Correia On Current Events

Normally little observational posts end up on Facebook, but I’m still in FB jail for a few more weeks, so here goes. Current events, rapid fire edition:

Corona Virus: I’m super glad to see that the same people who become experts on literally every other topic as soon as it hits the headlines are also epidemiologists now too.

I just watched an actual PhD scientist medical doctor get into an argument about how diseases spread with a lady who sells herbal soap for a living, and she told the doctor to “get educated”.

Yes, it’s a serious disease and all around pain in the ass, yes, it is dangerous and people will die, but it isn’t the end of the world. In other words, calm down, Karen. Your perpetual freak out does absolutely nothing.

Though I haven noticed that most of the really bad freak outs tend to be politically motivated, which is just pathetic. The media really really wants people to be scared, and they’re praying for the economy to crash. They’re sick bastards.

I just got back from TupeloCon. I went through three airports. On Friday out, planes were full, didn’t see a single mask. On Monday home, lots of extra elbow room on the flights, and lots of people wearing masks.  I probably could have a made a fortune selling bootleg hand sanitizer by the squirt.

Also, really observing people at the airport with this topic in mind, man, many of you are disgusting. Quit rubbing your eyes after touching the gross ass hand rails on the train.  And to think, this is how people act when they know there’s a global pandemic. We get a real bad ass disease, and y’all are gonna die.

I did see one dumb ass cough like crazy on a plane without covering his mouth, and then he got half a dozen withering death glares from people who looked like they wanted to climb over the seat and beat his ass, which he noticed,  then behaved after that.

Toilet Paper Hoarding: okay, this one makes me laugh. However, as a low level prepper I’m not going to make fun of these people for suddenly realizing just how unprepared they are in case they need to actually hunker down for a while. Anything that gets people thinking about that is a good thing.

You toilet paper guys might want to actually get some, you know, real provisions and stuff while you are at it. Hell, if you had to quarantine for a couple weeks, a few cases of ramen noodle will be more valuable than that toilet paper. (worst case scenario, you should all go stock up on Larry Correia novels. I recommend the mass market paperbacks for softness. And no, I’m not offended, I get royalties either way! It’s a win/win)

If you don’t understand the fundamental principles of food storage, find your local Mormon and ask them. If they aren’t hard core about food storage, I guarantee they know someone in their ward who is.  We are amateurs compared to some of the people we know, but if we had to quarantine for a month, the Lovely Mrs. Correia wouldn’t even be worried. The only hard part would be that I’d probably run out of Coke Zero within two weeks and be really grumpy.

Political Vultures:   These are the people who really extra suck, because they refuse to let a good crisis go to waste. I can still read FB (I just can’t comment) so I keep seeing the same pieces of shit, sharing every single fear mongering article that takes this crisis and tries to score cheap political points about how it’s all some politician who they don’t like’s fault. Because you know, if their guy was in the White House, then suddenly diseases will no longer spread or something.

On that note-

Biden vs. Sanders: 

Hahahaha haahaha ahahahaha aaaa ah

snort

That is about the most pathetic match up of losers to ever occur in any political contest in the history of ever.

Sanders is a Marxist doofus. His plans are gibberish. His philosophy is bullshit, designed to appeal to wishful thinkers who can’t do math, and greedy ass mooches. But don’t worry, he’s a total squish without an ounce of fight in him, so the DNC’s just gonna roll him over to make from for their chosen one…

Joe Biden!  Who is either suffering from dementia, or is just really really dumb. (insert porque no los dos? meme girl here)

They can’t let Joe speak for more than five minutes because they know he’ll go off script and start babbling incoherently. And I’m not talking Trumpian style stream of consciousness yammering, but weird ass, dog faced pony soldiers, corn pop, hairy legs, girl sniffing, finger biting, he’ll slap you, fight me IRL, you wanna step outside?

I’ve known people who worked with Joe Biden years ago, and they all said the same thing. With him, what you see is what you get. There is no act. That’s how Joe Biden is. And he was a weird scoundrel back then, but I’m pretty sure his mind is going now.

On the plus side, Jill Biden moves faster than the Secret Service, and that lady will throw hands. Respect.

All the DNC needed to do was find somebody decent and dignified to run against Trump, but oh no, they went batshit crazy instead, and their anointed one is a doddering, senile, fool, who is so corrupt his son, Crackhead McStripperbang makes millions of dollars for imaginary jobs not at all related to his dad’s position, and they don’t even try and hide it. But don’t worry, Biden’s gonna come from behind, because nothing wins swing states like threatening to slap construction workers who are suspicious that Beto O’Dork actually does want to take their AR-14s.

