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  • Hunker Down Diary – 26mar20 (updated 27mar20)

    George Rebane

    When there’s a problem, government is guilty until proven innocent.

    Today is HD19 for the Rebanes.  We started hunkering down on 8 March 2020, and finally risked it all this morning by showing up at our local Safeway at 7am, the advertised ‘old folks shopping time’.  Apparently the younger people had not gotten the word, and the store was full with a lot of couples like Jo Ann and me pushing two carts.  Most of us wore gloves, a few had on masks, and all of us social distanced as much as possible.  But what we saw was dismal; something you’d experience in a socialist second or third world country – ‘miles’ of empty shelves of the stuff that everyone really wanted to buy.  Still, we all filled our baskets with what there was and substituted a lot of PlanB items.

    What surprised me was that today the younger generation of managers have no knowledge, let alone experience, of the buying patterns during times of emergency and need.  With all signs of the coming hunker down time apparent more than a month ago, no one, starting with FEMA, advised the supply system to put the pedal to the metal on obvious staples and sanitary items.  There was no anticipative ‘push’ in the pipeline.  Everything appeared to have continued on with the JIT (just in time) scheme that works so well during happy days.  The makers and distributers are making do with the JIT schema in spite of the enormous consumer ‘pull’ of empty shelves.

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  • The Value of Testing

    George Rebane

    Trigger warning: The contents of this commentary may not be accessible to the innumerate reader.

    As explained in ‘Testing, testing, …’, the value of testing comes to the fore when you have a sufficiently reliable test that can be administered on a regular and scientific basis over a suspect population.  In that case, it could be used to identify concentrations of infections that can be used for a more satisficing allocation of limited healthcare resources.  In an update to the referenced commentary, I illustrated how to determine the reliability of test results given the reliability parameters of the test administered to a walk-in member of a suspect population (country, state, county, city, region, …).

    In this piece I will answer the questions many reasonable people have about testing – ‘why test if the tests are unreliable?  Why test if the test only provides a snapshot assessment which may change within the next hour?’  We start by recalling the advice from our federal and state medicos.  Given the limited availability of tests and processing labs, we are only supposed to request a test if we are symptomatic – fever, cough, headache, … .  Don’t burden the system if you are asymptomatic.

    To read the remainder of this analytical commentary full of some algebra and all kinds of numbers, please download this PDF – Download The Value of Testing

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  • The Demonic Party reveals itself (updated 25mar20)

    George Rebane

    The congressional Democrats have plumbed new depths of unabashed and sickening sleaze as they block the passage of the Senate bill to provide liquidity and relief to the nation’s economy on the verge of depression.  The multi-trillion dollar aid package is designed to prevent bankruptcies of countless companies that provide jobs to millions of Americans and are now attempting to rapidly retool to supply the medical needs to flatten the Wuhan virus infection curve, thereby saving untold families grief. (more here) Instead, led by Team Pelosi/Schumer, the Dems have attached a socialist wishlist of provisions to the bill that have NOTHING to do with fighting the virus and saving the economy.

    Besides demogauging another one of their material Big Lies that the bill is a “slush fund” and a “bailout” of corporations, as if the corporations were the cause of the pandemic, these socialist sleazebags want to piggyback on this crisis to pass anti-capitalist provisions that they could never accomplish during normal times.  The want to revise laws that will implement many of the Green New Deal provisions on corporate board memberships (unions, activists, and workers), and that henceforth the government will have a major say in how individual businesses are run. (more here)

    One of their most onerous provisions is a permanent ban on corporate stock buybacks.  It is clear that such buybacks should not be allowed during the time a company receives liquidity funding from the feds, but the Dems want to remove this important financial strategy forever.  They are either ignorant of or just plain evil in denying such an important market strategy that benefits every participant in such buybacks, including the small investors and holders of retirement accounts.  (more here)

    Their aim is to finally start the real fundamental transformation of the country through a government ‘rob-and-ruin’ involvement in company operations.  Since the Dems have no positive or productive policies for generating wealth and jobs, they continue to play the only cards they hold – hate capitalism and hate Trump.  And their constituents don’t have the wherewithal to ask ‘what then?’ after their socialist future comes about.

