Otherwise, we’ve caught a bad case of the stupids and it’s looking terminal. I’m talking about hydroxychloroquine as treatment for COVID obviously. HCQ’s introduction to the casual news consumer arrived either via a trump tweet, or a news article about a trump tweet. However, weeks before this, Chinese doctors were said to have some success with the drug and there was a doctor in France, Dr. Didier Raoult, reporting very good results when pairing HCQ with the antibiotic, azythromycin. Reference this article for more on Dr. Raoult and some associated rabbit holes (if you’re into that). An American doctor, Vladimir Zelenko, tried administering a combination of HCQ, azythromycin and zinc to suspected COVID patients and he was so amazed at his results that he created a YouTube account, uploaded a video detailing his experience and addressed it to the president (it should be pointed out that off-label use of HCQ for COVID at the time was completely illegal). Hydroxychloroquine may have remained an obscure medication to be trialed by renegade doctors in small numbers. But then this happened:

And the world lost it’s mind… There is a large, influential segment of the population that stake their identity on resistance to Donald Trump. That’s not a healthy way to live, but that’s reality and because of this, there were the predictable pronouncements from the usual suspects about the drawbacks of HCQ and the lack of “science”. And then someone DIED. The tagline would end up being that “Trump has blood on his hands” for encouraging people to self medicate with unproven off-label treatments. Then came the studies. In quick succession, a handful of studies were released that said HCQ was on a spectrum ranging from marginally beneficial to outright harmful. However, none of the studies used HCQ in tandem with other drugs the way Dr. Raoult or Dr. Zelenko did and most of the studies focused on HCQ’s effectiveness for ventilated patients. It’s worth mentioning that antiviral treatments are most useful when used at the beginning of the disease and if you are on a ventilator… well that’s the end. Chris Martenson has a great summary of the HCQ “controversy”, please click the link to learn more.

I’m sure we would all have preferred if Trump had said something more diplomatic like “we’re fast tracking research efforts and as a result I’m advising the FDA to allow off-label usage of many promising pharmaceuticals so that doctors on the front lines can be free to do what THEY think is best for THEIR patients.” He didn’t say it quite like that, but that is what he did. As of March 24th, doctors are now allowed to try HCQ for their COVID patients.

Before I wrap this up, I just have to point out the insanity of the couple that poisoned themselves with chloroquine. This actually happened: a lady was going through her pantry and saw that her fish aquarium cleaner has “chloroquine” as an active ingredient so she and her husband took a spoonful of the stuff with some soda- she was hospitalized, the husband died. I don’t think it’s fair to blame the president or hydroxychloquine, this couple was a Darwin award waiting to happen.

Lastly, I have to point out that we’re still waiting for a good study on HCQ before we throw all our eggs in that basket, but we should ALL be praying for a cheap and effective antiviral treatment over ANY prospective vaccine. I’m no anti-vaxxer but some of the news surrounding the global vaccination push is downright creepy. More on that later.

Everyone is probably familiar with the normal distribution, the bell curve. An important point to emphasize: the bell curve is merely observable fact. It is not an opinion, not a theory, and in no way political. Many things in life are normally distributed: human height, weight, SAT scores, etc. It causes a lot of consternation among some people, but intelligence is one such normally distributed attribute. The rest of this article is opinion, but it will bear itself out in experience with any visit to a DMV or similar government agency.

Government generally attracts people right in the middle of the bell curve. The outliers to the right most likely find more success and less restraints on their potential in the private sector and the outliers on the left, the actual morons and criminals, are (hopefully) screened out in the hiring process. That very average portion of the population that enters government service has it’s VERY OWN bell curve: the Government Service Bell Curve. The outside observer would hope, and expect, that the people leading government agencies would come from the outliers on the right side of that bell curve, perhaps 1 or 2 standard deviations plus. From my experience, I can assure you that is a rare occurrence. The name of the game for government and any large enough organization is “don’t rock the boat.” Novel thinkers are a liability, not an asset. In the private sector, exceptional people can leave the stifling confines of a rigid company and defect to their nimbler competition or create their own enterprise and then emerge as the competition. With government, there is no competition so you get with the program or find a new line of work!

Regrettably, in government, it is the middle of the bell curve that rises to the top. The most exceptionally average of a very average cohort. When people plea for government intervention and seek out government advice, they should be cautioned to bear in mind that fact. This is a great argument for the libertarian goal of smaller government: the people in government are probably idiots so lets make government as small and powerless as possible.

