Risky Business

Timeless wisdom for the ages, from Guido the Killer Pimp:

 

"In a sluggish economy, never, EVER f**k with another man's livelihood."

Sunday Music: Son Of A Preacher Man

Born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, "Dusty Springfield" spent her entire musical career as the very dictionary definition of "blue eyed soul", being the most southern woman to come out of London since Vivien Leigh, and the blackest white Irish girl to cut an album anywhere. This cut, from Dusty In Memphis, made it only to #10 in the US and UK at the time, but has since been included on every list of the greatest singles of all time, and rocked it just as hard in the soundtrack for Pulp Fiction in 1994 as it did brand new in 1969. Dusty was eventually awarded the Order of the British Empire, and described after her death as arguably one of the greatest singers from the UK of the 20th century, but songs like this will keep her alive for and inspire generations yet to come.

Turkey Leftovers



As my aunt would remind us, "If you don't finish it all, it just keeps coming back!"

Yesterday was the most important part about looking at how you fared at an individual level: what did you do, what should you do, and what will you do? I hope you take the time to analyze your own situation, and improve your position.

Now I want to consider the broader implications, and complications, of the current, and ongoing situation.

We already talked about wider casualties of this pandemic, and the fact that even if this thing dematerialized (and no, faithful tinfoil-hat fucktards, this wasn't an illusory pandemic, much though you gnash your teeth at that reality) overnight, like it couldn't, things will not, and probably not ever, be "like they usedta be". The 2020 you woke up to on New Year's Day this year is gone forever, and that world will not be seen again, probably not in your lifetime.

Wrap your heads around that, and start behaving appropriately to that information.

There might not have been many Kung Flu cases in North Dakota, or Alabama, or Mississippi, and only localized problems in Texas and Louisiana, but the departure of the oil business for the next several years, particularly the fracking fields, will change economies in all those places for a decade. Those oil boom jobs? Gone with the wind. Oh, btw: oil was one of the few bright spots in places like Venezuela until Chavez and Maduro, and Mexico until this year. Their industries will be hurting perennially for some time too, which merely increases pressures in both countries going forward. The economic refugees normally pouring across our southern border non-stop for a generation will not abate in perpetuity absent a large, high wall.

The decline, death spiral, and/or outright crash into a smoking hole of several other sectors, both short- and long-term, bodes poorly for the overall economic outlook. Entire restaurant chains are announcing, essentially, "F**K it; we quit." in the face of slow-roll-outs for re-opening. They will, quite simply, never be back. Smaller enterprises (we have friends in this boat) have done the math, and won't be re-opening again either. Maybe in five or ten years, but not this one.

That has upstream effects: on bankruptcy filings, commercial rentals, mortgages on them, lenders, financial services, and the DJIA. Which then proceeds to the Fed, the Congress, and ultimately, you and your paycheck and bank account, if you have any of that left.

Meanwhile, only Bitch McConjob and the Republican Senate stand between Nancy Alzheimer's and spending your grandkids' inheritance, not like a drunken sailor on liberty, but like one on acid, meth, and crack. The latest Porkculus III (or IV? Or V? I forget...) attempt to pack Socialism's Wish List into every crisis is D.O.A., but like the penguins of Antarctica, they will simply keep coming, until we can flip the House back to something less insaniac.

If the Senate and/or White House were to be lost this time around, you should be loading magazines and bandoliers, because the next stop will be Weimar at warp speed. (Remember that when someone tells you voting doesn't matter at all).
Followed, inevitably, by one of the updated forms of socialism originally begun under the branches labeled National, and International.

"Jaw, jaw, jaw, is better than war, war, war." - Winston Churchill

 

"There never was a good war or a bad peace." - Benjamin Franklin

Both men knew whereof they spoke, firsthand. Fight, tooth and nail, to avoid open warfare on your continent. But if it comes anyway, despite your best efforts, stop at nothing to win it. The results for those who fail at both end up in an open trench, just beyond the crematoriums.

A farmer in the Alsace Lorraine, Belgium, etc. could have done quite well, in 1914, or 1939, with simply the means to bunker under the south forty for five years, with a sack of Swiss francs and silver for his re-emergence. Just saying.

Work to get out of any debt whatsoever, as quickly as possible. Diversify your savings from just fiat bux. Multiple currencies and precious metals (PMs) would be wise. (And get it the hell off the grid, and out of the system!!! It's too late when your bank folds, or the .GOV seizes all pension funds and 401ks to pay the tax bill, i'n'it? Think they'll "never do that"? See yesterday's essay.) So would tangible assets. Arable land, potable water, renewable food sources. A man with a cow, a bull, a flock of chickens, a feed lot, and a few acres will never want, and a little more than that will always be an income, even if it's barter or black market. You can raise chickens in part of a garage and back yard, btw.

Getting the hell away from large population centers entirely would be a better long-term plan, but as I'm not yet there myself, I understand those without the ability to do so presently. It is nonetheless a goal to work towards, with a will and a purpose. I am.

You have just witnessed a concerning dress rehearsal for worse things, in recent days. And as we've all seen, morons gonna moron, and tyrants gonna tyrant. Plan for both contingencies, widespread and long-term, and be prepared beyond a continuum that only has "Suck it up" and "Open fire" as options. Life is a fader switch, not a light switch. The problem with false dilemmas is that you may never get to the point where "it's time to shoot the bastards", but yet be far worse off than you are now, for weeks, months, or years, nonetheless.

