Robert Bramel

Germany is apparently predicting that 60-70% of the German population will become infected with the corona virus. Since Germany is doing at least as much as we are to slow the spread, it seems plausible we may have 200 million Americans infected with this virus. There are only one million hospital beds in the US and in normal times three quarters of them are in use at any one time. If only five percent of the 200 million need hospitalization (ten million) our "fantastic" healthcare system may well collapse (as many medical experts are now prediciting).

Al Peffley

Our politicians and community leaders were warned at regional pandemic exercises in the 2006-2010 time frame (after the SARS outbreak and before the MERS pandemic occured in 2012.) Federal, Regional coalition, and WA State emergency management organizations warned local and county agencies about the documented health impacts of the 1917-18 Spanish Flu, and also the predicted impacts of greater global travel accessability for average people who might spread pandemic pathogens. We modeled and trained for economic disruption and recovery options in large groups. Unfortunately, many community and government leaders who participated in the pandemic exercises retired or left their organization without educating their successors. The 2019nCoV outbreak is proving not to be a stable endemic desease of global proportion with traditional treatment and abatement remedies.

I met with one of my county DHHS supervisors last week and she did not know what a MSA Millenium protection mask system was or how it is used for mass biological and chemical events responce protection in incident Level II operations conditions. Experienced medical personnel have died after being improperly protected against being infected by this potent virus. Some lung residual damage is irreversable, even with "recovered" patients. There is only one recovery reported in Washington State on the Johns Hopkins CSSE pandemic digital dashboard. We have one reported confirmed case now in Cowlitz County that has not been verified by DHHS.

Community leaders and citizens have been warned about large area catastrophic incident disasters (natural or man-made) and supplies preparation for several decades now. My children ignored my suggestions, stories about disaster experiences in the US, and the need for in-place emergency supplies.

The probaility of this happening is higher than many adults are willing to accept because many think the government will fix everything when society is confronted with a pandemic. There are not enough response practitioners to help everyone with a pathogens threat and public panic. Managers aren't equipped to perform detailed response tasks. We are top-heavy with executive decision-makers and short on medical response practitioners and equipment. Those huge cruise ships with a damp enclosed environment are big biological culture containers for focused virus growth and spread.

History repeats itself. The blame is on a short-sighted and overly optimistic public education system and a public lulled by years of widespread pandemic absence in America. We should heve a better system of pre-positioned supplies, but we choose to spend the money on HOV lanes and expensive studies of large infrastructure projects that never materialize. It's like installing an alarm system in your house after it has been robbed and totally stripped of all of your valued possessions. Hindsight is usually 20-20, as some say. It's easy to not understand threats and situations that we have not personally experienced. We often don't pay attention to the harsh lessons of history because we think that technology and our knowledgebase will solve anything quickly. There will be nothing "quick" about this pandemic recovery, in my view. This will be a stark reality check for many people across the earth.

Gregg Wilson

The 1918 flu began in army camps in Kansas. They were burning cow manure to stay warm.

It is called the Spanish flu because Spain was the only country to report it in newspapers, etc. Every other country kept a lid on it because they were in the Great War.

Tom Chavez

Bob, your reductionistic focus on virus–cell interaction is simplistic. You write, “Outside of the cell the virus is inert and not subject to attack, so any antiviral attack must occur at or within the cell” and therefore diet is “unlikely to affect”.

A more holistic view sees the body as a vast complex of interacting systems.

To defend against viruses, the immune system has an arsenal of weapons including killer cells, antibodies and messenger molecules. Some of these defenses do not have to be triggered, but are continuously active, like a standing army. An army travels on its stomach, so diet is very important.

Recently, researchers, from ETH Zurich and the University of Bern, have discovered a new form of innate immune defense which acts against viruses such as SARS (with single-stranded, positive-sense RNA), similar to coronavirus. The body is amazing. We actually know very little.

The body's many lines of defense, both active and latent, need to be in good condition as a whole to fight disease. Diet is extremely important. Correlations between good diet and health, as well as poor diet and disease, are well documented.

You are right that specific suggestions for diet are not ‘validated’ by double blind studies. But that is not the only source of evidence and knowledge. If others have good experience with fasting or diets, we can learn from them and experiment for ourselves. We can also learn from scientists, but we are not exclusively dependent upon them.

