Tag Archives: coronavirus

COPING WITH THREATS

The freedom of the United States and the stability of worldwide political intercourse, depends on the role of the Dollar.
The greatest threat to dollar stability.

Prudence will be served best by a rational analysis of how and why the COVID-19 strain of “coronavirus” so dramatically upset governance, liberty and economics, compared to other flu-like illnesses that infect huge numbers of Americans every year.  This essay is beginning at the height – or the depth – of the national economic shutdowns and of the extraordinary fears that have everyone suspicious of every other warm, breathing human.  It wasn’t going to be published until we were at the other end of this national economic threat, which will, it seems Prudent to say, going to arrive.  But it cannot wait.  What can this new virus be compared to?

Annually, more than 30 MILLION U. S. residents make hospital visits due to the 4 common flu viruses.  And hospitals are busier because of them: there are some 200,000 hospitalizations.  This happens with no enforced shutdowns of business and trade, or restrictions on movement of legal residents.  If someone tells you they may have the “flu,” you back away, say “don’t give it to me,” smile and recommend your favorite home remedy: “Hot water with lemon.  Make sure it’s fresh lemon, squeeze it so you get all the juice.”  Then you carry on your daily activity, sure that you have cured someone.

Television advertising reminds everyone of the wonderful “flu” medications for sale that, in fact, suppress symptoms, enabling customers to feel good enough to go to work!  But, did you know that in the 2017 – 2018 “flu season” that there were 900,000 hospitalizations?  You didn’t hear about that then?  Weren’t the media keeping us up to the second with every new case, and in which county and city it appeared?  You weren’t afraid to leave the house?  Why not?  EIGHTY THOUSAND people died from flu that year, and in just a few months!  Ye Gods!  We should have been cowering, waiting for the federal government to rescue the entire country and we failed – we failed – to pay attention.  Thank God we survived that crisis.

The 2017 – 2018 season was 4 TIMES worse than the year before and our virtuous political leaders were asleep at the switch.  How was it that they didn’t whip us into a frenzy of prevention, segregation and economic dependency?

Is it Prudent to offer a couple of predictions?  One is that a relative handful of economic powers, some or all at least partially financial powers, will emerge with MORE economic power than they had prior to COVID-19.  Why does this seem likely?  Because those are they who know how to profit from crises, whether military or medical.

Want another?  The crisis we believe coronavirus has created, will be extended in many aspects, into the Fall, possibly through the beginning of November.  It’s possible that enough economic damage will have been done by mid-April for this to happen regardless of politics, but if not, political considerations will make it last for two valid reasons: 1) Democrats believe they can damage Trump into non-re-electability if things get “bad enough;”  2) Republicans believe that managing a terrible crisis with signs of steady improvement, will keep the nation from “changing horses in mid-stream.”  It would be more Prudent to put the whole thing to bed, so to speak, before the middle of April.  Let’s hope this prediction doesn’t pan out.

Based on the tawdry quibbling over how many non-virus-related hands will get greased by the, perhaps, $2 Trillion dollar rescue, bailout, support, small-business/ big-business load the Congress is “debating,” many socialist dreams could get realized thanks to the Chinese coronavirus.  Rational residents of our once-great nation should be shaking their heads at the crude nature of most of those august men and women, but we’re afraid to spread the virus ourselves.  Evidently, the House under Speaker Pelosi, has tried to include a dozen or more components of the leftist agenda in the “emergency” legislation.  One has to wonder.

Another prediction involves the health-care industry/system.  They are moving public policy at every level of government while struggling to meet the sudden pressures of a contagious disease.  It’s a disease that needs lots of products for just protection of care-givers – more than anyone had in stock.  It also requires lots of specialized equipment for treating those infected – more than anyone had in stock.  COVID-19 also requires lots of decisions about how to both remove the shortages of stuff, and to “prevent” the continued spread of infection – there is an oversupply of those: politician-provided.  And, unlike gloves, masks and ventilators, the proper operation of decisions is very difficult to measure or evaluate.

