Last week, I talked about our drought - we had a big storm come through and it dumped two inches of rain! It lasted from Thursday night through Saturday morning. It has been a very long time since we had a whole day of rain - Hurricane Michael may have been the last time. Even though the wind was whipping and the rain was squalling, you could hear the mocking birds singing out in glee! They would flit down to a puddle, get a drink and a bath, then back into their protected nest, singing the whole time. It was wonderful to hear! As part of the storm, a power glitch took out my laptop's extension monitor. Our Spectrum internet was also lost at that time. This occurred right before a meeting, so I had to pull up the meeting on my phone while the cable router reset and found everything (a fifteen minute process). Meanwhile, I pulled an extra monitor that I had and wired it up to the laptop. It's smaller, but it will do until I can replace the failed unit. I was chuckling to myself, because it was comedic with me setting up bluetooth headphones on the phone, dialing into the meeting, troubleshooting the failed monitor, removing the monitor, unwiring the spare monitor, wiring the spare monitor back up, waiting for the internet to come back for the laptop, then moving the bluetooth headphones back over to the laptop, and bringing up the meeting there. LOL. Part of working-from-home.
Into the numbers, then: Worldwide - 2,885,699 cases with 198,532 deaths; USA - 925,038 cases with 52,185 deaths; Florida - 30,533 cases with 1,046 deaths; Pinellas county - 673 cases with 24 deaths. The decade factor is out to 28 days now. The state of New York gave the results of a study that they conducted with a sampling of New Yorkers throughout the state and they found that 15% of the population of New York state has had COVID-19 and that 20% of the population of New York City has had COVID-19. That would imply that over one million people in New York state have, or have had, COVID-19. California is finding similar numbers. This past week, it was uncovered that the outbreak of COVID-19 in the US began months before the initial January 2020 date. The key is the immune system. COVID-19 invades through the mouth, then opportunely comes across a protein that triggers it. It is not alive, but the unfolding of the proteins and the opportunistic nature of the virus make it appear to be living. It then transfers its RNA to the host cell which becomes a principal component source for constructing the virus. Part of the RNA sequence also creates chemicals that prevents the transmission interferon, the messenger to you immune system. This can go on for months, with the infestation getting worse and worse each day. And then, some stray messages of interferon are received by nearby healthy cells, and it's "game on." The healthy cells heighten their defenses while signalling for help. When the immune system finally arrives to eradicate the corona virus, it is well entrenched and the immune system removes the infected cells. These are lung tissue, however, and the response by the immune system reduces the capability of efficient O2 transfer in the lungs, causing the patient to have an episode of COPD. I have COPD and I understand those numbers. Three things will always get their fill of oxygen: your brain, your heart, and your reproductive organs. So, as oxygen is starved from the body, the other organs take the damage: kidneys, liver, intestines, pancreas, etc. - they begin to shutdown; and when you can no longer process food or waste, you die. I keep a close eye on my pulse oximetry, and so far, I have primarily been above 90%.
When I worked for International Paper in Selma, Alabama, I had a 45 minute drive into work each morning. There was a radio show that I listened to, called "John boy and Billy's Big Show." They had a saying: "Just when I thought you said the stupidest thing ever, you keep talking." This fits into that bag - the president of the US suggested that people shoot up disinfectant in order to kill the corona virus. This caused a ridiculous amount of backlash, with Lysol putting out a statement that their products are not meant for infusion, and the AMA stating that they do not concur with the White House's view, HHS telling people not to do that, and the president saying that he was being sarcastic later that day. The notion fell out of a study by DHS. Homeland Security? It's not peer reviewed, and I take it as propaganda. This is on top of senators suggesting that states file for bankruptcy. Like a freaking piece of paper will fix it. In addition to this, the states of Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina have started easing restrictions, with Georgia going so far as opening beauty salons and bowling alleys. That, too, drew a lot of flack. There have been many demonstrations at various state capitals to ease restrictions. These have had attendance of a few to a few hundred. To me, these are the pawns of people setting the table for the presidential election later this year. Those people funding these events are never part of the event - they let the pawns do that.
It has been a crazy week economically. Gas continues to fall - $1.67/gal, locally, last that we saw it. Oil had a nutso week - it went below zero on Monday. If you held futures that were due on Monday, you had to pay someone to take the oil off your hands - there was no place to put it. So, now the fedearal goverment is buying futures for futures in order to stabilize that market. So far, that abstraction is holding - but it's a shell game to me. Wouldn't it be even better to reduce our reliance on oil and gas even further, especially now? Well, oil is too entrenched in the brokerage's baskets to afford displacing it. Then we'll never be rid of it, and because of that, we will be doomed to global warming. The DJIA was up this week, beginning at 23628 on Monday morning, and closing at 23767 on Friday. This is almost flat, but an uptick is an uptick. 26 million americans have applied for unemployment. That's 7.8% of the population.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are grey
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away.
- Jimmie Davis/Charles Mitchell, "You are my Sunshine", 1939