Every individual is different. Every one of us can fine-tune our own diet by personal experience to optimize peak performance. Personally, I would encourage everyone to cut out junk food and denaturalized components like refined sugar, oil and flour. Enjoy a healthy balance of veggies, fruits, whole grains and other natural wholesome foods. Avoid all intoxicants including alcohol, tobacco, 'dope', and heavier drugs.

In my humble opinion and experience, vegetarian diet is best. Protein is available in legumes, tofu, milk products, nuts, etc. Corona and other dangerous viruses seem to come from the animal markets into human society. I call that 'karma.'

Keep active with regular aerobic exercise, and practice a spiritual discipline such as prayer or meditation. Studies have shown a strong link between spiritual practices and positive health outcomes. Regular fasting, to give the digestive system a little rest and relaxation, is purifying and healthy, even more so if done as a spiritual practice.

Amen, brothers and sisters. Om tat sat.

Linda Pompeo (Worden)

Have you hosed down your houses  with rum or whatever yet?

Actually...I just had this thought  (I try not to have too many of them)..  In a worst case no hand sanitizer scenario, would this work or does it have to be rubbing alcohol?  I am relying on the brains of the class of 64 to enlighten me!

Al Peffley

Linda, you want to look for Isopropyl Alcohol, not rubbing alcohol. Rubbbing alcohol is less than 60% solution of ethanol, whereas isopropyl alcohol (used as a medial antiseptic in clinics) can be purchased in drug stores in a 90-91% solution. Household hydrogen peroxide (3%, or even better at 6%) works as well or better than >60% ethanol solutions to kill most viruses on material surfaces around the house. The virus also is eliminated with UV rays and no moisture/oil surface film to host it.

Drink a little water about every 15 minutes. The water will keep your saliva flowing in order to wash any virus that may exist in your mouth washed down to your stomach acids. I read Japanese doctors are now advising more water drinking based on treating infected novel coronavirus patients. You can drink up to two liters a day which eliminates oxcilates in the kidneys and keeps you hydrated if you get any type of virus infection.

Linda Pompeo (Worden)

Thanks for the response.  My rubbing alcohol does say 70% isoproply so I am ok there.  I actually had a case of it because I use it to spray for bugs in the greenhouse.  Works well for that and is not toxic to the vegies. Good to know about the hydrogen peroxide.  Didn't know about that.  I had just been wondering what people who did not have the alcohol could do.....so I came up with the spirit alcohol.

Good to have all of the input for everyone.  I pray that all will be well and this to will pass.

Take care and be safe .

Tim Jones (Jones)

I came across this piece from Doctor Norvell in Dallas Texas, on the front lines in the coming COVID-19 pandemic. The US Medical Industrial Complex has been short sighted in anticipating and preparing for such an event and now it is here.  What is next? A bit long, but worth the read......

 

Cara Norvell

March 11 at 1:38 PM

I know I’ve been uncharacteristically silent about the coronavirus, but I’ve had enough at this point. The number of people who call this “media hysteria” or a “political hoax” or want to point out the mortality rates of the flu, cancer, or obesity...do you want to come work my shifts? Do you want to expose yourself to patients in respiratory failure day after day? When we run out of ICU beds and vents, do you want the responsibility of telling your mom, dad, aunts, uncles, friends, and family that I can’t intubate them because we just don’t have the resources? Do you want to tell the kids of 30 and 40 year old patients that their parent is going to die and we can’t do anything to stop it? Do you want to look at the parents of a 20 something year old and tell them their previously healthy son or daughter might not survive? Because these are REAL possibilities. This is ACTUALLY what is happening around the world.

This American superiority complex of “it’s just not going to affect me the same way” is gross. There have been multiple projections that this could infect 40-70% of the population. While it’s hard to extrapolate accurate predictions, that should concern you. It shouldn’t make you hysterical and run to doomsday prep, but it should make you want to be a part of the solution in decreasing the spread. Because kids aren’t dying I think people feel protected. Kids less than 10 aren’t dying. People in their 20s and 30s are in respiratory failure and ARE dying. These are not elderly people with lots of medical problems that have had the chance to live full lives. These are young and previously healthy people. Yes, the elderly are more likely. But the young and healthy ARE NOT IMMUNE.