Prices for some things (gasoline, e.g.) will drop. Then the inflation, driven by the Porkulus Spendomania bills, will kick in, and shortages will begin, and they'll rise again, precipitously. (Usually, just after you've taken a pay cut.) Make prudent plans. Expect chaos.

This pandemic is liable to continue, in fits and starts, all the rest of this year.
The Second Wave of it may be a robust boom, or a bust, but it's still a likely thing.
I think it's going to blossom and wither in a kaleidoscope of places, at varying times, and varying intensities. And I would put a vaccine in the Nice To Have category, but my pessimism about getting one, or its efficacy, runs to between 90-100%, at this point.

And if you think this wimpy little virus was the only pandemic possible, or likely, in the rest of your lifetime, I have a bridge for sale, cheap. Everyone has seen how utterly hapless, helpless, hopeless, and brainless both TPTB, and Joe Average, were for this one. (Not to mention the idjits running healthcare, generally or specifically, anywhere on the planet). We simply aren't prepared for this, and probably never will be. People in any group are comprised of too many Gilligans to get it right anywhere, for very long. Singapore and Korea thought they had a handle on things. Now, not so much.
Island dictatorships fare slightly better, but only if they stay completely isolated, with draconian rules and tabs on the populace, indefinitely. Anyone else that looks good now is most likely either lying about numbers, or dancing on the beach ahead of the tsunami. Or both. The common component of every pandemic is hubris. Ask China or NYFC. Human nature in that respect has not changed since Edgar Allan Poe wrote about it fictionally in 1850.

You can't fix that, nor should you worry overmuch about it. Prepare to cope with smart, half-assed, and/or bog-stupid responses, and you'll be fine. You'll also get all three, at different times.

In short, you just had nearly three fat years of boom. I hope you enjoyed them, and made the most of them. You are now looking at lean years of bust, and the buildings aren't done bursting into flames and collapsing yet. Some of them are just getting warmed up, in fact.

Get used to bare spots in grocery aisles. Make sure your masks are comfortable, and plentiful, because they'll be a thing for some weeks to months. Don't be surprised if there are retreats on opening up, as well as advances. And mind the falling casualties, both actual, and metaphorical, they will continue for the next few years.

The Titanic sank in a couple of hours. The economy, being somewhat larger than a modest ocean liner, can be expected to drag things out commensurately longer.

But however long it takes, it's always more fun to watch from a lifeboat, than from the deck.

So Let's Talk Turkey

In this case, the 800-lb. turkey in the room.
As various levels of lockdowns, quarantines, safer-at-home, and other restrictions are lifted, some more wisely than others, it's time for a serious come-to-Jesus talk.

Some of you were ready, mostly.
Most of you were found to have your pants around your ankles.
A goodly number of the latter also were found to have heads inserted, to various degrees, up their own @$$#$.

And everyone knows what excuses are like.

The ones that were ready, mostly, will have a hard time ahead, because they're going to have to think, really hard, about where they might have failed, or would have come up short, for any number of "what if"s that didn't happen. Most of them will survive that trial handily, since they're pretty good at "what if"ing. But no plan of action survives first contact with the enemy, and it will still require diligent and careful consideration to be prepared for the next Problem.

And there will be a Next Problem, most assuredly.
(No small part of which is the follow-up to what has transpired this year, to date.)

That concludes their after-action memorandum, and being the ones who did OK this time, they're probably already working on doing even better next time. No one ever glides and coasts across the finish line in first place, and they already know that.

So the bulk of this little chat will concern the bulk of people for the past few months.

Bare Survival

You're here reading this? Congrats. You survived. So far. This always beats the alternative.

Details

1) You thought to yourself, "Self: The Government will Never do X, Y, or Z."
I warned people waaaaaay back, because the CDC outright told you, they planned to do exactly the shutdowns that happened. I got told, online, and in person, "That will never happen, because reasons."
Well, sucks to be you, doesn't it?
They called out the National Guard. They shut everything down. Schools. Businesses. Courts. Government offices. Congress. SCOTUS. Every-damned-thing.
If you thought, to any degree, there was something they'd never do, you just got a metric fuck-ton of evidence that your head was one of those shoved in a dark, quiet place.
Welcome to Reality, Bucko!
Don't be That Guy ever again, please.

EVERYTHING is on the table, always, every time. Get that through your heads.
That foolish and short-sighted take cost some people their lives, others their livelihoods, and the reckoning on the final tally of damage will take a decade to properly assess, and there's no guarantee today that you'll be there for that final announcement.

 

YOU WILL SEE THIS MATERIAL AGAIN

2) Despite being told, any number of times, the sage advice of Ol' Remus, to

"AVOID CROWDS"

most of you couldn't, or wouldn't. Not "Run to the hills" necessarily. Most of you lost your complete shit at being told to simply stay home, and mind your own business. As if you'd been told to fly to Mars in a balloon. No plan. No resources. Little to no forethought whatsoever to that eventuality, judging purely by the pissing, moaning, and caterwauling, both here and a hundred other sites, leads me to believe you'd do even worse if it was anything worse than just going home, and effing off.

