Read Aloud

 One of the first instructions you get in school is to read to yourself. This makes sense in a classroom. But it is a mistake. If you want to remember your lines in a script always read your portion aloud. If you want to remember your lines, never read them to yourself, always read them aloud. If you are having difficulty with a text, read it aloud. If you are working a difficult problem, read it aloud. I don’t know why it is, but we process differently when we voice the words. You will be more successful reading aloud.

Calling It for Inflation

 Inflation wins. We have already had severe capital inflation. Eventually, when rich people spend money, it impacts wage earners. Trickle down becomes a torrent of prices. The pressure for wage inflation was held in check by undocumented immigrant labor, destruction of unions, imports and, until recently, interest rates.

Then DJT and Steven Miller terrorized the undocumented immigrants. Terror works, particularly institutional terror. Mexicans love their kids and they quit coming. Fruit rots on the ground. Stores are closed on Monday. We still get immigrants, but they are refugees, and they have status. Undocumented immigrants set the marginal wage rate low. A documented immigrant is less likely to endanger their status by driving the truck or recycling shipping containers. Without our slaves we have to be more rational and that is expensive. There have been multiple economic shocks and we are no longer as cushioned.

There is also demographic. A lot of us are retired and indexed. We will pay our mortgages and student loans out of social security.

Inflation makes more sense when you distinguish between capital inflation and wage inflation. The dirty secret of the Federal Reserve was that raising interest lowered wage inflation and increased capital inflation. But manufacturers and any other interest sensitive companies were sacrificed in 2008 to the finance industry. Companies that survived are less likely to feel the rise in interest rate and will keep hiring. So now the Federal Reserve is yanking on a loose lever, employment is no longer as dependent on interest rate.

Banks depend on interest rates. I am shocked that Silicon Valley Bank went under. It is fun to see everyone dancing around rescuing SVB clients. SVB was supposed to be the smart ones. Bankers are dumb, but SVB was playing by the rules, admittedly rules they lobbied for, but the same across their midrange sector. SVB going under means that all banks are in danger. The Fed rapidly cranked interest rate. When SVB clients realized they could get better return, SVB was holding onto paper paying the earlier low interest rate and cashing out lost the bank money. If this isn’t a failure of Federal Reserve regulation, then it has to be a failure of Federal Reserve policy.

Please don’t mention reserves. There is no reserve requirement. Capital requirements are thinly veiled silliness. You can’t expect banks to hold cash.

Raising interest rate this quickly will crash more banks, long before it impacts employment. The Fed can crash as many banks as it wants, it can nationalize the banks, the fight against wage inflation is lost.

Jesus

 Right after I saw The Banshees movie, I blocked someone boring on Facebook. I doubt you will find any of this new, does it need saying? I like that there are four gospels. Four gospels refute literal truth. Christ is a descriptive name. There were no Cross kids running around Nazareth. Is Jesus also descriptive? In some gospels the name Jesus is a big deal:

-Name him Jesus.

If Jesus were just a name, would they have said:

-Name him Ralph.

Jew Zeus comes to mind. A later interpretation says that Jesus is a Greek mistranslation of Joshua. Joshua made it through translation just fine in Torah. Mathew affixes the name to another character; thus, arguing that it was a name of the time.

Ancient people were aware that the name was descriptive. They didn’t care about literal truth. The story spoke to them as they spoke it to each other. Every holiday but Hanukah was trashed, every commandment broken. Ruled by the future Italians, monotheists were confronted with evil. The story of Christ is their ironic response.

Leave the lost story about Mary’s abortion failing. There is one lost story that should be restored: Herod orders the slaughter of the children. Jesus is hidden in the manger. The miracle is that the child is silent. This contains an important lesson: sometimes you should shut the fuck up. Perhaps the lesson was too obvious. This story foreshadows several other times when Jesus held his tongue. It makes Jesus taking the Lord’s name in vain more poignant:

-Now you speak.

Sewer Valves

Many people in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, are installing sewer valves for their homes. Some years back we had an impressive deluge and this is a reaction. Your stack or stand pipe may drain directly out to the street sewer. Putting a check valve or flapper in the way means that when the system hits load those houses refuse service and the overall pressure on the system will increase precisely at the time it is stressed. If you don’t have a flap then super tough on you, the effluent has to go somewhere. A product that creates its market. Once everyone has flaps there should be popped flaps or broken pipes.

Flaps are necessary on flood plains. As flood plain construction is common it is difficult for other municipalities, such as Oak Park, to deny their use. Chicago used to require a basement floor drain. You were expected to share your suffering with your neighbors.