Why is this such a big deal when we’ve already been seeing people with the flu? RESOURCES. Over the past few months we have already spent many days at capacity, boarding patients including ICU patients in the ER. We don’t suddenly have a bigger ER, more floors to admit patients to, or more staff to take care of this influx. We have the same resources now with a second deadly virus. For estimated 80% getting sick this is like a cold. For the other 20% they’re either significantly sick, or eventually dead. Yes, cancer kills more. Yes, obesity related illness kills more. When taking care of my obese patients I don’t have to worry I’m going to “catch diabetes” or that suddenly my coronaries will be blocked. Their BMI can’t be transmitted to me through the air. Lung cancer isn’t contagious. I’m not worried about catching lung cancer when intubating these patients in respiratory failure. I’m vaccinated against the flu, and I can protect myself from flu patients with a simple surgical mask.

Patients coming into the ER want the best, EVERYTHING to be done, and for it to happen quickly. And more often than not, we deliver on that. We’re going to have a different reality if we don’t have rapid containment. Everything is going to be far from an option for most patients, and I’m not looking forward to the potential ethically crushing choices we might have to make.

Italy SHUT DOWN THEIR COUNTRY. Italy isn’t drastically impacting their economy, tourism, education, and way of life because they care about our presidential election. They are doing it because their citizens are dying. This isn’t a hoax. This isn’t just the cold. And I don’t care if more people by the numbers have already died of the flu. (Actually I very much care-GET VACCINATED). This is a big fucking deal. Open your eyes and pay attention. Your American immune system is not equipped with special corona fighting antibodies that just skipped over other countries. And more importantly, your healthcare system that already didn’t have enough doctors doesn’t suddenly have a surplus of doctors.

While you have the option (THAT YOU SHOULD TAKE) to stay at home and decrease the likelihood of you being a vector, when you do get sick, guess who is still working? Your nurses, doctors, pharmacists, hospital support staff, EMS, police...we don’t have the option to stay at home and protect ourselves and our families. The consensus among myself and other docs is and expectation of not if, but when, we get sick. People that have no lung problems are developing respiratory and multi system organ failure, and dying. We know that could be us. And we aren’t just being exposed at the airport or the grocery store or at a concert venue...we are being DIRECTLY exposed to the sickest patients. And without the resources to protect ourselves. The public has stock piled N95 masks to an extent our masks are LOCKED away and we have to have approval to use them. Because we WILL run out. The protective recommendations by the CDC recently became more relaxed...and let’s be totally transparent. This is not because the transmission has slowed or COVID is less virulent. It’s because we cannot meet a higher standard. We cannot provide our healthcare workers with better protection because we simply don’t have it. And I’m so fortunate to work in a resource rich hospital with what I consider exceptional leadership. I see people busting ass to try to keep us safe and informed, but under the context of a rapidly evolving situation with not enough supplies, people, and space to manage the consequences. I’ve also heard the theories that the doctors that died in China were given amphetamines and worked days at a time. That exhaustion weakened their immunity. As we go through cycles of quarantine, who do you think is going to be on back up? Who do you think will be covering those extra shifts and putting in more hours? While we won’t be pumped full of amphetamines, someone will have to be there.

So if you’re one of the people that keeps laughing at the “hysteria,” keeps comparing it to more deadly disease, thinks that somehow you’re special and it’s going to skip over you...you’re not special and your immune system isn’t unique. Take the current pandemic seriously. Stay home and don’t be a walking vector. Find a hobby, read some books, spring clean your house, make some new recipes, clear your DVR. You don’t need to panic and build a bunker, but don’t be an asshole. Stop buying protective supplies that puts those of us on the front line at high risk. Stop buying all the toilet paper. Covid doesn’t cause massive diarrhea. Our water supply is not contaminated. You don’t need to stock pile bottled water. Don’t go to the ER “because you just wanted to be checked out” when you’re not actually sick. You risk exposing yourself and frankly, you’re pulling us away from the patients that actually need us. And realize that when this gets worse, we are working as hard as we can to do the best we possibly can. Be patient and kind to your first responders.

 

Gregg Wilson

After having more than one thousand deaths and total national lockdown, the Italians are coming to their balconies and windows and singing enmasse. Perhaps the best public response of all.