Resistance? Insurrection?? Civil war??? Pfft. You'd have been roadkill on Day Two.
Some number are anyways, right now. And you thought you were going to kick ass?

Sh'yeah. That stinging in the back of your head? That was Reality slapping you.
If this was news to you, I'm sorry to have delivered it.

3) Despite any number of times you might have heard it from me, The Other Ryan at the former Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest, or in Commander Zero's Notes From the Bunker, or from Selco, or Ferfal, you didn't - and DON'T - have a multi-month cash float of funds to see you through a crisis even as mild as the one we've just gone through.
"Oh, but, But, BUT...!"
Reality doesn't give a sh*t, Snowflake.
If you aren't homeless, in a box, eating from dumpsters, literally living hand-to-mouth 24/7/365, you had disposable income, and you foolishly and short-sightededly got a house mortgage, car payment, credit card balance, or any number of toys, geegaws, and other miscellaneous sh*t that you suddenly found burdensome, because you did not pay yourself FIRST and use those funds to establish a cash reserve sufficient for your normal expenses for three, six, or twelve months with no other means of support.

This has been commonsense advice from sites like Kiplinger, Motley Foole, Dave Ramsay, and about 1000 others for effing YEARS, man.

Isn't the back of your head really red and sore yet??

"BUT BUT BUTT I CAN'T DO THAT!!!

Okay. So you're now an American't, instead of an American. Enjoy the welfare dime, suckle up to government's cold, hard teat, and may your chains rest lightly upon you.

If, however, you "coulda, shoulda, woulda", but didn't, then just own up to that error, and correct it, FIRST CHANCE YOU GET. Not next year, next month, or next week, but next paycheck. And every bit you can, FIRST, until you've got money you can lay hands on, even if the house burns down, even if the bank is closed, even if the power grid goes down and there's no ATM, no Internet, and no financial system, so that next time, you're not That Guy.
If you have nothing, work on a week's pay. When you get a week, work on having a full month. When you get a month, work on three. When you get to three, work on six. When you get to six, work on a year. At least 90% of all problems that aren't global zombie apocalypse can be readily solved with a passport, a credit card with a high limit, and/or a fat envelope of cash. If you want to get to more than a year, good for you. If you want to diversify from fiatbux greenbacks into other currencies, as well as gold and silver PMs, great for you.

And nota bene if you run a business (RUN, not "work for") the same should be true of your business emergency contingency fund. If you can't do that, you're a failed business, and skating along the edge just ensures you'll be the first one over the cliff at the first sign of trouble. Some of you have already discovered that.

Your parents and grandparents, who went through the Great Depression (which was anything but Great) knew this in their bones. Now you do too. The Gods Of The Copybook Headings just called to say "Hi!"

4) Three days food (and other necessities of life) is a joke. One told by FEMA and the Red Cross, mainly to people for whom 1 day's extra anything is something their tiny minds never thought of. Three days' stored food just means that on Day Four, you're in a FEMA camp, as a refugee.

No sh*t. All it takes is the barest planning ahead. I had a month on hand, for two, in a one-bedroom apartment, when the Northridge Earthquake hit. We did fine. I upped it to six months since then. In this non-event, I've yet to crack a single can of that. But I'm working on making it a year before the next annoying little PITA comes along.

5) And my TP "hoarding" consisted of buying exactly one extra package, before it became a thing, because I already had months of that laying around stored too. Ditto for damned near everything else. I'm working on the same for meds and other supplies. You? Probably not so much, right?

6) Not living on land I own, water is only ("only") a couple of months, plus about nine ways to purify all I can gather and store. By year's end, I'll be at six months. 

7) Power/heat is something to work on, but I can cook for several months ("Several", because I need to see how long a fraction of what I've got stored works, and then see how long everything I've got stored extrapolates to.) Heat here is only a problem a few months a year, worst case, and mostly solvable with warmer clothes. Handled. But adding a small capability for renewable power for a fridge/freezer, and brief use of a couple of appliances, was on this year's list anyways. It has moved higher since January.

8) Any problem that lasts more than a year has gotten beyond mere survival, and become an extinction event. Aim to be able to handle that, too, eventually. But more guns, and more ammo, aren't going to feed you, because anybody worth robbing has probably already gotten there ahead of you, along with a lot of people who think they'll be doing the robbing. Even during the height of the German Occupation, the French Resistance, small and humble as it was in reality, never seemed to lack for enough guns and bullets. Neither will you, because at some point, the people who have them become a supply point for everyone who doesn't. You only need a knife, or a rock, or a few feet of stout wire, to start leveling up.
Stop focusing on weapons, and start looking at tactics, strategy, and logistics. Starving people never won a war in recorded history, and even modern society, fat as it is, hasn't managed to eat itself quite to death yet. Calories are more important than gun racks, in the grand scheme, though you'll always need enough of everything.

9) Communications, with PACE, were a minimal concern in this Lilliputian problem. Next time, they may feature more heavily. You might want to get on that.
Just saying.

10) Medical?

"What's a virus?"
"What's PPE?
"What's handwashing?"
"What masks work, at all? Good? Better? Best?"

And on and on and on and on, ad infinitum.

