Bad News Thread

whatithink said:
If they drive economic stability, then they do benefit everyone. They've been used by governments worldwide for the last decade to ease the global economy out of the last crash.
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I think the problem is we spend way to much money. That will come back to haunt us. I don't just refer to the past year and a half either.

A substantial portion of our budget goes to financing the debt. The gov has keep rates artificially low now for some time. At some point rates have to go back up which means an even larger portion of the budget has to go towards just paying that.

It isn't a good long term recipe for success.
 
Desert Hound said:
Well here is part of their non scientific/false statement.

"Within the context of rising COVID-19 infection rates, student-athletes are a particularly vulnerable stakeholder group"

CDC stats show that college age individuals have basically zero risk from covid.
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You mustn't question Faucspola and the media. You may laugh at them though.
 
whatithink said:
Here's a breakdown of the US COVID spend. I don't see how this is an inflation driver. The only one that might be is the direct payments, but that's less than a quarter of the total, and for everyone who didn't need that, there's probably someone else who did to pay rent/mortgage etc., i.e. every day bills and not just blowing it.

COVID Money Tracker

See how much COVID relief has been spent and where the money has gone with the #COVIDMoneyTracker tool.
www.covidmoneytracker.org www.covidmoneytracker.org

Inflation is being driven by the supply chain problems with Covid, as best I can tell. Americans have a higher saving rate now than in decades, so its not demand - its limited supply driving up prices which drive up the indices used to calculate inflation. I expect this will settle down. If the Fed is estimating inflation at 3.4% for the rest of the year but not upping interest rates, I expect they are not that concerned, and they know more than me on this subject.

BTW, inflation (low digits) is not necessarily a bad thing.
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Price inflation is always driven by an increase in the supply of money via QE or "money printing". Call it whatever you want. More people with more money or access to more money, competing for low or the same supply of goods and services is what drives up prices. And to your point regarding inflation being a good thing, I agree. It limits consumption, allowing supply replenishment.
 
Desert Hound said:
I fully agree on this one. Much of what they are peddling as infrastructure has nothing to do with infrastructure. But by calling it infrastructure many people assume that is what it is. And unfortunately the press is rather uninterested in calling out what they really want to do.
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Money is fungible. And fungible is a euphemism for Asymmetric information and moral hazard. Especially when it comes to government spending.
 
Ellejustus said:
Inflation is getting real bad folks. The new goal for super rich dad is to now go up to space for $21,000,000 for freaking 10 minutes. Anyway, I just stay home and mine my business and hope things get better. My pal told me about combo deals now at Edwards. BTW, it's been theraputic for me to sit back and watch all this play out. Remember, it's not a "Us vs Them." Its always US!!!! Stay thirsty for the truth my friends and never be afraid to ask questions :)

View attachment 11128
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Cineopolis has been charging these prices for at least the last 3 years prior to Corona.
 
whatithink said:
Printing money via quantitative easing didn't drive inflation for the last decade. I linked to a breakdown of Covid spending and again, not driving inflation imv.
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Increasing the money supply = "inflation" of the money supply. Inflation of the money supply always drives an increase in prices. If you're citing CPI as proof that QE didn't drive inflation for the last decade I might agree with you. But it did drive up or steady Bond and home prices in that are more important to banks and you and I as well. Your covid spending link proves it. Look at the 3.25 Trillion dollar Fed Reserve purchase:

New round of quantitative easing to support the economy and increase the money supply by purchasing additional long-term U.S. Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities.
 
Desert Hound said:
The problem we have is that politicians do not get elected to save money. You get elected to "fix a problem" which inevitably costs money.

The Dems are the worst in this category. The Repubs just get there later..ie they also want to solve problems but their solutions are less expensive. But in the end the Repubs are spending money they don't have.. the difference is they tend to do it at a slower rate.

Either option is irresponsible.
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I'm not against incentivizing debt as long as it is good income generating debt. Cash is not king. Cash Flow is King.
 
Desert Hound said:
By the way be it printing money or quantitative easing...neither option benefits the public.

Both in their own ways allow politicians to spend money they don't have in order to further their political fortunes.
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The bigger problem is that we don't teach personal finance in a meaningful way. As previously posted, cash is not king. Cashflow is King. But how do you do that if money is too expensive (interest rates). It's still possible if tax incentives and appreciation is favorable. Or if you understand how to leverage simple interest against amortized interest to pay off a mortgage in 5 to 7 years as opposed to 30, you get to use banks instead of having them use you as much. That's been super fun for me.
 
whatithink said:
If they drive economic stability, then they do benefit everyone. They've been used by governments worldwide for the last decade to ease the global economy out of the last crash.
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QE has never driven economic stability. It may benefit everyone, but does so unequally, fueling the inequality narrative. But the inequality narrative lacks credibility because it ignores age and time.

 
whatithink said:
If they drive economic stability, then they do benefit everyone. They've been used by governments worldwide for the last decade to ease the global economy out of the last crash.
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Did it benefit the U.S. Women's Soccer Team and their claims of inequality? Anyway, we are deeply uneducated in personal finance.
 
Bruddah IZ said:
Yes. Herd immunity and therapies being overlooked. My buddy Duane turned 89 this year. Caught COVID last November and was touch and go until he got some prednisone to sort him out. Celebrated his 89th about a month ago!
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Glad they made it. If they were reaching for the corticosteroids to quell the inflammation from what I understand that means it was a serious situation. Now they should be on the immunized side of the herd, hopefully with no longer term damage. Not sure I'd recommend that as a general approach for immunity however.
 
espola said:
What does CGG CGG have to do with the covid vaccine?

