I have hidden away from the world, and locked myself into a small confined space for the duration of this Mexican Beer Crisis. I have damaged lungs so am deathly afraid of getting this thing, like, death for real. I have a new morning plan - to get out of bed, have a Mexican beer (who’s brand has been hijacked in a particularly nasty way), and document my gradual decline into madness here (I can hear Deb saying “but that happened years ago!” Whatevs).
I had a discussion with my doctor about what I should do, and it totally shocked me. I mean, everyone has been going on about this Corona virus disease, and I explained that I’ve had that lots of times, and was unpleasant but not that big a deal. If I had drunk five Corona the night before it was only a small problem, and only really got debilitating at the twenty Corona level. She then patiently explained that that was a Corona Hangover, and this was a Corona Virus, told me about it, and said I should be really careful. I mean, who knew?! (“This is not a laughing manner” the most serious of people might say. “If you can’t have a laugh at reality’s shit, icky stuff gets even Ickier” I reply. Trust me - I suppose the odds of a serious person reading this is vanishingly small, so whatevs…).
The Great Beginning, March 14, 2020
It’s pi day and after my typical breakfast at the cafe across the street, and a last piece of their fantastic cheesecake, I’ve come home and locked the door. I’ve been pleased with the apparent success of the Chinese to limit the continued spread of the virus in their territory, but am a bit suspicious that the numbers in Wuhan haven’t move at all for a week. I mean they have locked ten million people away in their homes, but there is still some interaction involved in feeding and caring for them. In any case, the ‘social distancing’ has been having a positive effect in several countries, and not just there.
On the other-hand, we have the oowsnn (orange one who shall not be named) making a hash of it to the south. Luckily he ‘is not responsible for anything’ (the most true words he has ever spoken), and people with a clue seem to have finally got a word in. The short ETF I was losing money on for so long has come through in a big way last week, and that kind of market drop will even get the ooswnn’s attention. It means the coming of a collapse of the world financial system (Hey world, just take a month, hell, a couple of months off.. Every thing will be fine), but I can afford to eat for a while. Pluses and minuses all over the place. I wish the mass of the positives were on the scale of the negatives, but whatevs.
With almost no testing in the states until recently, the virus was clearly out of the barn long before the door was sort of closed. There could be a hundred thousand cases in the States now, depending on how conservative you want to make the numbers, so it was a little late, but whatevs. Spilt milk. The recent confirmation that it can spread by the asymptomatic is unfortunate, though.
Our very own Prime Minister’s wife has it, and say what you will of Justin, he knows how to hand things, outside his area of expertise to experts - and he has a Deputy Prime Minister who seems to be an expert at leading stuff to conclusions that don’t suck. I mean, she’s a woman, so needs the beefsteak distraction with the title to do his part, but letting her be seen to be the real leader isn’t done, old chap. That leaves Justin plenty of time to care for his wife, while the epidemiologists, and Ms. Freeland get on with it.
I’ve always sort of liked exponential stuff, but it’s really unattractive when it’s the growth rate of a bad thing. It only hits hard on people with a pre-existing problem (which is something north of thirty percent of people) or healthy people that it happens to hit hard for some reason...(and smokers, but if they had a problem with dying prematurely they would have quit a long time ago, so don’t really count at a full weight). That second bit, with healthy people getting randomly smashed is a concern if you aren’t in the first bit. OK, it’s very unlikely to be random in fact, but until we understand the common risk factor it sure seems random, so I’m going with that. I’m deeply in the first bit, but am also a tad worried about the many billion of us that aren’t (My old boss is a giant of a man named Tad, so it isn’t a little thing in my world). Even the thing with the smokers sucks.
Till Later, Cool Cats.
Day the second. March 15th 2020
WooHoo! I have no reason to get dressed! This whole thing will cut back on the need to do laundry, and I’m lazy (I have a doctors note though, so it’s ok. Really, I do. I’m a diagnosed lazy person). Today’s job is to get on documenting my decline into madness, sealed away all alone, with a pantry full of food, and a number of high tech tools to keep me from boredom. It’s not that much of a hardship if you’re me, cus moving hurts, and now I don’t need to do much of it! Unfortunately, there are many people in the same boat who don’t have much of a good side to it - particularly those with kids, or family members they aren’t that fond of. I have my imagination to keep me company, and am letting it go at it for at least a month. Thus the descent into madness. It might be interesting. It might suck. Whatevs.
I am thinking the the gods who wrote this chapter were bored though. “Let’s just pile on crisis on crisis on crisis, and see what will happen!” I mean, stop already. There are too many plot lines to keep up with, and too many of them are dark. How about good crises! That will stretch out your imaginations cus it’s harder, and let you show your stuff! A crisis of world wide glee! A crisis of glum people not being able to stay glum! A world where projecting out the status quo doesn’t lead to universally icky stuff. Ok, only worldly icky stuff, but the universe dies with the eventual victory of entropy, so it’s not going in a good way either. I mean, a few trillion more years, but whatevs.
Unfortunately, I accidentally got some work, so I’m going to have to do it. I mean, that was a seed I planted sixteen months ago, and wham! Out of the blue comes a phone call promising work. I’ll have to spend less time inhabiting imaginary worlds playing computer games an writing than I planned. I guess I might as well get on with it, and get reality out of the way quickly. Reality isn’t that much fun just now. I mean that company’s stock price dropped in half last week, so the project might get cancelled and I should get my invoice in there before that happens.
Till Later, Cool Cats.
Day the third, March 16, 2020
The Traffic outside is subdued, but still happening. All right, very subdued. I was thinking back to all those ‘X% of people in couldn’t go a month without a paycheck I ignore in the news, and trying to find out what X is. Google says about half. That’s icky. Freeland is going to need all her skills to figure out as a way to make it through with social stability in place. Oowsnn doesn’t have a Freeland, and wouldn’t know what to do with one anyway, so they’re hooped. That is also icky.
I was trying to track down the doubling rate in Italy before they shut huge parts of it down, and it’s harder then you’d think, with changing criteria for testing, the amount tested and the lag from infected to symptoms. I think a CDC person said two to four days, but I can’t find it. The Chinese numbers haven’t changed again, so I’m thinking they are too busy to get to that, or something less altruistic. Japan and South Korea have shown that lots of tests and social distancing works, So exactly having the Chinese numbers doesn’t matter for proof of concept, that we should stay away from each other.
I’d think that if everyone stopped bathing, it would build in a reminder to stay back, for you still on the outside. It won’t make it more unpleasant to be out , but maybe marginally safer. Still wash your hands, but the parts under clothing don’t touch your face as much. You know, I started that as a joke, but it could be useful…Hmmm.
Day the Fourth, March 17, 2020
I have substituted a pint of the black stuff for the Mexican beer in my morning routine, in a ‘cheers’ to the most under celebrated St. Paddy’s Day in history. Yet another economic victim will be green dye manufacturers. I mean, everyone is getting hammered…but not hammered in the more traditional St. Paddy’s way.
It looks like it takes a about two weeks for a case to go from initial infection to ‘ok, I’m sick’, with the second week of that being mild symptoms. That means today’s numbers are a snap shot of who was infected two weeks ago. It will be fascinating to see what the data looks like when someone produces a dataset that isn’t riddled with variation from sampling selection, and testkit availability, and political machinations and stuff. The only thing I can see in the numbers right now is that the variation outweighs everything. I like playing with numbers, and can’t yet. The way the numbers behave at this point isn’t how viruses behave, so I suppose it’s possible this one is doing odd things, but it’s more likely wide variability in number generation.