Al Peffley

I thought your post of the doctor's frank and truthful comments from an ER medical doctor's perspective was excellent, Tim. Thanks. Our medical system is in shambles. My young internalist doctor resigned from Kaiser last week. He was my fifth young doctor (primary or specialist) in five years to leave Kaiser for a private or government agency practice, and then this pandemic comes along to overstress the rapidly disappearing and once-admired American healthcare system. The elderly poor will suffer the most because our health system has been weakened and gutted by an inept and divided Congress (who have better health care services available to them than the legal citizen taxpayers they are suppose to serve.) Expensive imaging services should have been fully funded by the federal government in the ACA, but Congress directed funds to non-value added bureaucratic paperwork systems with more complex HIPAA restrictions and rules that unnecessarily burden all qualified medical care personnel when they try to treat us for serious physical illness reasons.

March 15th: We saw the video of Italians singing to each other from their patio balconies in Italy. Very cool!

I started thinking what most nursing homes might have in common besides an obviuosly vulnerable, at-risk population. The mobile residents at these homes all eat in the same cafeteria at most meal times. They may be served by foreign nationals who travel home to Asia to visit their relatives still living there. They may receive gifts often mailed in sealed containers from Asia. The food service hardware and expendable supplies like napkins used in the closed community facility's cafeteria are most likely made in China, as well as canned food like mushrooms or bagged sea food items like shrimp served at meals. Their disposable medical equipment and generic medicines were most likely also manufactured in China, and stored in air-tight packaging and hermetically-sealed shipping containers. Do you see where I am speculating why nursing homes seem to be ideal community epicenters for 2019nCoV? Visitors interact with the residents and spread the virus out in the community without knowing they have been exposed. We need to eliminate the virus on transfer items produced near the global center of initial infection, and focus more on sanitation measures in factories processing food, medicine, and disposble or reusable hardware. Kill it at the sources of distribution.

Gregg Wilson

The president has announced that we should not hoard food, etc. This a bit late. And this statement will backfire BADLY. Individual citizens save their lives by hoarding essentials. We are on our own.

Does anyone believe that the government will deliver food to you if the virus spread increases, where production of food and its distribution fail, due to massive sickness?????????

Tim Jones (Jones)

I went to Costco in Tumwater yesterday and Trader Joe's in west Olympia. Looked like the locust had been there before me.  Very little on the shelves. As my sister Connie stated recently, "we've entered the Twilight Zone".  Everyone is pretty much on their own.  I'm guessing mid June before things return to sort-of-normal. I hope we all survive it. Take care out there.......

Tom Chavez

Controversial International Perspective 

I got this from a financial newletter, Daily Pfennig, quoting from a different newsletter. What to think?!

After an unprecedented display of national unity, resolve and courage, China has essentially expelled COVID-19 from its territory. But the virus has traveled worldwide, invading other nations and wreaking extensive havoc. Given its leaders’ denial of the danger and its unpreparedness to deal with a major outbreak, the United States looks especially vulnerable, a disaster in waiting.

Just at this moment, Russia has detonated a nuclear weapon (tactical, if not strategic) in the global financial markets. Its refusal to cut oil production, in defiance of US and Saudi Arabian pressure, has devastated asset prices everywhere.

Like a chess grandmaster, Russian President Vladimir Putin has long put up with assaults from the American Empire, waiting for the right moment to strike back and inflict maximum damage. He has just done so, leaving Washington and its allies/vassals reeling from the shock.

Astute analysts have long speculated that the end of the US Empire might come not through war or politics, but some cataclysm in the financial markets. Is that watershed process now underway? With a plague, unrepayable and still-growing debt, a fragile and inflated economy, financial implosion, severe imperial overstretch, and too-obvious government incompetence, is the American Empire facing the perfect storm?

Like Russia, China has been putting up with relentless US hostility and persecution. Will Beijing, like Moscow, seize the moment to force payback time, especially on core Chinese interests?

Global instability is always a big concern for the Communist Party of China, so it will act cautiously. But along with the danger is a rare opportunity to downsize the US imperium and cut its capacity to continue preying in the world.

Success in doing so would benefit not only China, Russia, and other nations that Washington considers its enemies. It would also lead to a more stable, prosperous, and peaceful world, one driven by win-win cooperation instead of zero-sum competition and conflict.

Al Peffley

Last night it was confirmed that we have our first 2019nCoV case in Cowlitz County being treated at St. Johns Hospital. There are probably a few more unreported infections festering in our county. International freighter ship crews come off the ships on leave to buy supplies in town. The odds are some of these maritime visitors from global epicenters may be carriers of the virus and may show no or minimal signs of infection symptoms.

