March 29, 2020
Maybe it will all be over in a few weeks. The President could be right.
Of course The Curve Flatteners could be right. The lock-downs could allow for hospital bed availability, and the current situation could then go on for months or more without stressing the hospital world too badly.
No one really knows of course because this flu, while not absolutely unique, is certainly impressive in many ways and with all the data collection that has taken place, we still see statistics being manipulated to portray stories that simply aren’t true. It’s with this introduction that NO ONE really knows what will happen…that I share a few thoughts with you that should help you CONTROL YOUR WORLD while governments try to control yours for you.
People getting the flu and living or dying is part of the equation of “life” on planet earth. If one doesn’t like the risks they can freely choose to eliminate the risk for themselves. The flu doesn’t concern me. I don’t like it. I’ve had nasty flu’s. So have you. And people die from the flu. Lots of people…every year. And no one ever shut down the world for anything similar.
When you fly a lot for 8, 10, 12, 18 hours you are exposed to this stuff all the time in large doses. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like flying. You know you will get sick a percentage of the time and you have no idea what form it will take but usually it’s some kind of a flu. The name is largely unimportant. If you fly, you are safe in the air and at risk a few days later.
About a week ago the news aired a story about one man spitting on a Chinese man and taunting him with the responsibility of the flu being in the U.S.
My god, people are stupid.
Aside from being both disgusting and embarrassing, it is a symptom.
There are many types of behaviors and experiences that are critical to understand if you want to understand The Zombie Apocalypse (which is today’s article.)
You need to understand how it is that there is an answer to almost every question you have ever typed into google. I didn’t say the right answer or the truth. The key concept is that you are not as unique as you’d like to think you are. Someone already asked the question that you are googling. It’s a good place to start and google is only 20 years old. How did EVERYTHING as far as collective knowledge on planet earth end up on google? (Including all of the errant information, which is most information.)
One of my childhood hero’s was Ben Franklin. He was a MASTER at Fake News. Franklin would write anonymous editorials in a newspaper he published. He knew that if people read stuff, they believe it. He had pseudonyms like online idiots do today. Franklin was generally motivated to make things better rather than worse, but the key point here is that he wrote to SHAPE OPINION and he KNEW that most people would read ONE SOURCE and BELIEVE IT.
I travel around the world and it probably would bug me if people spat on me for any of dozens of justifications. I’ve certainly had people blame me in social conversations about politics over the last two decades. The last three Presidents have been lightning rods (Bush, Obama, Trump) for American travelers. It’s an interesting bias. The President of the country in which you live is identified by others as “your choice” or “your fault” or “your cause” of a host of worldwide problems.
By Easter, to use the Presidential target date, there will be a HUGE increase in the number of reported CV19 viruses. That’s a fact (as long as all the test kits are distributed and used). How MANY PEOPLE will “test positive?”
I have no idea how many test kits will be shipped.
The jump in reporting will simply be a fact. Test kits have been mailed. Every test kit mailed is a positive response waiting to happen and it will. People will think that this virus is somehow unique in how many people infects. I see no reason to think that eventually 100 million people might have a positive test result. It could also easily be 1/10 that or 10 TIMES that number.
At some point we will have a clue how many people on the planet test positive for CV19, assuming everyone could somehow be tested. I also don’t know if testing negative will mean the person already had it and got rid of it or if most will test positive even after they get well.
I also don’t know that anyone else knows the answers to these puzzle.
I really doubt that it’s any different in statistically meaningful way than any other virus. All things being equal, I suspect (and don’t know) that it is “normal” in transmission from person A to person B. Normal would mean it falls into a standard bell curve of virus where out of every 100 viruses 2 really are terrible in transmission and 2 are expert in transmission where the other 96 all “fall in the middle.” If you wonder what that looks like, about 2% of people have an IQ below 70. 2% have an IQ about 130. 96% are between 70 and 130. The 96% are “normal.”
What you and I also do not know is what DAMAGE range a normal virus will cause. We certainly don’t know yet. We’ve seen a LOT of bad video. 30,000 deaths to this moment.
We DO know what the most visually recorded virus looks like. I’m glad there were NO CAMERAS back in 1350 recording The Black Plague. THAT would have been a story impossible to look at.
We also know CV19 is NOTHING compared to The Black Plague/Black Death which happened in Europe in the 14th century. (Fact check this) Ballpark, 60 million lived in Europe in the 14th century. 10 ships come to shore filled with seriously sick people suffering from the most grotesque of all plagues imaginable. Caused initially by rats it killed 20,000,000 people. Now THAT is impressive. (Please do fact check the numbers, this is all from memory. I’ve always been “pretty good” at history but I’m better at math.)