    But all of this is part and parcel of a party that has long been the creator and promoter of the nation’s miseries, highlighted by their support of slavery, then decades of Jim Crow, then the destruction of black families and promotion of urban blight launched by their not-so-Great Society, and now continuing with the dismantling and destruction of America’s educational system. (The complete list is too long to recount here.)  While the Republicans also have warts and have not always been our angels, the policies and politics of today’s Democrats have surely made them into our Demonic Party.

    [25mar20 update]  Healthy companies create jobs, jobs pay people, people with money can buy things they need, companies make more such things, and the cycle repeats.  I have yet to find a single leftwinger, let alone socialist, who really understands this cycle.  The role of a thriving private sector economy is so obvious that, when told this, almost all folks of the Left will agree to the need for such a cycle that epitomizes a healthy economy.  And then they blow a tire, because invariably their follow-on remarks turn out to promote economy stifling policies, which gives lie to the claim that they understand.  All this is enormously magnified by the nation's political idiot contingency in Washington and other levels of government across the land.  They simply cannot connect the dots when it comes to wealth creation; they sincerely believe that money (wealth) is created simply by government printing the long green as much as is needed.  There is no comprehension as to what has to stand behind those printed slips of paper (or the equivalently fortuitous bit patterns on some mass memory device somewhere in the cloud).  We see that again in the demonic machinations of Team Pelomer in Congress.  Last October “the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.” (more here)  Their bottom line, don’t destroy the economy when fighting a pandemic, the resulting damage is a lot worse and longer lasting than what the pandemic can do in an economy that continues to function.  Save the economy to save the people.

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  • ‘Your money or your life!’ (updated 21mar20)

    George Rebane

    Proposition:  Many more lives will be lost and/or ruined by intentionally tanking our economy into a depression, than will be lost to Covid19 going forward with a balanced policy of social distancing and continuing our economic pursuits with due prudence during the waning epidemic.

    The iconic and immortal Jack Benny, comic of a bygone era known for portraying a skinflint, performed that classic skit where a robber walks up with a gun and demands, ‘Your money or your life!’.  Benny takes time to react and looks absorbed, prompting the thug to demand ‘Well?!’ to which Jack replies, ‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking.’

    At Casa Rebane we are now in HD13 – our 13th day of hunkering down which began on 8 March.  We are in the so-called most vulnerable age group, even though we are both still healthy, which at our ages can change overnight.  Given this, and the many birthdays under our belts, both of us have had much talk about what direction the country should take going forward.  The alternatives seem to be –

    1. Everyone hunkers down, leave home only for the necessaries of life, businesses shut down, millions of jobs are permanently lost, government prints and distributes tons of cash to everyone (with dire fiscal consequences), the morbidity and mortality curves are flattened, and if all ‘goes well’ we emerge losing fewer lives to Covid19 and then dive into a genuine global depression taking years to recover, during which many more (millions) of uncounted lives are lost to poverty and perhaps real war, and more millions of lives are consigned to various stages of destitution.
    2. Quickly learn how to manage infection risks with social distancing etc, and go on with prudently modified business practices while preventive medicines/vaccines are discovered and treatments developed to minimize the inevitable morbidity and mortality rates which will rise and take from the oldest and weakest among us. But in doing so keep the wheels of business and industry turning so that we don’t become a second or third world country with the potential for real civil unrest that will inevitably rise from our great and chronic socio-political divisions.

    Rebane Doctrine calls for taking #2 as the wisest and best approach.  Executing such a well-considered and purposeful plan forward will allow us to emerge economically strong, and most certainly wiser about how to manage our affairs in preparation for the next pandemic (Covid19 is NOT the last one we will encounter).  And showing leadership with #2 will allow us to set an example to the rest of the world and support them in taking their own prudent risks and cope with small to moderate losses.

    If our national measure of utility is to reduce the number of premature deaths over, say, the next five years, then it’s a no-brainer to avoid #1.  So while you are doing your own thinking, consider that no poor and destitute country has ever been able to take care of its own, let alone help others and contribute to preserving the environment and providing a satisfying quality of life for its citizens.  Fearfully hunkering down will guarantee that we will suffer such a dreadful future, in short America opting for #1 will be penny wise and pound foolish.