As somebody who would rather reach into his own chest and pluck out his heart than vote democrat, I will admit that I find it terribly amusing all the liberals I know who are weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth about Old Rich White Guys There Are No Women Or People Of Color Running… While Tulsi Gabbard is over there, like WTF?

Sorry, progs. She said hurtful things about Hillary, so the media and Google basically Thanos snapped her into dust.  Meanwhile, the right are eagerly betting on whether Nikki Haley is going to run in 2024 or not… So who are the real misogynist bigots?

The Economy: Luckily all of those people who suddenly became epidemiologists last week have become economists this week, so now we know that the end times are upon us and everyone should panic.

Markets go up. Markets go down. Duh. If this freaks you out that badly, then playing the stock market probably isn’t for you.  On the bright side, I’ve been complaining about companies having all their manufacturing eggs in one Chinese basket since my first Fortune 100 job back in the early 2000s, and we were slowly farming out all our vital production stuff there.

It’s stupid to have everything depending on one source. Assuming they don’t all die of Corona Virus, this shake up should be an amazing opportunity for places like India and Mexico.

Russia vs. Saudi Arabia… All I’m gonna say there is that it sure does make me glad we invented Fracking.

Now, as for the proposal to get rid of Payroll Tax… Oh hell yeah! That sounds fantastic. That’s basically giving everybody an 8% raise, 16% if they get rid of employer match too. Only I don’t think they should get rid of it for the rest of the year, I think they should get rid of it FOREVER.

But Correia, people who think the government should run literally everything in the universe will whine, won’t that mean the government gets less money? Allow me to clarify, I DON’T CARE. We should cut everything. And I mean everything. We could fire 1/3 of the government tomorrow and all it would do is open up more parking.

Since the economy basically runs of feelings, the press is really hoping they can spin this into a depression that they can pin on Trump in the mind’s of the voters. (wait, didn’t the same press try to tell me that Trump was Putin’s plant, which is why Russia is bombing the oil market to … whatever… I can’t keep up with the narrative anymore)

Hermit lockdown blog update
House of Assassins (Book 2 of the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior) Now in Paperback

110 thoughts on “Correia On Current Events”

  1. I’ve commented this in a couple places, but I figure I’ll put it here too, because it confirms what Larry is saying about how Biden only knows how to follow a script. A first-hand account of hearing him speak:

    I saw Biden speak about a year ago. We only went because the ticket was part of a package deal with other people we did want to see, so we figured “why not?”

    He was the worst speaker I have ever seen, and I attend a church that invites untrained laypeople to speak every Sunday so I’ve seen some mediocre speakers. He was BAD. Rambling and self-contradicting and occasionally downright creepy. While he was at the podium, he spoke about the importance of cross-party friendships and interactions, and bemoaned the decrease of people in Congress all having lunch together even if they were in different parties. Then once he left the podium, it was all complaining about Republicans and snide criticisms of Trump (referred to as “the guy in the White House”). Also lots of references to “my buddy Barack” and a really weird and out-of-context anecdote about an old friend who kept calling him Joey.

    Somewhere in that mess he paid lip service to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, mentioning the importance of freedom of speech, right to a fair trial, and so on. One right was VERY noticeable in its absence.

    And all the blue haired ladies sitting right in front of me kept saying “mhmm” and “oh yeah” and nodding their heads like it was a gospel revival.

    And this was supposedly just a paid speaking engagement for him to talk about his experiences as Vice President. He very obviously used it as a campaign rally.

      1. Yup. A large part of the argument was the guy trying to explain what semi-auto is while Biden shouted at him about how we don’t need “machine guns”.

        1. What bugged me most in that clip, even beyond the “AR-14” bit, was how Creepy Uncle Joe flipped out even more when the guy reminded Joe that he worked for us.

  2. Meanwhile, The governor of WA, having abandoned his quixotic run for President (what? You didn’t know the governor of WA was one of millions running for the Democratic nomination?) has announced measures to fight COVID-19 in Skedaddle and Martin Luther King County, which include banning all gatherings of 250+ –how many were at that press conference? — but “COVID-19 is ten times more fatal than the flu” (which is BS) and more drastic measures are necessary.
    Also, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
    Also, the chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams.
    Man, the statists are loving this.

    1. > “COVID-19 is ten times more fatal than the flu” (which is BS)

      It depends on how one counts it, but assuming that one is talking about fatal cases if infected with one disease or the other, COVID-19 has 2.3% ish fatality rate, flu has 0.1% ish, that is more than twenty times more fatal than flu.

