Category: Economy

U.S. Report Found It Plausible Covid-19 Leaked From Wuhan Lab

U.S. Report Found It Plausible Covid-19 Leaked From Wuhan Lab

I am not an epidemiologist, so my word is not final on this subject however, I will point out that with every major natural virus in the last 20 or so years, by the time the virus was with us for 12 months we had samples of the virus leaping from bat to animal to human. Not in this case, we still do not know a natural way that this virus could have infected Patient 0. The longer that it takes to find the path of animal to human, the more likely it is that it was lab to human.

According to Dr. Stephen Quay, and Richard Muller, the Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus making it ALMOST impossible that the virus could have come from purely natural origins. Quay is the founder of US-based biopharmaceutical company Atossa Therapeutics, while Muller is a Physics professor at the University of California Berkeley.

Therefore, every passing day, week, and month makes it more likely that this is a human-caused calamity and it is the single biggest, most deadly, and most economically devastating human mistake EVER.

I am not contending that China maliciously released the virus upon its own population. I do believe that China knows for a fact the true origins of the virus and they should likely be held responsible for the trillions of dollars of harm they have caused to the world population.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-report-concluded-covid-19-may-have-leaked-from-wuhan-lab-11623106982?mod=djemalertNEWS

Mr. Biden Has Effectively Rebutted His Own Campaign Warnings

Mr. Biden Has Effectively Rebutted His Own Campaign Warnings

In the days leading up to the November elections, Joe Biden told some whoppers on the subject of health care. Perhaps that’s to be expected in the heat of a political campaign.

Mr. Biden’s recent Covid-19 vaccination in Delaware proves he now understands that his consistent skepticism about the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed was misguided. This is probably excusable in an election as the words that come out of a politician’s mouth are rarely correlated to reality. Trump is responsible for his inability to convince the American public that he set up the apparatus to get us out of the global pandemic. That failure of communication is probably reason enough to lose an election.

Candidate Biden claimed that the president had no plan for addressing the virus and warned that Americans couldn’t trust Mr. Trump to oversee a quick and safe vaccine approval. This wasn’t true and Candidate Biden probably knew it, but it was the responsibility of Mr. Trump to make that case. Mr. Biden was not obligated to explain the effectiveness of the Trump administration if the Trump administration couldn’t explain their accomplishments in a convincing way.

With yesterday’s vaccination, Mr. Biden has effectively rebutted his own campaign warnings.

His acknowledgment of the vaccine and the public display of its use was designed to inspire Americans to trust the vaccine. The act is an admission that his candidate claims were made for purely political positioning and not based on scientific or logistical evidence. He lied on the campaign trail (or at least used Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt – FUD) to convince people that Mr. Trump was failing at this important task and therefore they should hire him. Admitting that Mr. Trump was doing a good job at getting the vaccine to the American public would not have been in Mr. Biden’s best interest at getting hired to run the country.

The outstanding work of the pharmaceutical industry, encouraged and enabled by President Trump, has already resulted in two approved vaccines, and yes, there is a distribution plan.

Drug distributor McKesson Corp. began picking up doses of the vaccine from manufacturing plants on Saturday for distribution around the country. United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. trucks started rolling out Sunday to deliver the doses to hospitals and other sites.

The federal government plans to distribute over the coming week a total of 7.9 million doses of vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer Inc., which developed the first Covid-19 shot authorized for use in the U.S.

Vaccinations will continue, without Mr. Biden having to do anything. And there are still more vaccines in the pipeline which could soon come to market, as long as he doesn’t get in the way. The J&J vaccine is a one-dose treatment and the preliminary results have been fantastic.

Yet despite his own vaccination experience, Mr. Biden is still talking as if there’s a huge problem he will be called upon to solve. According to a Bloomberg report on Washington’s latest massive goring of taxpayers, Mr. Biden seems to think there’s much more Covid spending to come.

The economy is awash in money; politicians just need to let people use it. Americans suffering economically are suffering from shutdowns, which never worked as intended, inflicted enormous collateral damage, and are now becoming untenable with the arrival of vaccines.