The example of the hour has to be the World Health Organization, a supra-governmental health agency which must mean… a collection of the most average health experts from ACROSS THE GLOBE! Read this for a summary of their recent misadventures. As you do, remember Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Do your own research, come to your own conclusions, be wary of experts trotted out by any government.

Very soon, the government induced interruptions to supply chains and the division of labor will result in permanent shortages. Currently, there are empty aisles in the paper products section and there’s no flour or yeast. People aren’t panicking because they are being assured that these goods ARE “out there” and just waiting to be resupplied. How long must the shelves be empty before people start to question more seriously? How long till they investigate for themselves? How long till they find reports from truckers, farmers, and other concerned citizens with direct evidence to the contrary of their politician’s empty claims.

My hope at this point, is that when the pitchforks come out, they are directed at the proper targets.

Do not target the producers.

Do not target the distributors.

Do not target the vendors.

When you are hungry and pissed off, remember that it was your idiot governors, idiot mayors, and idiot “administrator class” that caused THIS phase of the disaster. Work has been made illegal. The economic engine WILL restart if given the freedom to do so. The battle lines will be drawn shortly, choose wisely.

Literally, and metaphorically. Supply chains are breaking down. The economy is breaking down. THE DIVISION OF LABOR IS BREAKING DOWN.

What you need right now:

Cash

Precious metals… and lead…

Greenhouse(s)

Stored dry goods and a freezer full of meat

Seeds

Rabbits and/or chickens

Productive land (rents, agriculture, mineral/water rights, etc)

Community of like minded individuals

If you don’t have the items on this list, find a way to be useful to those who do. There WILL be shortages and soon there will be price shocks. Don’t worry too much about paying your mortgage, pretty soon, no one will be paying their mortgage. Even if the powers that be WERE to evict people for non-payment, they couldn’t just because of the sheer volume. Also, the courts are effectively shut down.

The name of the game for the next few years is survival. The more self sufficient you are, and the less money you have to waste on inflated food prices in the future, the more comfortably you’ll be able to weather this crisis. If you entered this crisis with some liquid assets, you very well may be able to score a few nice deals. Watch for big discounts in luxury goods. I expect land prices to fall soon as well, good luck getting a loan in this coming environment though so these deals will go to cash buyers.

To be clear, the real threat to our survival is not a virus, but the inept response of our leaders. If you are looking to your government for guidance, safety, or deliverance, you are lost. Prepare now.

The year was 2020, a mysterious illness was sweeping across the globe. Almost overnight, countries began closing borders and closing down. Individual economies sagged, then the world economy seized and hung in the balance. ICUs were packed, morgues were overflowing. The situation was grim. Then the doctors and nurses began to fall ill. The makeshift PPE they had been forced to resort to failed to seal out the deadly pathogen. But trash bags, scarves and snowboard goggles aren’t designed for that sort of work so the outcome was to be expected. The various elements of the government charged with foreseeing such catastrophes failed to prepare, did not restock national stockpiles of PPE and did not put in an emergency order in the early stage of the contagion. This tragic oversight set the country back, but America is a fighter, never down for the count.

The government rebounded from their initial failure, and pulled out all the stops to mass produce the critical gear that would keep our healthcare workers in the fight and slow the spread of the novel virus. It was Apollo 13 meets the Manhattan Project. The brightest minds across the country were brought together in real time with the miracle of the internet and provided an unlimited budget and a simple mandate: GET IT DONE!

Before we proceed with the big reveal, meet the competition:

Now for the big reaveal:

SO… All that up there was sarcasm, none of it happened. The surgeon general put a t shirt on his face and that’s all. If you literally have NO OTHER OPTIONS, click the thumbnail to learn how to make your own t-shirt face mask.

What actually happened is FAR more amazing than the previous work of fiction. Without any government directive, an entrepreneurial outfit in LA called Suay Sew Shop with 30 staff decided to re-purpose their entire operation with the goal of finding a replacement for the N95 masks. They bought a particle counter capable of testing down to 0.3 microns and did REAL science. They tried multiple stitch patters, different cloths and different inserts. The story is HERE and I hope you’ll click the link and read what they accomplished, it’s inspiring. The miracle ingredient turned out to be blue shop towels! They managed to make a mask that filtered 93% of particles down to 0.3 microns in size, a homemade N93 mask if you will. Visit their Go Fund Me to help them in their effort to get these much needed masks to the healthcare workers on the front lines.

There’s a few important lessons.

1. We’re on our own, don’t trust the government, don’t rely on the government.

2. An extension of the first, the market has the answers, empower the market and trust the free people of this once free country.