By definition decisions are made in advance.  Decisions made about the past are notoriously ineffective.  Real decisions lay courses of action, often without knowing which of the potential consequences will actually manifest.  There is always a hope that the one consequence a decision-maker prefers will be the one that happens, but once a decision is made, it’s a bit of a crap-shoot.  There are too many moving parts to control which consequence will be true tomorrow, or the next day, or a week or so from decision time.  In this current matter, the decision was to keep people from congregating, even down to groups as small as, well… two!  This has a corollary that says most businesses must close, especially those that operate with congregations of people – like restaurants, churches, schools, public transportation, planes and on… and on… and on.  It means no weddings or funerals, no court sessions, no legislative gatherings, no business meetings, book clubs or sales leads groups.  Very few business activities will be “allowed” to happen.  Meanwhile, millions of people are not paid, millions of transactions are unconsummated, billions of dollars of commerce are unrealized, and trillions of dollars of wealth are vaporized in a few days.

Was this damage a decision or an unfortunate consequence?  Who could possibly benefit from this consequence?  Some will, unfortunately.  As this shakes out – hopefully with the United States still an independent nation (this is relative) – the new economic patterns will emerge and we’ll see the beneficiaries.  China will have something to do with them.

Odd, it seems, that the paralysis of the West has coincided with the miraculous cessation of reported cases in China.  Clearly China has manipulated its stories about coronavirus, its reports about coronavirus, its claims about who started the virus’ infections (the U. S.), its denials of anything wrong having ever been done by China regarding coronavirus or regarding the punishment of doctors attempting to warn the government of China about its uncontrollable spread, and now, about the incredible end of new infections.  Is there any reason to believe that this disease was not released to have precisely the effect it has had on America and Europe?  Or, to believe that the West has reacted in the only ways most favorable to China?

Keep an open mind.  Question EVERYthing.

WOO, WOO, WUHAN

We have enough to worry about... I'm not going to worry about toilet paper on top of everything else.

You may have heard of this new virus, COVID-19?  Many have.  It’s not as widespread as “the flu” or hemorrhoids, but it’s becoming a popular meme.  The Chinese provided the best possible environment for the rapid spread of “Coronavirus,” but they are quite reluctant to take full credit for their successes with this new flu virus.  Funny, that, for the progressive and benign inventors of virtually everything, starting with justice for all.

People and governments, businesses and schools and other institutions, have reacted in some ways foolishly.  Again, the Chinese were world leaders, although they have started to forcibly push that honor onto the United States, displaying their progressive generosity, to the point of claiming the highest honor of all: being the victims of COVID-19, rather than the originators.  How friendly is that?

There are numerous “corona” viruses, 7 at least.  Some of them haven’t “sold” as well due, possibly, from their not having been granted cool, mysterious names.  Right now, COVID-19 is hot, and everyone seems to want it… or, at least, wants to worry about it.  229E (alpha coronavirus), NL63 (alpha coronavirus), OC43 (beta coronavirus), and HKU1 (beta coronavirus), all gain customers every year but are never celebrated as much as SARS, MERS or the king, COVID-19.  I mean, who the Hell would want people to know he or she were suffering from “NL63?”  No one, that’s who.

“Coronavirus,” however, or COVID-19, clearly carries a certain élan, some people are so excited about it they are posting their symptoms and difficulties for all to envy and, perhaps, copy, if they’re lucky.

Admittedly, your correspondent, who has never caught SARS, MERS, 229E, NL63, OC43, or HKU1, and not even the 2009 Swine Flu, and whose ability to get within 6 feet of COVID-19 is equally in doubt, still shares your desire for victimhood and all the benefits that go with it.  President Trump and Congress have cooperated to pump air into our virus-deflating economy.  They call the air, “money,” so-called “billions” of dollars’ worth.  It, and many regulatory changes may prove valuable in the limiting of COVID-19’s popularity, so those of you who have gotten hold of some will be even more famous as the weeks and years go by.

Popular and social media, along with other “influencers,” have managed to whip up a pretty good frenzy over “coronavirus.”  In response, every business that typically attracts crowds of people to its products, from Wal-Mart to the NBA, major league baseball, the NHL and various marathons and fun-raisers, have cancelled or postponed their events, at great economic loss.  Individual star-players have stepped forward to financially support the hundreds of ancillary employees and businesses that function to operate sporting events and to serve their attendees.  Real generosity, as compared to the “federal” type.  A lot of the lost or displaced economic activity will never be restored or replaced.