I’m not thinking I can figure out numbers better then the experts, but if the underlying data is all over the place with the numbers the experts are working with means they aren’t that sure either. I guess that’s why most of the expert stuff I’m reading only looks at one country in isolation, where the variability should be less. So if you consider your area is a South Korea, it’s manageable, and if your area is an Italy, not so much. Calgary has gone into lockdown-ish (although the car traffic out my door metric has it the same as yesterday), so that should be helpful on the disease side. On the small business economic side, it’s not so good, but you can recover from economic problems easier then death. We should minimize the death. We should also plan for stuff with the economy…
Later Cool Cats
Day the Fifth, March 18, 2020
Yes I updated the title. It’s hard to determine how the language is going to stabilize around phrasing, and I clearly missed. Anyway, I’ll start in unfeeling scientist mode, talking about death, and looking through the WHO website that has lots of numbers posted. Looking at deaths is morbid, but they are less susceptible to the data confusion that ‘cases’ are (Its hard to fake that grisly tally, in countries with a free press at least). Yesterday was bad. The night Italy died. Almost 700 of their 2500 total. Spain had a bad day the day before, but their totals are still small (less than 300 - that’s small in the comparison to Italy and China, not small in impact to the people involved). America was icky as well, with 17 of 58 deaths yesterday. These will mostly be people infected a week-ish ago, according to the presently most popular infection theory (mild for a week, then bad).
The oowsnn is just spinning like a top. His head might actually explode during this. He may be starting to think people other than him need to be in front of this, mostly so the bad news will be tied to the new guy, but it’s a better outcome for the world however he makes the decision to hide away somewhere dark. Unless it’s Mr. Kushner. Or anybody Trump is liable to trust with it. Whatevs?
So what about those Flames?…oh crap. I haven’t followed the Calgary Flames much for years, but it’s my go to ‘change the subject’ line. So many things are going to need to be updated because of this virus thing. I keep looking for silver linings, and struggling. Oh, there is one. Short the market until May-ish. It will be up and down-ish lots, but mostly down. Profit is going to be limited to Netflix et al, and maybe some Pharmaceuticals. Netflix is already priced in and picking the right Pharma group is hard. Shorting is easier and more certain. Yes I’m doing it myself, but I’m going mad, so might not be the right guy to listen to.
I guess the other plus is the near certainty the Democrats will sweep the American Election. That will hammer the market as well, as a byproduct, but it should be so beat up by then it won’t notice that much. On the good side, people that think government should be run well will be running the government again, as the cost of electing people that hate the government to run it…should be pretty clear.
The ‘outside my window’ traffic survey is about the same as yesterday, maybe down a bit more, but still a car a second or thereabouts. Some people are still doing things that aren’t in their home. The cafe across the street has temporarily closed, as they weren’t making enough on takeout to cover costs. Multiply that by some millions, and you have the economy, summarized in personal terms.
Finish on a good note, I must finish on a good note. Did I mention the Democrats or the Market shorting thing???
Later Cool Cats.
P.S. and by looking at deaths, I almost missed the 1825 new cases in the States over the previous day. I guess their testing is getting up to numbers. That’s half as many tests as they had a couple days ago. So how about those Flames?
Day the Sixth, March 19, 2020
It looks like WHO has changed their cutoff for reports and made comparing numbers over time harder. They undoubtedly have good reasons and are under a teeny bit of pressure, so no aspersions cast their way. There is a bunch of data that is on both the last two updates as a result. It all works itself out over time, with today’s numbers sort of the new baseline for determining daily changes going forward.
It will make oowsnn happy, cus from report to report there is only 28 more cases in the States. Mission accomplished. The daily drive-by metric shows that Calgary is about half of yesterday, but still lots of people moving about. The Market continues it’s ‘a day or two bad, a day not quite as good as the bad was, good’ fluctuations and I’m never paying attention at the right instant to maximize return, but have at least covered my next few months in seclusion - if money is still worth anything in a few months. Maybe I should buy ammo…I don’t have a gun, but people would trade food for bullets, right? They do in the post apocalyptic computer games…
Later Cool Cats.
Day the Seventh, March 20, 2020 - One whole week!
I’ve been listening to the Submarines on repeat lately. It’s such happy music. The world isn’t so happy. It looks like Italy continues to get hit hard, and England will be one to watch. Boris has been convinced that letting everyone healthy get it, and let a herd immunity protect the at risk sooner isn’t a great idea, with lots of young healthy people needing hospitalization to get through it, so plugging hospital beds. The have joined in the whole self-iso dance with the rest of the world now, but the lost time is going to have tragic consequences. It looks like governments are useful things after all! Who knew? A NYTimes guy (Farhad Manjoo) had a good line the other day, referring to Reagan and his quip, “the scariest words in the English language are ‘I’m here from the government, and I’m here to help’.” Those words are pretty reassuring about now.
On latest ideas of refundable tax credits, the governments know that people need the cash now, right? Sending checks isn’t that bad an idea, but a hell of a big project to account for and manage, and depending on the country, will be an enormous undertaking that will take months just to plan. Post offices have everyone’s mailing address, but don’t really have the accounting resources. Taxes aren’t paid by everyone, so tax folks have the accounting resources, just not everyone’s address. They can work together, but that will take time to organize and they should get on it. The American Congress is waist deep in lobbyists trying to get their industry/business group/brother free money, and the regular folk aren’t represented by enough lobbyists. Canada and the Europeans might pull something useful off.
It is taking it’s toll in developed countries, but what is going to happen in less developed places is terrifying to consider. Yemen has twenty five million half starved people from it’s ongoing civil [sic] war. The Sahel in general, and everywhere touching the Congo(s) has been in a low intensity war, with occasional flare ups for years. No one will even be tallying the dead, so we probably won’t ever know how bad it gets. The Favellas of Brazil. Venezuela in general. So, how about those Flames? Right. Hockey’s cancelled. I need a new distraction.
On the good side, we’re all getting some ‘me time’ to reflect…except parents. Parents can write off ‘me time’ for the duration. Ok that’s not a very good side, but I’m trying here…
Later, Cool Cats.
Day the Eighth, March 21, 2020
And on it goes. The weird bit in the data today is that the Germans are getting Covid-19 it as much as the rest of Europe, but they aren’t dying at any thing like the rate. ~11,000 cases, and only 20 deaths. Spain is Spain is at 17,000+ and 767 and France is at 10,000 and 372. Everywhere ‘not Germany’ is showing similar ratios except South Korea who are testing everyone and Japan - but Japan’s numbers are still much lower in total.. It might be the Germans are testing more widely than the rest of Europe, like South Korea, and it illustrates the difficulty making comparisons with these numbers.
There is also an interesting possibility, on a global scale, that some countries might be self-iso-ing so well they have virtually stopped transmission of the virus. The numbers look like they should in a community that has herd immunity. It explains the South Korean and Chinese numbers. The problem is if the ‘herd immunity’ they are showing (mathematically) is brick walls, once people go outside again, it goes back to day one. If they all need to stay away from each other until a vaccine is figured out, it could be difficult to feed them all by the end, with the farmers locked away with everyone else.
Can we be doing too good a job? Not just cutting off the peak, but pushing the peak into the future all together? At 126 new cases a day, it’s going to take a very long time before enough Chinese have had the virus and recovered to provide herd immunity for real. I don’t totally trust the Chinese numbers, but Japan and South Korea show the same type of thing. Of course, sending groups of people to be exposed so they can generate immunity if they survive is a morally untenable choice, so I don’t know what we do if that’s the case. Get the farmers and food delivery chain people working, safely, at the least. There is a lot off ‘interesting’ hidden in the ‘terrifying’ with this thing.
The ‘drive-by my window’ metric is showing a drop in traffic, but it is the weekend, so whatevs. Let’s hope next week brings good news. There has to be some good news somewhere. Maybe that the 2020 Olympics will have the exact same number of Gold medals handed out to every country? Equality!!
