One lesson I learned from 2008 is that the powers that be will do everything possible to stop a paper-based financial system from going into deflation and depression. They will be very creative, and all that is possible due to the nature of our system. That was contrary to my expectation, and well… lesson learned. Plan B or a PM economy was early. This time however, there is nothing the Fed or any other financial authority can do about COVID-19. So I am happy that PP makes videos with updates based on science and latest data. Now it’s up to the scientists to help us out here even with ADE as a possible complication.
To me no other news comes close to this. I was completely checked out of following any news for 2 years or so. Markets were happy, people working. The scare of 08 buried away under trillions of electronic 1s and 0s. It seemed like the next crisis was years away. I stopped thinking about debt and interest rate swaps and all that. Bought a 96 4runner and turned it into an off-road savage with front and rear locking differentials. In the back of my mind I knew I was building a SHTF escape vehicle. Have you seen what a duel locked 4X4 can crawl through? I was laughing to myself at the Chinese makeshift road blocks knowing my rig could easily crawl through them haha.
This coronavirus really got my attention and really got me moving, especially after I heard about the unprecedented modern day quarantines. With so much chinese production offline God only knows what the hell is going to happen. India announced they are banning the export of antibiotics due to supply concerns! This is just the beginning I fear.
The world may not be the same after this event plays out. “Made in China” was a huge mistake. We have the keys to the kingdom away to a authoritarian communist regime. Corps made the cash and consumers went along for the savings. IF the supply disruptions become severe are we going back to the way it was? Or will China lose its place as bulk manufacturer.
This could easily be the biggest event of our lives
Make those you want to conquer dependent on you, then pull the plug. Gaslighting, indeed.
Here’s a Google Sheet where you can graph data from all areas to look for trends. If you copy it, you’ll need to replace the data daily with John Hopkin’s data, which is available. The update data link is included in the sheet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FXVgNrTbECcO8X4-hFXhJuqgE5sl-7ddU-IO2ciXCdU/edit#gid=275720644
I find it odd that they still only display 15 for US cases.
How many people are troubled, versus comforted, by the apparent stasis in corona virus cases in the US?
It has now been a week since the CDC confirmed the 15th case in the US…. Since then, deafening silence. No new cases, great right?
What troubles me is the lack of any recovery or worsening of the acknowledged 15 cases. What’s up with North America. The US has 15 cases but only 3 (20%) have recovered. Canada has 8 cases with 2 (25%) recoveries. So what’s wrong with that?
Australia also has 15 cases but 14 (93%) have recovered. The U.K. has 9 cases with 8 (89%) recovered. German and France are lagging with only 57% recovered combined. Go down the list and anywhere that is not being overrun by rapid addition of new cases (Japan, Korea) seems to have >50% recoveries, as high as 87% for Vietnam!
So what’s the deal with the US? Nobody gets better, but nobody even comes up as being in critical condition? If they aren’t in critical conditions why aren’t they recovering? Supposedly 80% should have resolved with mild to moderate side effects by now. Strange…….
No news is not good news. Are they even testing anyone in the US? Supposedly they are screening cases in 5 cities, but the reagents weren’t of high enough quality so they are whipping up more, to be ready……when?
I’ve found it curious we have yet to see anyone trotted out in the media as having recovered. We have a few active from Diamond Princess, and various quarantines, but aside from a statement from a spokesperson here & there, I really can’t find anything from those who beat this thing, at least not in the Wes t.
I understand why people might choose to remain private, but find it odd in a time when overstating is so common that we don’t have at least one or two coming forward to tell their story…
Until governments stop underestimating this thing, there is no other news of importance.
Bitcoin? in it’s own little speculative universe. I’ve been tracking cryptos along everything else and they show absolutely no correlation to world events. One moment it behaves like a safe haven, the next it behaves like a risk asset. If you wanna predict what those are going to do you need a crypto specific website.
Economy? Completely dominated by supply chain disruptions coming out of china now and will continue as such for the coming year. Same dynamics as a traffic jam: Even if the virus clears now, it’s essentially had the same effect as a driver on the highway slamming his breaks out of nowhere, then accelerating back up again, creating “ghost traffic” as we call it here in the Netherlands. Only question now is if it’s a driver slamming his breaks or slamming into the wall.
Articles on how to prepare for the next months? That’s what these videos are. Knowledge is power, and what we know about this virus is still very much in development. As to why there is so much about it; it keeps getting worse. That’s no joke either the more we learn, every time we learn, it gets worse. The only ‘uptick’ we’ve had so far was the report that the virus doesn’t seem to either infect or affect children much if at all.