GET TRAINED.
GET SUPPLIES.
GET ENOUGH SUPPLIES.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

My Porcelain Thinking Room catalog library shows N95 masks, which don't expire, were going for $1.49@ from Major Surplus as recently as 2018, in 10-mask boxes. IOW, for $150, you could have put on a new one every day from the beginning of the lockdown to now, and still had masks left over. That'd be good for decades if you never used them. But more than a few people bought a ninth handgun for three times that price, that they never used this time around. If you have a gun collecting itch, fine. I do. I could arm enough people to take over most countries south of Mexico without breaking a sweat. But let's call your fetish a fetish, and not confuse it with anything but a nice inheritance for your heirs when you die of old age. I'm closer to the end of my life than the beginning, and I've used the medicine cabinet far more than the gun cabinet, to date. Both are good, and even fun, but one has a wee bit more utility in the long haul, and should be accorded a higher precedence if you're using your big head to work your way though a problem, instead of the little one. Get smarter about that, get trained, and get the supplies that can support your training, and vice versa. If you can deliver babies, birth cattle, and safely remove an appendix, with what's on-hand at home, you're the exception that proves the rule.

Almost none of you are there, nor anywhere close, and very few really want to be, until it's far too late to fix. I've made a tidy sum over the years on those people. Ask me how I know.

We could go on, but won't.
I hope you all enjoyed your free trial of communism, and I hope you all manage to bounce back and thrive coming out the other side, whenever this current sh*tshow all ends finally.
But you shouldn't have been setting your hair on fire nor sh*tting your pants about anything that happened. And you wouldn't have been, IF you'd been more than half-assed totally unprepared for it.

You just got the world's most annoying fire drill. You're not on fire, as it turns out. So go forth, and learn the goddam lessons you should have already learned, instead of going back to sportsball, mall therapy, and general obliviousness, so that the next one doesn't kick your ass like the last one did.

And please, by all that's good and true, remember this nonsense the next time some government-paid tool tells you "Don't worry. This will never happen. It will happen, but not here. But if it happens here, we'll crush it. We're ready for this. We've got this. We'll do fine."

Instead, worry a little bit.
It will happen.
Here.
We won't crush it.
We're not ready.
They don't "got this".
You won't do fine.

Remember that, and nothing else they say will concern you much, as much as make you laugh at them. And hopefully, inspire you to take a wee bit more personal responsibility for your own safety and security, to the extent possible, rather than bitch at the government for telling you lies, or bitch at other people for telling you the truth. You come off looking poorly in either case, and none of the BMWing helps with your ultimate problem.

The harder this little note made you cry and want to hissyfit and tantrum, the more it applies to you. Best wishes in your future endeavors, but Denial isn't just a river in Africa, and Hope still ain't a plan.

Somebody Impanel A Jury, And Start Looking For A Stout Oak Tree

h/t The Old Jarhead

And Dumbocrats were ready to ditch Dopey Gropey Joe, and try to nominate this @$$clown??

(NYFC) Gov. Andrew Cuomo [D-Five Families] has finally admitted — tacitly and partially, anyway — the mistake that was state health chief Howard Zucker’s order that nursing homes must admit coronavirus-positive patients.
On Sunday, Cuomo announced a new regulation: Such patients must now test negative for the virus before hospitals can return them to nursing homes. Yet the gov also admitted that COVID-19 cases might still go to the facilities via other routes, and didn’t explicitly overrule Zucker’s March 25 mandate that homes must accept people despite their testing status — indeed, couldn’t even require a test pre-admission.

Make that murderous @$$clown. 

Tiptoeing quietly away from the scene of the crime, especially after revelations that somewhere approaching half of all NYFS COVID deaths were in nursing homes, after you foisted infectious patients into such a vulnerable population, are what legal scholars and beat detectives both call "consciousness of guilt".

There should be indictments for criminal negligence and depraved indifference there. One jackhole governor probably caused more deaths than two wars in the Middle East, in as many months.

Proving once again that when you put communists in charge, their first instinct is to start pushing citizens into the wood chippers.
As always.

Big Winner: Shrillary.
Just like Jimmy Peanut heaved a monstrous sigh of relief after the Obozo administration, when peanut-brain suddenly became only the second worst president in U.S. history, the personal body count of Shrillary and the Clinton Family Crime Syndicate has now, nearly overnight, dropped to being only the second-worst place in the Dumbocrat Party all time score list.


BTW, a related item:
8/10. RTWT.
Why only 8/10?

Read Item 6 in that post. Then look at the story above again.
Nursing home administrators are slightly higher than pond scum, in many cases. But when their hands were tied by the CCCP-NY, it's much clearer where the problem - and culpability - lies.

Re: Item 3:
This was an average bad flu season - except in just two months, not a year. 
And this problem isn't over yet; you're teeing up Round Two, as we speak, and you're liable to see triple the score of the first two months by the end of the year.
You'll get the economy rolling, yes, and that's good.
But TANSTAAFL.
You wanted to trade a return to a functioning economy, in exchange for the certainty of more Kung Flu deaths. You'll get your wish, and pay that bill. Darwin always gets his due.
Soft-soaping that is beyond retarded.
 
There is going to be a price, in lives, for any action you take. Suck it up, buttercup.
You asked for it, and you're going to get it. Put on your Big Girl panties and deal with it, but stop pretending it's going to be consequence-free.

As for the other points: clear outta the park. See for yourself.