3. I sure am glad this little business wasn’t ordered to close.

Why trust the market? Consider this: there is one government, populated by people that think and act… the way government workers do (for those lacking extensive experience in Government, think DMV). And on the other hand, there are 30.2 small business populated by tough minded people who necessarily think and act very differently. You have to if you are going to be an entrepreneur! Quick example: in the single category of “Restaurants”, there are millions of small businesses and they survive by all thinking just a little bit differently. From my experiences with government, thinking differently in that line of work is a liability and a career killer.

So I ask, 1 or the 30.2 million, where will the innovation come from? My bet is on the Suay Sew Shops. Every. Damn. Time.

In 1958 Leonard Reed wrote a short essay called I, Pencil. The essay sought to highlight the surprising fact that no single person on earth knows how to make something as simple as a #2 pencil, yet still, they get made. At first glance, you might object: simple construction, only a handful of parts, can’t be that complicated! And yet it is a tremendously complicated enterprise involving countless workers (directly and indirectly) and global supply chains. Without any central planning or government compulsion, all the players assemble, even those who don’t realize they’re part of the pencil supply chain. A second unacknowledged miracle is how pencils manage to appear as if by magic, everywhere they are needed.

The essay is worth reading and can be found for free in the Foundation for Economic Education website and there’s even a children’s version here.

Currently, much of the world is experiencing some form of “lock down” and in tandem experiencing surprising shortages. Lock downs are certainly A strategy for combating pandemic illness so I will not waste time criticizing lock downs per se. I will merely point out that it is not the only strategy and some small, forward thinking Asian countries have managed to avoid the sledgehammer approach. My intent in writing today is to elucidate the concerns of those leaders who have pushed back against lock down measures and to dispel some of the hyperbole and hysteria that has been leveled against them

The main concern, summarized by Trump, is that “the cure would be worse than the disease.” Unfortunately, it would be revealed that he didn’t quite understand the point he was making, but more on that later. When people heard these statements, by Trump and others, they only heard the most obvious implication: millions of people would be stuck at home, lose their jobs, be unable to pay their bills and in short “the economy” would suffer. If you add in the untold social and psychological toll, I fail to see how this ISN’T a legitimate concern, but regardless, people balked that there should be concern for the economy at a time like this. Grandstanders said such things as “you can’t put a price on someone’s GRANDMOTHER” and similar crap. In their minds, the economy was just the stock market, and if it had to fall to save lives, then who cares.

The trouble is, the economy is so much more than the DJIA or SP500, and if those people were being honest, they knew they were being hyperbolic. The economy is more than just complicated, it’s complex and no one knows how it works. No one can forecast all the effects, intended and unintended, when whole sectors are closed by government decree. “Non-essential” business may prove to be quite essential in the long run, and ultimately, only the economy itself can determine what is essential and this can only be discovered after the fact when things no longer work. Here is a recent example: UK is facing egg “shortages” of a novel fashion. There are plenty of eggs, but they are rotting in storage because the cartons have suddenly become unavailable! The factories that produce the cartons have suspended operation. A second example: here in the states, dairy farmers are DUMPING milk down the drain, at the same time that grocery stores are rationing milk and customers are facing empty shelves! The restaurant wholesale distribution pipeline has completely seized up now that most restaurants have shut their doors. The restaurants that would like to sell their wholesale foodstuffs directly are disallowed by health codes in most jurisdictions. The supply chain for retail/grocery store dairy products cannot accept the milk that is no longer needed in the wholesale supply chain because they are at their physical limit of production capacity! In short, it is a fact that restaurants account for 1/3 of the food distribution in this country, but no one was prepared for how that fact would play out in this new reality of lock downs and shut downs.

These two examples concerned our food supply, which we all have a stake in, but I assure you that the supply chain for the masks, respirators and PPE that is so desperately needed in the healthcare sector (all sectors if we’re being honest) is equally complex. Supply chain interruptions and heavy handed government attempts to direct production will only further restrict the shrinking supply of these critical goods. Currently, there are talks of diverting PPE shipments from other countries to our own. Aside from the obvious ethical problem with this, it’s worth noting that the deals a multinational company makes are often multi-part deals: sale of equipment to X country provides capital to purchase raw goods from Y country for manufacture and sale to Z. These deals are much more complex, but they allow for a company to take advantage of tariff, tax, and currency disparities. Interrupting this system will only add delays and cost and in the end may break it permanently.