Some businesses, naturally, will benefit mightily… paper-goods manufacturers, for example and any store or supermarket that sells them.  Bottled-water purveyors and those same stores, again.  Company’s that make hand sanitizer, antiseptic surface wipes and face-masks, among other goods, are doing nicely as sheeple attack their supplies to obtain extra quantities of those items that no one and no family, certainly, could bear to do without.

Toilet paper is a big item as the perceived threat of worldwide pestilence rears its empty head.  Dozens of rolls.  If the supply chain for toilet paper gets severed, people are calculating, their family is not going to suffer the absence of toilet paper until the very last possible minute.  This is perfectly logical, possibly even Prudent, although neither quality can be judged on real merits.  Faced with a frightening disease, the natural reaction is to stock up on toilet paper.  Clearly adherents of this philosophy have not thought things through: if conditions deteriorate to the complete cessation of toilet-paper production, there likely won’t be any food to eat, either, and wiping one’s butt will mean less and less in the grand scheme of things, until we are all smothered by the final, rapid descent of what’s left of the sky, bonking us all on our heads, rendering us senseless.  No shit?

Basically, coronavirus, COVID-19, is a new strain of an old friend, causing a variant of the seasonal flu.  AS WITH ALL “FLU” VIRUSES, elderly, especially elderly nursing-home residents are at the greatest risk, as are those with other respiratory diseases or weaknesses, smokers and those otherwise immune-compromised.  Without strong immune systems, infected victims will find it hard to conquer the virus, and in those, the virus will replicate at its fastest, causing fluid build-up in the lungs and death from pneumonia or, in effect, drowning.  No one wishes such an end on anyone.

The “flu,” we have observed, tends to decline in the spring and virtually disappear in the summer.  Why would that be so, if it’s so virulent?  Why are some people able to fend it off easily in its “high” season, mid to late winter?  Why are carefully-tended nursing home residents so susceptible?  It’s all dependent upon individuals.  It is our habits, our practices, our health and nutrition and our good sense that enables a virus like COVID-19 to succeed or fail.

Why do flu viruses infect more people in the winter?  In large part it is because humans tend to have more bronchial and rhinopharyngial inflammations in cold weather.  We cough, our sinuses produce more fluids and mucus, we blow our nose, and our bronchial tubes collect mucus and fluids.  We work hard to get rid of these intruders and enflame these sensitive linings.  Both bacteria and viruses find welcoming environments and it’s off to the races.  Over the period of a couple of weeks to a month our bodies fight off the infections and our immune systems are invigorated.  Fairly soon there are fewer and fewer people who are contagious and the season passes into spring and summer, and another factor kicks in: sunshine.

Vitamin D is essential in all sorts of organic functions, including strengthening our immune systems.  We are likely to be a little healthier in warm weather because we get more sunlight and our skin creates more vitamin D.  It’s not just that simple, but it’s not a lot more complicated, either.  Nursing-home residents don’t get as much sunshine, for one thing, rarely consume really good meals, don’t get to take supplements, and are kept away from viruses to a great extent, thus rarely exercising their immunities, leaving them more vulnerable than just age alone would make them.

With flu warnings hammering us every “flu season,” we also modify our habits, cover our coughs and sneezes more diligently, stay away from others when we’re feeling ill, take our vitamins more diligently, wash our hands more often, things like that.  And, we survive the flu, kind-of like the way we are surviving the new “coronavirus” this year, too.  There aren’t many MORE ways to have reacted badly to COVID-19 than the ones we have and are trying, starting with the Chinese in particular.  If we had simply described this virus as an especially aggressive flu bug and blasted the airwaves with how to protect ourselves and what to do if our symptoms are one way or another, we’d be acting extra carefully and still going about our daily and business activities.  There’d be more absenteeism, but no mania, the cost of which we can hardly estimate.

COVID-19s is a nasty bug.  It has a more severe effect on lungs than other coronaviruses, making breathing difficult and stressing hearts.  The death rate is higher, too, and, like other coronaviruses, mainly for senior citizens, rates spike with age and certain pre-existing conditions.  Number-one is heart disease.  Another big one is diabetes, which is its own epidemic in overweight America.  If your health is already under attack, please protect yourself.  For age groups over 60 the risks are higher.  Compared to other well-known flu’s – the ones that come back every winter – the death rates spike higher with this new one for these at-risk, older groups.  Use good sense: don’t snuggle with anyone exhibiting ANY flu symptoms.

