We read a lot in the news about the new Wuhan coronavirus and the illness it causes (COVID-19), but some important points often get left out.
[1] COVID-19 is incredibly contagious.
COVID-19 transmits extremely easily from person to person. Interpersonal contact doesn’t need to be very long; a taxi driver can get the virus from a passenger, for example. The virus may be transmissible even before an infected person develops symptoms. It may also be transmissible for a few days after a person seems to be over the virus; it is possible to get positive virus tests, even after symptoms disappear. Some people may have the disease, but never show symptoms.
[2] The virus likely remains active on inanimate surfaces such as paper, plastic, or metal for many days.
There haven’t been tests on the COVID-19 virus per se, but studies on similar viruses suggest that human pathogens may remain infectious for up to eight days. Some viruses that only infect animals can survive for more than 28 days. China is reported to be destroying paper currency from the hardest hit area, because people do not want to accept money which may have viruses on it. Clearly, surfaces in airplanes, trains and buses may also harbor viruses, long after a passenger with the virus has left, unless they have been thoroughly wiped down with disinfectant.
[3] Given Issues [1] and [2], about the only way to avoid spreading COVID-19 seems to be geographic isolation.
With all of today’s travel, geographic isolation doesn’t work very well in practice. People need food and medical supplies. They need to keep basic services such as electricity and garbage collection operating. Suppliers of food and other services need to come and leave the area and that tends to spread COVID-19. Also, the longer a geographic area is isolated, the larger the percentage of the people within the area that is likely to get COVID-19. The problem is that the people need to have contact with others in the area for purposes such as buying food, and that tends to spread the disease.
[4] The real story regarding the number of deaths and illnesses seems to be far worse than the story China is telling its own people and the world.
The real story seems to be that the number of deaths is far greater than the number reported–perhaps 10 times as high as being reported. The number of illnesses is also much higher. At one point, facilities doing cremations in the Wuhan area were reported to be doing four to five times the normal number of cremations. Some of the bodies in the Wuhan area now need to be sent to other areas of China because there is not enough local cremation capacity.
China doesn’t dare tell its people how bad the situation really is, for fear of panic. They want to tell a story of being in control and handling the situation well. The news media in the West repeat the stories that the government-controlled publications of China provide, even though they seem to present a much more favorable situation than really seems to be the case.
[5] Our ability to identify who has the new coronavirus is poor.
While there is a test for the coronavirus, it costs hundreds of dollars to administer. Even with this high cost, the results of the tests aren’t very reliable. The test tends to produce many false negatives. The virus may be present somewhere inside the person being tested, but not in the areas touched by swabs of the throat and nose.
[6] Some people get much more severe symptoms from COVID-19 than others.
Most people, perhaps 80% of people, seem to get a fairly light form of the COVID-19 illness. Groups that seem particularly prone to adverse outcomes include the elderly, smokers, those who are obese, and those with high blood pressure, diabetes, or poor immune systems. Males seem to have worse outcomes than females.
Strangely enough, there is speculation that people with East Asian ancestry (Chinese, Japanese, or Vietnamese) may have a higher risk of adverse outcomes than those of European or African ancestry. One of the things that is targeted by the disease is the ACE2 receptor. The 1000 Genome Project studied expected differences in ACE2 receptors among various groups. Based on this analysis, some researchers (in non-peer-reviewed studies, here and here) predict that those of European or African ancestry will tend to get lighter forms of the disease. These findings are contested in another, non-peer-reviewed study.
Figure 1. Chart from Coronavirus risk for Asians, Africans, Caucasians revealed.
Bolstering the view that East Asians are more susceptible to viruses that target the ACE2 receptor is the fact that SARS, which also tends to target the ACE2 receptor, tended to stay primarily in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. While there were cases elsewhere, they tended to have few deaths.
Observational data with respect to COVID-19 is needed to determine whether there truly is a difference in the severity of the illness among different populations.
[7] China has been using geographical quarantine to try to hold down the number of COVID-19 cases. The danger with such a quarantine is that once the economy is down, it is very difficult to come back to the pre-quarantine state.
Data shows that China’s economy is not reopening quickly after the extended New Year holiday finished.
Figure 2. China daily passenger flows, relative to Chinese New Year. Amounts are now down more than 80% and have not increased, even as some businesses are theoretically reopening. Chart by ANZ, copied by WSJ Daily Shot Feb. 17, 2020.
Figure 3. China property transactions, before and after Chinese New Year. Chart by Goldman Sachs. Reprinted by WSJ Daily Shot, Feb. 17, 2020.
All businesses will be adversely affected by a lack of sales if they need to continue to pay overhead expenses. Small and medium-sized businesses will be especially adversely affected. Bloomberg reports that if a shutdown lasts for three months, there is a substantial chance that these businesses will run through their savings and fail. Thus, these businesses may be permanently lost if the economy is down for several months.
Also, restarting after a shut-down is more difficult than it might appear. Take, for example, a mother who wants to go back to work. She will likely need:
- Public transportation to be operating, so she has a way to get to work;
- School to be open, so she doesn’t need to worry about her child while she is at work;
- Masks to be available, so that she and her child can comply with requirements to wear them;
- Stores providing necessities such as food to be open, or she may be too hungry to work
If anything is missing, the mother is likely not to go back to work. Required masks seem to be a problem right now, but other pieces could be missing as well.
Businesses, too, need a full range of workers to restart their operations. If the inspector doing the final inspection is not available, the business may not really be able to ship finished products, even if most of the workers are back.
[8] A shutdown of as little as three months is likely to be damaging to the world economy.
Multiple things are likely to go wrong:
(a) Commodity prices are likely to fall steeply, because of low demand from China. Oil prices, in particular, are likely to fall steeply, perhaps to $30 to $35 per barrel. Besides cutbacks in oil demand from China, there is the issue of a general reduction in long distance travel, because of fear of traveling with other passengers with COVID-19.
(b) US businesses, such as Apple, will find their supply chains broken. They won’t know when, and if, they can ship products.
(c) Debt defaults are likely to become more common, especially in China. The longer the slowdown/shutdown lasts, the greater the extent to which debt defaults are likely to spread around the world.
(d) The world economy is likely to be pushed into recession, without an easy way to get out again.
[9] The longer the shutdown lasts, the more likely there is to be a major collapse of the Chinese economy.
In the event of a long-term shutdown, it would seem likely that, at a minimum, a new leader would take over. In fact, there would seem to be a significant chance of major changes within the economy. For example, the provinces of China that are able to restart might attempt to restart, leaving the more damaged areas behind. In such a case, instead of having a single Chinese government to deal with, there might be multiple governmental units to deal with.
Each governmental unit might consist of a few provinces trying to provide services such as they are able, without the benefit of the parts of the economy that are still shut down. Each governmental unit might have its own currency. If this should happen, China will be able to provide far fewer goods and services than it has in the recent past.
[10] Planners everywhere have been guilty of “putting too many eggs in one basket.”
Planners today look for efficiency. For example, placing a large share of the world’s industry in China looks like it is an efficient approach. Unfortunately, we are asking for trouble if the Chinese economy hits a bump in the road. Using just-in-time supply lines looks like a good idea as well, but if a major supplier cannot provide parts for a while, then having inventory on hand would have been a better approach.
If we want systems to be sustainable, they really need a lot of redundancy. Redundant systems are not as efficient, but they are much more likely to be sustainable through difficult times. There is a recent article in Nature that talks about this issue. One of the things it says is,
A system with a single cycle is the most unstable because the deletion of any cycle-node or link breaks the sustaining feedback mechanism.
“A system with a single cycle” is basically similar to “putting all of our eggs in one basket.” “Deletion of any cycle-node or link” is something like China running into coronavirus problems. We probably need a world economy that consists of many nearly separate local economies to be certain of long-term world economy stability. Alternatively, we need a great deal of redundancy built into our systems. For example, we need large inventories to work around the possibility of missing contributions from one country, in the case of a problem such as a major epidemic.
Conclusion
The world economy may become very different, simply because of COVID-19. The new virus doesn’t even need to directly affect the rest of the world very much to create a problem. The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world are very much dependent on the continued operation of China. The world economy has effectively put way too many eggs in one basket, and this basket is now not functioning as expected.
If China is barely producing anything for world markets, the rest of the world will suddenly discover that long supply chains weren’t such a good idea. There will be a big scramble to try to fill in the missing pieces of supply chains, but many goods are likely to be less available. We may discover quickly how much we depend upon China for everything from shoes to automobiles to furniture to electronics. World carbon dioxide emissions are likely to fall dramatically because of China’s problems, but will the accompanying issues be ones that the world economy can tolerate?
The thing that is ironic is that it is possible that the West’s fear of the new coronavirus may be overblown–we really won’t know what the impact will be with respect to people of European or of African descent until we have had a better chance to examine how the virus affects different populations. The next few weeks and months are likely to be quite instructive. For example, how will the Americans and Australians who caught COVID-19 on the cruise ships fare? What will the health outcomes be of non-Asians being brought back from Wuhan to their native countries on special planes?
“UK banks are rolling out emergency loans to businesses that are showing signs of financial strain amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“High street lenders including Barclays, Santander UK and Royal Bank of Scotland began contacting thousands of business customers in recent days to check whether factory disruptions in China were putting their supply chains and cash flow at risk.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/banks-issue-emergency-loans-to-firms-hit-by-coronavirus-crisis
“The Bank of England is on crisis alert, but there’s not much it can do.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-bank-of-england-s-on-crisis-alert-but-there-s-not-very-much-it-can-do-zcmpwjpnk
“China’s services sector had its worst month on record in February as new orders plummeted to their lowest level since the global financial crisis, a business survey showed on Wednesday, with economists urging swift support to avoid mass bankruptcies.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-pmi/chinas-services-activity-plunges-as-virus-wipes-sales-caixin-pmi-idUSZRN0008L4
“[Korea’s $9.8 billion stimulus] plan was unveiled just hours after the U.S. Federal Reserve slashed interest rates by half a percentage point in the first such emergency move since the 2008 financial crisis.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-04/south-korea-unveils-9-8b-extra-budget-to-stem-virus-fallout
“Analysts see Japan falling into a deeper recession as data starts to show just how serious the coronavirus impact will be for the world’s third-largest economy. Barclays now sees Japan’s economy shrinking 3.1% this quarter…”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/economists-see-deeper-japan-recession-073906061.html
“With tourism accounting for 14 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and employing one in six, the Thai economy was always going to be hit hard by COVID-19… The Bank of Thailand is talking openly about two negative quarters, and warning about deteriorating employment.”
https://www.afr.com/world/asia/thailand-facing-recession-as-virus-kills-tourism-20200303-p546fo
“China’s car sales had the biggest monthly plunge on record as the coronavirus kept shoppers away, intensifying the pressure on automakers already battling an unprecedented slump before the outbreak.
“Sales fell 80% in February, according to preliminary numbers…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-04/china-car-sales-drop-a-record-80-as-virus-adds-to-industry-woes
How many businesses are going to depend on orders from China now?