Later, Cool Cats.
Day the Ninth, March 22, 2020
And Europe catches and passes China in total cases. America is charging hard on the rail to catch up. The warning given to Western nations that this was coming, doesn’t seem to have been used well. I keep hoping that some need in myself that this is a big deal is making me blow it out of proportion, and then I look at the numbers and the models and blanch. Following the branches of this to potential conclusions goes through a whole bunch of icky stuff before it finds anything shiny. I’ve decided to believe that, as horrible as this is and will be, it will give us the kick in the pants we need to get after Climate Change.
I worry that the kick might lead to a cycle of societies collapsing into civil war and regional wars that collapse economies and lower emissions that way, which is a glass half full…Hmmm…glass half broken?…and a glass totally shattered?…situation. Then I think, no, people would burn more coal and petrol fighting the wars, so It would get worse. Then I cry. Whatevs?
I think I’m going to go back to selective delusion for a while. Lets see….almost have it…almost…there. Man, life in Monaco is hard these days. The Ferrari is in the shop, and I’m stuck with the Maserati. It’s blue clashes with my favorite new shoes. To make things harder, I had a calendar problem and triple booked dates with different swimsuit models today. I’m trying to time shift to make them all, but will only be able to linger over wine with the last of them. A lunch, and an early and a late dinner should let me make them all, but it’s such a chore. I’ll have to ration portions to get it all down. Life is sssoooo hard.
Later, Cool Cats.
Day the Tenth, March 23rd, 2020
Well, the official number WHO has for the US yesterday is 0. No deaths. No new cases. I just we can all just go home now, and use their magic solution! Or not go home. We are all home. We can all just go un-home now, and use…
Right. I guess they missed the filing deadline, but they are dealing with a lot right now, so no aspersions cast from here. A tasteless joke, but no aspersions. There isn’t really a lot to say. Best Wishes, I guess. The numbers are getting bigger, and it looks like it’s kicking up in Hong Kong again as they started mingling more, and brought/permitted people to return to Hong Kong from overseas. This self-iso thing doesn’t seem to do well with stopping.
Meanwhile things up the hill in Monaco are going well in my delusion. I walked it, dropped ten grand on number 12 in a recognition prisoners, self selected and not, during this time, and they spun my number! $320,000 grand at a wack! After the croupier and I sat through several hours and passing a lie detector test that we didn’t know each other, and confirming it was a moment of pure luck, I followed instructions from the large man with the ear bug who was following me to “keep gambling”. He left me alone when I only had $30,000 left. Easy come, easy go. Oh the dates all went well, so I’ve set up follow-ups with all of them, but on different days this time. Oh the trials of in a life of spoiled leisure.
Later, Cool Cats.
Day the Eleventh, March 24th, 2020
Everything seems to be trundling along in an unpleasant fashion, and the Americans are arguing over saving big business with conditions and all the workers, or big business without conditions at all (like take the bailout money and buy back stock with it, no conditions - the workers can take care of themselves) to stave off economic collapse. Really. One of those choices don’t make guillotine and pitchfork companies do better than anyone else. Which one do you think the will compromise on? Or rather, which side do you think will do the compromising? Oh tourism - like say, golf courses - would be amongst the priority targets of the bailout, if that helps in answering that question.
So, back to my delusion. It turns out the redhead swimsuit model has a PhD in history, so we sat around all last night talking about historical analogues for the present situation….wait, this is my delusion. Everything is great in my delusion. I’ll start again.
So, back, to my delusion. I was called up the hill to the palace last night. They wanted to discuss how the present situation…damn. I’m failing at delusion. I’ll try again.
So, back to my delusion. It seems the three swimsuit models are friends and they’ve been talking about me. We all had dinner last night, at the redhead’s house, and had a swimming time - like in the infinity pool. What came afterwards is something gentlemen don’t discuss, but I learned things about human flexibility I never thought to imagine. (Now that’s delusion!).
Later, Cool Cats
Day the Twelveth, March 25th, 2020
Actual positive news today! The Democrats held firm, and the big bailout bill is actually goodish! The company bailouts come with a requirement to keep all their employees employed for twelve months after the end of the crisis, with a penalty for anyone who gets laid off before that time! The corporate bailout part comes with a specific carve out for companies owned by senior Administration officials. That is a big deal when a good number of them own companies on the side. The people in charge of the fund can steer money to their friends, but not themselves. The Republicans didn’t want that limitation. Trump could devolve ownership to his kids and still take part, but he can’t stand not being in front, so won’t.
So in my delusion, big news. The blond swimsuit model, (I’ll avoiding using their names, to protect their privacy, and the three have different hair colour, so I’ll use that) had her father charged with embezzling from the company he is CEO of, and he swears it was a setup, so we’re going to try and catch the real culprit, Charlie’s Angels style. I’d be Charlie in the in that metaphor, but maybe a bit more involved.
Later Cool Cats
Day the Thirteenth, March 26th, 2020
Unsurprisingly, after further study, the American bailout is not nearly as positive as I thought it was. The requirement to keep employees to keep the bailout money only holds for the smaller business that receive a fraction of the money and employ more than half of employees. The big corporate folks end up with the same oversight that didn’t work for bank bailout in 2008. I don’t know who the rich corporate folk think are going to buy their services/products, but they are money gods and I am not, so whatevs.
Back to my delusion. It’s safer here. So Blond and Raven went to clear out personal effects from BD’s (Blond’s dad’s) office. There thought they would do some reconnoitering while there, and expected that the police would have locked down his office until they were finished looking for evidence. Sure enough, police tape sealed the door, and Blond couldn’t get access, but she did have the opportunity to strike up conversations with people working there, as they approached her, saying “I can’t believe they think your dad…” and similar. At the same time, Raven moved to the back of the C-suite reception area, and stuck up conversations with the various younger men that worked there. As we all know, men, especially young men, think with organs other than their brain when confronted by a stunning woman. Afterwards we met up to compare notes.
Blond thought it was surprising that the CFO knew what accounts had been tampered with, even though her father did not, but he is the CFO, so should have noticed if anyone did. It was a tidbit that came from Raven that confirmed the CFO as the most likely suspect for being the real culprit. One of the junior people in the financial department had been approached by the CFO to work on a special project, the previous year, that involved the purchase of investment properties in the Maldives and kept off the books for tax purposes, and he had just been surprised by the CFO insisting he take his girlfriend to visit them in the company jet, but he had to leave tomorrow. He had been on his way home to pack, but had stopped to see if Raven wanted to be his girlfriend for a week. If the CFO was playing games with company resources for personal gain, getting the witnesses out of the country would be a priority. The plot thickened. If only to the consistency of thin soup. At least we had a suspect!
Later, Cool Cats.
Day the Fourteenth, March 27th, 2020
So news on the corona front is continuing to be bad to worse, with nothing in particular to comment on. It’s icky anyway, so I’m trying to spend time there, and more on my delusion!
So back to my delusion, we sat around brainstorming all day, and it turns out Raven is quite the chef, so we were well fed as we stormed our brains. Nothing much came out of the storms in my head, but that was ok, cus I wasn’t the only brain so storming. Red hit upon the idea that the CFO would need an inside man at the bank, not only a helper in the company, and maybe he hadn’t managed to get that person out of contact. Raven and Red decided to check out the bank tomorrow, as Blond was too likely to be recognized. That left us time to finish up Raven’s cooking, and go for another swim in the infinity pool.
Later, Cool Cats
Day the Fifteenth, March 28th, 2020
Other than the John Hopkins’ numbers showing ~37,000 more cases in America than the WHO numbers do, it’s largely more of the same. Spain, Italy and other places in Europe are in the throes of this thing, and it is about as horrible as horrible gets. People isolated and alone, dying while gasping for breath. Absolutely horrible.