    I am reminded of the encouraging words of Sgt Dan Daly, the holder of two Medals of Honor at Bellau Wood, “Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?!”

    [21mar20 update]  ‘Low Wage Workers Face Brunt of Coronavirus Crisis’ (here) is one of the many news articles explaining to us the obvious – it was ever thus.  Yet these low- and mid-wage workers are continuously pandered to about the feds bailing out Wall Street capitalists and greedy corporations.  They don’t grasp that giving money only to such workers will not help, for they will have nowhere to spend it for their necessaries – if only the grassroots libs would attempt to think about that.  But they don’t; they don’t comprehend that the low- and mid-wage workers don’t create jobs, instead, they benefit from having jobs.

    It is America’s business owners and investors who create and sustain the companies, and take the risks to make the stuff we need while creating the jobs that make our quality of life possible – it is called capitalism.  But today, one of our political parties and its academia, media and entertainment industry allies are doing everything possible (including crisis enhancement) to convince Americans that government can do it all much better than the private sector – they take pride in being called socialists and communists.

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  • Scattershots – 20mar20 (22mar20)

    George Rebane

    'Most of us will get the Wuhan virus, a small fraction of us will die.  But we will continue business and commerce as usual with all the prudence we can each muster, because the death and destitution a depression will bring will be much worse for all of us.'  A hoped for statement from President Trump.

    The lamestream is very quiet about the Covid19 goings on in Europe.  They are focusing all their reporting on Italy which really screwed the pooch on its handling of the virus, and is now the media’s unavoidable posterchild for all the comparisons with the US.  Even there they like to dun our feds (i.e. Trump) on stats like hospital beds per person, and testing (of uncertain effectiveness and reliability).  However, their unconnected dots involve national preparedness and the response effectiveness of nationalized healthcare – those don’t look so good, so nothing is said about that.  Moreover, similar problems are encountered in the rest of the EU countries starting with France, Germany, Spain, …, about which there seems to be a total blackout.  And for good reason.  Keeping Americans up to date on doings all over the continent would really put a big dent in our socialists’ long- and carefully-concocted narrative about the shortcomings of America under Team Trump.  More comprehensive reporting would reveal that President Trump has really done all the right things with what he inherited, and the Europeans are now playing catch-up, starting with the “racist” sealing of their borders.   But according to the Dems and their media lackeys, we are to pay no attention to what’s going on behind that curtain. (Here is a website that a young man up in Washington (more here) set up to fill in this shortfall of information.)

    Trump and his team look and say like they’re trying to make this a ‘V-shaped’ recession.  (See also ‘Your money or …’)  If they succeed, they will come out smelling like a rose in November.  The other side of our political spectrum, the socialists, will be doing everything they can to make the recession be shaped like a ‘lazy L’, steep down and slow up (you know, like we had with Obama).  That will make the case for blaming the whole thing on the Trump administration so much easier.  They care not for lost jobs or businesses, the more misery the better.  Why?  It helps support their anti-capitalist narrative, and gives them a basis for policies to enlarge government, shrink the private sector, and gain firmer control of the lives and fortunes of those pesky liberty-loving Americans.  There will definitely be a mounting tension between the central planners and the free market capitalists as this pandemic matures.

    [21mar20 update]  Urban lightweight versions of the heavier Bradley Fighting Vehicles on Manhattan streets (here).  These are actually armored personnel carriers, the modern version of the classic Mk113 APC that yours truly spent some uncomfortable hours in.  The government is making a very strong statement that it will not tolerate armed civil unrest during this crisis.  This show of force had only one message as these armored and armed urban fighting vehicles were moved to pre-arranged ready areas that are being set up in local sports stadiums and school football fields.  The inquisitive readers wants to know why this is not covered on the mainstream media, why only Twitter feeds.  Thoughts?

    The thin veil of civilization starting to rip.  This Twitter video of looting at Walmart (here) is probably a harbinger of things to come.  No one will starve to death quietly when there’s food to be had in locations unguarded or easily overcome – write that down somewhere if it’s news to you.  Advent of desperate times, therefore, even if you’re ready unlimber your shootin’ arn, it’s better to get on with Alernative #2 sooner than later (here).

