an excuse to get away from the family.

There is a good paper on the origin of Covid19 The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 in Nature.com.  You can tell they know what they are talking about because they call it SARS-COV-2. They tell us that this one isn’t something they would have whomped up, which sounds true. There isn’t enough work done to conclusively rule out someone’s idiot child but their take is that it gestated in people. This is in line with patient zero catching it in a toilet.  There is criticism of China’s slow initial response. Everyone but Merkel, the most beautiful woman in the world, has been guilty of that. Once the Central Committee realized it attacked elderly men, they changed course. The CDC is doing everything in its power to stop and frustrate testing. Everyone, except Merkel, was more scared of panic than virus. There were higher pneumonia deaths before people were aware of the virus.

A Chinese who was sick of our arrogant defamation gave it back by pointing out that we had a military athletic team in the area. The Kansas flu was passed from our troops so not entirely nonsense. What was surprising was our umbrage, seemed to touch a nerve, suspicious. Given our suppression of testing we have no right to accuse.

I am so encouraged that we took so many good lessons from HIV. Not. At least let us have new respect for the phrase:

-I don’t know.

Bait

The most frightening thing I have ever seen is the Gulf of Mexico from space.  It is circular.  A circle is a crater.

*-*

The hunter waited. A terrifying brilliant ferocious huge man eating tiger, he chuckled, very quietly of course.  It was just another job.  Once it is a money matter, it becomes so simple.  The goat was bleating plaintively on its’ tether.  All as it should be.  He cradled the rifle in his arms thinking about how he would spend the money and with whom he would spend it. He startled, looked at the goat, it was still there.  What was wrong?  The goat was sitting.  It was quiet.  Too late, the hunter realized the goat was staring at him. His position revealed, he felt the tiger’s breath.

*-*

One place to look for aliens is dust. Large successful alien civilizations left a lot of trash, at least at some periods of their development. The difficulty is that chemists usually start by burning or dissolving their samples. Finding a Teflon molecule in moon dust or an arctic ice column seems definitive. Just as we don’t yet have the technology to understand advanced communication, we probably won’t recognize alien detritus. When we do, it will seem obvious even common.

*-*

-People have seen flying saucers.

-People have seen the Virgin Mary.

-That’s not real.

-More people have seen the Virgin Mary than have seen flying saucers.

-It’s not the same.

-The people who see the Virgin Mary sneer at the people who see flying saucers.  The people who see flying saucers sneer at the people who see the Virgin Mary.  If you see both you’re a Mormon.  Just because people see something, doesn’t make it so.

-Why would they make it up?

-Loss of faith; people want to believe in something.

-What about the aircraft carrier visits?

-Excellent example, here we are waving nuclear reactors over the ocean. Why would we prefer a visitation over an admission of ignorance of the physics?

-You think it’s all made up.

-That’s the most likely explanation.  It’s very unlikely that someone came all the way from Andromeda just to drain somebody’s sinuses. It’s an order of magnitude more likely that they are from the neighborhood.

-Where?

-Atlantis, it’s not likely. However, a higher level of primate is certainly more probable than aliens.

-Wouldn’t we know?

-Why would they tell us?

-Why would they let us live?

-Good point.  Primates are sometimes kind to each other, much less to other primate species.  They could be that different I suppose.  It’s more likely some small difference that gives them a big advantage.  Maybe they don’t have our resistance to disease.  Maybe they are moving forward in time until we wipe ourselves out. If it’s just us and them, why are we still here?

-So much for that theory.

-If it’s just us and them, they wouldn’t keep us around.

-Why would they otherwise?

-Bait.

*-*

He stared at the blue planet.  Other species might sneer at the windows in their craft, at his species sense of wonder, now the windows were essential to their plan.  That planet had once been their home.  Then they met the Federation.  They had prospered with the Federation, assured themselves some measure of perpetuity, now it was time to pay their dues.

For thousands of years they had groomed the planet, allowed that other primate species, humans to have it.  It was horrifying to watch.  They had protected them from intrusion, waiting for this moment.  Now the enemy was approaching, a ghastly foe that enslaved the universe.

 

Their own craft was equipped with manual air systems, not the slightest electronic indication.  They waited for the enemy to materialize from their jump gates.  First the scouts came, next would come the huge behemoth ships.  Each jump gate had its own planet. After their experience in an earlier engagement the enemy made its jumps in two large waves.

