Quirky thoughts from an old man.
Covid 19, formerly The Corona Virus, is real but that there has been a massive overreaction to it. Back in March and April I predicted that the USA and the world would survive the Corona Virus and would in fact continue to thrive. I’m sticking with that prediction.
I borrowed this image from a postcard on Postcrossing. The wording was originally borrowed from a British WWII poster and is now ubiquitous on social media and on postcards.
It isn’t enough to sanitize, you also have to leave a physical sign that the area has been sanitized.
Thank you Pedro!
And so the pandemic response enters the “Security Theater” phase. Like taking off your shoes at the airport it is a response to the need to “do something.”
If you want to do something Wash Your Hands again.
“Germ” is an imprecise word used by the unscientific to refer to viruses or harmful bacteria. Microbiologists and epidemiologists do not use the term “Germ” except when needing to communicate with the unscientific.
Credit to George F. for clearing this one up.
What happens to “The germ of an idea.” under this more precise definition?
Photo is of Lily like flowers that came with Nurit’s white roses for Mothers Day from Lilli.
The vast majority of our national wealth isn’t money or gold or real property or personal property. Our wealth is intellectual, intangible capital. We know how to do stuff, and that’s what makes us richer.
Why is this important? Because it explains why we can restart the economy after the COVID-19 shutdown. We know how to do stuff. We hit pause, to blunt the virus storm, now we can hit restart. We haven’t forgotten how to do the stuff that made us rich.
Lots can still go wrong. A particularly fragile part is the financial system. But I’m pretty positive that we can make it work again.
Photo Credit Steve Gerst. We had rain showers during our hike this morning and Steve got this photo.
Idea credit to Fred Hochberg author of Trade is Not a Four Letter Word
I just finished binge reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Even conceding that for me a lot of it is confirmation bias, I found it to be one of the best books I’ve read in years. It taught me not only lots of things I didn’t know about the world, it also taught me new ways to think about the issues facing the world. And it made me confront a couple of mistakes I make when forming my opinions. Yes it is germane to our current pandemic.
A couple of quotes: (i’m saving lots of them for future Maxims.) “Urgency is one of the worst distorters of our worldview.” and “Cultural and religious stereotypes are useless for understanding the world.”
On March 4 I predicted that:
The Corona Virus is not going to be a terrible world-wide epidemic.
The Corona Virus is not going to cause a world-wide depression.
And again on March 24 I made some specific predictions about number of deaths, less than three million and the Dow not lower than 14,500. I’m going to stick with these predictions. Even in the eye of this terrible storm I’m pretty sure that we will survive and thrive. And it will be to some extent because of the institutions that everybody is so ready to criticize today. The WHO, 3M, the CDC the political institutions.
Special thanks to the Queen of England for her reassuring words.
Is it time to get back into the market?
Photo is of rain and poppies along the Grand Canal near the Pueblo Grande Museum on March 12, 2020 BC (Before Corona)
I’m feeling so good I’m thinking about making some henges. I am definitely symptom free for the second day in a row. But it is a little bit like pins and needles. You know when you got them but your not exactly sure when they went away.
Photo is Matchbook Henge from a few years ago.
Since many of you are sheltering at home and are already giving up on reading Thackeray or Adam Smith I’d like to recommend The Widow’s Strike by Brad Taylor. It is a thriller that has a main plot element a virus. So it is timely, time consuming and does not require much concentration. It is not War and Peace. I listened to it on Audible while playing Spider Solitaire. I normally don’t read this genre but this one was a pleasant distraction with the benefit of learning a few things about viruses.