Highlight Item 4 in yellow highlighter, then underline it in red ink.
We've only been telling you that one for 6 years, so far.
That's why we've been telling you about this all along.
Unfuck yourselves, as necessary.

You will see this material again.

It's Looking Like Biden Was The Brains Of The Outfit

If You Want To Do Memes Badly, You Will

Unfortunately, there's no IQ test for meme generator sites.
For example, Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man posted quite a collection of good ones today, and one total clinker.

We have gently and lovingly fixed the mental misfire for the person who wrote it.

This embiggens.

For the layman, comedy/wit has to be two things:
1) It has to be True.
2) It has to be Funny.

Rule #1 is inviolable.
Rule #2 is hard.
But Rule #3 is a cast iron bitch:

3) If you fail at #1 or #2, what you write is just stupid and pointless, and the joke is always on you.

A true comedic genius, Mel Brooks (perhaps you've heard of him) once pointed out further comedic truth:

"Tragedy is me stubbing my toe.
Comedy is you falling off a cliff."

So to the unknown soopergenius who posted the first part of today's illustrative lesson, I'd like to thank you for providing comedic relief - unintentionally. You'll be sharing the award with gravity. Mind the drop.

Now enjoy Chuck Jones, Robert McKimson, et al, proving how smart Mel was.

Money Does Not Equal Brains, Lesson 4,683,287,142

Sunday Music: Ode To Billy Joe

Monster Number One hit of 1967, taking Bobby Gentry from country nobody trying to sell her songs to other artists, to top act in the country. The album it spawned pushed the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album off the top of the heap, and the song won Gentry three Grammys (out of eight nominations). She sang and played guitar on what became the master cut, literally dripping with Southern melancholy, as a demo because "it was cheaper than hiring someone else to do it". It remains on just about every "Top Song" list of American contemporary music, and probably always will. Gentry, now 77, has quietly retired, and hasn't been seen or heard from in public since the early 1980s. We'd like to think (and hope) that somewhere she has a steamer trunk full of songs and tapes covering the last 40 years that will someday see daylight, but if this one song was all she'd ever done, she'd still be a music legend.

Little Victories

I had no idea when I went to see it how much

this movie would direct the forces in my life.

Longtime readers may recall that Fat Cat, having used up all nine lives, shuffled off her feline coil last Thanksgiving. So, as sure as God makes little green apples, a couple of weeks afterwards, the landlord decided to upgrade plumbing hereabouts.

Goofus #1 and Goofus #2 employed to do the job were earnest, if not very bright, plumbers, and they managed to get the digs' piping upgraded, and with only three tries, finally sweated the final fitting right, and stopped the leak they created.

Buuuuuut...they left gaping holes in the sheetrock where they dropped new lines to replace the old copper tubing. Way up in the attic space, but still...

Consequently, there lately was newly heard a rustling and bustling up thataways, where normally only old boxes sit, and the only residents are dust bunnies and ghost turds.

Until last month.

I know this, because old potato chip bags that fall behind the trash bin do not, as a rule, chew themselves to small ribbons.

Then there was a regular rustling behind piles of piles around the manor.

Rodents in the wire! Set off the claymores!

Knowing that I have, when there's a local heatwave, propped open the front door to capture a breeze now and again, I was afraid that, like one brief incident decades hence, I might have inadvertently invited Mssr. Rat in to set up residence.

That was bad enough.  Having no desire to share space and have to deal with Kung Flu and plague-carrying rabid sewer rats, I began removing possible hiding places from among the piles of grown-up toys, ammunition for same, books, and other research material in the various corners of the lair. But a couple of weeks later, as I whittled down the available hiding spaces, imagine my shocked surprise when, instead of some monstrous Norwegian Brown Sewer Rat, my late night visit to the loo revealed a couple of field mice, in flagrante delicto.
The brazen rodentious bastards.

And, in what quickly became apparent, they had obviously brought their relatives and relations.
Such that
1) containment measures that would suffice for Mssr. Rat would not work on an animal that can get through a dime-sized knothole, and
2) They had already escaped containment, and decamped to the four corners of my fiefdom.
3) Which, thanks to the gorram Kung Flu, is now awash in potential mouse food, much of it so new I haven't had time to decant it into mouseproof sealed metal cans and food-grade buckets yet. And which, if they get into it, will beget a never-ending sh*tstorm of well-fed mice.

F**k that very much, thanks.

They sure as hell aren't getting any of my chow, no effing way.
Having some wee experience with the little rodentious bastards, and the campaign awards to prove it, I hie myself to Orange Box, and grab a package of Mk. I Traps, Mouse, (4)@. And, Callooh! Callay! Sam's Club gifted me a few months back with a free tasty retort packet of honey-peanut butter.

I bait my trap line, and set the ambush.

I have thus been greeted by a steadily increasing bodycount this week, until this morning, on arising, the last rodentious p.o.s. was found dispatched.
O frabjous day! 
I have since patched the holes in the sheetrock, on my side and the neighbor's side of the wall, so they won't be getting in again. Other than animals I've brought home, the biggest problem I've had were ants and the occasional spider.

But seriously, them getting in just after the lifelong unemployed cat, who would have made sport of them, had permanently departed, and just at the beginning of a pandemic where stored food could be kind of a big thing? WTAF?!? What are the odds of that?
I was looking for the hidden camera, I swear.