My delusion doesn’t have the will to get out of bed today, so I’ll update it when it returns.
Stay cool, Cool Cats.
Day the Sixteenth, March 29th, 2020
The numbers on the WHO site and the John Hopkins site are vastly different for America. The John Hopkins seems to be using the WHO numbers for everybody but America, but they have way higher numbers for Americans, 40,000-ish cases higher, with twice as many deaths, and I haven’t found a reason anywhere. They may be using data with a different testing requirement, or something that the WHO won’t accept, or they may just be getting better numbers by virtue of being in America. It makes comparing numbers even harder, but that’s a pretty futile task for most of the world now, anyway.
As the first hit States begin to make progress against the virus (and that’s begin) other States start to go exponential. Canada looks similar, with the Provinces, but there aren’t that many, so it isn’t as strong an effect. The usual rule of taking the US number and dividing by ten doesn’t work. Canada’s numbers are much lower than that. I hope it’s because of a better response, and not just a matter of time.
My delusion is still sleeping off it’s last episode, so won’t be appearing until Monday.
Stay Cool, Cool Cats.
Day the Seventeenth, March 30th, 2020
So just more of the same really. Lots of the world just getting started, and other parts seeing light at the end of a very dark tunnel. This self-iso thing is working to limit cases once people take it seriously, but lots of people aren’t taking it seriously until someone they know ends up sick. People. I mean really. We have those big cerebral cortex things so we can take action before have the associated experience.
My delusion got out of bed today, I guess it doesn’t think it should work on the weekend, and lets get back to it!…Well Raven and Red came back from the bank laughing uproariously. It took a while to get the news out of them, they were laughing so hard, but eventually, Blond and I were able to decipher their laugh/talk..
It seems the cover of being rich models out to splurge on beachfront property worked without a hitch, partly because they are rich models and have bought beachfront property, so no ones acting skills were too stretched. They asked to see anyone at the bank that had experience investing in, say, the Maldives, as a completely random suggestion and soon sat down with a Mr. Slimy. His real name sounded like that, and the ladies were laughing so hard we couldn’t get closer the real name than that. When Blond said, "Wait. His name was Mr. Slimy?” Raven and Red kicked back and positively roared in laughter. We couldn’t get a word out of them for half an hour, and figured that getting the name right could wait for another time.
Oh, I guess I’ve run a little long today, so I’ll pick up there tomorrow.
Stay Cool, Cool Cats
Day the Eighteenth, March 31st, 2020
I wonder if Trump could be indicted for Criminal Negligence Causing Death for the American response? Maybe just straight up Murder? Murder with Intent? His rambling thing, yesterday, on how the Russian’s were ‘our partner’ in WWII and that Germany was the enemy, and now ‘we talk to Germany’ but ‘Russia lost fifty million people in WWII’ and ‘now we don’t talk to Russia, we talk to Germany.’ is amazingly bizarre, even for Fox. There is a bunch of stuff about how Germany cheats America on trade, and doesn’t pay enough for NATO in there, but he’s lost it even more than he’d lost it earlier. I’m going to leave his bragging about his TV ratings alone, and pretend it never happened, cus I can’t handle that a guy who thinks that way can have agency over so many peoples lives. Whatevs…
Back to my delusion…So after Raven and Red calmed down enough to understand, it seems it wasn’t hard to get Mr. Slimy to brag about how he’d arranged the sale of Maldive properties for a ‘local executive’. He even left them with brochures for the places he’d bought. His efforts to subtly look down the ladies tops, or find excuses to touch them were, apparently, quite comical. His attempts at charm, even more so.
There was a sense in their laughing that it was being used to remove the blight of his presence from them - sort of laughter as a sterilant, and I felt a bit guilty of being party to them being discomforted. When I mentioned that, they laughed even harder, and pointed out that they were discomforted that way for a living, and for ninety percent of the time when not working. I grumbled about men being pigs, and they agreed, with a glance between themselves and a smile I didn’t think it would be a prudent thing to ask about, for my own self image.
Keep Cool, Cool Cats
Day the Nineteenth, Day the Twentieth, and Day the Twenty First - April 1st through 3rd, 2020
Well, I’ve been distracted with delusion, and missed a couple of days. We’ve passed a million verified cases, and the gods only know how many total cases we’ve got. As a personal high spot, the computer game Mount & Blade, Bannerlord has been releases, and living in that world is my delusion of choice at the moment. My personal high spot is a bit short of out weighing the catastrophe in the world out here, but it works to keep my mind off it. I’ll get back to my Monaco delusion when the initial innocence of a computer game involving a medieval war across a continent loses it’s charm. Remember when we thought that wars were the horrible things that caused global scale early mortality? I miss those days.
Keep Cool, Cool Cats
Day the Twenty-Second, Day the Twenty-Third, April 4th and 5th, 2020
So, this is my three weekly anniversary! The American situation continues to degrade at an alarming pace, and the Canadian situation is degrading at a somewhat less alarming pace. The unemployment number for the US last week was 6.6 million (at least - the hit on the unemployment offices was so bad, there was an uncounted backlog). If that was a state, it would rate somewhere near 17th, and as a working population of a state, at about 5th. In one week. A week that wasn’t completely tabulated. Before a lot of the stay at home stuff was implemented in a lot of states. Short the market.
In my delusion, we had a suspect and a co-conspirator, a property purchased in the scam, and we weren’t sure what came next. It didn’t seem enough to bring to the new CEO or the police. We threw ideas around the room while picking at our breakfasts, and we were scattered around the cavernous living room in Blond’s family home, maybe more a mansion. Nothing was agreed on for a while, until I was cleaning up the dishes (of course I’m the one to clean-up. It’s delusion!) and as I lifted the tray from Blond’s desk, I clumsily bumped against Blond’s computer (Yes, I’m even clumsy in my delusions). Blond came over to check the computer for damage, as I apologized and slunk into the kitchen.
I heard an exclamation behind me, as I reached the kitchen door, and turned to see Blond pumping her hand in the air. “His computer. It will have access to the company accounts! He had a blind password set up so he could anomalously check on the finances and inventory, to keep an eye on brewing trouble. He clearly wasn’t using it during the CFO’s exploits, but it should still be active!” She sat up an began typing furiously at the computer.
Stay Cool, Cool Cats.
Day the Twenty-Fourth, April 6th, 2020
With Reality’s weird sense of humour, it’s going to turn-out that chloroquin is a miracle cure, and the stable genius will die when his ego bursts out of his swollen body to take on a life of its own. No one will notice a change. Oh, in answer to his whispered question ‘what do we have to lose’, it turns out the gap between medicine and poison is not very wide with that particular family of medicines, so people who aren’t very careful about dosage, the answer is ‘everything’. Don’t try that at home.
So, to the Delusion - I looked at Blond, and asked, “why do you know about backdoors he set up in the company systems?” She waved back at me, casually, “Because I set it up for him. In my pampered youth, I rebelled against society by learning to code and hack stuff. It started with me targeting an soon to be ex-boyfriend who I suspected of cheating. I was right, and the geek I befriended in an effort to learn how to track the jerk taught me a lot of things about a lot of things. We were planning to get married when he died in a horrible kite surfing incident.” She wiped a tear off her cheek, and continued, “I miss him.”
After a short moment of silence, she sat down and began typing furiously. After a few moments, she stopped and cocked her head to the side. “This isn’t right. There is something new here, a new block - it might be tied to this computer being outside the network. It looks like AWS’s doing. Damn company is taking over the world. Give me a while.” The rest of us went about our business and left her to work.