 

The plan was after the scout wave, to power up and fire as one.  The destruction of such a huge ship in a jump gate would devastate its’ host planet.  Without their gates, the enemy would be helpless and the Federation could finally drive this scourge back into the darkness.

 

In the distance, they could see the haze that indicated the arrival of the behemoth enemy ships.  He stared at the planet and wondered if it would survive.  There were bright red lights shining from the planet.  He squinted. As he looked around, he gasped.  Each of their ships was glowing red.  The humans were shining lasers at their ships.

-Those bastards lit us up!

He screamed.

Bear Act

There is no recording of this. There was no videotape. It was Chicago.

I think I was four years old, which would put this at 1956. A group of kids from the Neighborhood Club, that was the name, went to be on television. I had never seen a television.  Lee Phillips was the producer. There was a bear act. The trainer grabbed me out of the group of kids to ride behind the bear on a scooter.

The bear had silver curly hair. I didn’t smell anything. I held onto the big massive wall of curly hair. There were extremely bright lights. I squinted at the cameras and looked away. I wondered what the cameras were. I waved to the kids. Then the dog showed up. The dog perched its paws on my shoulders while we rode around in a circle. The dog’s big head was next to mine; I could smell the dog.  I didn’t know from bears or scooters, but I was afraid of dogs.  Perhaps the bear was affected by my fear because it roared, which also startled me. I had a feeling like:

-uh oh

The trainer called the dog off. The dog was like:

-What? I’m working here.

The trainer took me off the scooter.  I went back to the kids. One of the kids said:

-You rode behind the bear!

I nodded. I felt I had let down the act. Later I saw the trainer smoking and he glanced at me.

We got to all run into a cave and each get a present. I opened mine and got a dolly. A girl got a Tommy gun style squirt gun. Lee Phillips made us switch.

BlogSpot Sucks

BlogSpot just created a beta software update for statistics. BlogSpot used to pollute my view count with my own visits.  It offered an option to turn that off but then it didn’t keep it clicked. Why would someone want to count their own visits? Now it throws me into Analytics which seems overly concerned with Google users.

I used to be on Open Salon.  When that closed I chose BlogSpot believing there would be permanence. It was tedious cutting and pasting my entries. Who thought there would be so many? I lost my dates and comments. You would think that there could be an easier transition. That may be working now.

Why is it so difficult to have an index or table of contents?

I had AdSense on Open Salon. BlogSpot sent me over to AdSense with a new ID which AdSense rejected. I am now trapped in a perpetual user ID embrace from which there is no release. Please don’t send any scripted solutions unless you have tried them yourself.  AdSense sucks as well. You might think AdSense and BlogSpot had better coordination.

Amazon EBook sucks. Why is XML proficiency a requirement for publishing an EBook with any features?  Why doesn’t Amazon have its’ own editor so that I can structure the book within the reader the way it should be rather than down and up loading it over and over? This reminds me of TurboTax preventing free self-filing.  TurboTax sucks. Hello Amazon! If there is a self-publishing industry to create EBooks, you are doing it wrong.

Why isn’t there a common directory for voicemail, text and email? How many decades now?

These companies should require that their employees actually use their products.    

Materialist Mary Poppins

The fabulous nature announces a suspect narrator. The constant revision screams repression and avoidance. Let us make use of our understanding of children and history.

Servant was an honorable and necessary profession. It was impossible to run a household without servants, there was too much to do. The wealthy understood this and were raised in these relationships, the middle class not so much. Working in a middle class household, in this case the Banks, subject to even greater pettiness and viciousness could be horrific.

The Banks children, observing the dynamic of the household, knew they could be abusive to servants. They took their sense of neglect and entitlement out on their nannies. “Came with the wind” meant that Mary Poppins came without reference, which was unheard of. The Banks obviously had no concern for their children. Confronted with an impossible situation, Mary Poppins resorted to drugging the children with laudanum, an opiate solution that was commonly available. Laudanum is bitter, thus the “spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”. Laudanum was the Ibuprofen of its day, used for every ailment. It is not until the last few modern decades that drugging children for behavior is appropriate.

Managing children’s dosage is difficult. The children hallucinated. At least Mary Poppins took the children outside for recreation. There she had sport with her friends and acquaintances.  There is interest in her view of empire and hierarchy and how she informed and imprinted the children. The great scandal was her friendship with Bert the match man. Women did not have informal relationships with men. Mary Poppins had several such friendships and she entertained Bert.

