Coronavirus not Very Carnivorous
March 6th, 2020Biggest Effect here: Empty Shelves at Harbor Freight
I decided to check the coronavirus situation before going out to cut trees. As you know if you read this blog regularly, I have expressed what could be called extreme skepticism regarding the impending extinction-level pandemic, as well as my amazement at the seeming ineptitude of the officials and medical people predicting a plague. Today, I see nothing that could change my mind.
To have an epidemic that compares numerically to a typical American flu season, China needs 1.5 million new COVID-19 cases PER DAY. When I checked yesterday, the global total–not just China–was increasing at a rate of about 5,000 per day. Today, there are about 5,000 more cases than yesterday. Nothing has changed.
I am still wondering how the medical establishment can be so wrong. Is it really possible for a guy who blogs from his couch, using fourth-grade math, to be right when doctors all over the world are wrong to the point of absurdity?
Sure looks like it. Maybe I will have to eat my words later, topped with Robitussin, but so far, my prediction looks solid, and theirs look insane.
Maybe I should not doubt myself. I’ve been right when I said the TV heads who predicted severe hurricane destruction at my locations were totally wrong. I was right when I told people home prices could not increase by 20% every year, forever. On the other hand, I was wrong when I said Obama’s economy would tank. I still can’t figure that out.
I was also wrong about Ebola, which looked pretty bad when it was starting to break out of Africa. Apparently, the African response, not the disease, was responsible for most of the transmission and lethality. I should have known. In Africa, people go blind needlessly because they don’t wash their hands and faces, so it’s not surprising that ebola patients would die in large numbers.
Every time I post things like this, I think about the bizarre mindset many people have toward misfortune. I can understand people who disagree when I say dire predictions are wrong. What I don’t understand is why so many people get angry with me. There is something seriously, deeply wrong with you if optimism makes you angry and worry makes you feel righteous.
Women are much more prone to this syndrome than men. My mother had three sisters, and they and their mother all savored talk of misfortune and suffering. They were not unusual at all. I think this is one reason why men are so much happier and less given to mental illness than women. It makes me wonder if the feminization of men is going to make men less happy. I dread the thought of large numbers of old queens sitting around, speaking almost longingly about things like cancer and infidelity.
It’s not fashionable to say women are more likely to be mentally ill than men, but it’s a fact borne out by statistics. I suppose it has something to do with the modern male’s failure to get God’s protection for his wife and daughters.
Worry and unbelief are sin. People forget that, and somehow, like pride, worry has been turned into a virtue.
Worry is a type of faith. It’s faith in Satan. Faith brings results. Something to think about.
FYI, T.B. Joshua, the African preacher I’ve been watching lately, says God has washed the epidemic away. He says God showed him this. If it ramps back up and billions die, we will know we shouldn’t pay any attention to Joshua!
I’m tripling down on my rosy forecast. I’ll keep following up on it, unless I turn out to be wrong, in which case I’ll delete all these posts and claim I expected a pandemic all along.
In other news, my new welding helmet and some gun stuff should be arriving today, so I should be able to repair my Desert Eagle and finish off my dry saw stand. I decided to turn my dining room into a mini-workshop/gun room, so I’m selling my mother’s gigantic china credenza to make room. A heterosexual male with no wife has no earthly use for a china cabinet.
Do I feel bad about selling an heirloom? A little, but this thing is 7 feet long and probably weighs 200 pounds, and I keep my mom’s china, which I will never use, in boxes in a storage room. Also, if I move to Tennessee, I will have to go through the misery of dealing with a giant piece of furniture I don’t like.
The other day I was talking with my friend Mike about all the things I’m putting on wheels in my workshop. He confirmed something I suspected. He said God was making it easier for me to move things to Tennessee.
The credenza is not a great heirloom. My mother knew an old lady in Miami who sold estate goods, and she bought the credenza from her. To me, the credenza shouts, “MIAMI! MIAMI! MIAMI!,” which is as comforting as, “FECES! VOMIT! INFECTED PAPER CUTS!”, and it also shouts, “YOUR DAD NEVER BOUGHT NICE FURNITURE FOR YOUR MOM! SHE NEVER GOT WHAT SHE WANTED IN LIFE!” She paid for the used credenza herself, but my dad bought expensive Scandinavian furniture for the girlfriend he lived with while he and my mother were divorced.
I have never used the dining room for anything but storage. My kitchen is so big I can have two dining tables in it, so the formal dining room is superfluous.
A consignment shop will pick the credenza up in a couple of weeks, unless I can sell it myself before they show up. Can’t wait to see it go.
I’ve learned something about selling junk. If you want a good price, you will probably have to hold onto it for a year. If you want it gone in a reasonable amount of time, you can expect to get about half of what it’s worth. I am okay with that. I have accepted it.
I think I’ll shove the credenza out of the way and move my indoor tool benches downstairs. I already raised the dining room chandelier so it won’t hit people in the head.
A single man is like a superhero. We can do stuff other men simply can’t do.
Time to saw some trees. I hope ethanol doesn’t thwart me.
March 6th, 2020 at 2:43 PM
In that video I posted a link to yeserday, the guy said that there’s some R value or other (I think) that’s a measure of a pathogen’s infectiousness. The lower the number, the less infectious it is. SARS and MERS had low R numbers so didn’t spread widely. I don’t think we have a value for the R number of this thing yet. (Mike Pompeo was just now complaining about the lack of good data from the Communists in China.)