In the United States, hyper-politicized and divided into sets of enemies, we have allowed the entry of the latest coronavirus to modify our governance and our economic relationships, citizens and federal government, and states and federal government.  It’s dangerous.

COVID-19 is a serious disease, mainly because it is more easily transferred than other flu’s.  It doesn’t mean we’re all doomed to catch it, nor that every senior citizen is going to die if he or she is infected.  The speed of its spread has tripped up health systems, but now that it is better understood, the natural anxiety caused by the rate of infection can be set aside and replaced with best practices to help people recover, AS MOST OF THE INFECTED ARE GOING TO DO.  Reactive mania, while politically irresistible, is not particularly helpful beyond the shortest of terms.  The concerns about testing rates have more to do with getting the infection statistics right than with specific treatments for those infected.  One of the reasons South Korea has relatively low infection and death rates is its widespread testing.  That data keeps panic at bay.  With cleaner air nationwide, and lower smoking rates than Asian nations, Americans are in some ways healthier and somewhat less at risk.

Americans have learned, on a sudden, how quickly their freedoms may be curtailed by a handful of press conferences and an executive declaration of a “state of emergency.”  Families can be disrupted with school closings and by “woke” corporations changing job descriptions without notice.  Whole businesses may be shut down by arbitrary event-attendee limitations, mostly by state authorities.  It seems unreal, yet the expansion of economic, social and religious displacements is evident with every hourly newscast.  It seems imPrudent.

Take your vitamins, extra C, as much as 3,000 IU’s of vitamin D, eat fresh fruits and veggies, and an orange every day.  It makes a lot more sense to stock up on oranges, lemons and limes than toilet paper.  Don’t smoke… anything.  Get plenty of sleep.  Don’t frequent venues where people are packed tightly together; stay away from others if you feel sick, have a tough cough or are sneezy.  Pray – praying for those who are sick is always recommended.  While you’re at it, ask God to protect our hapless United States of America.

TO CATCH A THIEF

If only it were only our money being stolen…

Coronavirus, Covid-19, strain S or strain L – or both – is the unannounced candidate in the 2020 presidential race.  Democrats have already been calculating how to use the epidemic to make Trump look bad; they haven’t been calculating, much, as to how to protect citizens and residents from the disease, or to restore the pharmaceutical industry to the United States.  Hatred will do that: blind the carrier to its contagion, making him, or her, feverish and seeking a point of blame.  Trump will do.

Theft is very similar.  Where the blind virus can steal a person’s health, mobility, outlook and good nature, so can hatred, equally blind, make off with decorum, civility, kindness, compassion and good sense.  Both patients are… sick.

But theft, as any victim of a thief can testify, destroys belief as it reduces one’s economy.  A break-in to one’s home, for example, leaves residents distrustful, vulnerable and suspicious.  New information coming to those people is filtered through a different set of beliefs than prior to the act of thievery.  Eventually, assuming no repetition of the crime, distrust fades, safe feelings return and life goes on.  Love for others replaces fear.  But what if the nature of the theft is not precisely known… and what if the feeling of one’s safety and privacy having been breeched, one’s familial or even personal integrity being threatened by unrecognized thieves, almost continuously… what does a person believe then?

A person would certainly be angry at the violation, the assault on privacy, safety and personhood.  And that feeling would lead a person to be mad at, well… someone – whoever is stealing from him or her.  What is being stolen?  Who is it that should be punished for the constant thievery?

We live, today, right now, in a world of constant thievery, and among those things being stolen are the traditions of America’s founding.  One could posit that history, itself, is being stolen from us as “we” dis-educate our youth and restrict and belittle the beliefs that made the American experiment work and the American Dream real.  It’s unsettling.  What other thefts are being perpetrated?