Washington’s work is over. Washington didn’t do enough to save many businesses as they were tied up in the politics of helping things that didn’t really get hurt. That was a shame, but that is the political reality of our country. Republicans and Democrats spent far too much time discussing how to not let a good tragedy go to waste. But now we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

By the time that Mr. Biden is inaugurated, 50-60M people will have been vaccinated (that is about 1/7 of the US population). Combined with the existing survivors of natural infections, this will now probably exceed 25% of the US population.

Within the first two months of Mr. Biden’s reign, we will have vaccinated or infected over 50% of the US population and may reach 60-70%. By the time of opening day of the MLB season, it is reasonable to assume that we will be at 80% which is effectively full herd immunity. We should still try to reach 90% and that should happen in early summer.

Due to Operation Warp Speed, we could have approximately a dozen manufacturers of vaccines for the COVID-19 in a few more months. All we need to do is wear masks and social distance for another couple of months and then the US participation in the global pandemic will be over. This has nothing to do with the leadership of Joe Biden, it is purely a function of the continuity of the efforts of the Trump administration.

Biden should simply sit back and enjoy the ride back to a fully functional economy. The Trump train will get him there without him having to do anything. All he can do now, is screw it up.

This analysis is based on the fine reporting of the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman.

Exponential growth bias may be affecting our reaction to COVID-19

Exponential growth bias may be affecting our reaction to COVID-19

A simple mathematical mistake may explain why many people underestimate the dangers of coronavirus, shunning social distancing, masks, and hand-washing.

Many people consistently underestimate how fast the value increases – a mistake known as the “exponential growth bias” – and while it may seem abstract, it may have had profound consequences for people’s behavior this year.

A spate of studies has shown that people who are susceptible to the exponential growth bias are less concerned about Covid-19’s spread, and less likely to endorse measures like social distancing, hand washing, or mask-wearing. In other words, this simple mathematical error could be costing lives – meaning that the correction of the bias should be a priority as we attempt to flatten curves and avoid second waves of the pandemic around the world.

The researchers speculate that some of the graphical representations found in the media may have been counter-productive. It’s common for the number of infections to be presented on a “logarithmic scale”, in which the figures on the y-axis increase by a power of 10 (so the gap between 1 and 10 is the same as the gap between 10 and 100, or 100 and 1000).

While this makes it easier to plot different regions with low and high growth rates, it means that exponential growth looks more linear than it really is, which could reinforce the exponential growth bias.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200812-exponential-growth-bias-the-numerical-error-behind-covid-19

To prepare for this pandemic, our liberal and conservative leaders failed us

To prepare for this pandemic, our liberal and conservative leaders failed us

A lot of liberals won’t like this post. Please don’t read it if you are a liberal because you will get mad. It hurts when facts smack you in the face, so you should avoid doing that. This article points out that liberals completely failed to help the US prepare for a pandemic.

To be fair, conservatives shouldn’t read this post either because that same brick wall of facts is going to hit you in the face as well. Don’t read it as conservatives haven’t prioritized preparing for a pandemic either.

This is an article from 2009. It is from NPR, so no one is going to say it right-wing bias. Conservatives will say that it is MSM, but the facts on the ground have proven this article to be very accurate. 

Here is another article by Sheri Fink that covers the various studies in 2006-2009 about how woefully prepared the US is in handling a pandemic.

In 2007 and 2006, the country did studies that showed that during a pandemic, NYC would be short 15,000 ventilators, and 150K people could die. Sound familiar? There were probably studies since the publication of these articles. So did Bush or Obama do anything? Not much, and I will suggest they did zero. Trump didn’t come into office with any insight and initiative to fix this known problem, so he is just as guilty as Bush and Obama.

There has been a total lack of leadership by Bush, Obama, and Trump on this issue.

And Governor Cuomo? Nope. He didn’t fight for it either—more lack of leadership.

And neither did Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, Ryan, Boehner, Schumer, or any other leader of our Congress. A complete lack of leadership for a situation that everyone knew would eventually happen.

BTW, the current candidates for POTUS in 2020: Biden, Sanders, and Trump – nope. None of them did anything when they were in positions that could have influenced this.

All of our government leaders failed us on both sides of the aisle. They taxed the hell out of us. They whined and complained about other stupid shit. They gave incentives for solar energy, oil production, buying stuff on the internet, buying health insurance, fighting bad guys in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria. But prepare the country for a pandemic? Nope. 