As I commented on before, leaders from many western states and Canadian provinces were briefed by the Canadian Health & Human Services Minister about the SARS outbreak that swept across Canada in 2003-04 at a large regional pandemic exercise at the SEATAC Red Lion Hotel. He said the greatest hurdle they had to overcome was getting people who lived in fear and social isolation for two months to get out in public and back to living a more normal life. They restricted the pathogen transmittal vectors by voluntary isolation techniques similar to what's happening now. The issue was building back public trust in economic revival after two months of strict isolation measures (which did keep the infection rates at a level their socialized medical system could tolerate.) Canada does have a smaller national population and an average density of people per square mile lower than CONUS (especially when you get away from the Ontario population centers.) He said he was on TV almost every day giving status reports over a three month winter period. He shaved his short beard when he began wearing respirators while touring the R&D labs assigned to find an injected or oral antivirus drug to kill the virus in patients already infected (and to protect ER and ICU medical team first responders.) Afterward, viewers across Canada commented to him when they met him out in public places about his facial hair changes they noted over the SARS recovery and restoration time period.

Requested provisioning budgets in around the 2006-10 time frame for pandemic medical equipment and supplies were reprogrammed by a short-sighted Congress and the new Administration to fund other social assitance programs unrelated to critical incident response preparations. Hospitals were purchased by for-profit, financial holding companies who received special loans and subsidies from the federal government. Pandemic planning, preparation, and supply were de-emphasized from 2008-2015 by DHHS, FEMA, CDC & DHS under Administration policy changes to deploy and sustain a new bureaucratic health care system (inappropriately short-titled the "Affordable Care Act".) Specialist doctors left newly reorganized, socialized health care organizations in droves. Foreign-trained generalist, "family" doctors from other cultures with little or no pandemic training or treatment skills became the norm in instutional socialized medicine organizations. Lobbying health insurance providers began to totally control the new hybrid, semi-socialized health care system experiment. Private healthcare practices and clinics that provided many specialist medical resources have dramtically decreased in large urabn areas. Specialists are in high demand during a pandemic, but in short supply by federal government law and regulations fiat (and may become overworked, literally, to death from exhaustion and little rest.) The Italian socialized health care system is at the brink of collapse due to this pandemic, and they are reported to have imported a lot of immigrant labor into their northern industrial complexes. The letter Tim posted confirms these observations. Who would have ever thought we would see the day when major food retailers like Costco, WINCO, Walmart, and Fred Meyer would look like the empty food distribution store shelves and food lines in the old Soviet Union? All this in less than a month. Incredible...

Al Peffley

Daily Pfennig = blatant Communist propanda news media source. Never let a global catastrophic disaster go to waste. Responsibility transfer is a commonly-used tool in adversarial information and psyops warfare tactics.

The world economy has become a more fragile interrelationship between human cultures, especially in energy resource production change, allocation, and earnings. The Fed lowered the interest rate to ZERO for a limited time during our containment and recovery response period, it was reported yesterday. Expect more international posturing and biased mass media psyops programs as global cultures struggle to obtain power shifts using this common man's misery. Propaganda is not new to traditional Communist doctrine strategy and population control application. Russia has not evolved into a true democracy or republic type of political system, but into a more sophisticated dictatorship with central committees (a mutated socialist system), in my view. Even the Democrats say (when convenient) Putin is not our ally or economic trade leadership friend. We are now energy independent from Russia and the Middle East. That bothers Russia, and they actively seek to destroy our energy independence along with our new world market supply influences. China is just trying to recoup plans to re-establish itself as the world's economic goods supplier superpower and save face in the light of western world criticism and skepticism over their pandemic response actions. Same story, different day.

Tom Chavez

If you've ever read the Daily Pfennig, Al, you would know that the writer, Chuck Butler, is an all-American capitalistic free marketeer, baseball lovin', 'show me' Missourian, professional market trader and banker. I was surprised to see that article but your accusation of him being a communist propagandist is waaay off. Your boiler plate anti-communist propaganda response is shallow. Maybe we need a deeper analysis, and a fresh perspective. I think that is what Chuck is implying. MATH. Make America think harder.

