Cool and rainy. [63F and 99%RH]
Rain started late last night, around 11pm. It wasn’t bad during the day with mostly overcast skies and shirtsleeve temps.
Last night was sleepover night for two of my daughter’s school friends. They were up late, scaring themselves. There is a self reinforcing behavior spiral that they get started on. Not just convincing themselves that there is a monster outside, but for other things too, like guilt. Not fun to short circuit that.
And the Girl Scout cookies arrived by the van load during the day.
I was out, doing deals and stocking up. I’ve got a craigslist sale later today. Finally.
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I’ve said before, I’m treating this coronavirus as an incoming Cat5 hurricane. It FEELS a lot like the start of the zombie apocalypse in the John Ringo novels. My biggest concern is that the actions the chinese are taking do not match the numbers or the reported threat levels.
Aesop, who was a voice for MAX RESPONSE during the first Ebola epidemic is the voice of moderation in this one. He’s got training, experience, and is on the front line,so I’m not discounting his opinion. I’m considering that he’s basing it on info out of china, though, and if that info is bad, so can the conclusions be…
My personal red line for this will be the start of person to person transmission in the US. Right now, it seems that every foreign infection started in China. Once we have it in the wild in the US all bets are off.
So, touch up those preps people. And stay tuned.
nick
–it seems that china has a problem with defective or counterfeit PPEs…
https://twitter.com/NoticiasVirus
–lots of other good pix on that acct too.
n
At least it’s not “iPhone 12” time. Imagine the outrage in the FUSA with no new iPhone just because the Chinese slave labor force is dying in the streets. How rude.
My personal red line for this will be the start of person to person transmission in the US. Right now, it seems that every foreign infection started in China. Once we have it in the wild in the US all bets are off.
As I stated previously, if we still lived in Vantucky, I’d be on the lookout for the Mainland Chinese fathers to return to the bugout pads they established here in the states for the wife, kids, and paternal grandparents to live safe from any SHTF situation.
If you live in a neighborhood convenient to an international airport with regular direct flights to China (Beijing or Shanghai) or Narita, keep an eye on any possible bugout pads. If you notice “Dad” is suddenly home, things are serious.
We’ve probably got plenty of that here, but it isn’t on my radar. We have a developing Koreatown just to our south. I’m happy to see it as I prefer it to the tire shops and money changers.
n
Links to the original videos and commentary
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/reported-corona-virus-cases-in-china-massively-under-counted-due-to-shortage-of-diagnostic-kits-and-layers-of-bureaucracy/
–the nurse videos are harrowing. The death count is (by design) much lower than reality because they don’t count it without a test to confirm. They are using tests on the living, where they are available. Lag time on counting is measured in weeks apparently.
n
We’ve probably got plenty of that here, but it isn’t on my radar. We have a developing Koreatown just to our south. I’m happy to see it as I prefer it to the tire shops and money changers.
Bug out pads in the US and British Columbia are unique to Mainland Chinese from what I’ve seen.
Younger Koreans I’ve met who weren’t born here give this vibe that their country’s success with LG, Samsung, Hyundai, etc. is because they are God’s Gift to the world and that will protect the homeland from SHTF scenarios. At worst, they see reunification as happening like it did in Germany.
Maybe they’re right, but I think all bets are off since Khadaffy cut the deal with Bush for peace, giving up his chemical weapons programs, and ended up less than a decade later being sodomized to death with a flaming hot bayonet while Hillary cheered from the State Dept. situation room. All the dictators took note that day of what happens if you don’t have a nuke or at least a stash of Sarin.
Regardless of the spread of the WuFlu, we are going to see what happens when you starve a city of 11million. The monster in me says, you won’t have trouble feeding them if they all die of the plague….
n
(there are lots of vids of people desperate for food already, women fighting over bags of rice in the stores, empty shelves, hands reaching under roll up doors offering money for the few remaining bags of rice.)
(and what happens to the rest of the world’s excess rice when it starts getting diverted to China as “humanitarian relief” for the 60 MILLION under lockdown?)
(consider also, most chinese drink only bottled water, as the tap water isn’t really potable, that’s gonna get real bad, real quick)
everything.
Vitamins. Electronics. Purses. Medicine. Bottled water.
Some years ago I was involved in a startup to build Chinese-language phone apps to scan items on shelves and find out whether there was a lot of current fraud regarding that item and ideally whether that particular item was counterfeit. My understanding is that fraud (and products not fit for purpose) has gotten worse, though maybe it’s just that reporting on the problem is more widespread.