      Unless you are counting probability of dying to either flu or COVID-19.

      1. “COVID-19 has 2.3% ish fatality rate”

        No it doesn’t

        Or, rather, we have no idea what the fatality rate of the Wuhan Flu is, because we have no good idea what goes in the denominator. Heck, we really don’t even know what goes in the numerator.
        South Korea has 7,755 confirmed cases of WuFlu, with 54 dead, 247 recovered, and 7,454 still active.

        So 0.69% of infected people are dead. Given their widespread testing, we might actually know the denominator here. But, since we don’t know how many of the “active” cases will die, we don’t know the numerator.

        In pretty much every place else, we have no idea of how many asymptomatic or low / flu-like symptom people aren’t being diagnosed as having it, so we just don’t know the denominator.

        tl;dr: we have no clue what the death rate is, and won’t for at least another couple of weeks

        1. Yeah, South Korea has the best data right now. If their current rate holds, That 0.69% puts it at about 7x as deadly as the flu (20k-52k) on a Case Fatality Rate basis. That would put it at between 140k and 364k deaths in the US, if it had the same level of immunity that the flu does in our society.

          Since it doesn’t, that number will probably be higher. How much higher we don’t know. The extreme case at 0.69% would be if 100% of the population got it, which would be 2.3 million deaths. That number is unlikely to be hit, but it’s the upper bounds if it goes here like it did in South Korea on CFR. It could get contained much earlier than that, or we could come up with a much more effective treatment before it spreads to everyone.

          There’s some promising treatments that have gone through the early phases of human testing already in the past, that they’re doing Phase 3 trials on now, so hopefully one of those is effective and we can shut this down long before it reaches that level. Basically all the stuff we’re doing right now is buying time for both the trials to complete, and for the ICUs to not be overloaded. Even the worst case scenario on the first pass through the population, it’s not catastrophic, just kind of bad, and could double our natural death rate in the country for a year. The better cases are far more likely.

          1. That 0.69% puts it at about 7x as deadly as the flu (20k-52k) on a Case Fatality Rate basis. That would put it at between 140k and 364k deaths in the US, if it had the same level of immunity that the flu does in our society.

            The reason why the flu infects so many people each year is because it’s already widespread, so it has a lot of places from which it can mutate into new versions that become “this year’s flu”.

            The Wuhan Virus started in a single location. So people will have to work much harder to get it exposed to as many people as are exposed to the flu each year.

            Between the China travel shutdown, the European travel shutdown, and “social distancing”, I think we will end up in the US with fewer Americans getting the Wuhan Flu than get the normal flu.

          2. IMHO, and I’m not a medical sort, part of the panic is because of so many dying over in Italy, which, from what I hear, has LOTS OF REALLY OLD PEOPLE, and a very social culture.

            And the reports of triage going “You’re old and we have to focus on treating the people we can still get future taxes out of.” (Which has me recoiling at how awful that sounds.)

      2. Except that one counts all infected and the other only counts proven infections. Numbers out of South Korea are a much more modest 0.7%

      3. I’ll point out that we don’t have all the data on this thing yet, so it’s really 2.3% ish for now. Thus far it’s been in a relatively small portion of the population whereas we’ve had over a century of in information on the virulence and lethality of the flu. While panicking does no one any good, being concerned and also being critical of government institutions whose sole purpose was prepare for, prevent the spread of, and fight diseases such as this, is important. I expect we’ll see quite a few people die from this because people don’t take it seriously enough. Others will die due to the panic and instability resulting from the general ignorance of the population.

      4. It has a 1% fatality rate. That’s the final count, even though they had it as high as 4% in guess work. But yeah. Its 1%. And don’t forget the flu is perennial. It comes around every year. Meaning it kills 46,000 ( in the USA alone) every single year. So saying its 10X more deadly then the flu is rather absurd. Still, figures are funny things.

      1. Exactly, so the mortality rate is probably much lower. We know how many people have died of it precisely. But we don’t really know how many people get sick stay home, and simply get better. Im sure its many.

  3. You know who the real victims of the toilet paper panic are? People that buy in bulk anyways and it just happens to be when they need to buy toilet paper.

    1. The weather is warming up so I can start air brushing minis in my garage again, but I need to buy a new respirator and latex gloves. I’m afraid to go shopping for those. 😀

      1. Lucky not that little so and so. It’s been too cold to prime anything when I’ve been free to do so

      2. I just got an airbrush for my birthday a week or so back and I need a respirator. Oh well. Guess I will just use a fan and plenty of ventilation.