Day the Twenty-Fifth, April 7th, 2020
It’s fun with ratios today. A wise epidemiologist suggested looking at recoveries to fatalities as a more comparable data-set, as they should be of the same window in time. After doing so, I suspect the only thing that actually tells us is the coverage of a country’s sampling regime. For example, the Germans have about 1 death for every 20 recovered, but they’re German. The South Korean’s have about 1 death for every 30 recovered, which out-efficients the Germans! The Americans have about 1 death for every 2 recovered, similar to Spain and Italy, who are overwhelmed so are kind of busy saving lives and have an excuse. The Americans have no excuse, yet, but, sadly, will soon. Canada is at about 1 to 10, which doesn’t make me feel much better, as there are lives on the line, and, unlike Mr. Trump’s attitude, it’s not a competition. If you don’t know where, or how big the problem is, you aren’t going to get in front of it. Just saying. Canada still has a chance.
Brrrr. To the Delusion! - We left Blond for the afternoon, and reconvened that evening for dinner and to see if there was any progress. I was distracted but the cut finger I earned helping Raven in the kitchen (of course I helped! This is a Delusion, remember?), but couldn’t miss the huge smile on Blond’s face as we took our seats. Blond waited for us to be seated, and started gloating, “It’s all there. The diversion of money’s, the transfers, the non-existent reason’s for those transfers, enough to put the CFO away, and let Dad walk away free.”
Raven got a look on her face like she was about to kick a puppy, but for the puppies own good…not that there is a ever a good reason to kick a puppy…whatevs. Anyway, she got a look on her face like she was going to do a necessary but grim task, and asked…Oh wait. That will have to wait till tomorrow.
Keep Cool, Cool Cats
Day Twenty Six and Day Twenty Seven, April 8th and 9th, 2020
The Globe is up to a million and a half confirmed cases, and the virus has become established in India and Brazil. If you are thinking it’s bad in Europe or the US, the real pain is going to be in places like those, and poorer. The data reporting may be ‘not horrible’ in those places, so we can see how ‘very horrible’ the situation can get. Really really icky.
To the Delusion - Raven asked, “Is it there in a clear enough way that the CFO doesn’t already have reasons for? You know what happened, so it’s clear to you, but will it be clear to someone trying to keep an open mind in the face of the CFO claims that it’s all explainable, and how people shouldn’t listen to a pretty young thing that is clearly distraught, and is a barely clothed model, not a forensic accountant. He’ll have some reasons sorted out. He couldn’t have expected the situation wouldn’t be looked into after he framed your dad.”
Blond responded, “Of course it’s clear. It’s perfectly…oh. Oh no. I do have a Masters Degree in Economics, but I take your point. I’ll need to do more work. I’ve downloaded that data, so I can try to find any clearer documentation while you guys find a smoking gun we can use, that can be supported by this information!
Keep Cool, Cool Cats.
Day Twenty Eighth Through Day Thirty Three, April 10th Through 14th, 2020
So I took Easter off. Didn’t miss much except things progressing as expected. America’s leader has lost it even more than he had already lost it, and when the earning on Wall Street cause another market crash, he will lose it even more. I don’t know how much he has, cus he isn’t very forthcoming about that, but he’s got to be getting to the point he has nothing left to lose, and just evaporates. One day he will be gone, like magic, to re-purpose his comment about the virus. His antagonism towards the states has driven them to form regional groups, to plan the great reopening in six months, and away from the federal government. That’s one of the building blocks for the dissolution of the ‘United’ part of the ‘United’ States. Just saying.
My delusion is rusty, so I’m going to take a day to get back to that. I’ve been deluding with the support of a computer games lately, and the one that’s just relying on me is rusty.
Keep Cool, Cool Cats
Day Thirty Four, April 15, 2020
2,000,000 confirmed cases globally, and it’s loose in parts of the world where no one will be counting. It’s a great time to cut funding to the WHO. I’m going to go get drunk.
Keep Cool, Cool Cats
Day Thirty Five and Thirty Six, April 16 and 17th, 2020
Big jump in American and world deaths, but it might be an adjustment for past under-reporting/change in SOP and not a new big outbreak. The numbers that are getting the most exposure are cases, but the test sucks, the reporting and sampling are different in every part of the world - even in different hospitals in the same city, and the data is barely useful on a comparable basis. Using the death data is morbid (buda ching!) but is closer. It’s just harder to find comparisons using that data. I can use the WHO data to do it myself, but it leaves me worried that too much of the modeling is using such crap data, it’s barely guidance. You go to a pandemic with the data you have, but you need to make allowances in interpretation. I’m used to making predictions with lousy data, and I get it wrong and have to adjust all the time. I’m not seeing ‘we got it wrong and are adjusting’ very often in public, so I hope it’s happening behind the scenes…except with Mr. Trump of course, because he uses his gut and common sense which is almost foolproof, and I think everyone thinks his response has been nearly flawless as a result (and they elected him? As a hereditary king you can see it happening, but as a chosen leader? Come on people).
On another note, today is my Birthday! I’m officially older and wiser (than what, I won’t speculate). Yay! The birthday celebrations in my delusion will remain private, but I’ll get back to the non-celebratory aspects of my delusion now. Yay! To the delusion - “We aren’t going to have to travel down to the Maldives and get information there, are we?” Raven asked. “I mean great diving, and reefs, but ‘been there done that’.” I smiled at her, with a wry grin, “I can see your excitement. That ‘I’m playing it cool, but I want to go!’ thing you do is overused.” Raven smiled back openly, “Great! I’ll get my diving gear!” I shook my head, “I don’t see us needing to dive to find proof the CFO is dirty.” Raven was not to be dissuaded, “Don’t be silly, we need a cover!” Red nodded, “She knows I don’t want to go to the place as it stirs up memories of a bad relationship, but she’s right. We need a cover, and without a photographer, diving is a good one.” I knew when I’d been beaten. “To the Maldives then. Do you know what airlines go there?” Red laughed, “Don’t be silly. We’ll take my plane. I’ve been there before so I have a flight plan ready.”
Keep Cool, Cool kids.
Day the Thirty Seventh, April 18th, 2020
Now that I am older and wiser, this little corona problem seems so ‘last year’. ‘This year’ too, I guess. Hopefully less so after that, though. The US rate is now a new 9-11 a day or about the same number of deaths in a week and a half, as the number killed in car accidents in a year. It isn’t slowing down, either. The math will probably follow that of a sequential series of outbreaks over time, as opposed to one big national outbreak (Canada is likely to be the same).
Clearly the Americans should reopen their economy post haste. It’s not like all the sick people and deaths will effect output much. Asymptomatic cases on the American aircraft carrier show it about half of the cases, although some of those cases may progress to symptomatic in time. If half of the cases among a healthy, fit population are asymptomatic, then as much as half the population wouldn’t need any time off work and could be making shiny stuff to buy straight through! The less lucky half would suffer with many of the survivors left with permanent heart and/or lung damage, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs! Good work with Trump egging on social distancing ignoring (and lawbreaking, not to mention silly and selfish) protesters in Democratic States! (Come on, egging on/breaking a few eggs - that’s brilliant, if accidental) He is definitely trying to pull the country together. He was good enough not to mention protesters in Ohio. It wouldn’t be because Ohio has a Republican Governor, would it? That would be silly.
To the Delusion, with haste! So, we landed in the Maldives after an…interesting trip. Red turned to me, “Look at him! He’s redder than my hair!” Raven shook her head, “You didn’t need to be quite so aerobatic on the approach. He barely caught his stomach contents as they emerged into that bag. You should stock bigger bags.” She turned to me sympathetically, and patted me on the head, “Do you want to sit for a while, to recover?” I nodded to her, and turned dagger eyes to Red, “There are all sorts of devices on that thing to make flights calm and restful. You had to turn a dozen systems off to make it that rough on approach. It’s easier to make that approach with the wheels pointed towards the ground, as well.” Red burst into laughter, “Now you are a flight expert? And I only had to turn off three systems.” I turned to her indignantly, if a fairly undignified indignantly, “I’m enough of an expert to be able to identify ‘right side up’.” She shook her head, “I counted thirteen separate instances where the right side was up!” Both Red and Raven fell about in laughter, while I sat with my head between my hands and practiced deep breaths.