Most people have their stack drain into their own sewer that then drains into the street sewer. This is a nice feature that gives the system some bounce and durability. Typically, however, the new flap is inserted between the two sewers. This creates the same shock on the system as above. I think the next deluge will disappoint those homeowners. As I remember it, I heard the sewer cover on the home sewer bounce. There was, for a moment, about a foot of water in the yard. It was the yards’ water coming into the home sewer that went up the stack and flooded the basement. Blocking the street sewer alone will not protect your basement. Maybe a sewer lid gasket on your sewer along with the flapper would work. But then it wouldn’t take the normal drain from your yard, increasing the chance of seepage.

It would be better to place the flap between the home and the home sewer. This would give the street system some bounce and also protect your basement, if not your yard. Unfortunately, if you examine your sewer, you will see that this is a deep connection. At that depth the pressure might overwhelm the flap. If you do not mind advertising that your house floods, you could break through your foundation to put the flap near the stack. Might as well put in the sump pump while you are there.

While you may disdain allowing the sewer unfettered access to your home, consider placing the flap between the stack and basement source. The flap would deny sewer water the exit of your basement without threatening system integrity. Water seeks its level; it can’t go higher in your house than it is outside. It’s just a matter of boundaries. Again, you will have to break the foundation.

The real secret of the Victorians was their plumbing. Failing all else perhaps install a new water closet somewhere upstairs, move the washer and drier up there as well, close off the basement plumbing and then you won’t need a flapper.

Inflation

One proof of the market is that economics is obscure. Because of patronage there is no advantage stating the simple obvious. As I am not getting a grant, I can be direct.

Inflation is manifest differently in each of its many components. My parents bought their house for almost $12,000 in 1959. That was about twice my father’s yearly salary. Today the house is almost half a million in Zillow which would be about ten times the salary of a comparable position, give or take. There are some equivalents. Maybe there is a correspondence between a year’s college tuition and a new car. The social security cutoff seems to be about what it takes to comfortably support an upper middle-class family of four.

Inflation has two classes: wage inflation and capital inflation. There is no government control of capital inflation. Wage inflation is controlled by four government agencies. The Department of Labor supervises unions. Immigration is restricted. Commerce allows imports. The Federal Reserve controls interest rates, at its simplest by buying and selling bonds. Raising interest cost chokes off small business, the business which competes for labor.

This time, the Federal Reserve was slow to raise interest rates because they failed to recognize a structural change to wage inflation. Terror works, particularly institutional terror. Unlike many, Mexicans care about their kids; they didn’t want Immigrations daycare program. Immigration and Naturalization determines who is legal. It is the illegal immigrants who set the marginal cost of labor. Without our slaves the United States has to rationalize our markets, which is more expensive.

In earlier times if shipping containers were piling up at the ports someone would have told Jose to recycle them. Joe will refuse. It’s not enough money to risk jail.

When you see crews hired out of 7-11 again, you will know that “inflation” is declining. Without marginal competition, the Fed is pulling a busted lever.

Insult Factor

Samuelson’s Economics has an entire chapter worrying over wage rates and the efficient allocation of labor. Why do people change jobs? Samuelson would like to tie it to capital allocation, work duration…he doesn’t mention the insult factor.

I know a guy who loved his job. He was proud of the job and the work he did. When he learned that someone else made more than him, it was too much. He quit even without another job to go to. Nothing else had changed. It was simply that he felt insulted.

Managers fail to understand the insult factor. Headhunters understand it. Unions understand it. Customers understand it. Why go through the folderol of a manufacturer’s rebate? If you are getting points, then someone else is getting ripped off. When the price at the aisle doesn’t match the register, you feel insulted. Bombing me with ads texts and emails after I have bought the product is discouraging. When a headhunter offers a better deal, it feels like your own company doesn’t value you.

Companies don’t realize that when they throw out puff pieces about how great they treat employees that it becomes insulting. I was at a company where headquarters was running a morale building exercise awarding the discovery of efficiencies. This was a software company. We were out there, bare knuckle fighting for sales. The company announcements were intensely demoralizing.

There are times when corporations engage in worthwhile activities and then advertise their altruism. But if you are engaged in a tough, demanding, hopefully profitable, endeavor so someone or even yourself has to prattle and prance with little regard for the bottom line it is an insult. Halos are for heaven. The appearance of beneficence becomes a broken promise. Corporate philanthropy means they are not paying enough taxes.