    2. That’s why I restock on it when I’m halfway through what’s on hand. Helps that I’m single, and a Sam’s Club bulk pack lasts me over a year.

    3. We bought some extra. Don’t need it right now, but we have the space to store it, have the cash to buy it, it’s pretty much non-perishable, and the price hasn’t / hadn’t yet gone up.

      Also stocked up the freezer and pantry with long life foods.

      We could easily survive a month on what we have. We would enjoy surviving two weeks on what we have.

      Obviously, we need more freezer space.

      Oh, and Larry, good luck getting a respirator of any sort from Home Depot or Lowes. If you have a good local or regional chain, try there, first

  4. One thing these sudden hoarder doesn’t realize is bullets is more valuable than toilet paper. And bean and salt.

      1. drat – I had just about convinced myself that I should skip it – RDU already has some cases, from some folks going to a bio-research sort of conference – research triangle and all that.

  5. The big issue with the oil stuff is right now there’s no way for anyone to make a profit, but especially the American fracking companies. It’s more expensive than classic oil extraction methods. I’ve got family here in Houston that works in corporate law, and they’re swamped with bankruptcy filings as the smaller companies which have already been hurting from depressed oil price are falling left and right. Which means the survivors are going to be primarily the massive oil producers we all know and love.

    1. The swamp of bankruptcy filings from the 2015 oil crash started falling off last year. I haven’t seen a new one in a long time. There’s always a delay.

      This is hitting some of the really big companies that rely on stock prices. The little guys either figured out how to manage to wait out $30 oil or they’re already gone.

      Saw one email (not to us or from us or about us) asking if someone was seriously going to frack a drilled well now instead of waiting for prices to improve. Probably there will be a lot of “shut-in” wells waiting for a turn around.

      In the mean time we should all do our best to enjoy really cheap gas. 🙂

      1. The 2013 crash wrung out all the fast and loose players. Fracking wells can be capped and put into storage to wait out the war. I can’t see Russia winning this war unless they resort to violence, which is eminently possible. It ain’t doing Iran any favors either.

  6. All I can say is, Nikki Haley would be the best flipping President. I’d rereg as Republican to help make that happen.

  7. Panic buying. My wife yawned, looked at her supply, and bought some alfredo sauce to fill a hole in her inventory. She does, however, get nervous if we have less than six months of dog food on hand.

  8. I still say the people who hoard toilet paper must all be planning to eat the Flaming Burrito from Hell. Why else?

    Biden: He’s obviously performing the same function as Dan Quayle in reverse. Quayle was life insurance for his president; Biden will have a convenient coronary shortly before swearing in, so that the establishment candidate he chooses as running mate (probably Hillary but I wouldn’t count out Pelosi, DiFi, or even Moochelle Obama) can waltz right in. Of course they’re still in denial about the whupping they’re going to get, or else they think they’ve worked out a new way to cheat in the general election.

    The economy: The greatest harm the virus will do here is to interrupt the supply of nearly all pharmaceuticals used in the US because China holds a near-total monopoly on them. One hopes the manufacturers will be able to resume production here before the shortage kills more people than the virus does.

    Russia vs Saudi: Why would they race the price to near zero except to try to shut down US oil production by under-pricing it? It might work, too.

    1. Why else?

      they have teenage daughters, that’s why else. Are you aware of what the monthly TP consumption rate of a household is *before* and *after* the teenager moves out looks like?

      It goes from “Going to Sam’s to pick up the weekly pack” to “Uh, we haven’t had to buy any this year, have we?”

  9. The one funny thing about being a “layman” today is that it’s too-often trivially easy to out-expert the experts.

    I was talking to an economist who works for a consortium of banks a few weeks ago, and he said that the Coronavirus would:
    1) Not have more than a 1% effect on the economy
    and
    2) Not affect supply chains, because his “supply chain expert” told him so.

    I looked him in the eye and pointed out that I, personally, was already experiencing supply chain issues for goods from China. Computer and VR system parts, to start.

    He looked at me like I’d grown another head. He had no freaking idea what was coming down the pipes – and this was in mid-February!

    1. Well, the stock markets’ chaos notwithstanding, he *might* still be right about the 1% bit, since recession/growth are defined by GDP. The specific impact of the virus may ultimately be small when it comes to consumer spending. Either way, because of the definitions used for that sort of thing, we really won’t know until July at the earliest, maybe September or October.

      But supply chains being unaffected? By a newsworthy virus breaking out to the point that even the CCP can’t keep it quiet? Yeah, no, that’s just willful ignorance.

      I’m willing to bet he’s a globalist-style Keynesian, isn’t he?