Keep Cool, Cool Cats.
Day the Thirty Fifth, April 19, 2020
So it’s time for economic science. That mean assuming a bunch of numbers and smashing those into facts, and making predictions. The facts are:
A plausible multiplier for economic stimulus calculated during the demand lead Great Recession of 2008 was 2-ish, in published, peer reviewed papers that I’m way to lazy to find and link to, but that I read at the time. That it was demand side is important to create that multiplier. Supply side recessions don’t create the same stimulus effectiveness..
Twenty million-ish people applied for unemployment benefits in the US the last three weeks. Under employment effects piles of others, and many big companies are using the promise of government expenditures to keep people employed.
Lets smash them together! Smashing things together is fun! Taking $50,000 as the average American wage (close enough for economic science sorts of science) we have a demand drop of $50,000 x 20,000,000 people / 2 as the effective demand shortfall in the American economy, ignoring the wage cuts and other forms of underemployment. We aren’t ignoring them to say they don’t matter, we are just calculating the demand shortfall conservatively. Hell, we’ll even make the average annual wage of those laid off $30,000 to keep it on the low end. That’s a $300,000,000,000, or 300 billion dollars on an annual basis, or about $25 billion a month. It’s a twenty trillion-ish annual economy, so 1.5%-ish.. Taking the wages of (more than) 10% of the lower wage working age people out of the economy represents 1.5% of the output (Not everyone aged 20-65 works, the overall [age distribution were just the numbers I had at hand and I’m too lazy to find the working age distribution). What does that say about inequality?
If the stimulus multiplier in a demand shortfall is 2, the shrinkage in demand needs to have the same multiplier as a direct reciprocity, assuming no hysteresis (path dependence). Of course, those studies of the time showed there was hysteresis, where monetary support didn’t reverse the loss, but needed to be greater than the losses - it was theorized to be due to non-monetized frictional losses in administration and the like or something, where the effort needed to get people to the point of being productive in the new jobs they get after losing the one they were good at accounted for the loss - or something. It’s intuitive-ish if you don’t squint, and makes some amount of sense so lets go with it. It implies the calculation is even more conservative than the already conservative built in. Think of it as, if $1 of stimulus creates $2 of output, the loss of $2 of output is worth $1 of stimulus, to prevent.
The recovery package to date is $2.2 trillion. That should be more than enough for years! Awesome! Except almost all of that is being used to keep people from being laid off, not to go into peoples pockets to cover the shortfall. That makes the estimation of future layoffs harder, but lets say the future layoffs are eliminated by giving companies the money they need to keep people on the payroll There is another huge conservative thing!
Lets say not one more person loses their job/salary as a result of the money in peoples pockets covering future layoffs exactly. The loss of people to buy whatever those companies make has just been hit with a $50 billion a month shortfall, but that’s covered in the multiplier, so is covered. The part of the stimulus that cut $1200-ish checks to every person, leads to 360-ish million people x $1200 ~ $400 billion to fill the $50 billion a month hole. Eight months. If the economy completely recovers in eight months, the stimulus could be in the right ballpark! Oh, that was $1200 wrapped in a bunch of rules that lead to an estimated $232 billion outlay? Then five months. That’s not nothing! If all those people get 2/3 of their salary in unemployment insurance with a $1200 adder, it all leads to 15 months-ish of demand replacement! It passes the first smell test!
How conservative was the assessment you ask? We’ll check tomorrow, along with checking my math. This is turning out to be work. Delusion will have to wait.
Stay Cool, Cool Cats
Day the Thirty Sixth - April 20th, 2020 (April the 20x3?)
Well, there was a lot of conservative in yesterdays math. Maths are really conservative, it turns out (it’s mathmatics, note the final s. Algebra and geometry and calculus, etc, lots of maths, but they all conserve values - conservative values less so, but whatevs). Sometimes maths are even progressive conservative, but by Mr. Kenny’s example, not really united conservative. I mean, plus signs unite things, so it could have been, but he’s really not very good at maths. Shrinking health care budgets in a pandemic doesn’t add up, and shrinking government in a depression is silly. Our grandparents (great grandparents if you’re younger, parents if you are really old, whatevs) learned that the hard way. It turns out maths don’t do silly.
Anyway, economies. The big conservative yesterday was the ‘people unemployed’ one, or the shortfall in spending because people are unemployed. People on benefits cut ‘non-essential’ spending, cus they don’t know how long any remaining money will last. Over half of Canadians and three quarters of Americans say they live paycheck to paycheck. For those people, lots of paychecks just stopped. Lots more then the number that have applied and been processed for unemployment. Gig workers don’t qualify for unemployment benefits, and people that own their own businesses usually don’t (unless they made themselves an employee of their own businesses and payed the appropriate taxes. Not a lot of people do that). Unemployment benefits take more than a single pay period to get paid, as well. Borrowing from friends and family to bridge the gap works better when friends and family aren’t in the same boat.
The American Oil industry is awash in debt, with lots of zombie companies that were keeping afloat by borrowing money to drill and frac new wells to keep enough cash flowing to service the debt so they could borrow more money and eventually get bought out by Anadarko or Encana. A barrel of Alberta oil is now worth less than the cost of the metal barrel it metaphysically comes in, and Permian oil isn’t much better off. That all stops now. American banks are going to get crushed. Oil Sands stuff is investment intensive, and works on longer time frames, so although it is toast too, it won’t be as obvious as fast. JP Morgan just put up a ginormous reserve for non-performing loans, and although it might get bailed out, the people that are about to be unemployed are in the count yet. That’s a spot I know something about, but it gets spread all over the place in the economy.
Sports, and the assorted businesses (from popcorn sellers to advertising agencies, to the athletes themselves) have had their entire industry stopped in it’s tracks. Yearly, that’s 71 billion in the States alone. Not a penny of that is being earned right now (ok, there might be some jersey sales, but not many pennies. (For our younger readers, pennies were what we old people called a coin that held the value of one percent of a dollar). Entertainment in general, except Netflix, is stopped - $700 billion there (there is double counting with sports, so don’t add them up). Restaurants, $800 billion. Hotels, $205 billion. Etc, etc, etc.
The capitalist economic system just isn’t compatible with this moment in time. Should the people that want to restart the economy, damn the illness right? Do we accept a couple of percent of the population dies off to save the economy? Hell, lots of the dead will be old folks who don’t contribute to the economy, anyways, and it save the government from spending all that money on Social Security! It’s an economic plus! Where’s the tax cut! (and it could, sorta, be a plus - economics isn’t a ‘fun’ or ‘nice’ science). Even if you look at that In a totally unemotional way, that still doesn’t account for more than half of the population needing to take a couple weeks off work, sick (that’s with fifty percent asymptomatic cases - an guess supported by some early data). If you stage the infection so only part of an area/industry is out at a time, the recovered/uninfected could keep the economy going while a bunch are out sick! There are lots of details to work out, and even more people could be employed working those details out! Solution found!
Yes, I was being sarcastic, if that was unclear. The details of why it is sarcastic as well as horrible to come. This is clearly becoming a blog or maybe a book, so I’ll move this there, and get back to my delusion in this space. This exercise has made me long for my delusion. Mmmmm. delusions.
Keep Cool, Cool Cats.
Day the something or other, April 24th
This was posted as a blog in of itself after I got it done, so it’s in two places now.