And that is a 1/3 death rate. How many of those people TESTED POSITIVE? I don’t know. More than 1/3 apparently. It doesn’t matter that much. You have to figure, “most.”
VIDEO MAKES EVERYTHING MORE DRAMATIC than it really is in objective reality.
There have been lots of plagues throughout history and have been catalogued in history and prophecy since Biblical times.
It took a few years for things to totally settle down after the Black Death.
Europe went on to repopulate only to have “aftershocks” of the plague (similar experiences in the future) every 50 years or maybe a little more often for a long time.
And today in 2020 there is CV19. We all sort of assume it’s another animal based flu, like the Black Death was. This time it was probably bats and not rats. But I can’t prove that.
Will 1/3 of all Europeans die in 2020? I doubt it.
1/3 of American’s? I doubt it. And I also don’t know.
I have no idea how many people would have tested positive in 1350 but we’ll have our FIRST example of what testing people for a flu reveals in 3 – 6 months. I suspect a lot of people will be tested. I doubt the number will mean much in 2020 or 2021 but it might help prepare the world for the next animal induced flu.
Another thing that happens in human behavior is polarized behavior.
I just got back from Chile where people lined the streets protesting the cost of water, feminism and the need to trash their constitution in lieu of a new one. Protestors then hurt or kill people.
The people I personally interacted with in Chile were genuinely nice people, but many of the young people are being swept away into the almost drug induced rage to physically attack people who have nothing to do with any of the things they are protesting. And no, drug use is fairly rare in Chile.
Stupid people.
Last week friends sent photos of protestors wearing masks to protect themselves from CV19.
And of course as we’ve all discovered masks don’t really stop you from getting much except fresh air.
As extremism expands across the globe, so does the decision making that goes along with it.
Extremism? You are in the midst of watching “the U.S.” spend TRILLIONS of dollars it will borrow from your children… on the flu. A bad flu, to be sure, but it is the flu. Every month for a century 2,000 people die from the flu in the U.S. That’s about how many have died to date from CV19, which IS over and above the “normal flu” …but 2 TRILLION dollars?
I’d explain just how much a a trillion dollars is, but it’s SO MUCH it’s hard to explain in any terms.
If a trillion dollars could save a million lives, that’s a million dollars per life, over and above what is already being spent by the U.S. government. Life IS PRICELESS to be sure, but no government can sustain spending a million dollars to save anyone’s life. Not mine, yours… it’s just not possible. You’ll get a deeper look at this in part Two of this series.
Side note: Sending $1000 to each of 330,000,000 people adds up to 330 BILLION dollars (is insane). But WAIT,that’s only 15% of 2 TRILLION dollars. And the other 85%? Just think back to 2008, you’ll get the idea…
“Send them each $1,000 and no one will complain that those too big too fail will take over half what is being sent out.”
Yep. Stupid People…which leads you to the Zombie Apocalypse
The Zombie Apocalypse
The Zombie Apocalypse of course is pretty much code for “end of the world as we know it” stuff. Zombies are the walking dead. (They come back to “life” after death, don’t pay taxes, nor do they use up natural resources outside of other humans who they seek out and kill.
It all started in 1968 in Night of the Living Dead. A returning space probe goes nuclear and the radiation fills the air.
It all begins though with THE FIRST ZOMBIE who you and I will reference as ZZ.
ZZ was the subject of a real scientific study just 3 years ago.
Here are the basics of the set up for the modeling study:
Zombie Zero becomes a zombie by infection from an airborne rabies virus. The earths population is as it was in 2017. Right around 8 billion.
90% of the people that come into contact with ZZ become zombies. They then have 20 days to live. Then a multilevel marketing program begins. ZZ infects those he runs into and so those he runs into and they spread to other people and so on and so on.
ZZ and all the rest to follow can survive 20 days per individual before succumbing.
6 weeks after ZZ was infected, the population of almost all humans on the planet is erased.
On Day 100 there are just under 200 humans left alive (but not you) out of the original 7+ billion residents of planet earth.
This was all part of a published research study at the University of Leicester about 3 years ago. (I’m serious.)
In follow up work, The Journal of Physics reported that by giving people the ability to fight back even with very limited impact, the ability fo flee and reproduce (make babies) insured the survival of the human race. (273 people remained alive at the end of 3 years, the zombies all had “died,” and eventually the earth was repopulated.)