Trade advice? Simple: DON’T. The market is far above exuberance on the simple premise of “If there is a crash, that’s good, because the fed will print more money”. Completely ignoring that you cannot print away a virus. This seems logic and reasonable to us, but the markets are not behaving reasonable and that’s why you should stay out.
The rest is simple: Have some physical gold/silver in your portfolio (that you have full legal ownership of and preferably is even physically located in a vault near your residence), some cash as well (and yes those hedge each other, in a crisis you’re not trying to make money, that’s how you lose money, you’re trying to lose less then everybody else and gain relative wealth), invest the rest in what you think will do well when the world’s going to go into recession, because it is. Japan and Germany where already going into recession before the virus, the last few drops in global growth where fueled by China massively expanding their debt to $40 trillion and again - because of the virus, no amount of printing is going to coax people from their homes to work. Especially not after the government has lied so much about it, nobody will believe the all clear.
What else… US presidential elections? Doesn’t matter. If the stock market crashes before november we get bernie, if it doesn’t we get trump. Neither has indicated any way to pay for their future plans other then massively run up the US national debt. Foreigners (mainly china and japan) have stopped buying that years ago.
As a result the US went bankrupt on 16 september 2019 in what we now know as “the Repocalypse” where the repo market; aka the shortest term lending facility, broke. Ever since then, the Fed has openly and directly monitized the US national debt, regardless of how hard they scream it’s not QE4. Not that it matters now, cause the virus will bring QE5.
And yes - when your central bank has to buy your national debt because nobody else wants to, that’s called bankruptcy. You could say the central bank shouldn’t intervene and let the market set the rates; which is fine. Then the market will set the rates where the US will be fully bankrupt in a month. Because that’s the real situation.
And if you think that’s a load of malarkey, just ask yourself what would happen if the Fed stops printing money to the tune of $60 billion a month ontop of their $78 billion overnight and daily Repo operations that they’re supposed to be tapering into april this year (don’t make me laugh). Their balance sheet went up $400 billion in 5 months and the repo’s are still oversubscribed twice their size. Another repo crisis is imminent, we just don’t exactly know when it’ll crack.
Of course when the US dollar stops being the reserve currency of the world prices for everything in the US will triple. When the world no longer has use for dollars you’ll have to live within your means. A process which was inevitable once it was taken off the gold standard; though it started long before that.
What else do you wanna know about? The massive swarms of locusts in africa that already are the size of cities and will get 500 times worse within 6 months? Those are the UN’s official estimates, not my alarmism, in fact i have a hard time believing them myself, though i can’t deny the evidence that it’ll be some amount worse then it already is at the very least.
Unusual weather patterns and such? All of that’s nonsense, global warming isn’t happening. Climate change is, of course, the climate has always changed. But as far as temperature increases go: Those numbers are based on the IPCC numbers, which again are based on the US weather service’s weather stations all over the planet. In the 80s, they decreased the number of those, and in the 90s they decreased it again. To the point where there were 87 measuring stations in my home country of the netherlands, measuring an area of 41,873 km2 while there remained 0 in Bolivia, with an area of 1,098,581 km2 and instead, “estimating” the temperature in Boliva from stations in surrounding countries.
Not only that, but sattelite data showed that there was no warming from 1998 to 2007. Warming resumed, at an accelerated pace, in 2008. Well turns out somebody looked into it, and it turns out some weather stations are still very much operational but are no longer taken with in the data. In other words: The IPCC simply changed the definition of “temperature gage”.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/06/weather-stations-disappearing-worldwide/
Oh look, an article from 2008, who would’ve thunk it!
All the “strange and extreme” weather you’ve been hearing is just over reporting by the same media who are so very accurately reporting every detail of this virus. Once you start looking for stuff you can find it.
Australian bush fires? Caused by 200 people arrested for arson as well as a stupid decision by the climate activists to NOT burn underbrush in the off-season where it’s manageable, essentially creating a giant tinderbox of a country. Allowing eucalyptus trees, which are all over the bloody country and filled with FLAMMABLE OIL THAT MAKES THEM EXPLODE, to expand fires greatly. Know where you can also find those trees? Northern California, after they bought them from Australia 100 years ago (and it turns out, these trees take 100 years to mature. GO FIGURE).
Jesus christ what else. Banks? going to fail. Deutsche bank has been bankrupt for quite a while now because they have $360 billion in bad assets and only $140 billion orso in tier 1 capital. That’s been that way since december (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5He-opu-nFk but it’s in dutch, still yknow, source. You can try following the closed captions but be warned it’s google auto translate so half of it makes no sense) and that is why i converted my life savings into physical gold and silver last december.