In fact, how many investors are going to make new investments in China now? It would seem like there would be a massive outflow of investment dollars.
“The shock that coronavirus has wrought on markets across the world coincides with a dangerous financial backdrop marked by spiralling global debt. According to the Institute of International Finance, a trade group, the ratio of global debt to gross domestic product hit an all-time high of over 322 per cent in the third quarter of 2019, with total debt reaching close to $253tn.
“The implication, if the virus continues to spread, is that any fragilities in the financial system have the potential to trigger a new debt crisis.
“…much of the debt build-up since the global financial crisis of 2007-08 has been in the non-bank corporate sector where the current disruption to supply chains and reduced global growth imply lower earnings and greater difficulty in servicing debt. In effect, the coronavirus raises the extraordinary prospect of a credit crunch in a world of ultra-low and negative interest rates.”
https://www.ft.com/content/27cf0690-5c9d-11ea-b0ab-339c2307bcd4
“Central banks around the world, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, have lowered interest rates …But investors and economists said there’s not much monetary policy can do to save the global economy, especially when some major central banks — such as the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan — have already cut interest rates into the negative territory.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/04/coronavirus-federal-reserve-other-central-banks-cut-interest-rates.html
“Global bond yields have hit record lows across the board on fears of the effects of the coronavirus outbreak… The novel coronavirus has the world economy in its “most precarious position” since the 2008 financial crisis.”
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/coronavirus-driven-recession-near-here-signals-chances-stock-market-economy-2020-3-1028959395
Called it. Comunity spread documented case NYC within one week.
New: NYC confirmed second case of COVID-19 –first case of community spread in New York City. The individual is a man in his 50s who lives in Westchester County but works at a law firm in Manhattan. He is currently hospitalized and is in severe condition.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/who-says-coronavirus-death-rate-is-3point4percent-globally-higher-than-previously-thought.html
““Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.”
USA flu 30 million cases this season and 18,000 deaths = LESS THAN one tenth of 1%…
COVID-19 DEATH RATE might be THREE and a half percent…
OVER THREE PERCENT…
(I doubt that this rate can be accurately calculated because the counting of all cases and the counting of deaths is highly suspect…)
OVER THREE PERCENT…
Ok the reported cases IS REAL LOW. (since we are using caps) 🙂 There are lots of cases unreported because THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH TEST KITS and PEOPLE WITH MINOR SYMPTOMS ARE NOT GETTING TESTED. THIS MAKES THE three percent MUCH HIGHER THAN ACTUAL. also irans COMPLETLY BOGUS INFECTED TO DEATH numbers skew it even worse. IF WE KEEP THIS UP the blog WILL LOOK LIKE A RANSOM NOTE. 🙂
There is no way we know the true infected number in any country. There is no way we know the death % if we dont know the infected number. The death number is probably pretty close. The incorrect low infection number makes death percentage incorrectly high.
If Iran is “messing up” their treatments of COVID-19 patients, it could raise their death rates.
3.4% is a whole lot more than 2%, which likely makes perfect sense as the info. initially for this virus was coming out of China and those numbers kept changing with new definitions and maximum quotas enforced. But other countries like Italy and South Korea are likely more accurate and thus a better indicator for determining the death percentage. One stat in a Martenson video was the death rate for people getting this over 80 was 15%. So its skewed from young to old, flatline to steep rise if graphed.
Less uppercase please, we are grown ups …
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/03/indonesia-finally-admits-coronavirus-cases-after-denials-and-confusion/
“The confirmation of cases within Indonesia follows weeks of confusion over whether the country was vulnerable to the virus, after a number of foreign nationals who visited the country, particularly the tourist island of Bali, returned to their home countries testing positive.”
I don’t see the confusion…
Indonesia is loaded with cases, and is hiding the facts…
“officially” just 2 cases… ha…
can Iran lick this virus?
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1635766/middle-east
“Iran regime criticized for coronavirus response as Shiite pilgrim ‘shrine licking’ videos emerge”
“Several videos have been released in the past week of worshippers licking and kissing shrines at holy sites in the Iranian cities of Qom and Mashhad.”
and so the virus spreads…
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/03/iran-23-lawmakers-have-tested-positive-for-chinese-coronavirus/
“Iran has confirmed 23 cases of Chinese coronavirus among its members of Parliament, the body’s deputy speaker confirmed on Tuesday.
The nearly two dozen infections join those affecting several other senior members of Iran’s Islamic regime, including a vice president, a now-dead member of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s advisory committee, and the man Khamenei put in charge of coronavirus response.”
Financial glue coming apart rapidly. I have no clue what the FEDs can do next to get the stocks go up. With the rate cut, it went down. Someone commented on ZH that it is like taking Viagra, going for a great performance and when the time comes, instead of up, it shrank. Very apt and telling
Nothing like the truth won through bitter experience… 🙂
I knew yesterday was just a sucker rally. The US market is technically in bear territory now and the 1/2 point rate cut appears to have been priced in with yesterday’s climb. Apparently the market wanted a full percentage point cut, so it’s likely going to keep throwing a tantrum and tanking, especially with the US Coronavirus news just getting warmed up.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/treasury-yields-rise-after-stimulus-hopes-lift-risk-on-sentiment.html
“The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell more than 11 basis points to an all-time low of 0.906%. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was also at a record low of 1.601%.”
Europe is below zero, so why not the USA?
they could cut “a full percentage point” or two or three…
it doesn’t matter… the virus is in control…
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/we-simply-do-not-understand-why-coronavirus-sparing-children-puzzling-n1147951
‘We simply do not understand why’: Coronavirus is sparing children, puzzling experts
“As the novel coronavirus spreads around the globe, sickening more than 90,000 people and killing about 3,000, doctors have noticed something curious: Very few children have been diagnosed with it. And of those who have, most have had mild cases.”
“The answer may lie in the difference between children’s and adult’s immune systems, said Dr. Vanessa Raabe, an assistant professor in pediatric and adult infectious diseases at NYU Langone. As people age, their immune systems weaken, she said, potentially making it harder for them to fight off illnesses.”
Because there is a god? Just asking… If there is thank you god for effecting old people like me who have had long good lives not the children.
Compared with older people, children tend to have healthier lungs that are less damaged by less years of smoking and breathing in air pollution. The disease attributed to the COVID 19 seems to cause a lot of problems for people whose lungs are already damaged.
Good point. Smokers beware.
I’m not worried, just keeping my blood/alcohol levels real high so I won’t get it. 😉
How about pot smokers? 😉 They are already aware
Coronavirus in the White House?
“A student whose classmates met and shook hands with Vice President Mike Pence has reportedly been put under quarantine after his mom came into contact with a patient who tested positive for coronavirus.”
Looks like we may finally have reached the point at which the news is so bad that the central bank intervention designed to ameliorate it is cause for further alarm rather than an incentive to invest:
“Stocks went on a wild ride Tuesday after the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates by a half-point to help protect the US economy against fallout from the global coronavirus outbreak.
“Amid wild swings following the unscheduled announcement, investors made up their minds around midday: stocks were sharply down.
“While the lower interest rates are good for stocks, making it cheaper for companies to borrow, the emergency cut also was a signal that the US economy could be in serious trouble because of the virus outbreak.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/03/investing/dow-stock-market-today/index.html
Tis strange! The big run-up yesterday needed to be offset today, somehow.
“While the lower interest rates are good for stocks, making it cheaper for companies to borrow, the emergency cut also was a signal that the US economy could be in serious trouble because of the virus outbreak.”
While the glass if half full (int. reduction) it’s half empty (shows econ. weak) and draining fast on Corona virus news – ‘Sell!’ is the rebel yell with Dow now down -787 at the moment! My opinion is yesterday’s huge stock market rise was a big mistake by investors due to direction and uncertainty of how badly the Corona virus will impact the world economy, let alone all the CB assistance it required before the virus, just to limp along at ~2% GDP in US.
This situation close to the end of the oil age, exacerbated by the Corona virus, is like tossing water on a dimming camp fire.
I’m on a roll today 😎 Folks!
YahooNEWS
‘This is not sustainable’: Public health departments, decimated by funding cuts, scramble against coronavirus
Jayne O’Donnell, USA TODAY NETWORK
USA TODAYMarch 3, 2020, 9:40 AM EST
As state and local public health offices scramble to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, they do so against a backdrop of years-long budget cuts, leaving them without the trained employees or updated equipment to adequately address the virus’ growing threat, former public health officials say.
In the last 15 years, public health, the country’s frontline defense in epidemics, lost 45% of its inflation-adjusted funding for staff, training, equipment and supplies. The Public Health Emergency Fund, created for such disease or disaster relief is long depleted. And much of the money the federal government is racing to come up with now to combat the COVID-19 outbreak will be pulled from other often-dire health needs and likely will arrive too late to hire the needed personnel.
Florida, with two cases so far, and Washington, where six deaths have been reported, have declared states of emergency, and state and local officials there and elsewhere assure they have staff, equipment and procedures ready. But early testing glitches in California, the failure to protect federal health officials from the virus in cruise ship patients, and a climbing number of U.S. cases raise questions about that confidence.
Maybe another emergency Fed interest rate cut will help?
45% cut in funding in past 15yrs – perhaps very good example of ECoE triage in practice, as the funds went partially into EVs and other “grow biz story” and or completely frivolous demand agenda instead.. to placate the world all is humming BAU way..
Fed emergency rate cut. 1/2 a point and the markets fall. Yikes!
It didn’t even take one day for the 10 year treasury yield to invert with the federal funds rate.
The 10 year treasury yield drops below 1% for the first time in history.
The really worrisome part is, this is just the leading edge of what’s to come with this virus. The potential depth of financial destruction that could occur as it spreads and kills, would make the 2008 financial debacle pale in comparison. So far there has been little information to suggest the spread can be stopped as its very stealthy.
At this point I think the ace2 being ethnically different to be true. Its clear to me (IMO) that the virus is present in the USA population and being spread locally. The now changing CDC position that only those coming from outside should be tested guaranteed that community spread infections would not be revealed. We are not seeing the type of carnage that China saw. 20% of people infected with pneumonia and needing oxygen. ARDS. Sorry that would be noticed. It could also be a personal space culture thing. Asian people are much more comfortable with closer proximity to other humans. It may hit later. We will see. If the asymtomatic infection stage is 7-14 days and the average time inbetween syptoms to icu in critical patients is 3-7 days your looking at 2 to 3 weeks lag after the virus is community spread b4 ARDS rears its nasty head along with the pulmonary failures. I thing were well into that time frame of events based on the Seattle deaths but also the time lag between infection and symptoms, delay not understanding what was happening, and international travel virtually guaranteed infection in every population of the world I dont think it will be as bad as China. (IMO) In the meantime even if the virus was to magically go away the economic implications are significant.
Interesting! At the same time, there were a lot of people on the Diamond Princess that died. Of course, these were older folks, and some were Japanese or of other Asian background.