  10. I’ve lived in too many places where the supply line is fragile enough that a natural disaster would/could do away with electricity, gas, water, food, ATM’s, phones, you name it. We call those places ‘California’ and ‘New York’.
    Seriously, when I was a kid, NY could weather any storm and there’d be food in the stores the next day? Now? They run out of food and don’t restock for 2 weeks.
    California is just as bad. I guess it might have something to do with no one wanting to keep any stock because the IRS punishes you for it?
    In any case, I keep a couple months survival rations, water filters, etc. Along with all the food in the freezers (I have generators to keep ’em going) and in the pantry. Also, I live in farm country now! And I already buy all my meat from local farmers, so not like I’m all that worried about what’s in the food stores.

    1. My perspective:
      JIT (Just In Time) scheduling is greatly to blame for the difference in local supply then versus now. JIT’s introduction had the positive effect of minimizing taxes on inventory-on-hand, warehouse space required for inventory, perishables storage and tracking, and first-in-first-out tracking and locating. On the negative side, local supplies were tremendously reduced (the whole idea), so emergency supplies simply don’t exist, A run on product for emergencies, real or imagined, quickly wipes out stocks, and if transportation is hampered, such as in storms, resupply is inadequate or not at all.

      JIT has saved businesses millions, if not billions, but it has also killed their ability to make major sales when demand spikes. And the consumer gets it in the end, or doesn’t get it, depending on your point of view.

      1. As a B-school faculty member for 30+ years you are right. Plus one more thing.

        Cheap computing power means we can do just in time tied into what sales are going out the door (plus theft & breakage). That makes the lowering of inventory even greater.

  11. One good thing about the Media’s Full On Karen Panic is that people are having to think “what would President Sanders do”, and shudder.
    He’d probably burn down the pharmaceutical companies, throw the epidemiologist into gulags, and shoot the kulaks.

    1. So, let’s sum up:
      1. Travel restrictions
      2. long lines at medical clinics
      3. lack of medical supplies
      4. stores lacking fundamental supplies like water, rice, toilet paper, etc…
      5. people voluntarily staying home to avoid “unclean” people

      This isn’t so much an outbreak as it is a test run for a Sanders Presidency.

    2. I don’t know if any of the news from PH makes it out to the West but I listen to my Mom rant about how everyone over there is running around like headless chickens, declaring quarantine, demanding things that nobody used before ever (like local IDs) and getting angry at anyone who uses public transport to get to the shops for necessary things (like getting money.)

      Sanders would make it worse.

  12. What I don’t understand is why, if there is a run on toilet paper there is not a similar run on kleenex / facial tissue. Coronavirus is a respiratory disease. Do they plan on blowing their noses with butt wipe if they get sick?

    1. I’m not sure that they’re planning at all. But at my work yesterday, I did notice that people were buying papertowels almost as much as toilet paper (we don’t carry kleenex), so they might be and for some reason its not hitting hte news the same way.

    2. Based on my weekly store run in King County, WA (aka US virus outbreak central) yesterday, there is a run on those as well. It just doesn’t make the same funny story in the news. The grocery store I use regularly was out of TP, kleenex, flushable wipes, bleach wipes, jugs of bleach, napkins, brand name paper towels, most flavors of soup, all flavors of ramen, and THERE WERE NO DOUGHNUTS. Also rather low on bread.

  13. For the first time prepper folks stocking up on toilet paper: Purchase MREs instead. After a steady diet of those you won’t need toilet paper.

  14. I dunno, Larry honestly, I find your paperbacks kinda chewy. Couldn’t I just eat your audiobooks instead?

  15. PREACH! I work in the dry food section at my local retail/grocery store.

    At the end of the day, the only thing these people are going to need all this toilet paper for is for living on a diet of canned beans and junk food. Seriously people, Bushman’s and Lay’s Potato chips aren’t going to save you from the apocalypse.

    I’d be completely fine with it if people weren’t being such assholes about it. I seriously had one lady follow me around the store for twenty minutes complaining about how we didn’t have anymore wet wipes. I had clocked out half an hour earlier. That didn’t matter. What did matter was the fact that she and her husband had been planning this cross country road trip ever since he retired and now they would have to travel with the risk of this deadly disease. Why the most reasonable course of action was to head out anyway instead of just postponing it shall forever remain a mystery.

  16. OMG! The STOCK MARKET! MY RETIREMENT!!!!

    The S&P 500 index, at close on March 11 stood at abut 2750. The last time it was at the ridiculously low point was….

    June 3, 2019

    Seriously, if you have to delay your retirement because of that, you suck at investing.