    [22mar20 update] Sen Richard Burr (R-NC) should resign and be prosecuted for his 13feb20 cashing out of stocks, in violation of the Congressional Stock Act, after a closed-door (not confidential) meeting of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, the results and reports of which immediately appeared on Twitter – i.e. the information received was public and not privileged, hence no violation of the Stock Act as also interpreted by other senators who sold stock.  Nevertheless, that is the position taken on Sen Burr by the media and many congressional colleagues.  Before running with the herd, I’d like to note from what we’ve been told that 1) no presented testimony foretold stock markets’ behavior, 2) the attendees and the online public had to connect the dots by themselves, 3) there is no law or ethical imperative requiring a legislator to broadcast his personal assessments (especially dire ones that can panic the public) or private transactions from the broadly available information he receives during the course of his congressional duties.  Burr is not a financial expert, but no doubt talked with his financial adviser about the spreading coronavirus.  Given the detailed timeline of who knew/said what and when, Burr’s post-committee statements echoed that of the administration which, in the throes of impeachment proceedings, ballyhooed published data on the economy.  So again, what is the case against Sen Burr?

    'We will fight, the virus' is a timely, well-performed, and entertaining remake of the classic 'Sound of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel.  Enjoy.

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  • Dropout Derby – 19mar20

    George Rebane

    And then there were two, and what a pair!  Of all the passengers in the Dems’ clown car, two of their biggest have managed to hang on, and one of them will now vie for the White House.  Given the attention she received from the DNC and the activity level of her campaigning, I think the woman just forgot that she was still in the race.  A friend must have reminded her, ‘Hey Tulsi, don’t you think it’s time to pull out?’ – ‘Pull out of what?  Oh yeah.’  And I should point out that our dear departed RussS is doing very well posthumously.

    DropoutEntries200319

    Dropouts200319

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  • Ruminations – 17mar20 (updated 18mar20)

    George Rebane

    Swine flu H1N1 Apr09-Jan10.  57M Americans infected, 257K hospitalized, 11,690 died.  Does anyone remember any full court press on Obama by the media and the Repubs as today we witness dished out hourly by the Dems and their lamestream in their vilification of Trump?  (H/T to reader.)

    Russia impacted the 2016 election.  Those lyrics of our leftwing loonies still rings out loud and clear across the land.  And since that chorus started, tens of millions have been spent in the attempt to find any evidence, all to no avail.  Admittedly, our Left is not all that good with the finer points of English as they continue to confuse ‘attempt’ and ‘impact’, or is it really one from their repertoire of Big Lies broadcast daily?  That's called trolling for the dummies.

    Coronavirus info link for Nevada County – NC Health and Human Services.  The Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital has announced a new testing program; see 17mar20 update here.

    [18mar20 update]  Epidemic model used by policy makers revealed, and also news of a stop-gap medicine to prevent and fight Covid19.  See the 18mar20 update to 'Testing, testing, …' here.

    Correlation of the nation's blue concentrations with the incidence of Covid19 was pointed out in a reader's correspondence.  Apparently no one in the media has yet to make the connection.  (more here)

    Lots of people buying guns and ammo.  The Left should recognize that these are not the nation’s gun owners who have already laid in their stash of Second Amendment armaments.  It is the latest tranche of newbies who have had their ‘gun epiphanies’ by the tens (hundreds?) of thousands.  The feds confirm this through the surge in background checks, and the dealers confirm it by reporting that these desperate buyers will take any available gun with any kind of ammo that fits.  Those of us who have owned guns for years would never even consider doing that for more reasons that we simply don’t have to.

    All the Dems grousing about Trump’s “failure to handle the pandemic” are simply full of horseshit (aka bull pucky).  No one dares to compare America’s response with the actual numbers of what the other Left-celebrated countries have done.  Grab any metric that you have available.  And the biggest farce is the so-implied massive testing that other countries have done.  The challenge is to discover what marginal benefit to prophylactic or prescriptive policies has their testing provided that shows America is somehow behind the response curve.  Nothing – but ‘testing’ is the only thing that the Dems have, with no better (or any) plans of their own, to try to get some traction against the Trump administration.