So, it’s rant day, here at Skellywords. Maybe it will become a regular-ish Friday feature. Today’s rant is scientific predictions. I do these predictions for a living - if in a totally different field. Through painful experience, it became clear that understanding data quality was a required part of understanding the uncertainty of that prediction. As we learn more and more about the Covid data, it’s clear that the only prediction that we can make with any certainty is that if everybody acts like they did last year at this time, lots of people would get sick and lots of people would die. I’ll put that at ninety nine percent likely. It doesn’t rate higher, mostly cus I’m not totally positive the world really exists and this isn’t a simulation or dream or something. That’s the other percent.
The modelling kind of indicates-ish what’s going on, and confirms that going back to how we lived last year at this time would be a disaster…a bigger disaster The real useful purpose of numerical models in prediction is they give you a sense of what variables change outputs very much. Sensitivity analysis. It isn’t about them being right, it’s about them being useful in understanding how the variables interact. They can’t predict anything other than what variables we can change, like isolating ourselves, that will move the needle on cases and deaths. That is what they have been used for, and we shouldn’t expect them to predict the future or tell you how many people are going to die from this (beyond ‘lots’) - especially when the data quality is this poor.
The reported number of cases misses the asymptotic maybe fifty percent-ish of cases (or twenty percent or eighty percent or whatev number is popular today…see my point?). The tests have a 30%-ish false negative rate, in any case, so those numbers aren’t great to start with. I tried to cheer my data driven mind by focusing on the dead. I figured the number of dead people would be well counted. My data driven mind doesn’t relate the numbers to people if I try really hard, so I can deal with it. Mostly.
The recent news has a number of examples of people dying of Covid-19 and not being counted in the Covid data set, because underlying condition were blamed. Someone who has a heart attack brought on by Covid might look like they had a heart attack unrelated to Covid and only a full autopsy will figure that out. It means the death data is unreliable and not an ‘unreliable’ that makes reality look any better. The NYT had a story about some epidemiologists looking at the death rates in March in New York this year compared to March in previous years and it was depressingly high enough I stopped reading. That makes the numbers of deaths closer to guesses than I thought.
The degree of miscount in everything will be different in different countries, so the numbers don’t compare well from one country to the next that well, either. The John Hopkins numbers have a 9-11 a day going on in America, at 3300 deaths, while WHO has ‘only’ 2200...a day. Every day. And the number started increasing today as other outbreaks catch up to the Eastern Seaboard. The criteria they use to include numbers is different, so comparing American trends to trends in other countries is difficult. That means figuring out where this is going, from places it happened earlier, has a lot of unconstrained variables. Unconstrained variables make modeling really hard.
Lots of the politicians and pundits are talking about what the shape of the curve will be, and how we can respond in whatever way, and they are just blowing wind. The politicians want to see the numbers they are making decisions on, and the models they come from, and think they are representing more than the possible shape of things to come, They don’t (and shouldn’t be expected to) understand the context without more time. It leaves them telling the public things that aren’t true - but that the politicians and talking heads think it’s true. It’s not a lie if you believe it (Credit to Seinfeld), but it isn’t helping the public dialog to represent loose ‘it’s going to act this way-ish, provided people act this other way’ numbers as they are real ‘counting things’ kinds of number. It’s about moving the curves and not overwhelming medical systems - not preventing two hundred and twenty three point seven deaths - exactly. The numbers in the models aren’t about ‘exactly’ anything.
America (and Canada) have very incomplete mixing, so there is no reasonable expectation that they will act the way England or France or Spain or whatever has or will. Note those integrated economies in Europe, where movement between small countries and small areas is trivial, and was totally trivial into the start of this, have peaks at different times, and differently shaped peaks because of incomplete mixing. Those different peaks will be merging in different ways in America and Canada during this period, because of barriers to mixing (distance) have been made stronger by shutting down flights, and locking people away in their houses. Flights are the stir sticks of North American geographical populations mixing, because the regions are so big. Just because the Eastern Seaboard has got past a peak by locking everyone away doesn’t mean Georgia is over the worst and can reopen. And Florida! WWE! WTF! It is not an essential service, please…just…please. If they are going full-bore into bread and circuses to keep the masses distracted, they need better circuses and the ‘bread’ part is the more critical piece. Get that one covered, people.
There is only one set of data that follows through to the burn out of the virus (where it can’t find anyone to infect, so dies off), and that’s China. From that, we know we can burn the virus out with a complete lockdown for a month-ish, and yes, we can’t be sure of the Chinese data quality that leads to any conclusion, but it’s almost certainly good enough for that particular conclusion. We don’t know if it is still lurking in corners and ready to launch new attacks, and we do know that cases are being reintroduced from out of the country. The only sure thing the China data tells us is that we can mitigate the problem by sheltering in place. There are now several populations, along with China in the early period, that show us that not mitigating the virus gets really ugly really fast, and that gets us to where we are now.
We need to shelter in place until we have testing and contact tracing that can control new outbreaks before they get too big to trace, or until a vaccine or treatment that is highly effective is worked out. Technology takes time to get sorted out, and doesn’t often work that well, first thing out of the box. This is going to take a while, unless we get really lucky. People are looking into the hiding spots luck could be hiding, and we can hope they find something, but we shouldn’t expect that to happen. We need to have a robust Plan B that doesn’t make it worse. The more people that get it, the more likely it finds an animal reservoir (or mutates, or other bad things) and becomes a lot harder to mitigate with social distancing less extreme than locking people inside - forever. If you want to know the worst case, that’s it.
We don’t even know people that have been infected and recovered can’t get it again the next day! There is almost certainly a window of immunity to the strain that person had, and multiple strains are less likely in a poorly mixed geographic area, but as for how long the window is, it’s guesswork. The landscape on the other side of that window is fairly blurry, along with most everything else of what’s going on. Real time is hard to work in, which is why you want plans for bad things in case they happen, so less has to be done working through blurry windows in a panic.
aside/
If we’d found a cure to the common cold (a corona virus) instead of focusing on treating it since forever, we’d be a lot closer. Difficult problems are the ones to keep plugging away at, not just giving up because it’s hard. Funding basic research is how we find those things out. The more recent push to only funding research that has a known application that makes money is short sighted. Short-sightedness gets you to this sort of situation unprepared.
end aside/
Peaking at things my brain doesn’t want to face, we want to minimize the number of cases for more reasons than minimizing people directly dying. If this gets into animal reservoirs in city biota it will make tracing breakouts harder, and make breakouts more common. If more people get exposed to it, especially people that have dwindling immunity from previous infections, it makes mutations and new strains more likely. The odds are on it mutating into less aggressive forms in the long term, because killing a host makes transmission harder, but the Spanish Flu mutated into strains that were more deadly, so it happens - and the Keynesian quip ‘in the long run, we’re all dead’ has new and more upsetting connotations at the moment. There are well understood scientific reasons and mechanisms for the stuff brushed past above, but my mind doesn’t want to linger there, so just trust me, or learn about it in your free time and tell me where I’m wrong so I can sleep better.
If we want to inform plans for the future (which I’m fond of), we don’t want to give false hope to people and pull it away when it turns out to be bunk (I’m looking at you Trump, and it is a really unpleasant sight so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give me reasons to do it). People need hope in times like this, and there are reasons to be hopeful. False hope is destructive because it encourages people to make stupid plans and do stupid things (like go to protests encouraging governments to ‘reopen the whole economy, now!’).
Science is good at these sorts of things, but not always that quick about it. We’ll learn more about the numbers, and how to make better predictions as time passes - but the predictions aren’t very good yet for practical planning like knowing how many ventilators to order. Unfortunately we are in a period that living people get to be guinea pigs because we need a solution quickly and ‘people’ are where the problem started.