  17. Masks and the medical environs yesterday.
    Med Arts building, ortho office waiting area: 45 minutes, not a single mask.
    Hospital main building, physical therapy waiting area: 30 minutes, not a single mask.
    Parking garage to Med Arts to hospital to pharmacy to parking garage: not a single mask. One person pressed the elevator button and said “Not sure why, but I use my knuckle” and she did.
    Bottom line is NOBODY, patients or staff, with the exception of one knuckle button pusher, is doing anything different, even in a building one might consider a Petri dish in its public areas.

    1. Neither, but not because of the virus. I’d already planned on not going months ago. I was going to do LC, but it’s the same weekend as Salt Lake Showdown and I want to try and win the paining contest again.

  18. I’m glad to see people taking to actually prepare for an emergency but the rush for toilet paper and hand sanitizer is just dumb.

    One tip I do want to share for anyone here who is new to prepping is don’t buy a ton of food that you will keep hidden away for emergencies. Instead cycle your extra food with what you eat daily.

    The reason for this is simple. After a long period of time it takes on the flavor of the packaging. Ask anyone in the military that has eaten a six-plus year old MRE (that includes me). It is still safe to eat but boy is it unpleasant.

    If you cycle through your food supplies it won’t have the MRE flavor to it.

  19. Personally, I can’t wait for the spring . So I can thank Global warming for ending the Chinese Corona Virus.

  20. I’m a Spaniard follower of Larry’s books and posts.

    I’m seeing what’s happening here in Spain anf France, in hospitals and have some medic friends. This is a fucking nigthmare.

    With the european travel ban Trump might have saved thousands of your people.

    Miguel

  21. Old Rich White Guys There Are No Women Or People Of Color Running… While Tulsi Gabbard is over there, like WTF?

    To be fair to the media (yeah, I know, why?) Tulsi Gabbard is polling something like sixth in a three-person race. It’s hard to blame people for ignoring her. The fact that Ms. Gabbard is still running for the Democrat nomination is roughly equivalent to the fact that Zoltan Istvan is running for the Republican nomination: an interesting bit of trivia, but unlikely to affect the real world.

    1. Chicken, egg. Would she have been in last place if the media had given her any attention at all, or if Google hadn’t sabotaged her?
      Not that I’m voting for any crazy democrat ever, I just enjoy the hypocrisy. 🙂

      1. not to mention if the DNC hadn’t changed the rules in the last debate and the next one to exclude her.

    2. Coworker who doesn’t follow US politics… “Who’s left?” Me: “Biden, Bernie…. then I guess Tulsi Gabbard, who’s down around 1%”. “Why’s she still in it?” “The other two are 78…. maybe she thinks she’s the only one that will live to the convention?”

      1. I think she is playing a long game. Positioning herself for realignment of the Democratic Party in a few years after Hillary passes of natural causes.

        Of course, I think Biden is what Hillary intends to use to get Sanders out of the way, so that she can get the convention nomination without cratering her chances. Or so I estimate she thinks.

        Also, Corona is from Mexico. (The branding for the beer is owned by a Mexican company.)

  22. I am NO political expert, nor am I given to Truly Deep Analysis, however, I do believe that I can, in my admittedly meager way, make some commentary upon current political discourse that would be, even if only slightly, elevating compared to the examples to which all too many have become accustomed. Thus:

    “Moo.”

    1. “Moo.”

      That makes more sense to me than everything I’ve heard from leftist media.

      And I don’t even speak Oxish. Or would that be Oxian?

  23. The big killer in this pandemic will be ARDS (google it), which will affect the elderly and anyone with a compromised immune or respiratory system. And where “Cerificate of Need” will bite us sharply on the ass. We do not have the equipment or staff to deal with the potential number of cases.

    1. HA HA HA HA HA! Oh man. that was good. I wonder how many people will make the same connection that you did? The government ACTIVELY PREVENTS the construction of new hospitals in order to protect current monopolies so they can continue to overcharge customers and NOW when we are worried about how much hospital capacity we have will ANYONE (besides you and me) think to blame the government for this lack of capacity? Government supported monopolies are dumb. We should stop doing them.
      For anyone wondering “Certificate of Need” is the paper the government requires you to get in order to get government PERMISSION to build a new hospital. There are a few tragic stories linked to this where a child died because there was no hospital close enough because the government had said there was no “need” to have a hospital there since the one in the next town over was only a half hour away. Sure thing kind big brother. I didn’t “need” a closer hospital. Whatever you say.