    Ordering out from restaurants.  Lots of people are buying into this alternative as an easy way to get good food without risking Covid19 infection.  Not so advise the thinking medicos.  You have no guarantee of what kind of food was used to prepare in what manner by personnel in what kind of pre-symptomatic condition within kitchens of unknown sanitary state that are frequented by numerous people whose outside contacts are also totally unknown.  The infectious disease experts tell us to order out is still a crapshoot.

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  • “Testing, testing, testing” – Really? (updated 23mar20)

    George Rebane

    Those words from Speaker Pelosi summarized her three most important aspects of the pandemic legislation now going through Congress.  But once more I believe that the lady misses the point here.  Testing will do demonstrably little to stop or even slow down the inevitable and incipient explosion of Covid19 infections in the land.  The emphasis of governments at all levels now should be to facilitate manufacture and distribution of life’s necessaries and healthcare equipment/supplies to treat the daily growing cohort of the infected requiring medical treatment.

    A couple of useful definitions for discussing the pandemic – ‘asymptomatic’ means “showing no evidence of disease”, and ‘pre-symptomatic’ means having been infected but not yet showing symptoms.

    The pandemic will stop only after 1) all have been infected (meaning it never stopped), or 2) it dies out since no more infections and the lucky infected have survived and are no longer infectious.  The best and fastest way to achieve the latter without inevitably overstressing our healthcare system is to self-quarantine and STAY AT HOME.  The head fed expert on infectious diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, reinforced this prescription again today when he advised everyone to maximize the time they can “stay at home” (here).

    A lot of bullcrap about how the virus is transmitted still pollutes the media channels.  Dr Michael Osterholm, director of University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, gives some extremely important and cogent advice about Covid19 transmission (here) the main takeaways from which are –

    1. The virus survives for several days on surfaces, depending on the material and its environment.
    2. The virus is readily transmitted via the aerosols (exhalations, sneezes, coughs, …) from infected people. And the scariest part is that in the air the virus can survive for a matter of hours.
    3. Pre-symptomatic people can infect others. Just because you are asymptomatic does not guarantee that you are not pre-symptomatic.
    4. Available masks do little to nothing to stop your breathing the viral aerosol.
    5. No anti-Covid19 vaccine will be available in time to stop the coming national spike in infections.
    6. The only way to stop the spread is maximum social distancing, i.e. self-quarantine yourself, stay at home.
    7. Our medical infrastructure is woefully inadequate to cope with what is coming; the spike in infections will overwhelm it. We will wind up triaging like the Italians and others are doing now.

    So getting back to testing, and how that affects each of us.  I’ve prepared a little flowchart that most people (most certainly the astute RR readers) can understand.  It shows clearly how your being tested for the virus is essentially immaterial as to what you should really do in any event.

    TestingUtilityIn the meantime, our Democrats and lamestream media along with international news outlets like the leftwing Economist, continue to lambast President Trump.  They blame everything from starting the pandemic, through not having the country’s healthcare system prepared and waiting (no nation has achieved this even now), to securing America’s borders as evidence of his “mismanaging” this national emergency.  In the mean time all the EU countries are sealing their own borders and many have already shut down all walk-in businesses and imposed national quarantines.  Any idiot should know that one obvious way the infections will continue to increase is through infectious people uncontrollably crossing borders.  But apparently not.

    And finally, I want to make the point that this pandemic may turn into a large-scale emergency for all of us (recall that’s an emergency when 911 calls are not answered).  But however it ends, we will have a national dialogue that will result in new policies calling for major changes in our preparedness for such future catastrophes which will surely pay us another visit.  A discussion of what these may be, I will reserve for a future commentary and comment stream.

    [16mar20 update]  It’s worth continuing to pay attention to the Dems’ Big Lie programs.  Most noteworthy now is the continuing lie that we would have done a better job fighting the coronavirus had we already implemented a nationalized healthcare system like Bernie’s ‘Medicare for All’.  If anyone cares to look at how the countries with nationalized healthcare are doing in this pandemic, they would quickly be disabused of any such thing.