Please try to keep it simple - I'm no biologist.
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To add to what Dad4 posted. The issue with the codons has to with the origin of Cov-2, not the vaccine. The sequence of the CoV-2 genome has regions that are highly similar (but not identical) to known bat coronaviruses, and regions that are highly similar, but not identical, to coronaviruses isolated from pangolins. It appears to be a chimera-a recombinant that fuses pieces of different coronavirus genomes together. One of the recombination boundaries where Cov-2 switches from bat-like sequence to anteater-like sequence is right at the part of the genome that encodes the S protein. At that breakpoint, or close to it, there are 12 nucleotides that are inserted that are found in neither known bat nor anteater genomes. These 12 nucleotides include the two arginine codons from above.

A diagram showing the putative recombination events can be found here, the "B" part is the most helpful. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78703-6/figures/2

How could such a chimeric virus come to be? One scenario is that the cells of some unknown intermediate host was infected with both the bat and anteater viruses at the same time. The viral replication cycle entails a mechanism that allows viral genomes to recombine readily, more easily than can be achieved through current genetic engineering approaches. Recombinant viruses can exhibit new properties, and this is one of the main ways in which coronaviruses are thought to "make the jump" from one host to another-like humans. SARS, MERS. What about the strange 12 nucleotide insertion? Given it's placement, it could occur in a related pangolin C-virus that has not yet been discovered. Alternatively, insertions at recombination junctions, while unusual, are not unprecedented. In this view the "CGGCGG" arose as part of a recombination process.

To understand the lab escape theory, it's important to know that the Wuhan Institute specifically studies the types of events that allow non-human C-viruses to make the jump to humans. For example, they would be co-infecting bat and pangolin C-viruses as part of trying to understand the process. So the lab escape proponents say "look, CoV-2 started in Wuhan, the Wuhan institute studies bat and anteater C-viruses, Cov-2 just happens to look like a complex recombination event involving those viruses, plus it has an extra bit (the 12 nucleotide insertion) that could be viewed as having been purposefully engineered into that site. That's a lot of coincidences". My take on that is sure, but in either case the stars had to align just so to produce this virus. That alignment almost certainly reflects just the right sequence of viral recombination events. That sequence of events could have occurred just as readily in nature as in a tissue culture flask, and the 12 nucleotide insertion can be explained either way. So, I'm agnostic.

Now there is information that apparently the IC has intercepts alluding to some kind of whoops moment. We'll see if anything more concrete ever comes of it.
 
espola said:
" a double CGG at just the right spot to help it attack human cells."

How does that work?
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The double CGG adds two arginines onto a part of the S protein. The S protein does two things. In the variant of the S protein found in Cov-2 (and a number of other C-viruses) it binds to the ACE2 receptor; this is what basically targets the virus to particular cells, like in the aveolar region of your lungs. The second thing that the S protein does is that it allows the membrane envelope surrounding the virus to fuse with cell membranes. That is how the viral genome is released into the cell so it can replicate. For complicated reasons, two Arg's at the site of insertion allow this fusion reaction to be much more efficient.

The classic view of how the S protein works is that the S binding the receptor is like the virus "knocking on the door". The the cell engulfs the viral particle, and changes occur that allow the S protein to mediate the fusion. The S protein of CoV-2, however, almost certainly as a result of the inclusion of the two Arg's can efficiently fuse directly with the external membrane of the cell after it binds the receptor. It doesn't so much as knock on the door as it kicks the door down. As a result, viral S protein is left on the surface of the cell, which can potentially cause adjacent cells to fuse with one another; this is called a synctium. Synciated tissue appears to be associated with the pathology of COVID19.

The two C-virus entry mechanisms are diagrammed here. https://www.mdpi.com/2218-273X/10/9/1312/htm. Scroll to Figure 1. CoV-2 appears to be able to efficiently exploit the mechanism on the right on the figure.
 
EvilGoalie 21 said:
Glad they made it. If they were reaching for the corticosteroids to quell the inflammation from what I understand that means it was a serious situation. Now they should be on the immunized side of the herd, hopefully with no longer term damage. Not sure I'd recommend that as a general approach for immunity however.
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The "longer term damage" is being 89. No doubt his immune system has rec'd a lot of viral updates over that period too. A recommended approach for immunity is not the point I am making. The Fear Industry has made immunity a binary decision with vaccines on one side and death on the other. Any talk of therapies appear muted by the CDC and the Media. Six of the 80+ y.o. folks that I know survived corona pre-vax. All are doing well for being 80+. None of them were in a LTCF. If you have a choice, keep your parents out of those kill zones people.
 
EvilGoalie 21 said:
That alignment almost certainly reflects just the right sequence of viral recombination events. That sequence of events could have occurred just as readily in nature as in a tissue culture flask, and the 12 nucleotide insertion can be explained either way. So, I'm agnostic.
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So we could have already been exposed but not exhibiting because our adaptive immune systems have rec'd the necessary updates?
 
The uk may have topped its curve out. Cases have been in decline the last 4 days despite reopening. Australia despite its ever stringent lockdown though still has a rising curb and is extending the lockdowns yet again. Taiwan doesn’t have the delta spreading but even with the alpha is having a tough time getting back to zero…they are around 22 and still might manage to tap it down.
 
Grace T. said:
The uk may have topped its curve out. Cases have been in decline the last 4 days despite reopening. Australia despite its ever stringent lockdown though still has a rising curb and is extending the lockdowns yet again. Taiwan doesn’t have the delta spreading but even with the alpha is having a tough time getting back to zero…they are around 22 and still might manage to tap it down.
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And deaths?
 
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