  24. Laughing like crazy. My son is in mgmt at Sams and he says it is nuts. I have no idea, WHAT do they think all that tp is going to do??????? Currently working with some P&E clients. They are actually seeing some opportunities right now to offer alternative financial help. So someone is always going to find a silver lining.
    Larry my husband would die if we ran out of classic Coke! ???? otherwise spot on , we have the Mormon basics. It’s really humid down here in Louisiana.

  25. If idiots get the idea of having a couple weeks of food & water on hand will help them sleep better there will be a bright side to this. We have always had a couple a month of food on hand my parents had six months to a year.

  26. Media is desperate to find ‘something’ that will stick to Trump. The B-boys are hilarious to watch, and the Sunday debate will be interesting IF the DNC lets it happen. 2 hours of the two of them unfiltered??? I need more popcorn. Re the Wuhan flu, common sense dictates… And there doesn’t seem to be a lot of that left…

  27. As far as your comments on Tulsi Gabbard, I have to wonder why Democrats, when given the opportunity to vote for one of the maybe three people in the U.S. Congress who has integrity, refuse to consider her.

    I don’t agree with most of her platform, and I wouldn’t vote for her this election, but any sitting politician who joins the military during a war and volunteers to be deployed to a combat zone has my respect.

    If she somehow ever decides to visit my town, she and her family drink for free.

    1. “I have to wonder why Democrats, when given the opportunity to vote for one of the maybe three people in the U.S. Congress who has integrity, refuse to consider her. ”

      Well, … Democrats. The national level party isn’t too big on things like integrity. I’ll forgo passing judgement on the rest of the party.

  28. “But Correia, people who think the government should run literally everything in the universe will whine, won’t that mean the government gets less money?”

    We can certainly hope so. Might give us a fighting chance.

    As to the Kung Flu, the problem I’m having is that we don’t know how bad the damn thing actually is. We have no trustworthy numbers at all.

    Therefore, I’m pulling up the drawbridge at the Phantom Compound O’ Doom and waiting two weeks to see how hard this is going to pop.

    Hopefully we don’t have the Ants vs. Grasshoppers War. Not my favorite fictional scenario, really can’t be bothered seeing it on my front lawn.

  29. My wife works at Walgreens and one guy today tried to buy all of the TP in the store, and got mad when he was told he can buy no more than four, because other customers.

    I really don’t understand the logic.

  30. Hi guys. Not claiming to be an expert and I have a question on
    the corona virus. If the Chinese did insert HIV segments into the virus as has been reported, then can this function as a retrovirus like HIV?
    And does that account for the stories of relapsed victims? We cannot count on the CDC for the truth. They lied
    back during the Obama regime and said that the disease that the illegals brought in was a “mystery disease” when they knew it was being brought in by the “children” that Obama, Soros, and Co were flooding us with. My concern is that since this is Chinese bioweapon, that it may not behave like a natural
    disease. On hoarding: I work at a warehouse and one RV dealer bought over 7000 packs of toilet paper. Cleaned out the entire stock in one order today.
    Oh and Larry, it would sure be nice to have a new book if we have to quarantine, What’s coming soonest?

    1. Totally not a Ministry of State Security disinformation operative, but if your report can be traced to that one early paper from India, it is alleged that it has some methodological issues.

      Apparently, when you compare a genetic sample to a database of patterns, there are some things you have to specify so people can tell what comparison you ran, and can possibly duplicate the comparison. The claim on twitter was that they details were missing. Which, yeah, could have been PRC agents.

      There are three other reasons to be suspicious. a) It was a study on a sexy topic put out during a time frame when it would attract attention. Good papers are often neither sexy nor published at a particularly interesting time. (Although, sometimes editors do bring in invited papers that there is a strong need for.) b) What exactly does India’s scientific community bring to mind when you try to boil it down to its essential qualities? There are a lot of garbage papers published in America, don’t get me wrong. Culture is important when understanding what groups of people do, even if you can’t validly judge individuals within the group by those models. c) A couple months back, I read on wikipedia about India’s security organizations. i) China is a major potential adversary where India is concerned, and is the reason why they even have certain systems. The PRC’s handling of this potentially changes the CCP’s regime security. Maybe India would prefer a China not ruled by communists. ii) One of the Indian security organizations was trained by the KGB. That probably means that the security organization employs a bunch of jerks. Obnoxious enough to carry out such an information operation? Dunno.

      Best to wait for other publications and maybe a few years before forming too many conclusions.

  31. right with ya on the seriousness of running out of coke-zero… I hit Sam’s and picked up three cases of Mexican cokes that’s about three month’s worth of cold caffine with lots of sugar for my personal stash; livin’ by myself as it were, heh, heh, heh.