We also need to keep in mind – that the virus itself is changing and mutating in time and in its travel across the planet. Various different strains will develop and their effects may be locally different. While the general evolutionary (mutating) tendency for this type of pathogenic virus is to moderate in severity of infections and symptoms over time – there is no absolute law that dictates these things. This also means that the original source of the virus – is almost unknowable at this point by just examining the current changed CV virus.
I tend agree that the US will get less severe infection levels than lesser developed countries for both cultural, technical, communication, transportation, environmental and medical reasons, I think the higher probabilities are – that by May and June the media won’t be reporting much about COVID-19. BAU modalities will return. Both the data that we make our probability assumptions upon could be erroneous (intentional or not) . Consequently, I certainly could be completely wrong in my assumptions as well. Being prudent often means not relying on the best outcomes of your assumptions.
I also think that future pandemic risk preparedness will experience the same kind of psychological evolution as – hurricane and other major natural risks. That risk sensitivity will diminish and resulting preparedness will diminish as well – until there is a major mortality impact.
We also need to keep in mind that biological weapons are one of the few weapons that preserve most enemy infrastructure resources intact and we can certainly see their impacts on global stock and financial markets. As genetic engineering technology continues to rapidly expand (especially small scale “garage” genetic engineering) bioweapons will become and increasingly attractive tool of conquering aggressors – including terrorist and even privateers – in the financial and economic realms.
The proportion of severe cases seems to be pretty much constant at the moment, and the actual mortality rate might be less in more developed health systems.
But we have yet to see them in an overwhelmed state, which is very much on the cards, unless there is a dramatic seasonal abatement of the virus.
Even at a 30% infection level, which is the most optimistic forecast, hospitals and the supply of drugs/oxygen, nurses will be overwhelmed, leading to a much higher mortality rate.
In today’s news – Remdesivir – is a likely an effective treamtent (how effective remains the questions) that is currently being used now for CV-19. This should impact mortality rates going forward:
https://www.newsy.com/stories/antiviral-drug-could-help-people-survive-coronavirus/?utm_source=MaropostMailing&utm_medium=Email&utm_name=02192020&omhide=true
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remdesivir
We need cheap solutions. Let’s hope this is cheap.
Great point, stay vigilant folks, as I mentioned previously, it could come in next stronger waves for pandemic season Q3 2020 – Q1 2021.. or even later years after brief lull and drop of defenses..
“…it could come in next stronger waves for pandemic season Q3 2020 – Q1 2021..”
That’s what I think it will do. It will just keep reinventing itself to take advantage of a species in such huge numbers. This is just the initial phase. So far we’ve been like Elmer Fudd playing chess against a Grand Master.
FWIW
I found a website that post a list of readings daily on the subject – some news reports and some scientific. No commentary just information. Here are the past few
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update 3.3.2020
https://wsenmw.blogspot.com/2020/03/coronavirus-covid-19-update-332020.html
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update 3.2.2020
https://wsenmw.blogspot.com/2020/03/coronavirus-covid-19-update-322020.html
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update 2.29.2020
https://wsenmw.blogspot.com/2020/02/coronavirus-covid-19-update-2292020.html
Thanks for the link collections. I read a few of the links.
One thing that struck me is that, just knowing whether a person is “American” or “Australian” doesn’t tell much about the person’s ethnicity. There is an article that mentions the Australian who was on the Diamond Princess, who came down with coronavirus. His last name sounds Korean, I believe.
There is also an academic article that followed through the experiences of the first person in the US with coronavirus (in Snohomish County, Washington). This person had just returned from visiting relatives in Hunan, China. This would suggest he was of Chinese ethnicity. He came down with the illness on January 15 and first sought treatment on January 19 (no doubt passing around virus particles during this period). He was nearly recovered at the end of the article, on January 30. The patient received remdesivir (new antiviral drug by Gilead), Vancomycin, and supplemental oxygen.
Yep, remdesivir (Gilead) is now offered officially throughout the world, basically as in fast process of trials among the ICU – hospitals.. Perhaps they have or will have numbers on diverse ethnicity – regional impact soon. is it going to be made public knowledge who knows..
Yep, remdesivir seems the best thing so far.
Gilead keeps their winning streak going.
San Francisco and Boston– you need smart people for biotech.
“San Francisco and Boston– you need smart people for biotech.”
not to mention the smart biotech people in Wuhan…
I awoke with an interesting idea. It’s based, Gail on that graph you posted that shows viruses are more active in cold climates and less so in warm climates. I wondered why that is and thought that the only difference that is obvious is the temperature of the air breathed. The Corona virus is in the walls of the throat and in the lungs, so maybe being in a room with a temperature that is between 90F – 105F would kill off the virus sufficient to recover faster. It’s got to be worth a try.
It’s the UV light of the warmer months not heat that kills the virus.
Yep, WHO & GOVs agree(d): no DIY what so ever: don’t use UV, Vit-C, herbals, ozone, submicron masks, gloves, .. as it’s all threat to preset agenda..
Take a look:
https://www.resilience.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/black-swan-122983_1280-768×506.jpg
Make the best out of a bad situation, this is dinner.
Dennis L.
Everyone is EQUAL….except in the pocketbook!
Some billionaires, bankers and other members of the U.S. elite are calm, others are getting anxious and everyone is washing their hands. But the rich can afford to prepare for a pandemic with perquisites, like private plane rides out of town, calls with world-leading experts and access to luxurious medical care.
“It’s been a full-on war-room situation over here,” said Jordan Shlain, an internist and managing partner of Private Medical, a high-end concierge service. The company is procuring hundreds of full-body coverings for work that includes visits in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and New York. “We have to beg, borrow or steal. Well, not steal — beg, borrow and pay.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/vaccine-early-rich-prepare-outbreak-155627247.html
Ah, those poor souls…
Wealthy couples who aren’t used to actually spending time together are in for trouble, according to Mitchell Moss, who studies urban policy and planning at New York University.
“This is going to destroy the marriages of the rich,” said Moss. “All these husbands and wives who travel will now have to spend time with the person they’re married to
I have heard the comment that the very rich are often quite lonely. Their fancy homes and belongings cover up other problems that they have.
I have no way of knowing, but this may be correct. There is something about being married for a long time that in essence puts good memories into the bank so when difficult times come there is something to draw upon, or a corollary, tough times don’t last, tough people do. Constantly trading is doable for very successful people, they have things and interests other than relationships. For most of us, should we be lucky, the person next to us is our best friend, but that presupposes not only good intentions, but a competence in where, when and how those intentions are used. Screw up enough times and one drains the emotional bank account.
The more time one has, ie. the less time spent succeeding, the more the person next to you matters, somewhat like all the eggs in one basket.
There are exceptions, I dance in a very formal dance club a few times a year, the men are very successful, the women are definitely grand dames and were almost without exception trophies in their youth. That is a different game.
Dennis L.
Wealth is a kind of distorting mirror through which they view the world – that in itself is rather lonely and alienating.
Xabier,
Is it possible that to be incredibly successful requires giving up many other things? There are only so many hours, success requires not only great talent and effort, it requires most of a person’s hours. Not being lonely requires people, friends, for men so inclined ideally a wife, it is very difficult to find time for everything.
Dennis L.
I think we can’t compare “incredible successes”..
First example, classic music/instrument player spending years of time since early childhood on perfecting his art.
Second example, venture capital investor (essentially talent/scout for upcoming CBs bubbles) co-chairing new tech/market segment manias, say doing it twice-thrice per career before retiring at 40-50, hence leveraging each cycle at least ~10x, so ending up as billionaire from meager initial capital he borrowed anyway..
I often wonder if everyone on here is so tied to collapse that every story is a collapse story….we have all invested so much time and energy into interpreting when and how it will happen that we have blinders on to see that it is not happening; I include myself in that. There have been so many upheavals in time and every time life has come back. Two world wars back to back etc…intelligent people always question their beliefs. In the past we didn’t have computers to track everything maybe the markets have always been manipulated and it is all fake…ie there is no law of physics in this regard…..The ego can be a powerful thing.
We know ~global CBs cartel is in control at least since ~17th century, we know from direct accounts of several maverick conquerors (disruptors out of planned pecking order) throughout the history, how they were eventually double crossed and demoted by them.. Do they micromanage everything or succeed in everything, no but they kept holding in the saddle.
More to your great initial point, perhaps it’s more like windows of opportunity and probability appearing and closing before us – we are jumping through as we “passenger travel” the time space..
There’s MORE…
Every human on Earth is ingesting nearly 2,000 particles of plastic a week. These tiny pieces enter our unwitting bodies from tap water, food, and even the air, according to an alarming academic study sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, dosing us with five grams of plastics, many cut with chemicals linked to cancers, hormone disruption, and developmental delays. Since the paper’s publication last year, Sen. Tom Udall, a plain-spoken New Mexico Democrat with a fondness for white cowboy hats and turquoise bolo ties, has been trumpeting the risk: “We are consuming a credit card’s worth of plastic each week,” Udall says. At events with constituents, he will brandish a Visa from his wallet and declare, “You’re eating this, folks!”
More than half the plastic now on Earth has been created since 2002, and plastic pollution is on pace to double by 2030. At its root, the global plastics crisis is a product of our addiction to fossil fuels. The private profit and public harm of the oil industry is well understood: Oil is refined and distributed to consumers, who benefit from gasoline’s short, useful lifespan in a combustion engine, leaving behind atmospheric pollution for generations. But this same pattern — and this same tragedy of the commons — is playing out with another gift of the oil-and-gas giants, whose drilling draws up the petroleum precursors for plastics. These are refined in industrial complexes and manufactured into bottles, bags, containers, textiles, and toys for consumers who benefit from their transient use — before throwing them away.
“Plastics are just a way of making things out of fossil fuels,” says Jim Puckett, executive director of the Basel Action Network. BAN is devoted to enforcement of the Basel Convention, an international treaty that blocks the developed world from dumping hazardous wastes on the developing world, and was recently expanded, effective next year, to include plastics. For Americans who religiously sort their recycling, it’s upsetting to hear about plastic being lumped in with toxic waste.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/planet-plastic-110014472.html
Just the other day, there was an announcement that the county where I reside WILL NOT accept anymore paper fore recycling because of lack of demand AND because of residence who contaminated the paper waste in the bin! Sooooo…guestion…why even recycle what’s left?
Most of my recycling volume is PAPER!!😜
Since only #1 and #2 plastic is actually recycled…I’m not recycling any longer.
PS does that mean the truck that collects the waste comes only once a month now instead of once a week?
Someone commented that plastics are a way of sequestering carbon. Paper biodegrades and in the process gives off CO2. So it depends on how you look at this. Would you rather have oil/natural gas products put into a sequestered form, or burned?
Boy, is that “creative reasoning”! What is the original form of plastics?
Plastics are made from natural materials such as cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt and crude oil through a polymerisation or polycondensation process
So, it’s really not sequestering in a meaningful sense.
Bio-polymers as carbon storage
While petroleum-derived plastics don’t release CO2 in the same way that burning fossil fuels does, they also don’t help sequester any of the excess of this gaseous pollutant — the carbon from liquid oil is simply converted into solid plastics.