Gregg Wilson

Tom,

I will go for extremely shallow. If Chuckie is a capitalist then I am a monkey's uncle.

Tom Chavez

I have to speak up for Chuck because I respect his experience and find him interesting. I don't know why he quoted that yesterday, but I suspect we are all monkey's uncles for missing his point. Maybe 'capitalist' and 'communist' are not very good descriptives. Both Russia and China have very capitalistic qualities. Anyway, here is an excerpt from his today's letter:

A couple of months ago, I was interviewed by good friend, Dennis Miller, at www.milleronthemoney.com and was asked whether the U.S. would see negative rates….

At that time I said, “yes, we will see negative deposit rates, but I doubt that our Treasuries will carry negative yields.” There’s more Government debt out there from around the world that have negative yields, and I just didn’t think we would be that stupid… 

I’m going to change my answer now, given what I now know… I mean when times change, opinions change, that’s a given… And when the 10-year Treasury’s yield dropped by 100 basis points last week, in one fell swoop… I did my best Bob Dylan impression, and said, “The times they are a changin’.”

Yesterday, I said that an economic analyst had called for U.S. GDP to drop 5% in the 2nd QTR. A dear reader sent in a note telling me that he didn’t know what the economic analyst was smoking but if the U.S. economy only lost 5% in the 2nd QTR, he was a monkey’s uncle! And I tend to agree with him, the way everything is getting shut down, and I mean everything, with the only things still open for business are grocery stores, and Pharmacies… 

 I think we can look to China’s mess of economics since they’ve been fighting the virus longer than we have… And yesterday this is what the Chinese economic data looked like: 

• Chinese Retail Sales crashed 20.5% YTD YoY – the first annual drop on record and four times worse than the -4.0% expectation

• Chinese Industrial Production collapsed 13.5% YTD YOY – the first annual drop on record and more than four times worse than the -3.0% expectation

• Fixed Asset Investment plunged 24.5% YTD YoY – the first annual drop and more than twelve times worse than the expected 2.% contraction.

OH boy! Can’t wait for that to happen here! NOT!  But I think it’s a very good indication of what will happen here to our economy, as this virus continues to spread…

For more "propaganda" from Chuck: http://www.dailypfennig.com 

Robert Bramel

For economic issues it's always a good idea to listen to economics profiessionals

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opinion/pelosi-powell-coronavirus.html

Gregg Wilson

There are reports indicating that quinine can subdue the coronavirus or lessen symptoms, or make for faster recovery. One can order it through Amazon. Get yours before there is a stampede. 

Tom Chavez

"Interesting Times" for the Economy

We think of ours as a capitalistic economy. What does that mean? Does it mean the markets decide? And communism is where the government decides? In the US the government decides the interest rates and recently cancelled reserve requirements for banks, which means that if interest rates go negative, and people want to take their money out of the banks, it may not be there. I suspect that the government is behind manipulations in all major markets including metals. Most countries use markets and government controls. A dichotomy between capitalism and communism doesn’t do justice to economic reality. 

It may get more complicated, according to Ambrose Evans Pritchard of the U. K. Telegraph, quoted by Chuck Butler: 

"Central banks have exhausted almost all their usable ammunition under existing rules yet still failed to calm markets or to unfreeze critical parts of the global financial system.

This moment is what we all feared. The danger now is that global recession — it is no longer “if,” as we are weeks into it already — will morph into something more intractable: a deflationary depression with a wave of defaults that breaks the capitalist system as we know it.

So what can be done? Let me take an instant stab. Either the rules are changed fast or we risk uncontrolled global liquidation. The Federal Reserve must be unshackled to act as a buyer-of-last-resort for the corporate debt markets, for great swaths of the credit system, and for Wall Street equity indexes.

The European Central Bank must acquire powers to act as a genuine lender-of-last resort for eurozone sovereign states. It must do exactly what Christine Lagarde refused to do when she blurted out last week that “the ECB is not here to close bond spreads” — an expression lifted word for word from the German board member, Isabel Schnabel, which tells us who is in charge of that institution in the post Draghi era.

This must be backed by a fiscal blitz even greater than in 2008-09, with pledges to “socialize” the drastic losses faced by industry and private firms. What was done for banks last time despite misconduct must now be done for others.