I was assigned to a project that was disgusting. They told me it would only be for a few months. After the few months I was gone. If they hadn’t promised I might have stayed longer. Promises matter. I’m canned if I fail a deadline.

We are ruled by the marketplace but our reasons are complex. Telling people how great they have it while they are under the hammer brings the union. Going to the moon doesn’t cut it. The upper class has to understand that you don’t insult the help. 

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court functions as a safety valve. When the court fails, it is a big mess, we have had a civil war. In 1974 people were voting with their feet. Illegal abortion was so prevalent that the court had to act.

The prisoner’s dilemma underlies our concept of justice. Say a juror is fixed. How does the juror know that they will be paid? If they are paid ahead of time, how does the fixer know the juror will stick?

At this time, it has been announced that there are five judges who will rule against abortion. The early decision is a blatant loud fart. As Biden explained, it ignores the ninth amendment. The ninth amendment is intended to prevent this argument. As Pogo said:

-I got rights I ain’t even used yet!

If privacy or women’s equality are rights, then abortion should be legal. Buttigieg explained why abortion, whatever the term, should be a private family, not an arbitrary government decision.  It is a difficult medical and personal decision made in hard circumstance.

The judges are receiving constant renumeration: speech engagements, book deals, private excursions… Once the decision is reached, the gravy train stops. There are attempts at reassurance: further issues, maintenance of the decision. Out of the five justices, one has to realize that it will be more profitable if they renege. It may even be more profitable for the dissenter.

The early release of the decision physically endangered the Supreme Court. Congress is debating increased court security. The early release also put the matter up to bid, one last squeeze. It might appear that publishing the decision and source confidentiality is covered under freedom of speech and the public’s right to know. But this endangered all the justices. Sounds like an issue for the Supreme Court. Except that the court should recuse itself. Given the surveillance state and all the money spent, it must be known who leaked the decision.

If an amendment is required keep it simple. Allow no wiggle room:

-Abortion is legal. 

Fuck Flash Cards

 Next time you see some little darling tormented with multiplication tables, have them make up a grid and fill it in themselves. It is easier to remember with context and seeing the relations between numbers. Be sure to point out the square’s diagonal. They can also build grids for the other operations, just for fun.

Philosophy of Logic

 

One of the questions of mathematics is are we uncovering the ideal structure of reality or creating language. Yes.[i]

I think of mathematics as a collection of tools or techniques.

Socrates argued that all knowledge is innate. He took a young slave boy and interrogated him as to a proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Since the boy kept agreeing with Socrates, he must have known of this proof already. Socrates described a right triangle, then showed a square constructed from 4 of these identical triangles, then set the area of the square to the areas of the 4 triangles and the square contained in them. Then he solved for the Pythagorean theorem.

Socrates was in the impossible position of arguing for ethics and logic in a polytheistic world, surrounded by the arbitrary gods. By proving that a slave had the same innate knowledge as the rest of us he was calling into question slavery.

Euclid hated this proof of the Pythagorean theorem. The proof requires that you already know what a right triangle is and how to calculate area. Euclid wrote an entire book showing how to derive the Pythagorean theorem from postulates. Euclid had to choose the postulates that would prove his theorems.

Thousands of years later, propositional calculus was created to describe the process of proof. They had operators for or, and, and if then.  Their conceit was that they dodged causality. Simply because I can create a truth table for these operators does not give me inference. The sky is blue, there is sand in the earth, connect them as you wish and so what? There will always be a point in an argument where you challenge the other party.   What else could it be? What’s a better argument?

Frege compares the morning star to the evening star. Let us take when the moon and sun are both in the sky. You can see the reflection of the sun on the moon. Everything is kind of round, why was this so difficult? Notice that the reflection of the sun on the moon does not correspond to the position of the sun in the sky. Why is everything so complicated? How do we figure out anything?

I asked my tutor the Chicago question about language: is supporting a large block above you equivalent to telling you to move? The tutor failed me. Who won that argument?

Thankfully, Gödel using Cantor’s technique, argued that even if you could construct such a propositional system there would be undecidable results. Of course, you already knew that.

 

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[i] No?

Review of Axiom’s End

 After Awoken, Lindsay Ellis will always be suspect. Alien romance has been done. It is a common theme on Star Trek:

-Dr. Bashir we have discovered a new life form.

-Does it fuck?

Dr. Bashir is a slut. There are vampire romances, werewolf romances, zombie romances… In Awoken the love interest is Cthulhu.

-As she fell into his arms, arms, arms.

-There were tentacles where no tentacle should ever go.