  32. IIRC the classic Roman legionnaire wiped his behind with a sea sponge on a stick , then would clean and moisten the sponge with vinegar. So somebody will get rich with recyclable butt wipes eventually.

  33. On toilet paper, history has shown that’s one of the first things to run out when society breaks down. The Soviet Union, what used to be Yugoslavia during and after the Yugoslav wars, Venezuela ect. all had TP shortages. The media breaking out “experts” claiming it’s because it makes you feel clean or some stupid nonsense like that shows the “news” is as dumb as always.

    Also: People actually followed up on Biden’s poll story. According to older residents of that neighborhood, there REALLY WAS a gangster known as Corn Pop that Biden got into fights with. Stranger than fiction…

    1. You just haven’t lived in a post-soc country until you’ve wiped with yesterday’s newspaper. It’s a bit nostalgic even – sure, supermarkets are a pain to go through, and the under-thirty generation is a bit freaked out. However, everyone else still has some memory of the 90’s breadlines, so the overall mood in my local Balkan neighborhood is of bored resignation. It’s kinda like Japanese stoicism, but less “perseverance in hardship”, and more “we’ve seen worse, now hurry up the queue, I’m missing my Turkish series”.

      One question I have is regarding the high death rate in Italy and the like. Age is a factor, sure enough, and Italy’s population is older on average than most of Europe. However, could it be that the country also has some usual go-to drugs, or even standard prescriptions, that have made matters worse in this case? I notice Ibuprofen and other anti-inflammation drugs being mentioned in that regard.

      Because if that’s the case, that would be another strike against the wonders of universal healthcare – the government jumping the gun and greenlighting blanket prescriptions before a better assessment of the problem can be made. Time will tell, but at the moment, the American response not only feels more rational, but is apparently a lot more effective than what the EU is doing.

      1. one of the problems with trying to determine “death rate” for this disease is that it actually matters A LOT whether or not you can properly treat the sick people. So the flu kills X amount of people compared to Y number of cases but in general only a very tiny number of people are hospitalized with the flu. Most people stay home with the flu and get better without any trip to the doctor. The problem with this new human malware is that the number of hospitalizations are extremely high and many of the patients who survive do so only because we COULD put them in a hospital. If you need a respirator to recover from a virus then that is not a ‘non fatal’ case of the disease. You were a ‘kill’ as far as the virus is concerned, we just managed to save you by keeping your lungs working till you recovered. If you need a respirator to keep breathing and we dont have one to put you on then you die. So what happens is that a country that CAN treat all its cases (Korea) may have one death rate while a country that CANT treat all of its cases(italy) will have a different death rate. Italy in particular has seen reports of hospitals overloaded and forced to turn people away. They have had to triage the incoming patients and decide “we will treat you but not him”. Then they send the ones they cant treat home and hope they survive. basically the hospitals in italy are choosing the ones that need hospitalization that are most likely to survive if they get it, and sending everyone else home.
        Triage is based on 3 groups. People who will survive without treatment. People who will die even with treatment, and the third group: People who will die without treatment but will survive with treatment. In a ‘triage’ you only treat the third group. The more overloaded you are, the more picky you get about who you treat. Reports suggest italy’s hospitals are running at 200% capacity and still turning people away.

      2. On Italy:
        There’s a WIN/Gallup International survey from 2015 asking Europeans if they washed their hands after they used the toilet. Italy was the second lowest at 57% (Netherlands at 50% was the lowest).

        That’s a question people are very likely to give a false yes on, so the actual rate is likely substantially lower than that.

    2. It’s also true that TP has no caloric value. So if the people buying TP have a serious fear of societal breakdown (I doubt it), they’ll be doing us a self-selection favor.

      If the TP supply chain goes belly up and my normal personal stock runs out, I can jump in the shower. If the water runs out, we’ve got bigger problems than soiled nether regions.

  34. Since this is in part a SF site; all this ‘social distancing’ stuff is putting me in mind of Solaria in Asimov’s The Naked Sun.

    Now I can be socially virtuous wheras previously I was just unpleasant and unpopular.

  35. Larry (and other Utah Monster Hunters) did you feel the quake this AM? Apparently the Wasatch Front fault system decided to slip. 5.2 main shock (thus far).

    Ya’ll take care.

  36. Is there any link or source for the lady that told the PHD to “get educated”? I’d love to see that.

  37. While I am waiting out the quarantine, it sure is nice to have the Dead Six series that you and Mike Kupari did. It gives me a couple pages of reading material and I’m enjoying it a bunch.

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