"Nine godless communist thieving mice dispatched, all weapons functional,  local patrols report no enemy within the AO. All enemy buried at sea via indoor plumbing. Area all secured."

And a moral to the story:
The little things and minor details, no matter how implausible, can always make any disaster go from bad to worse, just when you least expect it.
Like I needed reminding that Murphy is a right bastard.

Hopeium Futures Take Another Hit

h/t to CDR Salamander

"May you live in interesting times."

Well, $#!^.

For those out there trying to draw some illusory level of comfort in the mythos that current reported US Kung Flu deaths are a byproduct of perverse incentives, and packing the numbers with non-Kung Flu casualties like snowmobile deaths and people juggling polar bears, there's some really bad news, apolitical in the extreme, from the number crunchers in London at the Financial Times.

They don't give a damn there whether your politics are Left or Right, or what political dog whistles you hear. They just, y'know, analyzed the data, and then compared it with historical death numbers from the same countries and cities from years past to show change over time this year. Almost like they were using mathematics and statistics, or something. (For anyone unacquainted, they're a handy tool, and you should try them from time to time.)

Suffice it to say, the numbers you think are padded may actually be drastically undercounting the actual Kung Flu death toll by as much as 50-60%.

 (LONDON) "The death toll from coronavirus may be almost 60 per cent higher than reported in official counts, according to an FT analysis of overall fatalities during the pandemic in 14 countries. Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across these locations, considerably higher than the 77,000 official Covid-19 deaths reported for the same places and time periods. 

If the same level of under-reporting observed in these countries was happening worldwide, the global Covid-19 death toll would rise from the current official total of 201,000 to as high as 318,000. 

To calculate excess deaths, the FT has compared deaths from all causes in the weeks of a location’s outbreak in March and April 2020 to the average for the same period between 2015 and 2019. The total of 122,000 amounts to a 50 per cent rise in overall mortality relative to the historical average for the locations studied."

Oh NOES!!!! The Flu Bros Hoaxer Myth just took another .44Mag silver bullet right to the heart.

Data graphic for countries (these embiggen):

Data for individual cities:

Those big red spikes, above? Those are what people who read graphs call "anomalous spikes", and they represent how badly and how far this thing has changed things versus historical death numbers, in exactly the same way you look at holes in ballistic gelatin to determine relative ballistic performance and effectiveness of firearm rounds. Look at the graphs again. Did we say .44Mag? Sorry. We meant to say .50BMG.

"The extra deaths are most pronounced in urban areas with the worst virus outbreaks, and have completely overwhelmed reporting mechanisms in some. This is especially worrying for many emerging economies, where total excess mortality is orders of magnitude higher than official coronavirus fatalities. 

In Ecuador’s Guayas province, just 245 official Covid-related deaths were reported between March 1 and April 15, but data on total deaths show that about 10,200 more people died during this period than in a typical year — an increase of 350 per cent.
{And an increase in COVID-19 deaths of 41,000%! "Just the flu, bro." - A.} 

Experts have warned of serious under-reporting of Covid-19 cases in residential facilities for the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable to the virus. “Very few countries appear to be testing people in care homes, staff and residents, systematically,” said Adelina Comas-Herrera, research fellow at the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre of the London School of Economics. 

Even the much higher numbers of deaths in the pandemic suggested by excess mortality statistics are likely to be conservative, as lockdowns mean that “mortality from numerous conditions such as traffic accidents and occupational injuries possibly went down”, said Markéta Pechholdová, assistant professor of demography at the University of Economics, Prague."

More rounds, center mass to the chest.
Kind of like this:

ED-209? No. COVID-19. You have 10 seconds to comply. 9,8,...
"You killed Kenny! You bastards!"
 

The only good news? Most of those spikes appear to have peaked. For now.

And just to really take a monstrous dump in your corn flakes:
That's in the First World, i.e. what we mean when we say "civilization", with robust medical care, and transparent reporting systems.

In the Turd World, i.e. Sh*tholia, Trashcanistan, et al , where neither of those things apply, the pandemic is liable to be far, far worse.

We have NO WILD IDEA what the outbreak is doing in places where they can't count beyond twenty, even though they're already barefoot.

IOW, you're so far beyond F**ked by this virus, you can't see F**ked from here.
F**ked was eight stops ago, and you slept right past that station, and the train's rolling way beyond where you thought it was. At full speed.

Cheers.

Now tell me about how prepared you are, and for how long?

BTW? For those who would discount the CDC projections of estimated deaths, here it is, helpfully posted over at Salamander's blog from back at the end of March this year:

Talk about calling your shot. Pisser for those who have to admit that the actual totals are right down the middle of the fairway so far (except that it doesn't yet seem to be leveling out like they thought, does it?).

Let's hope that it does indeed level off, as they projected weeks ago. Rather than, say, having wingnuts keen to ignore this charging out and spiking it even higher in the next few weeks.

Counting Casualties

Stepping away from the actual pandemic, because I'm tired of disputing with morons on things that are grade school simple, we wander over to the crystal ball for a bit to look at some potential and probable casualties rather more important than even the 70K+ people (and counting) that'll never be going anywhere but the cemetery from here on out.