Petro-plastics aren’t fundamentally all that bad, but they’re a missed opportunity. Fortunately, there is an alternative. Switching from petroleum-based polymers to polymers that are biologically based could decrease carbon emissions by hundreds of millions of tons every year. Bio-based polymers are not only renewable and more environmentally friendly to produce, but they actually can have a net beneficial effect on climate change by acting as a carbon sink. But not all bio-polymers are created equal.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/could-plastics-actually-help-fight-climate-change
Plastics, no matter the source, are mainly made of carbon (PDF) — about 80 percent by weight. While petroleum-derived plastics don’t release CO2 in the same way that burning fossil fuels does, they also don’t help sequester any of the excess of this gaseous pollutant — the carbon from liquid oil is simply converted into solid plastics
Please explain why “solid plastics”, created by man, do not sequester carbon, but “solid coal”, created by Nature, somehow does.
And Another Thing!
Trump administration quietly cuts funding to the nation’s poorest schools
The Department of Education is led by Betsy DeVos, who was one of Mr Trump’s most controversial cabinet appointees at the start of his administration. She has drawn fire both for her lack of experience in schools and her past statements advocating a religious agenda for public education.
As reported in the New York Times, the department has changed the eligibility criteria for the Rural and Low-Income School Programme, which provides funding for school districts in some of the poorest parts of the country.
The change will make it harder for districts to demonstrate their eligibility, meaning hundreds of them will lose tens of thousands of dollars – and in some cases much more
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-quietly-cuts-funding-090641332.html
And ANOTHER THING
About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent nearly 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.
https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-vs-social-welfare/
Definition: corporate welfare
n. Financial aid, such as a subsidy, provided by a government to corporations or other businesses.
The Cato Institute estimated that, in 2002, $93 billion were devoted to corporate welfare. This is about 5 percent of the federal budget.
Anyone out there has more current numbers….sarcasm….
At least until the crash, all of the wealth seems to rise to those who are already richest. This is somewhat like steam rising with heat. The poorest tend to get “frozen out.”
In the natural world, we have “survival of the best adapted.” Are the richest the best adapted? Young, healthy people would seem to me to be better suited to the physical work that will be needed in the future. The wealthy will lose the hugely inflated value of stock and bonds. The wealthy in poor health will lose the medications on which their bodies depend.
I’ve just ordered this book
I think it might make interesting reading on this topic (inequality)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-Equality-Better-Everyone-ebook/dp/B002XHNNKW
It takes more growth in energy resources per capita to maintain equality. If there is not enough to go around, there is more wage disparity, more wealth disparity, and more problems in general. The problem is a physics problem.
We know from how poorly communist countries have fared that absolute equality doesn’t really work. In Cuba they say, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
i wasn’t inferring that equality would work, or that it will ever be.
humankind is the only species capable of engendering inequality within itself. This is a direct result of our ability and desire to ‘acquire’ stuff that goes beyond our immediate needs. (ie commercialisation of our living environment)
the smarter ones of us might acquire a 50 room mansion, when actual family needs might be met by 6 rooms at most
the rest of the house is a statement of status (same applies to planes, yachts. cars etc.
It is built on energy-acquisition, drawn from those who are less able. He buys the necessary energy to build a house too big for family needs. No other animal can do this
This has gone on throughout recorded history. The end result is alway an overturning of the wealth-strata on the assumption that it will redress the economic balance
It doesn’t, because economically smarter people will always seize opportunities to acquire more and more, building wealth and status until the overturning happens again.
Many animal species have “pecking orders.”
the term ”pecking order” derives directly from superior strength to gain access to food, the best food and so on
it has transposed itself from that into breeding (the best partners, and places, the best tree or cave etc)
thus a male lion can only hold the pride together to cover the number of females he can fight other males for. There comes a physical limit beyond which he cannot expend strength to do that. The prime male lion can’t retain the services of other male lions to protect his female group.
eventually his strength will deteriorate, and a younger stronger lion will take over the pride. The females will accept that as the natural order of things.
My point was that humans are the only species that can ‘buy’ pecking order. So an 80 yr old billionaire can still have a 20 yr old bimbo on his arm, who professes to ‘love him’ etc etc. We all go along with the joke of course. We see that joke being played out in the White House right now.
What she really wants is to outlive him, for obvious reasons.
Let’s forget the Lear Jets and the luxury liners, the seaside villas on Martha’s Vineyard and the latest sports cars. What I want to know is, when we’re all equal, will be all be able to afford a Patek Philippe watch and Chanel cosmetics, or are we all going to be forced to eat frankenfood from Walmart?
To put this outrage into perspective:
“Collins, one of the authors of the Rural Education Achievement Program, said in a letter to DeVos that 100 of the 149 Maine schools that qualified for the program would lose funding, which would result in about $1.2 million in cuts.”
That’s $12,000 per school. Or about one fifth of a guidance councillor, diversity manager, media affairs coordinator, or affirmative action layabout.
Hmm, is that an official figure your are reporting Robert Firth? If that is so, why do the cuts in the first place? After all Trump platform is MAKING America Great Again! Why cut education that will do just that! Rural communities are the MOST vulnerable to finding cuts by the Federal Government.
The President’s budget for 2019 shows the Administration is not working on behalf of rural America. It presents a long list of broken promises to rural communities, which disproportionately suffer high and persistent poverty. The budget hollows out the investments necessary to build a strong, competitive, vibrant rural economy. The President’s budget will make life harder for the millions of Americans living outside of major cities, who are struggling to get by
More detail here
https://budget.house.gov/publications/report/fy19-trump-budget-devastates-rural-america
Herbie, yes: that is an official figure from *the organisation that is the alleged victim of the cuts*. And they were not cuts at all; they were merely a return to the rules mandated by Congress, which a previous administration had bent. But yes, time to move on to another rant.
My family lived in the US for over ten years, with five school age children. And we learned the hard way that the last thing the school system spent Federal money on was education.
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Inflammatory rubbish. China’s on top of it, deaths are falling daily.
This outbreak–like those that occur annually and go unnoticed in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Nile Valley and India–will soon be forgotten.
Hell, if we can forget that our own H1N1 Coronavirus killed 300,000 people, we can forget anything!
Hello, comrade. I trust your friends in the CPC are rewarding your cheerleading lavishly?
CCP rather, lol.
We dont know. The numbers could be true. Just because someone believes the numbers doesnt mean they are a paid troll. How much is wall street paying you to have people make short bets that they cover the other side of Harry? The paid troll accusation shows a immature attachment to the correctness of ones own beliefs. You provide good information Harry. Are you that insecure?
Godfree Roberts does come from a different perspective than most of us. I see he has a book, “How to Retire in Thailand.” Another is, “Dealing with Dengue.” He writes on Amazon about himself:
So, perhaps he sees things differently than we do.
Peatmoss, I’ve seen Godfree crop up here before, criticising Gail for having the temerity to suggest that China’s GDP figures should be taken with a pinch of salt. Which they should be… Unless of course you’d like to buy a bridge from me.
““Officials produce the numbers, and the numbers produce officials,” Chen added, referring to the idea that massaging data can help one get ahead in Chinese officialdom.”
https://qz.com/887709/chinas-liaoning-province-admitted-that-it-inflated-gdp-figures-from-2011-to-2014/
“Ms. Stevenson-Yang, of J Capital Research, said she and her colleagues had seen growing discrepancies in official data in the last two years in a variety of sectors, including retail, shipping and steel production. She said a colleague had once called a Chinese cement factory to ask for production data, and a factory employee had thought the researcher was calling from a government-affiliated research association. The employee told the researcher that the factory had already changed its numbers twice and would rather not do it again, so the researcher could choose any number that fit.
““When you go around and meet state-owned industry people, everybody laughs at the national statistics, so I don’t know why foreigners believe them,” Ms. Stevenson-Yang said.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/business/international/china-data-slowing-economy.html
I have been looking up more about Godfree Roberts. He has a particular point of view, and evidently can make money posting articles with this point of view. He seems to write for The Unz Review, Countercurrents, and Quora.
Most of the crowd at Unz also regards him as a Beijing version of Tokyo Rose or Lord Haw Haw. As long as WW3 doesn’t break out, or if China wins it, he should do fine.
In the meantime, Godfree provides a very useful and important function in presenting the CCP’s views and talking points to an international audience far more coherently than they can do in their own words. He has a real gift for expressing the most outrageous and laughable claims in sensible sounding language with a deadpan delivery in the guise of his own personal opinions.
But what his real personal opinions are is anyone’s guess.
Thanks for the insights. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes, they actually have a good point, even if most of what they say is biased or “off.”
Sorry to destroy your delusions Mr McGibbs … but Mr Roberts is spot on . China ( finally ) has the situation in hand with the number of new infections dropping daily .
What China did not do was react quick enough … though in all honesty in light of COVID 19’s unknown properties … it probably would of made very little difference if it had
What Mr Roberts failed to mention was that along with OUR H1N1 debacle … there was that the loverly Spanish Flu that originated in the US ( Kansas ) killing millions across the globe … all because Wilson was unwilling to quarantine both the military base and the town connected with it …. choosing to send the troops stationed there to the European front ( WWI ) despite all the medical and military advice to the contrary
Facts Mr McGibbs … Nothing but the facts
” Science ( and the facts ) Do Not Care What You Think “
Whether or not the current level of COVID-19 is low, the question is what happens in the future. Will factories really be reopened? It doesn’t look like this is happening to a significant extent yet. Will the current government be able to retain control, after all of these adverse happenings? Will China split into smaller pieces.
Not only did China not act quickly enough, they detained the people who first raised the alarm, including the late doctor Li Wenliang, and made them sign a statement made declaring that their warnings had been “incorrect and illegal”.
By the time the did react, millions had left Wuhan for the lunar new year.
Since that time China’s *numbers suggest they have done a good job at slowing the spread of the virus with their aggressive containment measures but they are caught in an impossible situation – if they properly re-start their economy, which they, and indeed we, desperately need them to do, they will just re-accelerate transmission of the virus.
The Chinese populace didn’t seem all that happy when Li Wenliang died. The social contract in China seems to be that the government is obeyed provided that there are jobs and rising prosperity, so it’ll be interesting to see what a sharp economic contraction foments.
*Call me Mr. Cynical but I don’t always take these at face value.
“China ( finally ) has the situation in hand with the number of new infections dropping daily.”
Can you provide a link that assuredly confirms that assertion?
Science rules supreme? For example I know couple of head honcho “scientists” who believe or at least publicly reiterate that office fires produce pyroclastic clouds and melt-cut steel beams.. Preposterous, and conflicting eye witness accounts. Calming masses gets higher priority.. Sorry, in this world you better don’t believe anybody.
Given the finances of China, I wouldn’t expect anyone to be getting support from the CPC for long.