Pick a state, any state.  How many of its agencies are staffed beyond need and paid beyond reason?  How many departments or programs are suspected of malfeasance, misfeasance and corruption, often political?  Surely some.  Honesty is being stolen every hour of every day.  How many have died from opioids?  How many from in-hospital errors?  How many children in state care were neglected so badly that their health or lives were threatened, perhaps lost?  How are such questions answered to the public on whose behalf all such actions are taken?  Almost never in full truth, often in blatant deception and cover-up.

We are forced by police power to sacrifice our private properties – the gains from our labors – to PAY for governments that lie to us as normal operating process.  It is unsettling.  A little anger is justified.  If one is not angry, he or she isn’t paying attention.

What about our past 3 years nationally, when one political party conspired with federal agencies and officers to attempt to unseat a president?  So many lies were told to us by so many official and “news” organs that the count is without total.  The political divisions exposed over the past 20 years have been sharpened so fiercely that the next 20 years are in grave doubt.  Taxpayers pay for everyone who works in the federal government and they have been lying to us, all, and never more grotesquely than in the years 2016 through 2019 and through the impeachment of president Trump.  They, including many in congress, have lied and stolen from our present and future the innate trust we ought to be able to enjoy with regards to our representatives, so called.

That our heritage has been stolen, tossed away when we weren’t looking, can be realized by noting the groundswell of support for an old communist/socialist as he claims to be the “leader” America needs.  Young people, college students, even many adults seem enthralled by attacks on capitalism and free enterprise, the unfairness of success, the inequality of unequal results for unequal efforts.  It’s all a matter of “fortune” and “unfortune.”  The fortunate ones, regardless of their path to wealth and regardless of the millions of jobs they create and the trillions of tax dollars their enterprises and employees pay to support common goods, should not have any more than they need to live on… the rest to be divided amongst the “unfortunate.”

Truth and reason have been stolen, as have history and fact.  And, it is unsettling.  Even those espousing socialist nonsense feel stolen-from, although they refuse to recognize what their losses truly are.  It makes them hazily angry at the fortunate thieves, for they have no mirrors.

Inheritance far greater than one’s grandmother’s silver has been, is being stolen right from our dining-room buffet, and we have not only left the back door open, we’ve marked the shortest path to the buffet with bright orange duct tape.  How can we tell all these thefts have gone on?  Check the books, the ledgers of our balance sheets.  We’re out of balance.  “What happened?” we ask one another.  “How did we get $23 Trillion in debt?”  “When did it become illegal to separate boys’ and girls’ bathrooms?”

“When did people start to hate others so much that teams of thugs would be allowed to beat them up while police watched?”  “Is this what Socialism has done?  Made us hate each other?”  “They” are stealing our nation.  It’s unsettling.

Corona, corona

Corona beer comes from yeast, not a virus.
there is no connection whatsoever…

There are people who believe that the latest health threat to emanate from China is caused or somehow made contagious by Corona Beer, a well-known health threat from Mexico.  It is on this canvas that the gloppy acrylics of impeachment, economics, presidential politics, petro-dollar monetary policy, Antifa, Hezbollah, North Korea, opioid deaths and suicides, and the real threat of coronavirus must create a picture that is both truthful and meaningful to majorities in dozens of countries including our own.  Whew!  There are 15 national leaders whose views and beliefs about these and other issues, will define the next ten years and beyond: Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ali Khamenei, Kim Jung Un, Xi Jinping, Ram Nath Kovind, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Volodymyr Zelensky (who at least has a sense of humor), Arif Alvi (who doesn’t), and both last and least, Nicolás Maduro, who is an idiot.

Mixed up in all of their opinions is the existence of American constitutionalism, our ostensible structure of rights and freedoms, and our unbalanced, imperial economy.  Our primary concern must be the survival of the United States and freedom itself.  What presidential politics does every four years is stir us enough to reflect on our beliefs about our nation and our country, not the same things.

Democrat hotheads, committed to control of… well, everything, have impeached Trump to no good end, although his acquittal was never in real doubt.  No good end, certainly, but the disinformation value of, first Mueller, and then impeachment itself, must appear to elected Democrat leaders as a worthy end nevertheless.  Those who now shy away from bottled Corona most assuredly cling to bottled hatreds, known and unknown, but felt viscerally.  So there is the worthiness of relentless hatred of the aforementioned Mr. Trump.