Every time my wife or any of her friends in the US go to the PRC, they bring a large suitcase loaded with vitamins, over the counter medicine, and other commonplace products which are highly desired in the PRC. Even containers of Comet cleanser. The dozen containers she brought last time were snatched up, and it’s indicative of not only the failure of managed economies but of low-trust societies.
and what happens to the rest of the world’s excess rice when it starts getting diverted to China as “humanitarian relief” for the 60 MILLION under lockdown?
Rice is a global market like oil and has the added issue of a fixed shelf life. It will go to who has the cash. US Dollars, not Yuan. The Chinese need their USD right now to prop up their banks and infrastructure spending.
there are lots of vids of people desperate for food already, women fighting over bags of rice in the stores, empty shelves, hands reaching under roll up doors offering money for the few remaining bags of rice.
Dunno how much of that is real need and how much is “You Ain’t Got No Ice Cream” as I wrote yesterday.
Eddie Murphy
“You Ain’t Got No Ice Cream”
https://youtu.be/BfU1LjFfyBI
Thank you for this gem, Greg.
Eddie Murphy
“You Ain’t Got No Ice Cream”
Thank you for this gem, Greg.
“You Ain’t Got No Ice Cream” … and “Goonie Goo Goo”. Murhpy was on fire back in the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFatikHPTVc
My mother-in-law used to call my wife a word that the Chinese relations wouldn’t translate, horrified that it would be used by a mother to address her children. The closest I come to pronouncing it properly is “Scumbum”, just like the Jackie Gleason in the current DVD releases of “Smokey and the Bandit” — where we all know what he’s really saying.
Now that both Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham have passed, I hope Universal releases the uncut Gleason performance at some point. Maybe the 50th anniversary “Smokey and the Bandit” BluRay.
There is reporting of masks selling out, but there are still lots of sellers on ebay and amazon that haven’t raised prices yet.
I’m looking at N99 and P100 masks too. My supply of those is REALLY small. They have a premium price over N95…
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/hurry-and-buy-them-hoarders-buy-it-n95-virus-masks-sell-out-across-us
n
added- industrial suppliers like Northernsafety.com have some on sale! Big suppliers will probably be the last to raise prices. The only difficulty is many of them drop ship from a manufacturer and their ordering page may not reflect actual, on the shelf ordering.
KungFlu is now in my county.
https://www.ocregister.com/2020/01/25/case-of-coronavirus-confirmed-in-orange-county/
Did some yard work. Blew leaves. Pruned the apple trees and the citrus. The apple that I thought had died, must have just frozen it’s leaves. I guess we’ll see, but despite the black leaves, scuffing the branches shows soft shiny green under the bark. Good news!
craigslist guy actually showed up and bought what I had. Miracles never cease…
n
Oh, wait #2: It seems we have a surfeit of fools, considering the number of people who went deeply into debt to pay for their History and English Lit degrees.
My nephew just graduated with a degree in history. He has no idea what he is going to do now.
“Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter in California Sunday morning, according to multiple reports.
TMZ was the first to report that the 41-year-old former Los Angeles Lakers star was killed along with four others aboard the aircraft, which crashed in Calabasas, which is near Malibu north of Los Angeles.”
–did he have something on Hillarity? Or epstein
n
My first thoughts were wondering if he had some dirt on the Clinton’s. Since it was a helicopter crash “May he rest in pieces”.
Yeh, I am a bad boy today.
“Health department confirms first case of coronavirus in Arizona”
“PHOENIX — The Arizona Department of Health Services on Sunday confirmed the first case of coronavirus in the state.
The patient is a Maricopa County resident and a member of the Arizona State University community who recently returned from traveling in Wuhan, China, the department said in a press release.
ADHS added that the person, who does not live in university housing, is not severely ill and is currently in isolation to keep the illness from spreading.”
n
https://twitter.com/NoticiasVirus
is where I saw the AZ news first….
n
My nephew just graduated with a degree in history. He has no idea what he is going to do now.
Hopefully it wasn’t somewhere expensive, where he’s funding Obamacare with student loan payments on six figures for the next 20-30 years.
Those undergrad degrees are not meant to be standalone credentials, especially for a white male. He wasn’t planning on a professional program of some kind?
What is Texas law regarding sitting for the CPA?
I know WA allowed someone to sit for the exam with any undergrad degree as long as they passed a core accounting curriculum at an accredited school.
My wife’s nephew enlisted in the Air Force after graduating with … Broadcasting (?), and the service sent him to OCS. I’m still not clear as to why he wasn’t ROTC to begin with, but my mother-in-law wrote the checks for that Big Man On Campus (TM) experience at Florida State.