They all said, “Hopefully, that pandemic will happen when I am not in office, and the next person can worry about that.” Guess what, we are the next person. We are now worrying about it, and our bickering Federal government messed up big time.

The Federal government is really only good at two things

  1. the infrastructure that hundreds of thousands or millions of people rely on
  2. the defense of our country and people.

To be honest, the government isn’t all that good at those two things, but it is the only entity that can do them. The government shouldn’t be doing other things. It should focus on doing those two things and do them as well as possible, giving the inefficiencies of an organization that has no competition.

It is woefully incapable of doing anything else well. In just about every case other than the two cited, private industry that competes with others will do a better job. Will the private sector screw something up? Absolutely! But then that private enterprise will be displaced by a competitor that will perform better. 

Pandemic relief falls into both categories. It is the defense of our people, and it is the infrastructure to support that defense. We did both poorly for pandemic relief, and it is now costing us dearly.

What is the solution? Throw the bums out. Every damn one of them. They failed us. They screwed up. They should be rewarded with losing their jobs.

We need politicians that are focused on just doing the two things that only the federal government can do. We need politicians to look at a bill and say, “Is this something that ONLY the federal government can do and therefore is in the above two categories?” If the answer to that question is NO, then the politicians need to vote it down. If the answer to that question is YES, then the politicians need to approve it and give it the appropriate funding and oversight that it is done as well as possible.

Header Photo by Parentingupstream (Pixabay)
Gig workers are not employees and no one should make them be employees

Gig workers are not employees and no one should make them be employees

In order to understand why California’s new Assembly Bill 5, (AB 5) is lousy you have to decipher who wins and who loses in the gig economy. If the losers are politically connected, it is logical that the losers will try to change the rules.

This is the downside of most government interventions. The goals of the “do-gooders” are overwhelmed by the special interests. Laws should be simple and have as little interference in the personal lives as possible.

The gig economy has provided opportunities for millions of Americans to make money. That’s not the same as having a “job” but that’s the point. Many gig workers have other jobs and many of the ones who don’t are in school or want to work part-time to make a little extra cash. Obviously, some of these people would like to have a different job which they can freely look for while doing gig work without any repercussions from an “employer” looking for loyalty or firm work hours.

The reason the “gig economy” took off is because of the freedom it provides people who are willing to hustle to make extra money. You could set your own hours, accept work when you had free time, and not worry about an employer having that control. If you’re an employee, you might get benefits, but you lose that freedom and control.

The gig economy put millions of people to work in one way or another. Those new service workers upset many people that were being displaced by gig workers.

Any law that has lots of “exemptions” means it is a bad law. Lawmakers are saying what is good for one group (that may not be politically connected enough to get an exemption) is not good enough for another group (where they are politically powerful).

But people don’t sign up for gigs because they’re looking for health insurance, overtime, and a retirement plan. A gig means freedom, extra cash, and a chance to have control over when and how you work. Those other things are all important, but if that’s what you’re looking for, you look for a job, not a gig – and maybe you use a gig to pay some bills while you are looking for the perfect job.

Don’t kill one just because you think it should be the other.

Hopefully, this law doesn’t infect the rest of the country and hopefully, it stays in California, which is essentially a politically screwed up state anyway.

Here is John Stossel’s take on all of this.

Photo by raezer

The new burger chef makes $3 an hour and never goes home. (It’s a robot)

The new burger chef makes $3 an hour and never goes home. (It’s a robot)

The response to the high wages demanded in low skill position was obvious.

Miso can offer Flippys (a robot for making food) to fast-food restaurant owners for an estimated $2,000 per month on a subscription basis, breaking down to about $3 per hour. (The actual cost will depend on customers’ specific needs). A human doing the same job costs $4,000 to $10,000 or more a month, depending on a restaurant’s hours and the local minimum wage. And robots never call in sick.

Sorry teenager trying to earn a few bucks to go to college, restaurants don’t need to hire you at the high wage that over-eager do-gooders are demanding.

https://www.latimes.com/…/flippy-fast-food-restaurant-robot…