It has been impossible to not think about it the last month or so.
So WHY are people doing research on the zombie apocalypse and being published by The Journal of Physics in 2017?
The idea of infected populations taking their toll on humanity has been in the collective consciousness for millenia. Plagues or nasty flu bugs/viruses that just wipe out droves of people.
It’s not new.
It’s keeping a lot of people from going out and about though. People in many places on the planet are forced to not work out of the home. (I’ve been teaching people for 15 years to have a Coffee Table Business. I’ve mentored hundreds personally and thousands virtually to base your business in your home.) If you don’t you put yourself at significant risk as we have seen in every recession, depression and now the CV19 which is hard to label a pandemic, but we’ll know more about that in a few months. I certainly hope it doesn’t become that. (Black Plague is what I would qualify as a pandemic…and that is wicked nasty.)
What’s sad is they genuinely FELT that they (the citizens and governments) were doing the right thing in the U.S., Italy, China. Three places that did three different things and people with no background in statistics are FAST to point out, LOOK WHAT THEY did and they believe based on samplings that some approaches work and some don’t. That’s lousy science. There are so many apples, oranges and bananas in this worldwide mess that it’s almost IMPOSSIBLE to say Italy did ANYTHING wrong and that CHINA did everything right.
The U.S. President’s “gut” basically told him that the economy won’t survive a long lock down in the presence of something that might be like the Black Plague and he is right. And the experts on containment of this specific flu that “feels like a Zombie Apocalypse” with some serious respiratory symptoms in the 5% of cases are right as well. If you want to reduce stress on the health care systems in the world, then you have to reduce the number of people entering the hospital at any given time.
There’s a funny little catch about “decision making,”…. just because someone or some country gets a temporary positive or negative result doesn’t mean they made a good decision!
AND
It’s waaaay more complicated than that! Just because a good short term result (say 3 months from Decision Day) was attained doesn’t mean that experts did something RIGHT (or wrong)!
What?
That’s the nature of science, decision making, statistics. Lots of times good results mean that good stuff was done. But more often than you might guess someone got a good result that couldn’t be replicated by you with an instruction book and a team of experts. That’s how life REALLY WORKS.
I know it doesn’t seem sensible but it’s 100% correct.
Today I want you to let the professionals in epidemiology do their job. Let them do the best they can. Appreciate the doc’s and nurses. But don’t think for a second that people in medicine are great in math, because they are NOT. Even in simple diagnostics like breast cancer research shows that most doc’s get what it all means wrong and don’t have the correct diagnostic that they are sharing with their patients. The number of variables in something like a CV worldwide mess are far bigger than what anyone is talking about online or on TV.
A couple of quick opinions before we turn the corner:
The GOOD NEWS is that I suspect the CV is NOT going to give us a worst case scenario.
The BAD NEWS is that I DO think the PANIC and FEAR and “Strategies” to lengthen the periods of coping (the flatten the curve strategy) with CV will backfire…and yet, I’m not suggesting the physical response is “wrong.” It’s a logical choice. Keep the hospitals full but not overstressed for as long as possible. It’s just there is a MUCH, MUCH BIGGER problem that needs to be addressed before it makes the CV look like nothing…
In other words, short term things have gone very well considering the pandemic billing of the CV19. Compared to hosts of other problems in and out of the health arena (war, famine and starvation, other medical problems that could have had millions of lives saved with trillions of dollars…) things have gone far better (short term) than could have been guessed. Implemented strategies might have saved or possibly will save many thousands of lives. Never discount that.
Let’s move past March 2020 because people worry about TODAY which certainly bears weight in life, but they kind of skip the rest of the year, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2029 not to mention a dozen other years, well this is where MOST geo-social disasters happen in life. And when they blossom, you no longer have A PROBLEM, and clearly you have a SERIES of disasters to come.
What’s happening in your city/state/province/country TODAY is just a harbinger of the proverbial things to come. It’s small and limited compared to what is likely to come next.
Your leaders are about to cut you a check for $1000 and companies big fat checks all with money created out of thin air. This money will come from taxpayer funds that are collected from taxes, except there is no real money to write the checks especially when you consider millions are out of work and taxes coming into the government have been drying up quickly. Meanwhile the Federal Reserve, a sort of quasi-governmental murky group, promises to keep money in the financial system…even if it makes monopoly money look like Rhodium.
It’s fascinating to consider.