@Cowboy Slim: This one’s for you:
Bay Area Couple To Be Jailed For Massive Ponzi Scheme Worth $1 Billion:
Going to keep Schiff and bunch off TV, but when they get back on, blame it on tRump.
That just shows it. The more stupid you are, the more you can get swindled and more likely to go for solar.
Kobe’s chopper was a Sikorsky S-76. Very nice.
Rough country where they went down, but not an impossible autorotation. Exactly what we practiced all the time in the Army. Low altitude/airspeed (40/40) autorotations until they were coming out of my ears. The Sikorsky’s come out of the air like bricks, though.
Maybe they lost the tail rotor at low altitude and buried it. S-76’s are twin engine, even with one engine out, safe landings (even where they went down) are easy. I flew one at Fort Drum, NY. Some retired General came in to sell some weapon system and I hopped in to guide them to the ranges. The pilot said “you got the controls” and off we went. Nice bird.
Radio Derb: Hysteria Goes Viral, Great 2nd Amendment Rally, South Sudan Basket Case, And Canada’s Mini-SPLC, Etc.
John Derbyshire addresses the WuFlu as it stood last Friday. You won’t be reassured. 🙁
_The Lazarus War: Artefact (The Lazarus War (1))_ by Jamie Sawyer
https://www.amazon.com/Lazarus-War-Artefact-Jamie-Sawyer/dp/0316386375/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number one of a three book military science fiction series. I read the very well printed (nice large font) and bound MMPB. I will order the other two books in the series.
Wow, if you are a big fan of Heinlein’s _Starship Troopers_ and John Steakley’s _Armor_ books, then I have a new book for you. In the future, new super bodies will be grown using your DNA and your consciousness moved temporarily into the new body until it is killed. Then you snap back into your original body. Hopefully.
Note: This book is not Avatar even though a couple of the reviewers commented on that.
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 3.7 out of 5 stars (120 reviews)
That just shows it. The more stupid you are, the more you can get swindled and more likely to go for solar.
Every time I get a phone call on the house line about solar, the person on the other end of the line is a Fresher from The Subcontinent. I never get as far as the point where they ask for the Target gift card payment.
Unsolicited phone call from The Subcontinent = scam as far as I’m concerned.
Wasn’t Kobe anti Trump and a big Obama supporter? Let the canonization begin.
https://www.tmz.com/2020/01/26/kobe-bryant-killed-dead-helicopter-crash-in-calabasas/
Vote Democrat … for Kobe.
Hopefully it wasn’t somewhere expensive, where he’s funding Obamacare with student loan payments on six figures for the next 20-30 years.
North Texas State University. Texas Tomorrow Fund from his grandfather, funds from Mom and Dad, shift work at McDonalds, and bucks from his loving aunt (my wife). He thought he wanted to be a school teacher but student teaching cured that.
His dad is a crippled retiree of UPS with Alzheimers and his mom is fighting stage two breast cancer (she got clean margins last week) so he has put his life on hold helping them out. He still lives at home so his living expenses are minimal. He can always go back to McDonalds in a pinch.
For @Nick:
https://www.comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2020-01-26
I used to work with a guy like this. He would walk out on a 10 inch i-beam 175 ft off the ground without any safety equipment and try to get me to follow him out there. I am slow but I am not stupid.
Yes, tRump is getting pummeled on Twitter for tweeting RIP Kobe. The *hate* is strong in the Dumbocrats.
His dad is a crippled retiree of UPS with Alzheimers and his mom is fighting stage two breast cancer (she got clean margins last week) so he has put his life on hold helping them out. He still lives at home so his living expenses are minimal. He can always go back to McDonalds in a pinch.
Not much margin for error for white males anymore. Trust me, I get zero points for doing the right thing by my kids for four years in Vantucky.
People are still tweeting that amazon is sold out of N95 masks, but I see lots of them for sale.
ebay has lots of sellers too, although it’s mostly nicer masks at ~1 to 3$ each….
northernsafety has several styles, although some are selling out.
3M is the premium, and from personal experience I can say they are good, sturdy, and comfortable (as they can be.) Avoid MSA branded ones with two yellow elastic straps. They suck.
n
“Musk Takes On German Ecology Critics of Tesla Plant Near Berlin”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/musk-takes-on-german-ecology-critics-of-tesla-plant-near-berlin/ar-BBZlC08
“Over the weekend, Musk cleared a different environmental obstacle: unexploded World War II ordnance, a result of the Berlin area’s legacy as an industrial target for Allied bombers.”