    The other part of last night’s comedy debate was Bumblebrain’s ongoing claims that somehow he was in the crucial heart of policy making and implementation in the Obama administration.  Listening to him talk, ol’ Bumble was right in the middle of all that was happening.  If anyone cares to check the record, they quickly discover that the man was one watering short of a potted plant during the entire eight years.  VP Biden was trotted out to stand behind Obama during photo ops, dignitary dinners, and other ceremonial occasions, mostly to allay rumors of his early demise.  Oh yes, he was allowed to attend certain meetings as long as he kept his mouth shut.  So you know Bernie has to bite his tongue when, like last night, Bumblebrain claimed to be the “steady hand” that quashed the ebola epidemic and kept it from our shores.

    Now, as with Trump’s bravado, I would not count as ‘lies’ these outlandish claims of accomplishment.  But it would be refreshing to hear a progressive see such a common thread that knits together all politicians.

    And also, do you note that like socialists, they don’t want to call attention to China’s autocratic mismanagement of when the Wuhan virus epidemic started?  No mention is made of its genesis in China or Wuhan because such attributions would be “racist”.  The lamestream, of course, fell into line immediately.  For them and theirs, President Trump is a much more believable cause of all that’s bad about the Covid19 pandemic.

    [17mar20 update]  Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital sent out a notice to their foundation members (of which Jo Ann and I are) regarding their new drive-through testing program.  They also direct you to the county’s coronavirus information website is here.

     Drive-through Covid-19 testing now at SNMH

    Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital will begin drive-through Covid-19 testing from 3:00-6:00 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday (3/17 & 3/18).

    If you are symptomatic and meet criteria for testing, Nevada County residents should call their primary care doctor. If the doctor agrees that an individual needs to be tested, the doctor can fax an order to the hospital.

    Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital will call the patient to set up an appointment drive-through time. Please do not attempt to go to the testing drive-through without a previously set-up appointment. 

    [18mar20 update]  New epidemic model revealed.  It turns out that the epidemic spread model that’s currently most trusted and used by policy makers in various countries is from the epidemic modeling group at Imperial College. (here, here, and here)  Note the (lack of) emphasis put on testing as a policy tool to affect infection and mortality rates.

    Common malaria drug prevents and fights Covid19.  That is claimed in a report announced on Anthony Watts website (here) that was authored in league with Stanford University School of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, among others, and published in several respected journals.  This, of course, would be the best news yet to salve the pandemic until a vaccine arrives.  In the meantime, Dr Rebane advises that you reconsider a gin and tonic as your afternoon preventative; after all, it is made with tonic water.  (H/T to reader)  The summary of the report follows –

    Recent guidelines from South Korea and China report that chloroquine is an effective antiviral therapeutic treatment against Coronavirus Disease 2019.  Use of chloroquine (tablets) is showing favorable outcomes in humans infected with Coronavirus including faster time to recovery and shorter hospital stay.  US CDC research shows that chloroquine also has strong potential as a prophylactic (preventative) measure against coronavirus in the lab, while we wait for a vaccine to be developed.  Chloroquine is an inexpensive, globally available drug that has been in widespread human use since 1945 against malaria, autoimmune and various other conditions. 

    [23mar20 update]  The reliability of Covid19 tests now reported should give most of us pause.  We are told that existing tests catch about 60% of people infected with the virus, and they test positive from 3% to 50% of those who are not infected.  So what’s the utility of giving a test to an asymptomatic walk-in American?  Well, the good Rev Bayes can help us out (more here).

    [Trigger warning: some mild-mannered math ahead.]

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  • Sandbox – 15mar20

    [As one reader echoed the warning to Julius – 'Beware the Ides of March!'  Lot is happening in these trying times.  I have posted 'Testing, testing, testing, …' for the continuing discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Please deposit your topical good thoughts there.  gjr]

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  • The Long Road Back – Loss/Recovery

    George Rebane

    Given all the problems caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic, we now contemplate your investment portfolio in light of the markets’ plunge over the last two weeks – in short, we’ll now expand our horizons from the morbid to the macabre.

    LossRecovery%

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