There should be little disagreement with the proposition that hatred is the worst basis for political competition, yet hatred is everywhere employed in the United States, of all places.  Hatred doesn’t develop automatically.  Fear does: it’s pure ethnocentrism, even “racism,” per se.  But racism and fear of difference are not hatred.  Hatred is a visceral desire to kill or destroy the “other.”  To fear or to mistrust a stranger – or a strange “culture” – is instinctive and need not be taught.  To HATE  that person or group requires coaching, teaching, explanation and mythology.  It’s a long-term, methodical process to convert fear to hatred.  Who does crap like that?

Here and there are parents who were, themselves, taught to hate certain others and to varying degrees manage to convince their children to also hate them.  But it’s not as easy to do in the modern era, as public schools, ostensibly, fight the urge to bully or to gang-up on the unusual or most defenseless kids.  To some degree, children receiving messages of hatred at home are going to hear enough lessons countering that prejudice, that fewer and fewer reach early adulthood with firm hatreds.

Yet, now we have a split electorate, fueled by the sweet lies of socialists (people complain about Trump’s looseness with the truth but never a peep about the absolute and historical bullshit spread in the name of socialism).  A virtual communist is at or near the front of the pack in the ostensible “Democrat” party’s campaign for nomination to the presidency, and giddy polls regularly trumpet the acceptance of “socialism” by millenials.  There are reasons to fear Bernie Sanders’ cry for “transformation” of the United States, just as there were for the stated intentions of Barack Obama to “fundamentally transform” the United States.

Consider just the “ACA,” Affordable Care Act, which was not “affordable,” whatever that was hoped to mean, and it wasn’t about “care,” particularly: it was about coverage, the perpetual stumbling bloc to health care.  The nature of every “coverage” entity, whether “insurance” companies and HMO’s or governmental agencies that both regulate and directly pay actual care providers, is to reduce costs.  The main difficulties inherent in the ACA-expanded coverage industry were made worse and more expensive, nearly removing people from decision-making while nearly removing physicians and others from caring about their customers.

These sorts of change ought to be anathema to citizens of a nation with the heritage of the United States.  Our mythos is founded in individualism, self-made success, pioneering advancement into unexplored territories, and homesteads created even where the only building material was prairie turf.  Somehow the steady erosion of socialist promises of “free” safety and comfort have weakened the resolve of Americans to take control of their lives and circumstances, and to do so responsibly.

(See:
http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/01/16/health-care-fairness-and-free-enterprise/

Obama also made substantial changes to our foreign relations and to our ability to control events to our benefit, rather to enhance the influence and strength of Muslim regimes.  Fundamental transformation.  Here in 2020 these same intentions are voiced repeatedly by Bernie Sanders and others whose vision is not to improve or “perfect” our union, but to replace our form of government by altering Constitutional institutions and original rights.  The “new” goals are not comprised of strengthening liberty, but to “set” everyone’s standard of living so that no one is “above” his fellow residents: ultimate “fairness,” a new form of political organization that removes the interference in individual beliefs by churches, and in which every sort of human pleasure-seeking will be permitted… by benign elites, and, perhaps, taught in public schools.

The struggle of socialism is never-ending.  While “we” in the American, Judeo-Christian traditions of individual liberty and responsibility tend to assume our battle for freedom is won… and done, globalist socialism never rests on its continuum of undermining and destroying liberty and faithfulness.  It is a continuum that extends back to the “Garden of Eden.” 

“What?” you say, “nothing Prudent about that silly claim.”

Well, a few terms we don’t think about enough: Thesis – The Word of God, or the first premise; Antithesis – Direct opposition to the Word of God; Synthesis – Human-generated, pretended, compromise position with the Word of God.  The synthesis becomes the new Premise, no longer the Word of God, something less.  Is this not exactly what the “Serpent” offered to Eve, assuring her that God’s threat to not eat of the tree in the midst (center) of the Garden, or touch it “…,lest thou die.” would not come true.  “thou shalt not surely die.” the serpent told her.  God issued the thesis to Not eat of the tree; Serpent offered the antithesis  that the punishment would not be death (at least not right away) and the rewards of knowledge were worth the chance.  Is this process any more or less than the Hegelian dialectic?  Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis.  Abortion is no longer murder; socialism will create a better America than God did.