Well, i saw the same problems coalescing so i bought physical precious metals Before i saw the above video (i bought it on the same day as it came out and i didn’t see the video till 2 weeks later, i did buy an additional bunch of silver because of it though) and 4 days before Zoltan Poszar (the man who built the repo market) declared imminent doom which caused jay power the next day to announce HALF A TRILLION in repo operations.
So far i’ve earned more on that then all the interest ING gave me over the last 6 years on about $11,5k cash in a savings account. My last interest given was 0,01%. And honestly, there is no reason why it wouldn’t go up further.
Aside from a deflationary crash, which we will have. But i also reckon once we hit the bottom and the Fed’s still got the printing press running on all cylinders, because he has to, because the US is broke, literally everybody and their mother will want to buy actual physical gold and the price will skyrocket. So i’m taking the loss on the way down just to be in the market on the way up.
If you can still buy gold at that time, because germany has restricted anonymous cash purchases of gold this year on january 10th, down from €10k to €2000. At current prices that means germans can’t even anonymously buy 1 gold oz coin (https://news.bitcoin.com/germans-rush-to-buy-gold-as-draft-bill-threatens-to-restrict-purchases/)
And no i’m not thinking the government wants to track you so they can confiscate your gold. I’m thinking they want to ban cash and move those purchases to the digital realm so they can prevent more people from buying gold with the flick of a switch! It’s called Capital Controls, it already happened to Cyprus in 2012.
Once you cannot buy anything with your money in the bank, the policy makers have all the time in the world to decide how much of your money they will take to keep the bank alive.
They’re not coming for your gold. They’re coming for your money. Because you know what appreciates the most in a deflationary crisis? Cash. On top of that the crash will be because of a liquidity crisis, meaning nobody either has cash or wants to lend out the cash they have, placing an additional premium on cash.
I think that’s it. All the current calamities more or less summarized. That’s not to speak of the havoc wind and solar power are causing on the power grids, being optimized for stable current and not intermittent current, the escalating situation in Syria where turkey and syria are likely to go to war (which, considering russia is on the side of syria which might be dragged into the fight, with nato on the turkish side being dragged into the fight, is looking like another stage for WWIII) and if it doesn’t happen in syria it happens in libya, the EU pushing very hard for a banking union to share banking debt because of the above story, Brexit of course barely having started yet and the UK will crash out without a deal on jan 1st…
There is plenty of news. None of it good. And most of it will be severely sped up… by the corona virus. It has already been the catalyst of many things; now history just needs to catch up.
What you term as “complaining”, I term as “feedback”. While you and some others may want to read 100% corona virus information, myself and some others appreciate and value this information but would also like to read at least some other information. Other things ARE happening in the world. While you say the other news “repeats over and over” (which it often most assuredly does), the signal-to-noise ratio here has been steadily climbing and if you read through this thread, you’ll see a tremendous amount of news here also “repeats over and over”. Your assumption seems to be that your viewpoint is the only valid one. Mine is that we all have different viewpoints and it is that diversity in our perspective that adds to the strength and value of this site, not a monolithic, obsessive focus. That being said, they are many speculative and non-factual comments being made here by many who do not appear to have scientific or medical backgrounds nor direct personal experience with the corona virus experience that are drowning out the information provided by those that do. So perhaps in your newly assumed role as protector of the PP corona virus thread, you may want to curate the information and provide a truly valuable service. That would be a better use of your time and energy than attacking me.
I encountered this on twitter.
Was going to share w/ you the research and could be the reason Asians are highly susptibe. Please do not be offended, but … Theaflavons (side effect) suppress CD4 immune cells
Theaflavons are in black tea, I used to drink it,but now I’ll stop. HIV drugs stimulate CD4. You need CD4 to be elevated to early stop the virus. pubmed
Tea pigments inhibit Th1 and Th2
What Chris pointed out about dengue (den-gay) is correct. I survived a bout of it back in 1997 in the Brazilian Amazon. Even then they were saying that getting infected with a second strain of dengue had a high risk of turning into a dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF).
It’s a risk I’ve run for over 20 years as I’ve tromped through the jungles (and more hazardously - cities) of South America, Asia, Africa and Australia. So far so good…but it is always in the back of my mind. Time will tell how bad the first go around with COVID-19 is for all of us, never mind a second infection, when/if the second serotype develops.