But there’s more just in this aspect. How many checks will be written and for how long? Who will be deemed as the “too big to fail,” segment in this crisis. 12 years ago it was the banks. This time? We’ll see.
The Euro and the Dollar are edging closer to parity. The yield on the 10 year bond is under 1%. Really. 1%.
And worldwide people are buying the dollar over gold and pretty much over every other currency. More than fascinating.
Sigh.
If aliens from Alpha Centauri had invaded, it would all be a lot simpler…
About a month ago it was obvious that the fear of the panic of the flu was going to be a much, much bigger problem than the flu itself. But I confess I underestimated the panic factor. All across the world chaos has turned to lockdowns, lockins, quarantines, military in the streets (never a good idea), schools closing, businesses closing. Lives stopping and people in some places being locked up in their homes. We live in far more than interesting times, true?
The psychological damage has been overwhelming. Everyday more calls, emails, messages come in. “Kev …what do you think?” And then they let go of the fear. “What if I get it?” “I can’t go anywhere….social distancing.”
Humans are social creatures. Look how the terrified humans have collected in cities for millenia. Social and in need of “the security” of the hive. Just like bees, ants and a host of others.
Today I got an email from a friend who said that a friend of his talked to a local police officer here in Minnesota who said that people were frothing at the mouth with pink stuff and that people were dying everywhere in Minnesota. Sounds terrible but it’s just sadly bizarre. The mind plays interesting tricks on all of us. Fake News, even if it is believed to be true is something that is later believed to be true. Uh boy…. Less than 10 people, to date, in Minnesota have died from CV. A HUNDRED have died from the other non-important flu’s.)
Another call came in from a friend in a country far from Minnesota. “Our country is ordering body bags to accommodate the dead.” What do you say to THAT?
Apparently many had died from CV just yesterday. I checked with their up the minute government data. Zero. No one had died from CV. 7 deaths to date in their tiny country.
Stories mixed with truth and fantasy historically have replaced fact and reality, assuming the facts are correct.
And yet all of this is still just a simple precursor to the problems that are likely to come in the next chapter of the big story.
Never misunderstand. CV19. The suffering of those on the ventilators is as real as those suffering with stage 4 cancer. It’s bad for those who are terminal because of the car crash yesterday and people are suffering every day in horrible ways that you can only imagine. Check out MRSA and see what a serious challenge will do to your world with lousy survival odds.
People must begin to look at the psycho-social ramifications of EVERYTHING that is happening because if things don’t CHANGE (not SHIFT, but CHANGE) soon then there will be MASSIVE challenges. WORLDWIDE CROWD BEHAVIOR will begin shortly…
Walk with me…
Here’s the first thing I want you to consider: If you do get the flu (corona or the good old fashioned crappy flu) you will be sick for three weeks. It will suck. Then you can get back to work…or you can work while you have during the flu like most people throughout history have and you’ll be fine. It’s not easy to go from being healthy to becoming one of the statistics, at least to date, it is a mathematical rarity. If this is a real pandemic, that will change in very short order. If you start seeing worldwide death tolls double every few days for the next month, you’ll know there is a serious problem.
Another thing you might consider as you analyze and wonder is this: I’ve seen NOTHING that shows you can’t have THE FLU and CORONA at the same time.
Have you considered that? Everyone is talking about comorbidity and ignoring the fact that the flu season is here but ending and MILLIONS have had the flu, at least here in the U.S. How many of them also had C.V.? I have no idea. Neither does anyone else apparently. I bet that combination could be fatal. What do YOU think?
Ask a person who knows more about this than I do but I suspect a significant number of corona deaths you hear about are actually C + F (Corona + Flu) or C + P (Corona + Pre-Existing Challenge (like Cancer, acute heart issues, overdose, suicidal ideation)
The processes of reporting of corona complicate EVERYTHING in understanding just what’s happening.
Let’s be clear. It’s a weird flu. It apparently (does anyone KNOW?) originated from an animal to human transmission which is not standard flu fare. Apparently pretty much anyone COULD get this version of the flu. I’m told that apparently immunity doesn’t ward of Corona. I have no idea whether I believe the story. Makes no sense to me. I don’t know what to make of it. To be direct: It sounds incorrect to me, but it COULD be correct and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was because there are a hundred ways this could have had it’s genesis. The truth is NO ONE KNOWS. They are giving you best guesses, just as I am posing new lenses here.