In Axiom’s End, the protagonist Cora, recovering from a malignant narcissist father, falls for a manipulative extraterrestrial war refugee, Asterisk. Asterisk confuses her squeamishness over killing him with kindness. Get very nervous if someone regards you as kind or nice. Asterisk resembles a grass hopper Dr. Seuss character. Asterisk’s appeal is kind of a cuddly networked dildo, not much privacy, almost as good as a lesbian. The couple overcommit right away. Cora keeps assuming that Asterisk regards us as savage. She doesn’t consider that he is projecting.

I had difficulty in the beginning of the book. Cora fighting with her mom seemed normal. It’s a shame that families are always used to develop the character then disposed of. The surveillance was off. Surveillance doesn’t tailgate.

Once I got past that, I was able to swallow it. Asterisk knocked Cora around too much, sort of a school yard romance. It is suggested that the great filter is dominant aliens killing everyone else, good an explanation as any.

It was fun that the plot centered on Cora recognizing the relations between the aliens. Meeting family can be difficult. There is a good fight scene where Cora keeps trying to hold onto the tablet she uses to translate.

The aliens appear to descend from locusts. They have evolved to get their sustenance from power cores, which may be nuclear. They conflict with “transients” with which they have a common ancestor.

There is another alien variant with the same ancestor which has reached Automated Sentience. I think AS is going to happen with us very soon. Just a matter of finding the right algorithm. I see Binder as the most likely manifestation of AS. I was going to say Artificial Sentience, but they might take that as pejorative.

It is always assumed that the “government”, governments(?), will keep first contact secret.  Why would the governments classify the best budget busting defense motive that has ever happened? There has to be some aspect of the aliens that threatens established order sufficiently to overwhelm the motive of defense spending.

Ellis makes her aliens refugees, a reasonable way to avoid the first contact issues of why they would show up in the first place. Asterisk is a member of the one group, Fremda, that opposes wiping out other species, which is why they are refugees. I could see Fremda changing their minds. The ambivalence is apparent.

In my version of first contact, the aliens showed up, there were the usual issues of immunization, sustenance, insecticides, language, intellectual and social constructs. Finally, the aliens say:

-Take me to your leader.

They get in front of the committee and say something like:

-You guys have developed computers, you know about these political structures, if you just accept these four principles (or whatever) you could avoid hundreds of thousands of years of really tragic social development that you might not survive.

The committee says:

-Get back in that thing and leave.

It took me a while to realize that the US is the Star Wars Empire, including the death star. In Axiom’s End the alien establishment is an overzealous security state, just like us.

 

Kindle Index

 It is a cruel twist of technology that librarians have become one of the most computerized professions.  Whether transporting their bibliographic files across platforms or navigating all the varieties of text processing and information retrieval the technical expertise expected of them seems totally disjointed from the personalities that this profession should attract. Like Amazon, librarians rarely touch books. What librarians want to do, and are rewarded for, is party: events and fund raisers.  The only people in the stacks anymore are kids playing and making out.  Similarly, authors are now plunging the depths of HTML to properly format their works.  Books have become video graphic experiences.  I fully expect hypertext markup language to be taught in Humanities. Professors make use of services to check for plagiarism, grammar and composition.

Except perhaps for Prince, who cut all his own tracks, most people work with others. Authors have constantly railed against publishers and editors. Now we can publish whatever we want. That is not good either. There is a lot written about Shakespeare, he was Catholic, he was Protestant, he was royalist, he was radical, he was someone else. Shakespeare was a producer. He had a piece of the Globe Theater. Every day he was there watching the take and the concessions and most importantly, the audience. When something worked, Shakespeare pumped it up, when it didn’t, he dropped or changed it. Somehow, we have to rebuild that relationship.   

I miss the proofreader and editor if only to have someone to share the blame.  I’m sure even now there are errors and awkwardness in the manuscript I have created on Kindle. The primary function of publishers was gatekeeper.  We have moved the slush pile onto the web.  Richard Brautigan in The Abortion imagined a library where we can check in our masterworks.  Now it exists.  The wonderful thing about blogging is that since so few people read it, I can say whatever I want.  It was also wonderful to get the first book out the door. 

I was preparing to plumb the depths of Font, illustration, and HTML when I simply gave up. The current body of literature manages front cover, table of contents, footnotes, endnotes, indexes, bibliographies and so on without hyperlinks.  That is not such bad company to keep.  I finally just dragged the word document through Mobi, the packaging software Amazon gave authors, and sent it off to Amazon’s Kindle direct self-publishing.  I suppose it is a little embarrassing for a programmer’s book to be more awkward to use, but my experience has taught me that any attempt at cleverness will look silly in the next release.  I hoped that in the future Amazon would give us a means for editing our books on their site and then we can get rid of the superfluous code and format our books with all the features we intend.