In Brazil there are at least 3 serotypes of dengue endemic at this point. In some urban areas seroepidemiologic studies show ~70% of the people have been infected with dengue at least once. So lot’s of secondary infections have and will continue to occur. They don’t all turn into DHF. During the outbreak of 2002 in Rio de Janeiro state, of those shown to have dengue, roughly 1 in 300 progressed to becoming DHF. That’s bad but it still isn’t a death sentence. The mortality rate for DHF was ~5%. (link) So for those with dengue ~0.3% progressed to DHF and then they had a 5% chance of death. That works out to 1-2 deaths per 10,000 infections.
I don’t mean to downplay the severity of dengue and DHF. Trust me, you never want to experience ‘break-bone’ fever. I sweated it out for a week. In 2002 there were more DHF deaths than from malaria in Brazil. It is a serious health problem.
The point though is that getting it (and presumably Covid-19) twice is not an instant death sentence. Your risks of dying certainly increase if you get something like this twice but try to maintain perspective on the issue in your preparations. Hopefully we can avoid getting it the first time.
Depending upon the year, it’s identical to or at least similar to the Hilux which has proven its reliability all around the world. There is one difficulty when encountering road blocks. Bullets … since they are not infrequently manned by armed individuals. I hope you have that thing armored.
With the dosages of synthetic vitamin B6 presently being sold, it is quite easy to overdose on it. The result … possible irreversible nerve damage, usually manifested as numbness in the lower extremities.
But other things DO matter and your post has a tone that suggests you are heavily up-regulated about your perception of world events, a condition which can definitely lower your immune system function and just isn’t healthy for you physically or psychologically. You did, however, commit the unpardonable sin of denying climate change. That probably won’t go over big here. Just a word of advice from someone who’s been where you seem to be now (and from the experience of a good friend of mine who was there before me and also now realizes the folly of his thinking). First, do everything REASONABLE you can do to prepare but remain flexible enough to take advantage of the situation no matter what it is. For example, many people here who sold off their stocks and closed their retirement accounts at the time of the financial crisis have come to regret those actions. Second (and more important), NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, you will not be able to stop what is inevitable nor do you truly have any control over the situation. The control you think you have is just an illusion, a reassuring one to be sure (since I partake in it myself to some extent) but an illusion, nonetheless. As someone once said, “The only way to be happy is to tell yourself some lies or to deceive yourself.” When you understand that your existence on this planet is all about spiritual learning and growth, not about the economy, politics, prepping, the corona virus, or whatever, you’ll begin to find some peace and reassurance, regardless of the situation.
When my children, now my grand-children provide me with “negative feedback” like … saying “I am board” they get to dust and clean the heat registers and then start on washing the windows. Or, (which never happens) say they provide “negative feedback” they don’t like what is being served for dinner rather than being grateful, therefore get to help out by being in-charge of doing the dishes and cleaning up.
Yep, being a Granny I’ve seen feedback, complaining, criticizing and bs and lots-a bullshit. So, understand this. I agree with PP contributor George Karpouzis when he said “This could be the biggest event of our lives.” And I believe the PP team are working hard, very hard, and am not going to quietly let anyone unfairly criticize them. That’s MY feedback dude.?
AKGrannyWGrit
Radio broadcast sites virus as market mover. Gold a beneficiary. This is a significant change in media coverage. They specifically mentioned the spread to other countries. I am doing like Chris…upping my preps another notch.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued a new “Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS)” code for providers+labs to test patients for SARSCoV2- allows labs doing tests to bill for the specific test
https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/public-health-news-alert-cms-develops-new-code-coronavirus-lab-test
Saying “I’m board (sic)” is not negative feedback. It’s a child that either isn’t being stimulated or is not in a stimulating environment or hasn’t been taught or hasn’t learned to be a self starter.
And I’m not even sure what this sentence means.
“Or, (which never happens) say they provide “negative feedback” they don’t like what is being served for dinner rather than being grateful, therefore get to help out by being in-charge of doing the dishes and cleaning up.”
Thank you for your comments, dudette. You’re proving my point. Are you familiar with the concept of constructive criticism?
In my post #15 I stated the following -
“This site is doing an amazing job and complaining isn’t necessary or appreciated.“
No where did I use anyone’s name or reply to a specific post. Nor do I use you, you, you.
I am feeling a little attacked here!
“So perhaps in your newly assumed role as protector of the PP corona virus thread, you may want to curate the information and provide a truly valuable service. That would be a better use of your time and energy than attacking me.”
Yes I am familiar with constructive criticism and when I don’t understand someones post I don’t endeavor to completely tear it apart.
Okay, go ahead have the last word then lets move on.
OMG