😀
If he squirrels it away, he’s probably already got enough to retire quite handsomely in Chiang Mai.
https://youtu.be/w3oU3rgLKGo
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Mar 1, 2020
News Media Attacks Vitamin C Treatment of COVID-19 Coronavirus
Yet Ascorbate is a Proven, Powerful Antiviral
by Andrew W. Saul, Editor-in-Chief
(OMNS Mar 1, 2020) First of all, the naysayers are too late. Vitamin C is already being used to prevent and treat COVID-19 in China and in Korea. And it is working.
Here is a verified official statement from China’s Xi’an Jiaotong University Second Hospital:
“On the afternoon of February 20, 2020, another 4 patients with severe coronavirus pneumonia recovered from the C10 West Ward of Tongji Hospital. In the past 8 patients have been discharged from hospital. . . [H]igh-dose vitamin C achieved good results in clinical applications. We believe that for patients with severe neonatal pneumonia, and for critically ill patients, vitamin C treatment should be initiated as soon as possible after admission. Numerous studies have shown that the dose of vitamin C has a lot to do with the effect of treatment. High-dose vitamin C can not only improve antiviral levels, but more importantly, can prevent and treat acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress (ARDS).”
Here is a report from Korea:
“At my hospital in Daegu, South Korea, all inpatients and all staff members have been using vitamin C orally since last week. Some people this week had a mild fever, headaches and coughs, and those who had symptoms got 30,000 mg intravenous vitamin C. Some people got better after about two days, and most had symptoms go away after one injection.” (Hyoungjoo Shin, M.D.)
There are at least three high-dose intravenous vitamin C studies underway in China. Literally by the truckload, tons of vitamin C has been sent into Wuhan.
Here is a report from a physician in China:
“We need to broadcast a message worldwide very quickly: Vitamin C (small or large dose) does no harm to people and is the one of the few, if not the only, agent that has a chance to prevent us from getting, and can treat, COVID-19 infection. When can we, medical doctors and scientists, put patients’ lives first?” (Richard Z. Cheng, MD, PhD, International Vitamin C China Epidemic Medical Support Team Leader)
News media attacks on vitamin C are centered on false allegations of dangers with megadoses. This tactic lets the media ignore the truth that even LOW doses of vitamin C reduce symptoms and death rates. Do not let the media spin this issue. Advocates of vitamin C are medical doctors, not spin doctors. They are experienced, credentialed clinicians who have read the science.
http://orthomolecular.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=0f28b5d49b3020afeecd95b4009adf4c.145&s=ec57265b176c74b763c8da04ce463a20
Hm, interesting, seems like that M$ Billy Boy & global fellowship of Mr. Burns cartel has released (again) a buggy viral product for which there is an ~easy antivirus update after-all.. Thanks for discussing it few pages back in other details as well..
As I mentioned in Jan, if the Chinese eventually come out of it, they would be more willing (and agitated) to play hard ball next time be it conventional or otherwise..
1) ALL of the above is based on singular non verifiable experience/opinion …. not proven viable and verifiable actual science / medicine
2) Epistemology 101 – Isolated Personal experiences ( which amount to nothing more than opinion ) are NEVER a test for truth .. be it in science , medicine , philosophy etc .
3) OMNS is NOT a valid medical news source .
4) Packaged Vitamin C has been proven to have at best … extremely limited efficacy in regards to minor viruses ( such as the common cold ) and ZERO efficacy with serious viruses and the flu
5) There to date is NO scientific data in regards to any cure . mitigation etc with the COVID 19 virus . FACT … currently no one knows much of anything when it comes to the COVID 19 virus . It is an anomaly who’s properties are still yet to be understood .
6) Any claims to the contrary are blatant propaganda by the manufactures of packaged Vitamin C … none of which are regulated by any standards of scientific method and medical practice . What they are NOT are MD’s .. nor scientists or clinicians
7) Excess dosages of vitamin C are detrimental to both the digestive system .. immune system … etc . ( Harvard School of Medicine , Mayo Clinic etc et al )
There Mr Groves I proclaim your entire post to be fake news verging on shilling propaganda solely for the propose of profit .
I hate to say it, but my personal experience supports the truth of Tim Grove’s message.
This seems to be a controversial issue.
Vitamin C is not a black and white issue – nor cure vs. quackery issue. Ascorbic acid plays a critical role in the innate immune system’s phagocyte cells and it’s critical ability to destroy pathogens – especially in its generation of hydrogen peroxide. Depleted ascorbic acid levels show measurable increases in opportunistic infections – especially under various stress conditions.
While vitamin C is not a cure, but neither are anti-biotics if we are talking about an agent that results in the immediate eradication of specific pathogens 100% of the time. In specific circumstances, cellular ascorbiic acid level can be the difference between becoming infected – or not, or having a minor infection vs. a major and prolonged infection. However, in this protective role there are other health factors that can augment or defeat the non-specific immune system even with optimum ascorbic acid levels Both the complete denial of Vit. C efficacy and the abuse of excessive and inappropriate uses of Vit. C are linked to the same problem – a general ignorance of how the immune system works and ascorbic acid’s functional roles in the immune system, and thus the resulting incorrect perspectives created by this ignorance.
BTW you should also look at Pauling’s criticisms of both the Harvard Medical School and Mayo Clinic’s experimental designs on vitamin C efficacy. In my view they were both wrong – Pauling in his extreme “cure all” perspective of Vit. C and HMS and MC egotistical fear that someone had found something they had missed. HMS and MC were also scientifically wrong in that there limited experiments did not reproduce Pauling’s experiments even closely – especially in duration and dosage – and consequently the experiments were not scientifically comparable. Even if they had been more comparable – the difficulty in selecting experimental groups whose immune systems and medical histories were similar enough to measure significant differences in immune system responses – were beyond the resources and scope of eithers’ experiments – and most research today. Underestimating the complexity of the human immune system and especially the complexity of the variables that effect it and or limit its responses remains a common scientific problem.
Good post. The mayo clinics pretty much set the standard (IMO) for western health practices. Like any discipline when you are taught a paradigm it excludes other ways of knowing. The mayo clinic has condemned many non pharmaceutical cures that are far to popular to just be placebo effect. Clinical trials would seem to be definitive. They are very valuable. They are not completely definitive. Nothing is in this world.
Myself i swear by acupuncture. It is flat out incredible. There are times you need western medicine. In my personal experience those times have become fewer and fewer as i put more faith in acupuncture and experience its healing powers more and more.
Acupuncture aint going to cure cv19. If it could China would not have a problem. Acupunture deals with 90% of chinas health needs. It certainly can and will get your body better able to cope with CV19. A couple grams a day of c aint going to hurt you so why not?
An Iranian friend, having been assured by both Iranian and Western conventional doctors that her painful leg problem was untreatable, went in desperation to an Iranian traditional healer who used…..leeches. It worked! At least, the pain disappeared and did not reoccur. She was highly sceptical of success. Gives one pause for thought.
When my father had a pain in his knee, his GP prescribed acupuncture. It took the pain away. By the time the pain returned, the cancer had spread to his liver and he died a year later.
My father taught mothers-to-be to be hypnotized, and used hypnosis during delivery of the babies. He also used hypnosis when working with accident traffic victims, when still at the scene of an accident.
I can believe this. I eat half a large orange every day, and I eat a fair amount of tomatoes. But I haven’t been one for megadoses of anything.
I guess the context for suitable self medication of “megadoses” is that you are feeling unwell in colder season, especially towards the later part of it before spring. Also there are people with very unbalanced or even severely deficient vitamin intake throughout the year be it for seasonal on/off work intensity spikes, not eating regularly healthy food (taste, income, knowhow..) and other various civ stresses etc..
So, if you happen to have most of these factors stacked against you, go “megadoses” for the win.
Thanks! That is a very good link, Tim. Of course, this news would be a big disappointment to all of the people wanting to make money off of this epidemic. In fact, higher doses of Vitamin C would likely reduce the “regular” flu deaths as well. But such treatments don’t make money for physicians, builders of ICU units, and others. The existence of a cheap, almost instant, cure for the illness might explain the big drop in cases in Wuhan. If China could just get the other workers back to work, with Vitamin C pills, things might sort of straighten out.
I would like to emphasize that I don’t get as much as a shilling (12 old pence or 5 new ones) for shilling for Big C. 🙂
My understanding is that the humble ascorbic acid molecule is capable of donating not just one but two electrons without trying to grab replacements, thereby making these electrons available to neutralize free radicals in the body and prevent much of the damage associated with aging at the cellular level. Large amounts of Vit C won’t keep you young and healthy, but it will do you a power of good and you will live longer for taking it regularly.
You can get all the Vit C you need from a hunter-gatherer diet of wild nuts, berries and fruit—which is probably the reason why our primate ancestors lost the ability to synthesize the stuff on demand in the liver—a neat trick that over 90% of mammalian species can still accomplish—l but you will have a hard time getting enough of it from a modern diet, which is why most people are dangerously deficient in Vit C and suffering from borderline scurvy—more commonly known as inflammation.
But thanks to BAU and the much-abused supplement industry, you can swallow it in tablet, powder or lozenge form for about a shilling (5 cents) a gram. If the supplement industry makes a profit on that, I for one say good luck to ’em.
While pharmacological drugs are killing hundreds of thousands to millions of people worldwide every year, the total number of deaths proven to have been caused by consuming vitamins since they were first marketed is zero. You could swallow a whole jar of vitamin C tablets at one go and the worst that would happen is you’d experience very loose stools and possibly your acne would disappear.
Turkey is sending refugees to the Greek borders. There are now perhaps 10s of thousands refugees at the borders trying to cross into Greece.
From the Greek side: teargas, rubber bullets and live fire.
From the Turkish side: teargas, Molotov cocktails and live fire.
Soon there will be 100s of thousands of refugees at the borders…then millions…as the economies in the Middle East are in a state of collapse.
“Shenzhen, mainland China’s hottest property market last year, has seen an 80 per cent decline in home sales amid the coronavirus epidemic, Hong Kong brokerage Midland Realty said.”
https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3064672/shenzhen-home-sales-decline-80-cent-special-economic-zone-status-falls
“Automakers and department store operators [in Japan] reported sharp sales declines in February as the spread of the new coronavirus dented consumer sentiment and drove away foreign tourists… with Japan on the brink of recession…”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/03/business/sales-new-autos-10-3-japan/#.Xl4bD6j7TIU
Auto sales were down 90% in China in February.
The Chinese media continues to send good vibes on Xi’s orders.
Prices will necessarily fall. This will not be good for banks holding the mortgages. But neither will all of the people who are getting paid less, and businesses who cannot repay their loans.