Are these casualties guaranteed? No.
Are they likely? O Hell, yes.
Are they permanent? If not, how long will they last? GOK. God Only Knows.

The Oil Industry
People ignore the fact that Russia and OPEC were getting into a throat-slitting contest before the pandemic became news outside China, but that shindig, coupled with .Gov ringing the alarm over Kung Flu, gave Wall Street the go-ahead to take the most massive fiscal shit on itself in recorded history.

Last week, the price of oil was down to "If you'll take this crap off my hands, I'll pay YOU $19/bbl to unload it for me." Imagine Macy's giving $50 bills away for taking suits and dresses - marked down to "FREE" - off their store racks, and you've got the idea.

Fracking? Drilling? Fuggedabowdit.
Short-term, OPEC countries are going to starve, first for cash, and then quite possibly for real. This is when "Arab Spring" from a couple of years ago turns into a Long, Hot Summer Of Discontent.

American drilling platforms, oil fields, and general operations? Probably taking a months-to-years long shit on themselves too. We may never see things like they were last December again, for years, to decades, to ever.

Airlines

F**ked. Like 9/11 f**ked. This year at least. Some of them won't be back, ever.
Airlines run on razor-thin margins, and some won't survive the next shake-out.
Which takes out everyone from pilots to baggage manglers.
(But still not those fat, stupid crotch-groping perverts and luggage thieves at TSA, dammit!)

Bonus: Less demand for aviation fuel kicks the oil bidness in the crotch again.

The Auto Industry

We were already sitting on a months-long glut of cars, because the "booming" economy wasn't trickling down from banks and board rooms to where people buy new cars. With unemployment where it is now, defaults on auto loans to come, and metric fucktons of repo cars, demand for new cars will probably hit 1930 levels. I.e. nada. If Detroit announced there would be no 2021 models or model year, it wouldn't surprise me at this point. So auto workers, and ancillary parts makers, dealerships, auto finance, banking, etc.

Bonus: Yet another crotch shot to the oil industry.

Travel and Tourism

Deader than airlines. Hotels, restaurants, tourist destinations, cabbies, cooks, maids, etc.
Deals will be had, to be sure, but it's going to be awhile before anyone wants them, and a yuuuuuge chunk of people on the dole won't be taking trips anywhere, including the grocery store. And since it's either "newlywed, or nearly dead" that make up most travel/trips, I wouldn't expect the AARP/AMAC crowd to be lining up in droves to see when and whether this pandemic has gone out, anytime soon.

Vegas? Short it, in every way.

Which all impacts not just direct staff, but also sales of supplies, linens, and oh yeah, food.

Food Production and Distribution

People hoarded, so week to week purchases will drop while they eat that. A lot of people are unemployed, so what they do buy, they'll buy less of. We've already seen crops plowed under, to keep from bottoming out prices. Next, herds that cost more to feed than they'll bring at market will soon go the same way.

Which such wild swings, it's a short step from glut to shortages, especially come winter.

Entertainment

Disney Inc. probably won't re-open any parks in 2020, by all accounts. They're posting 90% Q2 losses (on top of the epic flop that was their craptastic StarBores additions, which lost them billion$ already), and isn't getting better, as they look to do without any summer park revenue either. Add Six Flags, and every other theme and amusement park to that list, as what gets re-opened, and the whims of both the government and the public change like the wind daily.
The movie business is about to get the worst summer in history, in all likelihood. Pisser not just for Tom Cruise and Top Gun 2, but for the entire multi-billion $$ industry, from fat-cat producers and overpaid actors, all the way down to the folks who wash the cars, take the tickets, sell the popcorn, and those who provide everything from midnight meals for production crews, to props, wardrobe, equipment, and a gajillion rentals of everything known to man.
Concerts? Who's likely going to attend COVIDfest 2020? Is it even going to be an option in most places? I'm thinking it's unlikely at best, for some time.

Education

Brick-and-mortar K-PhD died this year, even if they don't know it.
The secret's out: most school years could be knocked out in 3 months at home, for most K-12 kids. And unconstrained by waiting on the teacher to help the utter morons at the left edge of the IQ curve in every grade level, what kids can learn at home is fun, engaging, and interesting, when they're not being beaten over the head with Common Core stupidity, white guilt, privilege-shaming, tolerance for every perversion and every dubiously suspect fruit-loopy pile of rose fertilizer under the sun, except for orthodox Christianity and American cultural exceptionalism.
Not paying $50-$100K for degrees in underwater basket weaving and Victim Studies isn't going to hurt college students' feelings, when they realize they could do the whole four years in three, at home, in their PJs, with zero impacted classes, while holding down a paying job, and graduating with an actual marketable degree and no debt.

De-fund both public teachers unions, and liberal indoctrination gulags, in one swell foop?
Be still, my beating heart!

The only reason for 90% of colleges and universities by next year will be to pander to the alumni's sportsball fetishes. I'm spitballing here, but the brighter leagues will simply adopt them wholesale as minor-league feeder streams outright, put them on payroll, and end the charade.

The 10% of all schools who deliver educational bang for the buck, however, will have their pick of students from here on out.

Commercial Real Estate

Everyone on earth just got the memo that dragging people an hour's drive each way daily is silly and sooooo 19th century. When they realize how much they can streamline by cutting out buildings, 57-gender bathrooms, and 200 feet of regulatory oversight and compliance by leaving most employees the hell alone, and letting them crank out their work from home, most corporations from medium to huge will be dumping buildings like they were on fire and radioactive.