The United States class structure is a three by three grid, upper middle and lower both ways. England is four by four, with a government column and a proper lumpen underclass row. Mary Poppins is an upper lumpen.

Did Mary Poppins turn the children loose at Mr. Banks place of employment costing him his job? It isn’t clear what he had done to upset her. Her depiction is powerful, but this is suspect. Her insecurity may have led to her terse and stolid demeanor, a common behavior of servants and subordinates.  Mary Poppins then leaves as she came “with the wind” and without a reference. Lack of a reference meant little prospect for employment. The children are happy that their father has time for them and they fly a kite.

Worst President

1. Kennedy nearly blew up the world. Eisenhower had been waving the bomb around but now there was reprisal. Berlin, Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, Assassination, it was called brinkmanship.
2. Reagan was just running his mouth, but middle management on both sides was listening. Brave Petrov, Able Archer, Fleetex, KAL 007, Reagan calmed down after he was shot. Both Irishmen believed they had a special relationship with the Soviet Union.
3. Jefferson unleashed Napoleon on Europe. The only real consequence of the Louisiana Purchase was funding Napoleon. Jefferson said he expected Napoleon to attack the British, but the French direction was clear after the Seven Years’ War.   Napoleon was a general not an admiral. Dropping guns in Haiti, backstabbing Washington on the loan, stopping the tobacco deal, don’t say it turned out for the best. We don’t know what would have happened. Jefferson was slime.
4. Wilson’s intervention in World War I led to World War II.
5. Teddy Roosevelt was our most popular president. Roosevelt picked the next two presidents. He campaigned for our World War I intervention in support of the British. Roosevelt’s island by island suppression of the Philippines was an example to Japan. Japan and Germany were United States wannabes.
6. Eisenhower was a great general. His selection from the ranks as head of the European theater was a miracle. Unfortunately Eisenhower was a great general. Countless successful interventions of small forces, guns and money throughout the world murdered the idealists and frustrated sovereignty leading to disaster that Eisenhower was no longer around to manage.  He was embarrassed in Indonesia. Eisenhower put out the fires without clearing the underbrush. The SOCOM fantasy persists to this day.
7. Jackson, westward expansion and the associated atrocities seem inevitable. But Jackson left us with no shred of decency or self-respect.   There was also his financial manipulation in support of the overseas Dutch. Jackson and Van Buren established the Democratic Party which eventually gave us the Civil War.
8. Nixon, Cambodia will suffice.
9. Bush Jr. the MBA chump who fell for Bin-Laden’s provocation. Lead the US out of prosperity and into ruin.
10. Tyler joined the Confederacy.
11. Washington started the Seven Years War. He skimmed the French funds meant for his starving troops. He did keep the British occupied until France could win the Revolution. Without the benefit of gunpowder. If you don’t believe the British could have won, let me refer you to India, China and South Africa. Fortunately the British didn’t send the bad boy who would have dropped guns in the South and burned granaries in the North. Washington’s great mistake as president was sending Jefferson to France. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Jefferson’s job in France was to get the tobacco deal; instead he went to the other side. Jefferson was probably tipped by the Turks. Without the tobacco deal we had Shay’s rebellion. When it was clear that the French weren’t giving the loan in part because of Washington’s even handed policy, Washington was told to grab his hat and not let the door hit him on the way out.
12. Don John is the piñata for the ecological disaster.
13. Buchanan, pro slavery president just before the Civil War.
14. Andrew Johnson obstructed Reconstruction.
15. Lyndon Johnson got the China Lobby to support his social programs in exchange for the Vietnam War.  Johnson is the reason people are terrified of a socialist president. Obama holds him up as the example of change without consensus. And Indonesia.
16. John Adams got the loan from the Dutch and sold out to the British, but his fundamental function was to hold off Jefferson. Only managed one term.
17. Hoover tightened up standards and enforced prohibition before he was elected president; disrupting business arrangements which helped bring on the Depression. Hoover and his cronies supported the Germans. In Hoover’s case because he had worked for the British.
18. Fillmore opened up Japan. That worked out well.
19. Cleveland was such a stinker.  The death knell of reconstruction.
20. James Monroe supported Jefferson.