The demise of the traditional family revealed during the last parliamentary elections in Slovakia held on February 29th, 2020: a married couple, who are members of the party that defines itself as radical anti-LGBT and advocates the far-right fascist ideas, had a profile on an e rt ic dating website, defining themselves as bi s x ual and looking for s x al adventures, which is in severe contrast with their official image of loving Catholic spouses defending traditional Slovak values:
https://www.branik.info/post/tradi%C4%8Dn%C3%A1-slovensk%C3%A1-rodina-v-%C5%A1okuj%C3%BAcom-podan%C3%AD-volebnej-kandid%C3%A1tky-%C4%BEsns?fbclid=IwAR1xyTZYs-AVsEvUGrCcQv68ovw0crkN56h48DoC3jPhG0_YLB68fmSTab4
These elections showed more support for liberal ideas by the population, as a new promising liberal party, advocating LGBT rights did get into the parliament, missing it very tightly. They were short of 926 votes to make it into Parliament (http://195.46.72.16/free/jsp/search/view/ViewerPure_en.jsp?Document=..%2F..%2FInput_text%2Fonline%2F20%2F03%2Ftbtbexg10bp.dat_175300.1%40Fondy&QueryText=). The party SaS, that is already part of the Slovak parliament and advocates LGBT rights, is again represented in the Slovak parliament.
However, it seems, that liberal ideas still play a marginal role. And I guess that the example of the depopulating Japan shows that the liberal ideas will remain marginal, as the depopulation continues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Japan
As collapse hits, my expectation is that families will need more children to try to offset the likelihood of children dying before maturity. There will also be fewer job opportunities available, so more women will be at home with families. The need will be for more traditional roles again.
The problem si the decline of the human environments, we can not live in forests like animals. That is why the depopulation is more likely than more children per woman. We need energy for keeping the human environments, i.e. securing their energy needs, the needs of the food-producing fields regarding nutrients etc.
These are the limiting factors of the human populationis. We can produce higher populations with lower health using less resources per capita, but when the viruses come, the population crashes.
We see problems like this one today:
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2081202-coronavirus-may-lead-to-phosphate-industry-changes?backToResults=true
There are also some new technologies, but they are costly:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2164365/electric-plants-powering-chinas-new-agricultural-revolution
Regarding the phosphate article, I notice this paragraph:
I remember hearing that India was overusing at least some form of fertilizer (Urea?). I don’t know if that has been an issue, or if it is more a problem of affordability of fertilizer, given the low wages workers are earning. Farmers want to cut corners any way they can, to keep food production costs as low as possible. I imagine transport costs are part of the issue, too. If there is a closer supplier, the cost might be lower. It sounds like phosphate production was yet another area of the economy that was failing, even before the coronavirus problem.
Regarding the pesticide article (it only helps fertilizer use a bit), I notice this paragraphs.
It takes lots of resources to substitute for the pesticide and a bit of the fertilizer. It doesn’t sound like it is going anywhere.
Regarding phosphorus and rock phosphate as a finite critical resource: I began to investigate human overpopulation and human sustainability bottlenecks about 2005. I was particularly interested in the economic and technical feasibility of NPK based biofuels – especially for algae biofuels. I read about the finite critical resource nature – physical (energy) and fiscal (process costs) economics of the production of phosphorus from rock phosphate – the primary commodity resource.
In 2008 I ran across an impressive Ph.D. thesis by and Australian woman named Dana Cordell:
http://phosphorusfutures.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DCordell_SENSEpaper.pdf
After Dr. Cordell’s thesis was published, alarm bells apparently started going of in gov. think tanks around the world and the people who track these kinds of theses. Soon, China started instigating extremely high taxing rates for rock phosphate and several other critical resources minerals. Coincidently or not – with the completion of Dana Cordell’s thesis – rock phosphate and fertilizer prices doubled – “From 2007 to 2008, spring nitrogen prices increased by a third, phosphate prices nearly doubled, and potash prices doubled.” (https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/35824/10935_ar33.pdf?v=41055) Though resource agencies like USDA did not mention China’s constriction of rock phosphate resources as the reason for increasing rock phosphate prices of the time.
In 2010 Cordell’s thesis was published broadly in popular science and regular media as “The Story of Phosphorus: Sustainability implications of global phosphorus scarcity for food security.” (http://phosphorusfutures.net/the-phosphorus-challenge/the-story-of-phosphorus-8-reasons-why-we-need-to-rethink-the-management-of-phosphorus-resources-in-the-global-food-system/)
https://www.uts.edu.au/staff/dana.cordell
China’s critical resource export excessive taxation issues set off a global stink and in 2012 the WTO stepped in ruling that China’s export restrictions had “distorted international trade” and convinced China to resume its rock phosphate and other critical resource exports with reasonable taxation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/business/wto-orders-china-to-stop-export-taxes-on-minerals.html
About the same time 2011, reading the USDA Fertilizer Export/Import Reports – I noted that the largest global exporter of NPK and producer of rock phosphate fertilizer – the US (at least up to 2010 had suddenly become a net importer of rock phosphates. In 2011 the US imported 54% of its NPK ingredients from foreign suppliers – especially rock phosphates from Morocco and Wester Sahara.
I found this ironic since at the time the country was up in harms about our dependence on foreign energy sources – yet, no one mentioned our dependence on foreign food production fertilizer chemicals. Which makes a related coincidence of this time – that much more suspicious and interesting. The USDA stopped publishing its Fertilizer Import/Export Summary at the end of 2012. While the US (and the world) still has abundant rock phosphate (gross) reserves according to the USGS – the question of those reserves quality, access and general economic viability are not accurately stated. Much of the USGS rock phosphate reserve data is provided by the export country producing it – meaning that they use the same data as collateral for international loans and trade – therefore a significant bias to the data. For example much of Florida’s remaining rock phosphate reserves are now under greater Tampa and St. Petersburg.
https://www.slideshare.net/DevFutures/dana-cordell-phosphorus-scarcity
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190909121247.htm
Since rock phosphate deposits are often associated with noxious co-ingredients like heavy metals and uranium – the cost of mining and processing rock phosphate to remove these toxic ingredients can be highly variable. Basically, not all rock phosphates are equal or economically viable at current prices and related food economics.
It seems that – like everything else today – there are few problems that are simple (otherwise they would have already been solved), but the tendency to assume that complex problems either don’t exist – because of authoritarian declarations that say they don’t, or because they are not easy to understand – is a risk equal to the sum of the risks of those complex problems. This is especially true when we start talking about finite critical resource economics of phosphorus.
Interesting! USGS gives its view of what is happening with phosphate rock here:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-phosphate.pdf
There is also a PDF which a person has to download, available monthly, giving monthly actual amounts. I have uploaded it to OFW. It looks more frightening.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/rock-phosphate-usgs-oct-2019.pdf
One thing that is important to note is the fact that all commodity prices tend to move together. The problem now is that the price for phosphate rock is too low to make it economic to extract. The price was very high in 2007-2008 for all commodities.
In my (third world) experience, women have far superior work ethic to men. It would be suicidal to take them out of the workforce. The problem I’m seeing in my practical experience is the lack of planning and of structure. These things don’t require just giving into the flesh and treating women as baby mills; it requires much better education and use of our tiny brains.
Patriarchal societies certainly do tend to be organised so that men can sit around talking – theology, politics, hunting, war, etc – and having a drink. The highest level males do nothing of any use whatsoever.
I understand that in Africa, many societies tend to be matriarchal. A person always knows who his mother is. His father is more of a question.
I communicate on a few African Facebook pages. I’ve been told that women have very powerful roles in those societies, but what I never ever see is women voicing any opinion on Facebook. That role is left entirely to the men. I would never know from a distance what was in the women’s minds.
As collapse hits, regional wars are likely, resulting in the probability of a nuclear exchange. The human race needs less children not more for the sake of the other earth inhabitants.
If we don’t have contraceptive pills any more because of lack of exports from China, I wonder if that would affect birth patterns.
Good point Gail. I guess we can use places like Syria, Iraq, Venezuela, Cuba and parts of Africa as examples of what might occur on a much larger scale.
WTI 48.05
First came the breakdown of the support line.
Now comes the retest.
Then comes the rejection?
And then comes the crash?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESB2dJ1WkAQvjWx?format=jpg&name=large
“The recent slump in Brent Crude prices follows a similar pattern of past slowdowns in global factory output, sparking fears that the market’s fear is not only based on the coronavirus.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Odds-Are-Stacked-Against-Oil-As-Recession-Looms.html
China was already doing poorly before the virus hit. Its purchases of automobiles and cell phones was down. It had to close down most of its recycling business for lack of profitability. It has been contending with peak coal because of low prices.
I would expect eventually a crash, but I don’t know how soon.
“UK and Scottish government modelling shows that the economic and fiscal costs of a Covid-19 epidemic could be on a par with the costs of the 2008 banking crisis.
“According to a senior government source: ‘that is what our modelling shows’.”
https://beta.spectator.co.uk/article/coronavirus-could-cost-britain-as-much-as-the-2008-crash
“Shares in European banks have been among the worst hit since the virus began to spread, first through Italy, and now through much of the rest of the region.
“Their stocks took another hammering Monday amid signs the impact of the virus is starting to hurt economies, which has immediate effects on banks’ business of taking and lending money.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-heaps-misery-on-europes-ailing-banks-11583158487
According to the WSJ article,
Now, central bankers have a plan to fix the problem by making rates more negative. Somehow, this won’t fix the problem banks have.
The cost could be a lot worse than during the 2008-2009 crisis.
A very apt quote from a guy who commented on “Is China’s Economy Finally Starting To Recover? Here Is What The Real Data Shows”
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/chinas-economy-finally-starting-recover-here-what-real-data-shows
The comment :
The pollution PM2.5 levels have dropped at least 50% when compared to this date in 2019 and 2018. I’d say industrial output has also dropped at least 50%.
We’re talking more than just supply chain disruptions.. rather supply chain evaporation.
Supply chain evaporation.. scary but true
That is a great link. Thanks! The Chinese economy has not rebooted, whether or not the number of virus cases is down. It is increasingly looking like it won’t reboot, as long as the governmental structure retains its current top-down structure. If the current government collapses or is overthrown, perhaps parts of the economy could reboot.
Hong Kong protests in 2019 may have been part of an INTERNATIONAL attempt to get reform the top-down government so that the world can get more work out of the Chinese.
Here’s the question, are people who want China to become more like the EU*, really going to turn China into the Asian version of the EU and raise GDP , or will they just get China to outsource its manufacturing base to a country that is more cooperative?
*While most people in Hong Kong are ethnic Chinese, and although Hong Kong is part of China, a majority of people there don’t identify as Chinese.
Surveys from the University of Hong Kong show that most people identify themselves as “Hong Kongers” – only 11% would call themselves “Chinese” – and 71% of people say they do not feel proud about being Chinese citizens.”
There seems to be a correlation between , weak identity, and revolution. I remember reading somewhere that the very well-to-do and the very poor see themselves as foreigners in their own countries.
As comforting as it is to see the markets rocketing skywards in spite of our incipient global recession, the down side is that they risk forfeiting all credibility as a reasonable barometer of investor confidence and future corporate profitability (if they hadn’t already).
“Stocks rose sharply on Wall Street Monday as traders hope that central banks will take action to help shelter the global economy from the effects of the coronavirus outbreak. The market recouped part of the losses it took in a seven-day rout that gave stocks their worst week since the financial crisis of 2008.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/02/dow-surges-central-bank-help-economy-118907
“The largest bank lobbying group in the US, the Bank Policy Institute, is now leveraging the coronavirus to pressure the Fed to relax nettlesome banking regulations imposed on banks after the Financial Crisis.