The news says I am to believe that a bat or maybe a bird or SOME animal, perhaps bit a human and that started this. OK, let’s go there, NOW, the next necessary step is that I am to believe that this doesn’t happen THOUSANDS of times a day all around the world, making this a unique “random” situation. Sure….
What do you bet this happens a few hundred times per day on this planet? I’d bet a lot.
OK fine. Let’s go there… and we’ll come back later…
I’ve traveled with and have been in close contact with tens of thousands of people in the last month. Just going to the Louvre in Paris meant you were…well EVERYONE should have whatever was or wasn’t there. I’ve put on 30,000 miles since the virus started. I hate flying in the germ factories, er, airplanes. My 30,000 miles while a LOT for a few months, are NOTHING compared to international flight crews. And by and large they are all fine. A testament to immune systems…except hypothetically immunities to this specific CV is not very helpful…except very few people actually die from this CV…. at least to date. Sigh…
But IF IMMUNITY doesn’t help ward off the potential damage Corona) then why are people getting “well” (assuming they were sick)? I need someone to explain this to me…
Here’s the thing: My BELIEF (which is no more a scientific fact than ANY belief I have) is that not everyone that gets corona will die. Already the vast majority of resolution to health or death is dramatic. Apparently < 5% of people who end up with this virus/flu in their system will die. In other words, we don’t KNOW a real percentage yet but we can pretty fairly say it is NOT > 5%.
So what’s up?
95++% ARE not going to die from Corona…. apparently. (Again we can’t know if there really are unique properties to this flu vs. all others that might creep up on those who got better, but later.)
So far no Black Death.
Maybe the reason is not that this “almost everyone” group is immune. Maybe there is a mechanism of discharge. But whatever it is, MOST people that get this CV are NOT going to die from CV. (I’ll give you much scarier possible outcomes shortly…)
That does NOT mean that a lot of these people are not going to be sick as hell and FEEL LIKE they will die. Many will be hospitalized, just like with a really bad flu. Remember the last time you had a really bad case of the flu? I mean REAL BAD. How about severe bronchitis or pneumonia? That sh*# is NASTY and I DOUBT that it’s much less potent as far as mortality than CV. But I could be wrong…
IF we are to believe the data being released, kids under 10 by and large only rarely die from this current incarnation of a seriously nasty flu. I’m looking for an explanation for that because IF this is true, then why are SCHOOLS CLOSED and WHY are all these kids locked up at home? Perhaps the boys and girls are “carriers.” Does anyone know that? (I’ve heard it A LOT, but…How would they know that?) I mean is there data that shows that to be true? Perhaps I missed it and I’m dead serious because it appears that kids are at the moment the SAFEST people on the planet (and thank god for that).
Of course, I guess they could be carriers. It’s possible and if that’s the case then keeping schools closed and starting home schooling might be the ultimate solution…
And if we are to believe the data, if you’re over 70 or 80, yeah you will likely to still will be alive to pay your taxes, but if you get CV things are riskier. (Not the taxes, being able to come up with the money to pay the taxes.)
Have governments really mucked things up in one of the most bizarre worldwide efforts to not look bad that we’ve ever witnessed?
After restoring human rights and civil liberties the very citizens of the planet should demand independent groups be formed to deal with these types of scenarios so that civil liberties are restored ASAP.
In just a few weeks and then months and then going forward…for a couple decades, you’ll have more cases of PTSD, anxiety, depression, suicide (The President was right about that and you don’t have to be a President to figure that out), than ever. Take someone’s freedom even for their LIFE continuation will cause a lot of REACTANCE. You’ll have pockets of serious disorientation and fear on a TERRIFIED planet. And fear never brings good results. You explain from the beginning, that the bigger enemy is fear and panic and work your way back to strategy from there. You go the road that we’ve taken on the planet and you get a long term mess.
Xenophobia will go through the roof. (It’s the Chinese fault, right!??!) Ah I thought it was a bat…See how this works? Intelligent people become idiots when fear and panic enter the picture.
Prejudice, stereotype, division. It will be unprecedented. The divided nations (conservative/liberal) will schism in ways that you don’t want to think about it. The real question is not how many people will die from the flu, because this happens predictably, every day around the world and has for millenia.
Maybe a million will die from the flu this year. Maybe a tiny fraction of those will be from our named virus. Maybe a big fraction. Hopefully not more.
The real question is what happens this summer? But the panic, the fear, the hatred, the terror, and a QUICK introductory hypothetical example of a spark that could really happen soon…begins on Page 2 below.