Best President

1. Franklin Roosevelt, you may question his character and policies, but Roosevelt led us through the Great Depression and the Second World War. His appointment of George C. Marshal was great. As was Henry Wallace and Eleanor Roosevelt.
2. Lincoln won the election of 1864. McClellan would have been victory for the South.
3. Ford, modern presidents have the advantage of greater disaster and recovery. I have a soft spot for goodhearted insider conservatives. We could have had John Connally.
4. James Madison wrote the Constitution. Conciliated with Britain. We could have lost the war of 1812. Held on to Maine. Wasn’t named Jimmy.
5. Carter, insufferable sanctimony worsened by being right. Carter creeps up in the rankings. I see why Rosalyn beats him.
6. Truman, someone finally fired McArthur. Held off Dewey.
7. Bush Sr. Adam Smith bemoans the constant cycle of wastrels and saviors in politics. Republicans hold this as their fundamental tenet, the Santa Claus Presidency and opposition to socialism. Bush Sr. was the statesman who lied and saved the Republic. Clinton was smart enough to keep his policies. I would rate Bush Sr. higher except hijacking Carter’s Iran operation in support of Reagan. Also participating in the shooting of two other presidents.
8. Obama should also rate higher. His legacy will forever be marred by his successor.  The Department of Justice did not prevent Republicans from fixing the election.
9. John Quincy Adams failed to hold off Jackson, always right, never enough.

There are a number of dynasty, bookend, adversary and conjoined presidents. Did we always elect the wrong one? The various scandals look quaint. Rights usually mean right to have slaves or suppress unions. Empire is judged by atrocity. I have a new respect for meh presidents, who didn’t embarrass us, get caught, or mess up.

Damn You, Ken Burns

Orange you ugly

Orange you silly

Orange you fat.

Orange you goofy

Orange you stupid

Where’s my hat?

Orange you hateful

Orange you dummy

I can see

Orange you made

A fool of me

Beto you too thin

Booker you’re too poor

Kamela you’re too short

Warren is a bore.

They all do fine

Even good old Joe

Something on my mind

You might want to know.

This isn’t Europe

It is the USA.

We don’t like each other

We like it that way.

I don’t want to go to school.

I don’t care if I am sick

I want to act the fool

We know he’s a prick.

DNA proved

Justice isn’t so.

Children not my own

Clown putting on a show

Can’t put back

What’s taken away?

We can see

You’re working for pay.

Say what you like

Land of the free

Just don’t give us

Sincerity

Brexit

Brexit makes me proud to be an American. We may see the unification of Ireland, the separation of Scotland and, most certainly, an English depression as a consequence. England will be left as a tax haven, tourist site and source for military mercenaries.  We have all been influenced by vaudeville. But the music hall is most deeply ingrained in English culture. Looking over London’s architecture, it is apparent that they are deeply silly and proud of it. Can silliness be the explanation for their ruin?

Perhaps it is the return of Boudicca.  The British were so sick of the Romans that they revolted and laid waste to Romans and their sympathizers. They were defeated attacking a Roman army. The true cause of their defeat was that the British preferred trade even under the Romans. This lesson has been lost.

Maybe it is the Greeks. English take Greeks seriously. The English classical education justifies the English empire as in the history of the empires that precede it. The Greeks rag on the Germans but they are not leaving the Union. Perhaps the English were listening to the Greeks.

The English will tell you it is because of immigrants. Don’t they know their Union from their Commonwealth? It is the Poles. The Poles are the first large immigrant group that is not from the Commonwealth. The Poles lack the correct obeisance or truculence. The English are willing to destroy the Kingdom to rid them of the Poles.

What makes Poles so insufferable to the English? They both have awful food. The English are proud of their empire. The Poles are proud of surviving the Russians and Germans. Is it orthodontia? The size of their heads? The plumbing, it has to be the plumbing.  If you are a Pole living in England, please, don’t belittle the English. Even the Irish know better than that.

Putin brought his electioneering machinery to Brexit. Taught by the Americans, the Russians made a difference, just as they did with Don John. Who paid Putin? Given the emotional satisfaction, Putin probably gave a discount, or perhaps he double billed. Some wealthy Brit outraged by the Poles? Currency speculation? Irish Americans? The French kicking England out of their club house? Fury at the old empire? Who could resist the temptation? 

We are witnessing England succumb to Empire Fatigue. The United States follows.