“These regulations, particularly the liquidity and capital requirements, were imposed on banks in order to avoid a replay of the Financial Crisis.”
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/03/02/wall-street-biggest-banks-shamelessly-trying-to-use-coronavirus-to-get-federal-reserve-to-weaken-rules-better-markets/
Reducing the capital requirements and the regulations on the types of securities that may be held makes it easier for banks to be solvent.
Gail, I feat the opposite: it will help the banks to continue hiding the fact that they are insolvent.
“Global recession now baked into the cake.
“Six Key Points:
1. Global Manufacturing PMI slumps to 47.2
2. Survey-record contraction in China; rest of the world stagnates on average
3. Global trade falls at fastest pace since April 2009
4. Global Manufacturing Decline Steepest Since 2009
5. Manufacturing employment declined for the third successive month in February, with the rate of job losses the fastest since August 2009.
6. Purchasing activity declined to the greatest extent in the series history (which started in October 2009).”
https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/global-recession-now-baked-in-the-cake-nDwvDXbJk0uc8TeSMMdSIQ
“Central banks around the world are trying to keep investors calm as the coronavirus outbreak continues to deliver blows to financial markets and the world economy.
“Policymakers at major central banks say they are prepared to take steps as necessary to limit the damage caused by the virus as investors try to turn the page on the worst week for stocks since the global financial crisis.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/02/business/oecd-global-economy/index.html
“The Reserve Bank of Australia has cut official interest rates to a new record low of 0.5% due to the “significant effect” of the coronavirus outbreak on the Australian economy and has signalled it is prepared to cut further if needed.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/03/reserve-bank-of-australia-cuts-interest-rates-to-record-low-05-amid-coronavirus-concerns
An interest rate of 0.5% sounds pretty close to zero, already.
Good points! Even though economists seem not to be able to see this pattern.
No-one has posted Chris Martenson’s latest video ….
https://youtu.be/CNQB-Q67DpE
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNQB-Q67DpE&w=949&h=534%5D
Interestingly is the disinformation campaign going on around the world. There is either a lack of understanding by TPTB or a deliberate cover up of the severity. Unfortunately having worked with people very high up in Govts in the past, it is a lack of understanding that is being shown.
In this country, we have had a Chinese student do their 14 days outside of China in the UAE, then come to Australia feeling unwell. They took a week to go to hospital where the Coronavirus was found. How many hundreds did this young man infect, on the plane, through customs, at university etc. I’ll bet he is not alone.
The govts here are floundering with this.
The death rate according to Worldofmeters is about 6%, not the 2% many would lie to believe. If you look at South Korea’s numbers of around 28 dead out of around 5,000 cases it doesn’t look too bad. However if we go back to the number infected just early last week, 10 days ago, the number was 433 on 22nd of February, so a ‘death rate’ of about 6.5%, which matches China’s rate, the Worldofmeters rate etc.
What’s even worse is the ~18% serious or critical cases. Here in Australia we have just 2000 ICU (Intensive Care Units) beds. So if just 0.1% of the population get this virus all those beds will be taken, with extras triaged. That’s just 12,000 cases in a country of 25 million.
In the next week or so First world countries will wake up to these numbers just like the Chinese did, but how will western governments react?? My bet is poorly!! After not taking this seriously enough to begin with, ie half hearted attempts to keep cases out of the country, I suspect they will overcompensate and introduce some over the top restrictions on movement and gatherings.
Hence why people are hoarding/panic buying.
Of most interest to me is what will China do when they try to go back to normal, but the infection rate goes way higher again. Remember that only the equivalent of less than 1% of the city of Wuhan has so far contracted Coronavirus throughout China.
There is increasing evidence that this is a once in a century type event, and no-one is prepared in the modern world.
I think the issue is that there is essentially nothing that government can do without crashing their own economies. They cannot suddenly make more intensive care beds available. They can’t conjure up more doctors and other health care providers. The cost of the treatment, if it were available, would be a deal-killer. Slowing it down doesn’t really fix the situation much, either. It makes certain that financial systems will crash.
Chris Martenson makes a good point about the death rate. The best way to calculate it is to look at the resolved cases and the number of deaths out of those cases. So, deaths divided by deaths plus recovered. And, indeed, the rates are more like 6%-7% than 1%-3%. Eventually, this can be approximated by using a denominator of simply all cases, when most cases have gone to a resolution.
(using the same math methods)…
the flu death rate in the USA this season is less than 0.01%…
Resolved cases are selected from those tested for covid.
Surely those actually tested positive for season flu must be a small minority?
And death rate among those tested positive for season flu much higher utan 0.1%.
I highly recommend Emergen-C (effervescent powder in packets). I alternate it each day with Vit C tablets (nice when the latter contains bioflavinoids, but seemingly helpful with or without it). As someone said above there is no such thing as taking too much.
Too much ascorbic acid can cause diarrhoea. So, yes, there is such a thing as taking too much.
See, it even cures constipation!
Let’s give a big round of applause for Vit C.
LOL! Fortunately, I’ve been spared the problem Curt describes.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
“March 3 (GMT):
1 new case in the United States (Massachusetts): a woman in her 20s who lives in Norfolk County and recently traveled to Italy with a school group. She is recovering at home.”
She is contagious… um, “recovering” at home…
“with a school GROUP”…
Indonesia wow… 2 cases!
India doubles to… 6 cases!
Thailand up ONE to 4,300… excuse me, 43…
the games continue…
JHK today:
“Personally, I cleaned out an entire product-line of cat food, loaded up on cooking oil, rice, dry beans, and evaporated milk — and I wasn’t the only one checking out with the sixteen-roll bundle of toilet paper.”
TP!!!!!!!
“The message is getting out — though not from US authorities yet — that everybody may soon be spending a lot of time home alone.”
“There was chatter last week about a supposed Sunday meeting of global Central Bank poohbahs looking to come up with a battle plan for arresting the damage. It must have been mighty secretive because there’s nothing about it on the news wires Monday morning.”
“If the equity markets turn up today, that will probably be an indication that the CB Boyz and Gurls have launched a direct stock-buying blitz…”
good writing today by JHK…
Time to go crazy with your prepping time is running out
Charming to think of Kunstler stocking up on cat food. After all those years of preaching imminent doom….
I tend to picturing him more or less as lean-frugal type of guy so his hording was likely luke-warm sort of exercise and fraction of typical US hording style escapades..
Good point. I now imagine Kunstler as sitting in his bunker, torn between the left hand road of starvation and the right hand road of barbecuing his cats.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/02/cdc-32-million-americans-ill-with-flu-this-season-18000-deaths/
wow…
““CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 32 million flu illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations and 18,000 deaths from flu,” the CDC’s weekly Influenza Surveillance Report said as of February 22, 2020.”
wow… that mortality rate is LESS THAN a tenth of one percent…
““The percentage of death attributed to pneumonia and influenza is 6.9 percent, below the epidemic threshold of 7.3 percent,” the CDC reported.”
BUT, this flu season is ALMOST at the “epidemic threshold”…
that “percentage of death attributed to pneumonia and influenza” will be spiking in the coming months…
Someone sent me a link to an article through Messenger that may very well be a fake solution to the COVID-19 problem. It seems to have a lot of references (which I have not attempted to read). I know that Vitamin C is generally considered a fake solution, but this article claims it is a real solution. Does this article make any sense to someone who understands more of the medical related material than I do?
COVID-19, FURINS & HYPOXIA – THE VITAMIN C CONNECTION
The article makes this claim:
The claim is that Vitamin C somehow fixes the furin cleavage issue. Also, it helps elevate lymphocyte counts.
A few of the references:
A furin cleavage site was discovered in the S protein of the 2019 novel coronavirus https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338804501_A_furin_cleavage_site_was_discovered_in_the_S_protein_of_the_2019_novel_coronavirus
Furin cleavage site in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus glycoprotein http://www.virology.ws/2020/02/13/furin-cleavage-site-in-the-sars-cov-2-coronavirus-glycoprotein/
Inhibition of furin-mediated cleavage activation of HIV-1 glycoprotein gp160. – PubMed – NCBI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1360148
2019-nCoV transmission through the ocular surface must not be ignored – The Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30313-5/fulltext
Vitamin C Infusion for the Treatment of Severe 2019-nCoV Infected Pneumonia – Full Text View – ClinicalTrials.gov https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04264533
Vitamin C has long been known to be a limiting factor in hydrogen peroxide production in the cells of the innate immune system – including white blood and other immune cells. The use of immune stimulants which helps make the non-specific immune system more effective can also reduce the level of immune cellular ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in its respective cells and without extra/supplemental Vit. C – the immune function will decline into dysfunction -whether artificially stimulated or stimulated by infectious agents.
It’s hard to go wrong with increased does of Vitamin C especially during cold and flu season – one way or another. Linus Pauling (an early advocate of Vitamin C therapy and disease preventative) took up to three grams a day. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Medical_research_and_vitamin_C_advocacy)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3608474/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5707683/
I used to get colds, then I started 1gram of vitamin C per day, no colds.
Linus Pauling fight with the Mayo Clinic over the effectiveness of Vit. C is an interesting read – ref. above.
when i feel a cold or flu coming on, i try to shock it with Vit. C. half a gram every time i get thirsty. probably 6+ grams a day, spread out, as your body flushes it out regularly. fruit juice is OK, but you can’t get enough that way. it works for me most times, and i cured a friend in Munich that way, using German Vit. C plus zinc tablets. i told him to eat them like candy, with his hot tea (he was Welsh).
Linus Pauling was a great scientist and a great humanitarian. His research into vitamins and minerals convinced him that these substances—and especially vitamin C— held the key to fighting disease and extending life.
He also wrote a book, How to Live Longer and Feel Better, in which he advocated very high intake of Vitamin C.
And by personally taking mega doses of vitamin C and other essential nutrients, Linus did manage to live an unusually long, healthy and productive life, until one day at the ripe old age of 94, he passed away without warning by choking to death on a large multivitamin capsule. Which only goes to attest the sage advice, “be careful what you swallow.”
LOL. For real LOL not just txt. 🙂
In the last link you posted, Vitamin C and Immune Function , I notice the following:
This would certainly match the pattern that has been observed among Chinese people with the disease. I wonder how much Vitamin C Chinese people get. They are known for cooked food, not raw food, because of the historical use of “night soil” for fertilizing crops.
Perhaps I should be taking Vitamin C supplements as well, and keeping some on hand, if there are problems with COVID-19 nearby.