And when 2000 people a day don't all troop in and out and finger-bang the same elevator buttons and door handles, the plagues and pandemics of their children don't get shared around the office, cutting health care costs for the company too.

Win-win.

Bonus: Still another crotch kick, with both feet, to both the oil and automotive industries, and the travel industry.

And this is just for openers.

TL;DR?

As we warned you waaaaaaay back in Jan/Feb., multiple times, the deaths from a virus are relative small potatoes. The blowback from it, however, is going to shrink the economy, and put a lot of people who had jobs in December out on their ass, some of them for years to decades.

{We also told fucktards not to panic, but that the fucktards out there would miss that message, which is why they're fucktards. No really, we said exactly that:

"{Nota bene, random fucktards, no one, least of all this site, is ringing the panic bell. You'll ignore this obvious truth, but that's why you're fucktards.}"

If you're keeping score in your programs, that's still a 1.000 batting average.}

The engine of the economy just had a huge bubble of water pumped into the fuel line, and one of the pistons just sheared off. What happens after that?

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

And this is just the everyday stuff, inside the country.
Wait until this rumbles through 150 other countries' economies. ;)
For a lot of people, barring miracles, a butter-smooth Sully landing in the Hudson isn't in the cards.
It's "just the flu, bro?"
Because this is what happens every year?
Sh'yeah. As if.

愿你生活在有趣的时代

 

Follow-on: Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man has some personal ideas in a riff off this OP. Please go read.

And now Forbes Magazine and Bill Whittle want to pile in on this:

A New Drinking Game For You During Coronatardation

Go to your favorite go-to websites.

Every time one of them links to this CDC web page on Kung Flu deaths, and then, with utter un-concern for cluelessness, tells you anything close to "the CDC has revised Kung Flu deaths down by 30,000!" or any variation, you must slam a shot of your favorite high-test adult beverage.

When you get to the end of your list, you'll probably be just about drunk enough for them to make sense.

But you might have to do it two or three more times, until you're too blind to see

a few caveats, provisos, and codocils on the actual page, wherein the CDC, on the same page linked to, tells any olde foole with a spare two seconds of time and grade-school reading ability:

"Natzsofast, Guido!"

 

Sober people can be forgiven for noting, in the same two seconds, a few choice words about those "new, revised, lower Kung Flu deaths":

 

"Provisional death counts are based on death certificate data received and coded by the National Center for Health Statistics as of May 4, 2020. Death counts are delayed and may differ from other published sources (see Technical Notes). Counts will be updated periodically. Additional information will be added to this site as available.  

The provisional counts for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths are based on a current flow of mortality data in the National Vital Statistics System. National provisional counts include deaths occurring within the 50 states and the District of Columbia that have been received and coded as of the date specified. It is important to note that it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated. Therefore, the data shown on this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods. Death counts for earlier weeks are continually revised and may increase or decrease as new and updated death certificate data are received from the states by NCHS. 

 WHY THESE NUMBERS ARE DIFFERENT

Provisional death counts may not match counts from other sources, such as media reports or numbers from county health departments. Our counts often track 1–2 weeks behind other data for a number of reasons: Death certificates take time to be completed. There are many steps involved in completing and submitting a death certificate. Waiting for test results can create additional delays. States report at different rates. Currently, 63% of all U.S. deaths are reported within 10 days of the date of death, but there is significant variation among jurisdictions. It takes extra time to code COVID-19 deaths. While 80% of deaths are electronically processed and coded by NCHS within minutes, most deaths from COVID-19 must be coded manually, which takes an average of 7 days. Other reporting systems use different definitions or methods for counting deaths. 

Things to know about the data 

Provisional counts are not final and are subject to change. Counts from previous weeks are continually revised as additional records are received and processed. Provisional data are not yet complete. Counts will not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for more recent periods. However, we can estimate how complete our numbers are by looking at the average number of deaths reported in previous years. Death counts should not be compared across jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions report deaths on a daily basis, while others report deaths weekly or monthly. In addition, vital record reporting may also be affected or delayed by COVID-19 related response activities.

I never stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. But generally, when the FedGov, on it's own web page, tells you five times, nine different ways, including using giant type, bold face printing, and highlights, repeated enough times for even Gilligan to figure this out, including labeling the whole lash up

"PROVISIONAL Deaths" 

then maybe, just maybe...they're trying to tell the sloppy non-readers not to jump on these figures, and go galloping off on them in all directions, for another two months, or more.

Just spitballing, mind you.
Anyone who thinks the issue might be settled is invited to go to the linked page, and read it for yourselves.
It's always possible that the polarity of the entire universe, including the English language, just reversed itself 180 degrees, and it's now Bizarro Opposite World from now going forward, and telling people those numbers aren't the last word actually means "Please, by all means, pretend like we NEVER TOLD YOU that these numbers AREN'T the last word."

OR,
It could be that some people have an Emily Litella Moment coming, to match their impending Emily Litella Award, in 3, 2,...

 

 

{Hint: This info is not "fine print" when the .Gov puts it in 40-pt. bolded block letters, and repeats it more times than Nancy Pelosi stutters in a five minute speech.}