We have almost all of the top scientific minds across the world working on the parts of this problem that are relevant to their area of expertise. They are even collaborating across borders and regions and getting on with it in using appropriate urgency. Lets fund them massively, and let them try lots of things that won’t work, so they will find things that will. Climate at least changes slowly enough that there was some time to muddle along - not as much time as we’ve wasted since we figured it out, but that’s a different rant.
In summary. The data quality is presently too poor to make predictions that are more than educated guesses. As more data comes in, we will be able to make better and better predictions and probably make breakthroughs in big data analysis and medical science and epidemiology, and understanding lungs and whatevs - and move the whole bunch of us into a new paradigm of life that is much better in all ways than now. Or not. That’s one of the things about life that pisses me off. It would be so much easier if we could peak into the future sometimes.
Anyway, we will certainly learn important things people weren’t trying very hard to learn before this emergency, and in time, the understanding of the data, and corrections, and reworking, and whatever, will get us through this into a new place. That new place will probably value life more highly and shiny things a little less and be a better place to hang out in for a while. This might even encourage people to make the kind of effort the world needs to mitigate the climate problem - before it leads to an even bigger, if slower moving crisis. We might learn collective problems can be solved collectively and encourage that sort of thinking in our lives! How cool would that be!
Right. That’s enough ranting for now, and I was drifting into optimism toward the end. We can’t have that. We need better data first.
Keep Cool, Cool Cats.
Day the ‘Couple of Days Since Last Time’, April 29th
It is very giving and kind of Trump to support using his citizens as guinea pigs to test opening strategies. By the end of the month we will know more of what doesn’t work, and hopefully some of what does. I’m betting on Europe for ‘the some of what does’ and would rather Canada wait a while, in a horribly nationalistic way. People are people all over, but I know more around here, so my silly emotions are more worried about ‘around here’. My intellect is overcome with what will happen in most of the world, and is worried about how my emotions are going to deal with that, so it’s pretty much agreed in my head that I’ll be focusing on the more developed nations.
The more developed nations have seeming largely settled into to a holding pattern of a more less flat, or slightly declining case load, and number of deaths - as far as we can tell (see previous entry). The scientists are noting things that don’t make sense and are trying to figure them out, because that is where the key always lies. Figuring out the parts that make sense is what politicians try, and often fail to do. When the politicians try to figure out the parts that don’t make sense, it often ends badly - see the opening in the States, compared to Germany (Merkel is a scientist/politician, so can handle both ends).
We’re pretty much down to handing around and seeing how things work out for a period, and that’s always the hardest part in a story. We’ve had the big opening, and aren’t ready for the (hopefully non cliffhanger, ‘disappointing’ low key) ending. I suppose the Climate Change bit fits in as a sequel - much of the same cast, same setting). I’m going back to find out where I was in my delusion, cus I’ve kind of lost track - as we’ve got into the middle part there, too). I’ll try to pick it up where it left off here, sometime soon.
Day the Whatever, April 30th, 2020
It started here, but became the ‘Get It Over With, Damnit!’ blog, so there’s not much else to put in this space.
Day the Whatever and some, May the Fourth be with you.
Yesterday was the third birthday of my company that hasn’t failed yet, though it is on life support. All these inconvenient little realities of life that intrude on proper enjoyment of a good global catastrophe. My air conditioner wasn’t fixed last year just before it got colder - so I didn’t notice, the ‘s’ key on my keyboard is holding on by a thread, and money is nearing an uncomfortably low ebb. In a global crisis, these first world problems seem appropriately trivial, and we end up with better calibration of our perspective of our place in life. As per one of the great philosophers in human history (Douglas Adams) there is no faster way to drive a human into madness than getting perspective - actually understanding just how insignificant we are in the pan-universal scope of the multi-verse. How trivial our whole planet is, our whole galaxy is, possibly our entire universe, is in the gigantically enormously YUGE scope of the multi-verse - so you have to watch out that our calibration doesn’t get too accurate. Ok, typing with a broken ‘s’ key is driving me nuts, so that’s it for now…
Day Something or other…ok…Day 55 -ish, May 9th, 2020
Ok, so lots of outbreaks at meat packing plants. What’s special about meat packing plants? There are factory operations that have kept operating during the slowdown, but surely there are other places like that. The more obvious difference is animals. Is the novel corona virus kicking around in animal reservoirs already? I sure hope it’s just the proximity of workers...
Day 59-ish, May 13th, 2020
If you want to see what happens when a big country fails to isolate, watch Brazil the next few days. They should nudge America off the top of the charts in about a week. They are almost certainly under counting the poorer victims. Saude.
So I’m finally coming back to my delusion cus I miss those ladies - I held a grudge towards both Raven and Red for whole moments now that we were on the ground in the Maldives. The scenery was spectacular, but the total lack of elevation was notable. Red commented, “Enjoy the scenery. It’s all going to be underwater soon. The carbon capture device on the plane kept us from contributing [what, you don’t expect the ladies to be so careless as to pollute, do you?}. It will be good when the military folks let us share how to build those, although they are out of the price range of most. Raven shook her head, “World saving technology held up by short sighted political decisions. Next thing you know, there will be a pandemic, and countries will fight over who has the ‘rights’ to the cure.” Red knocked on wood, “You are being overly dramatic again, Raven, but you shouldn’t say those things where the fates can hear you.”
“All right ladies. We have a crook to catch.” I said. Raven turned to me, “Careful with that red bag, silly. You are almost dragging it on the ground.” I checked and she was right. “Sorry. I have a hard time with the seventh bag and over. The nine you’ve brought, and the one I have is over my limit.” Red turned to me with laughing eyes, “You are such a whiner. Come on, we need to get to our car.”
Keep Cool, Cool Cats
Day 57-ish, May 21st, 2020
The days bleed into each other more and more when it’s raining out, and it’s not like I go outside, ever. Sun and my nerves are not buddies, so going outside hasn’t been a thing for me for years. It’s still ‘happier’ weather when it isn’t sopping. From my time in England I know that the formal term for this mornings weather is ‘chucking it down’. We should just be heading into disintegration of the mountain snowpack, so if this keeps up, and is hitting the mountains, we may get to do flooding and Covid at the same time! Exciting! In a bad squared kind of way!
We’re heading into a critical time for pandemic watchers. Brazil is challenging for the global lead, and America, unwilling to give the spot up is reopening all over the place! Will the brash developing world challenger have what it takes to compete with the world leader? Stay tuned to find out! You’ll have to stay tuned for a month, but whatevs. The race is a fairly gradual thing, but doesn’t seem that way from in the trenches of a competitor, I’ll bet. Hopefully Canada will continue to fall into mid table obscurity. I’d even be good with bottom of the table on this one.
To the delusion! It’s the only reason I got out of bed this morning so…- The three of us discussed the best way to approach the property sales people. We were still discussing it when a loud voice came from the patio in front of a local eatery. “Raven! Raven!” came a voice. Raven turned to the sound and her jaw dropped. “Crap” she muttered. It seemed the junior financial guy the CFO had sent out of the country hadn’t forgotten Raven, and we should have suspected he would be at the property because he told us. Some of the most difficult clues are the ones right in front of you. Red snickered and put her arm around me, “Look, that guy Raven was hoping to run into is still here!” she said quite loudly. “We can do a two couple thing after all, and not have to worry about anyone feeling a third wheel.”
Raven shot her a glance that should have melted steel. Red must have some resistance, because I would have crumpled into a ball of ash. She managed to clear her expression by the time she turned to the financial guy. “Oh good, we found you. I’m sorry, but I forgot your name.” The ego diminishment from having his name forgotten should have been more than overcome by Raven coming all this way to find him.
Keep Cool, Cool Cats.