In fact, reports say that there is now a family with COVID-19 in Atlanta. The father and son have tested positive. The spouse and a sibling are being watched. The children are home-schooled, so there is not a public school involved. Another article says,
at the end of 2020, everyone will have personally known someone who has died from the coronavirus…
Possibly, but certainly by the end of 2020, everyone will have personally known someone who has filled their apartment from floor to ceiling with canned food they’re never gonna eat and toilet rolls they’re never gonna wipe their cheeks on as a prepping measure.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-australia-51702409/coronavirus-panic-buying-australians-clear-supermarket-shelves?at_medium=custom7&at_custom3=BBC+News&at_campaign=64&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_custom4=2898192E-5CD7-11EA-B4C0-5BE5FCA12A29&at_custom2=facebook_page&fbclid=IwAR2X3HMr_Z2WDnuoPuXkvV2Bw-ocM3ocM7NBmEXgGb2N0ILbCGOEApOkx4o
The story seems to move around the world.
+1200 with decent volume and no sell off into the close. If thats a dead cat bounce thats one hell of a cat. MROWww. Beware of the ides of march. 🙂
oil up 6%
Gail – He is singing your tune.
——————
For Smil, it all comes back to flows of energy. Energy flows determine our ability to turn all other resources into the goods and services that humans consume. Our economy, our societies, our civilization, and our survival all depend upon the availability of energy sources, our ability to harness them, and the efficiency with which we are able to convert them into the things we want and need.
Civilization began with the use of “extrasomatic” energy sources — those beyond our own bodies. First there was the mastery of fire and then the domestication of animals for travel and work. Human history since then “can be seen as a quest for ever higher reliance on extrasomatic energies,” mainly powered by the sun, such as the flows of wind harnessed by sails and flows of water harnessed by mills. But most important for the emergence of “modern high-energy societies” were fossil fuels, energy from the sun stored over millions of years.
Because the availability of energy makes all terrestrial growth possible, determines its rate, and ultimately constrains it, growth of all sorts follows familiar patterns. Growth is full of charts showing the curving growth rates of crops, oil consumption, and much else. Smil tracks the increase in transportation speeds over time, the extension of human life expectancies, the ubiquity of cell phones, the cargo capacities of container ships and oil tankers, and the scale and distribution of megacities. Sometimes the growth curves look like S-curves — rising sharply and then leveling off — sometimes bell curves. Sometimes they go through periods of linear growth, sometimes exponential growth. Sometimes they slowly asymptote toward zero growth after a peak, sometimes they seemingly fall off a cliff
————————
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/must-growth-doom-the-planet
Smil does sing my tune to some extent, but he doesn’t understand how the whole system works. Without sufficient economic growth, economies crash. Smil has studied energy, but he doesn’t understand how the economy works. The economy cannot just slow down; instead it tends to collapse. We know this from history.
Some quotes from the article:
Most on this site realize China is fudging actual Corona virus case count via a limited definition, so I tried to find the REAL case count for Corona virus in China on a Google search, but the best I could find was the following article addressing the situation:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/20/experts-say-confusion-over-coronavirus-case-count-in-china-is-muddying-picture-of-spread/
“Infectious diseases experts are losing confidence in the accuracy of China’s count of cases of the novel coronavirus, pointing toward health officials’ shifting definition of cases over time.”
“Confusion over how China is counting cases of infections is making it harder to know how coronavirus is spreading, even as China is officially reporting that the numbers of new cases reported in recent days have fallen sharply. Many suspect the decline may be attributed in part to shifting case definitions. Earlier this month, China broadened the criteria for newly diagnosed cases in Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, then reversed itself.”
“Every time you change the case definition, that then means you have a reset in terms of what you’re actually looking at,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy. “I think between the inability to determine the actual number of people infected and how cases are now being called a case means at best you can get trend data, possibly, but not more than that.”
A good point is made at the end there, as it may be possible to ascertain a trend from the false counts, but this AM the website with official numbers is either down temporarily or permanently. That website, now states the following when going to the link:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Turn on TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and TLS 1.2 in Advanced settings and try connecting to https://www.worldometers.info again. If this error persists, it is possible that this site uses an unsupported protocol or cipher suite such as RC4 (link for the details), which is not considered secure. Please contact your site administrator.
That’s food for thought why that site is now down, unless someone can find a way to open it, as it suggests TPTB may not want us seeing those numbers.
In between spin, false negatives, reluctance to “waste tests”, limited test capabilities, recovered testing positive after testing negative we really dont know. if its just a cold to those with lower ace2 and they dont get tested even if they ask for it then they are not in the numbers. Many responsible people will want to be tested if they display symptoms many wont because of stigma. Without wide spread capability to test easily true numbers cant be known. We do know statistics from other countries, We dont know if they are true or not,. The death numbers coming out of iran reflect much higher probable infections. Conveniently the 2 deaths in the USA match the suposed 2% death rate. That would imply 98 infected. If the ace2 presumtion is true this may be nothing to sweat over (pun intended) for the USA other than the economic issues. It may also mean more people can be infected with little or no symptoms than other countries. The r0 could be much lower in the USA because of ace2. We just dont know.
worldameters works fine for me. reporting 5 USA deaths. 🙁 250 infections implied less than 100 official.
Interesting, because I just tried going in fresh via Google and got the same readout. Maybe my browser is outdated.
Im using Chrome.
The vietnam and cambodia count is probably about as accurate as north koreas.
THe logarithmic scale function on new cases worldo meter paints a relatively optimistic picture IMO.
The site seems to be back up again.
The China numbers are suspect. 200 new cases 50 deaths? Lieing about a death is hard to do. Lets hope for the best. If the new cases are really that low it would indicate a peak might be in hand for China. They just shut down one of their quick build hospitals. That would seem to indicate a real world confirmation of the low numbers.
They were using out-of-area doctors, working very long hours, to try to staff some of these, I believe. One article said they weren’t really giving them adequate supplies or compensation. They would want to discontinue their use as soon as possible. The doctors would not be at all happy with this arrangement.
It may be hard to deny a death especially in significant numbers, but it isn’t that hard to falsify ’cause of death’ – such as by assigning COVID-19 deaths to “flu deaths” and other common causes. No accurate test kits and no third party observers to dispute it – not to hard at all.
I am using Safari. It still works.
This may be the answer.
Its already approved in japan for things other than cv19.
It blocks the ACE2 entry of the CV19 virus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camostat
It looks to me as though it is possible to purchase Camostat online. https://www.rndsystems.com/products/camostat-mesylate_3193
It seems to come in both 10 mg and 50 mg size. It even seems to be in stock. At the bottom it says,”Tocris Bioscience is the leading supplier of novel and exclusive tools for life science research with over 30 years’ experience in the industry. Tocris is a Bio-Techne brand.”
So the drug is available for research, at least.
I was just mentioning it. i wouldnt run out online and buy any. Nor would i buy any stock in the company. patent is expired. let the doctors do their job. they know a thing or two. It is exciting that we have the potential of a existing drug areadythrough development in Japan being possibly effective against cv19.
Looks like the common amoebacide sulfa drugs may have possibilities too.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00016-0
I didn’t notice that in the article. I looked for “amoebacide” and for “sulfa,” but didn’t find either. How do you come to that conclusion? (I may be missing something that is obvious to you.)
The article mentioned antabuse which is a sulfa drug that is very close to flagyl. flagyl is the standard amoebacide used through most of the third world.
Ive taken both 🙂
Thanks! I am not knowledgeable regarding medical things.
https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-7644/flagyl-oral/details
https://www.drugs.com/antabuse.html
Me and alcohol dont get along. Too much indian blood. 28 years clean and sober in a month.
Im no doctor or chemist.
I experimented with a face mask today: I think critics are more or less right, that unless you are in a clinical, disciplined setting, you are much more likely to infect yourself when adjusting or taking it off.
‘I experimented with a face mask today’
Be careful – you might develop a fetish. 🙁
dont go in a bank wearing it
Will they shut the bank down for disinfection?
probably use a litterpicker to hand over money just to get rid of him
Which gives us at least two career opportunities coming out of the corona virus situation. Opportunistic bank robber on the cheap and litterpicker cash handler.
well if cash crashes, we’ll need litterpickers to put it in the trash
Maybe they can legalize bank robbery to get rid of the infectious cash!
I am sure some swingers’ clubs are already having Coronavirus -themed evenings: think of the possibilities…… 🙂
they dont allow doomsters in
So happy face on the mask? … Doomsters need love too… I accept charity….
I’ve posted the link for Rentakiss for you
i don’t think fetishizing the disease will happen in swingers’ club unless the people in are dealing with social alienation. In some gay communities, getting AIDS is seen as a form of group initiation.
Similar to the Venetian masked parties during times of plague.
If you live in a large urban area… Everyone is so close and passing by you so fast that you are anonymous. You learn to keep a bland look on your face, A face mask makes that even easier.
Egypt is north Africa’s most populous nation. They have one confirmed case of Coronavirus. But has still managed to export five cases. Probably already out of control.
i read the other day that Egypt pop has reached 100m and produces a baby every 18 seconds
add to that the Ethiopian dam and you have realm trouble brewing there
Middle Eastern and African societies are very ‘young’, demographically, so although poor in terms of health services, they are perhaps less vulnerable to mass deaths from this virus.
The only thing that will adjust their demographic problem – so many young men, so few jobs – is starvation, pure and simple.
An communicable illness will likely wipe out quite a few of the young men, before they starve to death. This seems to be the way collapses work.
I expect most places in the world, about all one can do is let the virus go. There isn’t much treatment available. Poor countries may try steroids, but they are likely to make the death rate higher, I would expect, because of adversely affecting the immune system. It does look like the doctors are “doing something,” which is likely to make patients happy.
Well, there is no treatment, but several factories around the globe are churning out next gen affordable masks as we speak (gov/hospitals orders only – not in shops), capable to filter the bug out, so for this winter/spring pandemic season is too late as the production capacity should had been boosted up sooner, apart from tougher quarantines etc. But it could perhaps at least nudge the hockey stick infection rate as well as alleviate the cross contamination and reinfection rates for next seasons..
Not much different from the Civil War doctors, who only knew two forms of treatments ; amputation and opium. The soldiers wounded at the head of abdomen would die happy with a lethal dose of opium.
“Italy’s factory output slumped for the 17th month in a row in February, it emerged today, as economists warned the coronavirus outbreak could deepen the Eurozone’s manufacturing downturn… the coronavirus outbreak dealt the bloc’s economy some body blows as it disrupted global supply chains amid measures to contain the virus.”
https://www.cityam.com/coronavirus-threat-plagues-eurozone-factory-output/
“The global impact of coronavirus is starting to weigh on a post-election recovery in Britain’s manufacturing sector as factories reported a big jump in delays in their supply chains, a survey showed on Monday.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-pmi/uk-factories-feel-the-effects-of-coronavirus-spread-pmi-idUKKBN20P17L
“Some of the world’s biggest drugmakers have begun warning that their businesses could be affected by the spread of the coronavirus. AstraZeneca PLC, Merck & Co. and Pfizer Inc. are among the companies that said recently the epidemic could affect supplies for certain drugs…”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-drugmakers-warn-about-coronavirus-impact-on-business-11583078401
My impression of the story the article is giving: “Limited impact . . . we will get supplies elsewhere.” We will see.
Article spins the result as not too bad:
Hilarious: reasons from a false-premise ‘The Recovery ‘.