How will people find the good books? I suppose fewer people will read my book than read my blog.  Some beats none.  Perhaps authors could petition designated editors for inclusion on recommended reading lists.  This reminds me of the old days of penny dreadfuls, comic books, Mad Magazine and dime store romance.

Since I wrote this, I wrote the blog entry Blogspot Sucks. By some miracle, perhaps someone took pity, or I found the correct incantation, I now have ads on my blog, as you can see. I now have two books out. Kindle has gotten easier. They have an editor to set up the table of contents. Index still doesn’t work. I was sort of able to smuggle in footnotes. It’s very frustrating that I can’t download my books from Amazon to work on them. I would also like to revise my covers rather than start from scratch. Don’t harvest the corners. Good enough, I guess.

The real money is YouTube, or movies.  Good literature makes lousy movies. Perhaps because they have too much respect for the material. Fitzgerald’s real money was as a script doctor. Hemingway couldn’t type. So, his material was easier to adapt.

Audio books next.

Thank You, Gerald Horne

 I have just finished The Counter-Revolution Of 1776, New York University Press, 2014. It is a fire hose of facts. Horne, as most of us, could use an editor. There is occasional awkwardness and redundancy. But the facts. Nearly a quarter of the book is notes.

I have seen some criticism to the effect that there was an abolitionist in Massachusetts or some such. There are dismissals of slave owners reports as hysteria, which Horne acknowledges by the way.  Just put your head in this fire hose of facts.

In the US of Usn’s we are taught history starting from our “revolution”. Nothing comes from nowhere. In England they at least know there was the Seven Years War.  The Seven Years war was nine years. The English don’t want to acknowledge that it was the colonial tail wagging the empire dog.

I had attributed English opposition to slavery to their experience with Barbary pirates. Horne mentions this on page 39 as part of a larger argument and it doesn’t merit an index entry.

Some of my favorite themes are the unsaid obvious and common knowledge lost to posterity. Why do police keep records? Because it is usually the criminals who commit the crimes. Slavery was not an aberration. It was the point. The colonies would have failed without slavery. Slave owners and colonizers are scum. They are scum in every direction.

I did not know the English bought slaves to staff their army. I wasn’t aware that Britain conquered Cuba. I had thought of the Seven Year war as mostly a German and naval adventure. Horne shows how slavery and the Caribbean colonies were central to the conflict, and how the English experience with slave uprising changed their policy.  Fredrich was just an English patsy.

Just as Washington establishing Fort Necessity after his murder of Jumonville demonstrated his obsession with land, the resolution of the Seven Years War showed the various national ambitions. England stopped the fleeing of slaves to Florida. England wanted Spain, Portugal, and Holland as major colonial powers to hold off the French. The French sacrificed the fur trade for sugar.

Napoleon can be understood as following imperial ambitions. World War I can easily be accommodated to this larger history.

It is difficult for us to appreciate how few people there were. Their motivations were different. The French were truly horrified by the murder of Jumonville. You don’t kill gentlemen. Washington had to sign a confession. The European concern with territory had more to do with honor.  In America the conflicts justified the slaughter of indigenous people; in Europe the peasants.

We need more research on indentured servants. Horne discusses the Irish and Scots. There is reason they deserve mention in the third stanza. Towards the end of your indenture, you become dangerous. You will be free. Someone may take you seriously. Reputation is essential to business. Perhaps this charming young person should help with the thresher or roof repair. A lot of indentured servants died.

Horne exults that the slaves repeatedly revolted. This gives me reassurance as well. We need to study why slave revolts failed. Somehow the hype worked.

Covid19 Experiments

 

I just bought some Binax Now tests. The first test I followed the instructions and got a negative result. This is reassuring. I got my last Moderna shot in April.

The next test I took a rectal swab instead of nasal. Chinese think this is more accurate. It is also in line with my speculation about bile. This was ever so slightly positive. A clear test is obvious. If it is not clear, it is positive. I have thought that I had Covid19 in the fall of last year. Avoid flatulence.

I then blasted a nasal swab in front of a speaker to vibrate it. I had speculated that vibration pops the heads. This was negative.

Protein tests, such as this, seem more useful than immune tests, particularly once we have been vaccinated.

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.