“Bomb disposal officers carried out controlled detonations of seven wartime bombs on Sunday at the future Tesla site, German news agency DPA reported.”
Seven unexploded bombs ??????? Can you even dig in Germany ?
And Telsa is building a third assembly plant ? Wow. Somebody is standing behind Tesla with very deep pockets.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
Maybe they lost the tail rotor at low altitude and buried it. S-76’s are twin engine, even with one engine out, safe landings (even where they went down) are easy. I flew one at Fort Drum, NY. Some retired General came in to sell some weapon system and I hopped in to guide them to the ranges. The pilot said “you got the controls” and off we went. Nice bird.
https://www.tmz.com/2020/01/26/kobe-bryant-killed-dead-helicopter-crash-in-calabasas/
“We know the pilot contacted the control tower at Burbank Airport around 9:30 AM PT, and the tower was aware the pilot had been circling for about 15 minutes. The pilot eventually headed north along the 118 freeway before turning to the west, and started following above the 101 freeway around Woodland Hills, CA.”
“At around 9:40 AM they encounter more weather — as in seriously heavy fog — and the chopper turned south. This was critical, because they turned toward a mountainous area. The pilot suddenly and rapidly climbed from about 1200 feet up to 2000 feet.”
“However, moments later — around 9:45 AM — they flew into a mountain at 1700 feet. Flight tracker data shows they were flying at about 161 knots.”
Sounds like pilot error.
Finally from Arthur Bradley at https://disasterpreparer.com/ , some numbers that I have been wondering about:
“It’s time to begin paying attention to the coronavirus threat. While it’s still very early in the outbreak, there exists the potential for this to become a very serious pandemic.”
“The coronavirus 2019-nCoV is essentially a more deadly cold virus, causing fever, flu-like symptoms, and pneumonia. There have also been some reports of non-respiratory symptoms, including nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting.”
“It is still way too early to know, but early numbers suggest between 1% and 10% mortality rate. As of this email, it is listed as 4% fatal, with many of those being the elderly and people with other health conditions. Compare that to the annual flu, which has a mortality rate of around 0.1% to 0.3%.”
“With the recent announcement that people can transmit 2019-nCoV before they have symptoms, the disease possesses the ability become widespread. In fact, many experts predict that it’s already too late to stop its spread. The only questions remaining are how far it will go, and how deadly it will be.”
“Protecting yourself is done with the same steps you would to prevent contracting a cold or the flu.”
A 4% fatality rate is nothing to sneeze at but it is way better than the 25% fatality rate that I was wondering about. As usual, don’t be real young or elderly. Getting closer to the elderly thing myself every day.
His dad is a crippled retiree of UPS with Alzheimers and his mom is fighting stage two breast cancer (she got clean margins last week) so he has put his life on hold helping them out. He still lives at home so his living expenses are minimal. He can always go back to McDonalds in a pinch.
Not much margin for error for white males anymore. Trust me, I get zero points for doing the right thing by my kids for four years in Vantucky.
He is a good guy, age 26. It is never wrong to do the right thing.
I’ve been telling him that he should become a plumber. He has no fear of hard work and has helped me out with several projects around my house over the years. He just needs some direction. And he has been invaluable help with the hell his parents have been through over the last two years.
What’s the phrase? Controlled flight into terrain…..
n
There it is. The number one cause of death by helicopter: pilot error. Another thing we practiced religiously: instrument recover wherever we deployed. Heading, airspeed, altitude to avoid all obstacles and proceed with an instrument recovery for that area. This pilot probably went for the sucker hole. “I can see the ground through the fog. I’ll land there.” And then the fog eats you. That happened to a crew during my first tour in Korea. They buried it in a mountain trying for the sucker hole. They found one pilot’s boots, with his feet still in them. Nothing else but mush everywhere.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7931931/FOURTH-case-coronavirus-confirmed.html
Good summary and wrap up of current state of play.
n
Another funny thing. No mention of a copilot. The S-76 is normally a crew of two. The engine throttles are overhead and some emergency procedures require to manually operate them. You have to take a hand off the flight controls. I wonder if it was one pilot under VFR? Bad news.
From the pictures, you can see all that was left was mush. What a way to go.
Hooray for plumbers! He seems to have the aptitude, so might go for it. Once established, he might consider commercial work, or getting a contractor’s license. I hope there are still apprentice situations available for a jump start.
I know. I considered becoming an electrician. Might have been a terrific career, but other opportunities came up. Still, used those skills over the years. People who can plumb, or wire, or repair things will always be in demand. The trick is to find good, steady work, and make it pay. Being in a metro area helps.