There must be tax holidays, sweeping state guarantees for firms, credit forbearance, a temporary suspension of mortgage payments (pushing out the maturity), and moral hazard be damned — all under the umbrella of financial repression.”

Chuck Again….  You know, I sit here and think about all this, and then say, “Chuck, you’ve tried to warn them…. You’ve tried to point out that all that debt was going to bring the financial system crashing down… You’ve… Ah never mind…. Let’s just say, I tried!”

Ken Becker

Regarding quinine, Gregg, are you switching from martinis to gin & tonics?

Al Peffley

No more socialist bailouts of the financial centers after 2008-09 "...misconduct...", and no more loans from China. Let Europe stew in their own kettle that they created with their EU economic pyramid dependency structure.

Let displaced people apply for unemployment and process the claims quickly for two months of social separation. Stop the panic and insanity. As ususal, the governments of the world throw money at every problem to bail out people buying assets like futures investment sales income on credit. Then the transaction collapses because resources start to disappear or change and they have over-extended themselves to make fast money on modified timeline turnover. The idiots who extended credit for this financial "gambling" lose along with the virtual market players. Let the market weed out the weak investors using other peoples' money and bogus credit (including money-laundering bank exchanges) and we will be globally stronger in the long run. The credit bubble is bursting, and the globalists deserve it because they value social and information services more than real physical goods and products.

Try to exist on your IoT devices and "apps" during the outbreak sequestering period. The value of service organization stocks like Facebook is rediculous!

It's been less than two months into this pandemic response and we are doing and saying stupid things globally. I don't remember this level of panic during the H1N1 "Swine Flu" pandemic, do you? The public has become too dependent on dining out and buying stock/bond investments on the Internet with credit. The global "market" will adjust itself and the global financial services industry will have to adapt. Welome to the real world of natural and man-made consequences. Think of this like a long National Holiday break from unrestrained consumerism. This too shall pass.

Gregg Wilson

Hi Al,

Because the federal government went bankrupt three times during the 1890 to 1910 period, it was declared that money was unstable. So, they created the Federal Reserve to "stabilize" money in 1913. During the 1920s, the Federal Reverve loaned money out at 0.5% per year. This caused the great buying of stocks, etc, on credit. It collapsed in late 1929, and led to the Great Depression. By the way, this happened under Republicans.

The president and congress are repeating this insanity right now. Print the money, send everyone $1,000 checks, bail out all businesses, etc. What you have, once again, is very little actual production while horrendous loads of money flood the country. Guess what, massive inflation - your savings are destroyed.

Ken,

We take quinine in pills. We wash it down with martinis.

Tom Chavez

In 2016 the Obama administration produced a comprehensive report on the lessons learned by the government from battling Ebola. In January 2017 outgoing Obama administration officials ran an extensive exercise on responding to a pandemic for incoming senior officials of the Trump administration.

Asked at his news briefing on Thursday about the government’s preparedness, Mr. Trump responded, “Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion. Nobody has ever seen anything like this before.”

The work done over the past five years, however, demonstrates that the government had considerable knowledge about the risks of a pandemic and accurately predicted the very types of problems Mr. Trump is now scrambling belatedly to address.

“Crimson Contagion,” the exercise conducted last year in Washington and 12 states including New York and Illinois, showed that federal agencies under Mr. Trump continued the Obama-era effort to think ahead about a pandemic. That scenario was simulated by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.

The result: The outbreak of the respiratory virus began in China and was quickly spread around the world by air travelers, who ran high fevers. In the United States, it was first detected in Chicago, and 47 days later the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. By then it was too late: 110 million Americans were expected to become ill, leading to 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead.

The simulation’s sobering results — contained in a draft report dated October 2019 that has not previously been reported — drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed.

The draft report laid out in stark detail repeated cases of “confusion” in the exercise. Federal agencies jockeyed over who was in charge. State officials and local hospitals struggled to figure out what kind of equipment was stockpiled or available. Cities and states went their own way on school closings.

Many of the potentially deadly consequences of a failure to address the shortcomings are now playing out in all-too-real fashion across the country. 

President Trump moved from dismissing the coronavirus as a few cases that would soon be “under control” to his revisionist announcement Monday that he had known all along that a pandemic was on the way. “Nobody ever thought of numbers like this,’’ Mr. Trump said on Wednesday, at a news conference. 

In fact, they had.

< from New York Times, today, March 19, 2020 >