Showing posts with label Mutation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mutation. Show all posts

November 19, 2020

Vaccine Fears

So I was talking with someone about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines coming out to protect again Coronavirus. 

They tell me that the news is reporting 95% effectiveness and then they pull out their smartphone and show me a cartoon of someone taking the vaccine and their face is all deformed (I won't go into the details). 

So I ask him:

Are you going to talk the vaccine?

He says:

"No!"

I ask:

Do you take the flu vaccine?

Again he says :

No, it's poison!

He thinks some more and says (jokingly, I believe):

And if some big burly guys try to hold me down and make me take it, I'll tell them I'm gonna go out and get a gun and come back tomorrow and shoot them. 

Bottom line: there is some real fear and apprehension out there about these vaccines. 

And surely, some people do have negative effects--whatever that percentage is. 

Personally, I will take the vaccine. I would rather try and fail (hopefully not), than never try at all!  

How long the vaccine is effective for--that's another matter all together. ;-)

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)


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July 12, 2020

IMHO Warning: Stock Market MAJOR Correction Imminent

I went to the mall today.

This is a few weeks into reopening phase 2!

I expected people would have pent up demand and be swarming the stores even while keeping their social distance.

They weren't at the mall! 

The stores were nearly void of people.

The shelves were virtually empty of goods.

Whatever merchandise there was seemed to marked "sale, sale, sale" even on the already deeply-discounted clearance items.

It was completely frightening--like the economy is dead or on severe life support!

Most stores had 3 or more associates standing around or sitting twiddling their thumbs.

This while the stock market keeps ticking up and the NASDAQ is reaching new highs almost daily.

Coronavirus is surging again across much of the U.S. and there is almost 140,000 dead in the U.S. after just 5 months even though much of the population was in self-quarantine.

The economy looks to me in sh*t shape, despite the U.S. pumping $3 trillion dollars more of debt to artificially prop up the economy and the fed lending out money at super low rates.

It makes NO sense for the market to be hitting all time highs as if everything is all roses when the economy is still a true mess!

The New Yorker magazine wrote back in May of a post coronavirus "decade of depression" with an L shaped recovery, yet we keep seeing a V-shaped one and no one seems to be able to offer any plausible explanation for it.

Two-months ago, even before the recent stock run-up to higher levels, Business Insider reported that "the Stock Market is trading at its highest valuation in 18-years."

Last month, Forbes reported that "the stock market appears to be reaching unsustainable highs."

Yesterday again, Bloomberg reported that the "economic recovery is faltering."

Almost daily, I read that companies are laying off their workers (in Travel, Transportation, Entertainment, Retail, Energy, etc.) or declaring bankruptcy (e.g. Hertz, JC Penny, Neiman Marcus, Chesapeake Energy, and more).

This while we are still, in the best case scenario, maybe half a year away from the possibility of a tested, approved vaccine. And then it will still need to be mass produced and mass distributed to hundreds of millions of people in this country and billions globally.

In the meantime, we certainly could be up for a second wave of Coronavirus on top of the flu in the fall/winter. And then the Coronavirus may mutate and become more virulent requiring annual vaccines like the flu shot--more hit or miss.

All this while U.S.-China trade war is imperiling our economy further, and arch-enemies Iran and North Korea remain national security threats.

To me this all points to that we are nowhere near out of the woods and perhaps that there is a wildfire raging and no one seems to be paying any attention!

The stock market euphoria is a common trap and is the definition of "irrational exuberance" but comes after investors have been robotically indoctrinated to buy the dips!

IMHO, buyer beware, beware, beware. ;-)

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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April 1, 2020

Pathogen Deaths - Worst Is Yet To Come

So maybe I am the only one who doesn't see how things are adding up.

But in the U.S. we have 4,000 dead from Coronavirus and 3/4 of the country (all the major population centers) are on lockdown. 

Yet, the projections are still for deaths in the U.S. to pile up between 100,000 to 240,000

How do you get from 4,000 to 240,000 with most people under lockdown?

The numbers of projected deaths were in the millions before the lockdown and social distancing, so yes the numbers are lower and better now. 

Still the escalating death toll is frightening in its magnitude of what is yet to come DESPITE the lockdown.

Moreover, the estimated death in the U.S. from the Flu was only 34,000 (2018-2019) and that's with everybody round and about doing their business.

My question is what happens after the (first) peak when they send people back to work and school?

There are still going to be people sick and contagious out there and the whole cycle STARTS AGAIN until we get the vaccine. 

And even after the vaccine, it may become seasonal like the flu or mutate and become even more virulent. 

It seems like there is plenty of reason to be cautious and concerned about what is yet to happen from here.

Then again we may be considered fortunate this time and actually beat this Coronavirus, but then again what happens when the NEXT really bad natural or man-made pathogen gets out? ;-)

Note: There are approximately 16 countries with deadly biological weapons programs. 

(Credit Photo: My wonderful so-in-law, Itzchak)
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March 23, 2020

3 Months of Social Distancing

Here is a link to the modeling for Covid-19:
https://covidactnow.org/

You can click any state to see the impact of 3 months of social distancing or 3-months of Shelter in Place.

Basically, it looks like this first round of coronavirus will last until around the beginning of June. 

The hope is that we can keep the hospitals and medical system from being overwhelmed while we try to come up and test an effective vaccine. 

Of course, vaccines are helpful, but look how many still get the flu every year because viruses mutate and the vaccine misses the mark.

Also, there is a risk that the virus comes back even more virulent again, so we all need to continue to pray! ;-)

(Thank you to my sister for sharing this with me.)
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