Before we leave, check out these charts. They come from The Heritage Foundation, and you can visit their site and play around with the data yourself. People may argue over the subjectivity of some of the metrics, but overall the trend is undeniable: more freedom means greater health and greater wealth.

We have just had the sharpest drop backwards in freedom, economic and otherwise, ever imagined. There WILL be consequences if we remain here much longer, and they will not be pretty.

Hindsight, they say, is 20/20.  They…. are WRONG.  Myopic policy makers and news pundits don’t see any better looking backward than they do looking forward.  Since SARS-CoV-2 (henceforth the CCP virus) is THE black swan of the century, it is worth looking to those who called it first if you want to reconstruct a useful model of the past.  Notable sources include: Zerohedge, Dr John Cambell, Gary North, Chris Martenson, Shrimp Zoo and others.  I hope to add citations in the future but for now I just want to get the general timeline recorded.

Early January there were fleeting reports of a spike in viral pneumonia cases in China, a new Corona Virus.  The West largely ignored these reports.  One small exception was the prepper community and the perma-bears on Zerohedge.  These niche communities are apt to seize on any possible threat and extrapolate the exact path it would take from point A to Apocalypse.  In short, they behaved as expected and were dismissed as they usually are.  The mainstream media covered these reports but felt the need to editorialize and draw comparisons to past non-outbreaks and conclude that there was nothing to fear.  Towards the end of the month, these articles began to include admonishments to anyone questioning the official narrative and the dreaded R-word started to be tossed around as carelessly as ever.  Curiously, the World Heath Organization echoed similar talking points: the virus did not exhibit person-to-person transmission, the virus is largely contained due to China’s exceptional control measures, anyone floating alternative theories or pointing fingers at China is being Racist.  Curiouser still, these matched official Chinese talking points.

Here’s where things get nefarious. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) statements and WHO statements regarding the virus’s masterful containment by China’s brilliant response happened to coincide with large scale purchasing of medical equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE) across the globe by Chinese Interests.  The WHO went so far as to say that wearing face masks or N95 respirators was “ineffective” for the general population in an attempt to help quell demand for such devices while the CCP was desperately scrounging all the masks they could.  Western media parroted the WHO and CCP uncritically and for the most part, people went on with their lives

Some exceptions: South Korea and Taiwan.  Taiwan is the most interesting, having been burned once before by Chinese lies regarding the 2003 SARS outbreak, they immediately implemented the following: testing at the borders, contact tracing, quarantine, social distancing, masks for everyone.  Their economy slowed but they never implemented “lock downs”.  They still haven’t.

Western media was focused on impeachment proceedings and the airtime devoted to CCP Virus coverage concerned the Diamond Princess Cruise ship.  Cruise ship coverage made for good drama but the big questions around the virus weren’t being addressed.

Is it airborne (aerosolised)?

Are pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers contagious?

What is the incubation time? 14 days? 20 days? more?

When working with an emerging global pandemic it would have been sensible to operate under the precautionary principle: assume the worst about this virus until proven otherwise.  The WHO downplayed the severity and their answers were: no, no, 14 days.  Initial reports suggested: yes, yes, 27 days.  Western leaders and media makers alike minimized the threat by pointing to comfortingly low infection numbers in China.  Two thousand deaths? That’s not even a ROUNDING ERROR in a population of 1.4 BILLION!  Soon, cases began to mount in the US.  The media narrative began to change again.  Trump made much noise about closing borders, restricting inbound flights from Wuhan, but dismissed the virus as a distraction and seemed eager to focus on his strong economy which he was banking his 2020 re-election on.  This opened him up to attack on two fronts: the media immediately cried RACISM because of the border restrictions and then began to report each additional case count with rising glee because it undermined his initial dismissal of the virus.  They began to point at dire epidemiological models that forecast a 70% infection rate and millions dead.  The pockets of conservative media that had not yet settled on an opinion of the virus took the bait.  Fox News will never live down their initial reporting in which they attempted to protect the president by forcing the narrative that #it’sjustaflu.  In the most bizarre turn of events, people who should have known better, willingly accepted CCP propaganda in order to dismiss the novel virus and by extension, criticism of the president.

And here’s where things get nefarious.  The CDC actually came out and said that wearing face masks or N95 respirators was “ineffective” for the general population in an attempt to help quell demand for such devices while they were desperately scrounging all the masks they could for the US healthcare sector.  History doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme…. What they MEANT to say was: “we made a HUGE error and let China buy up the world’s supply of masks and N95 respirators without reserving any for ourselves and because of that we are begging the American public to please stay home and don’t buy up the remaining masks.”  The CDC made another egregious, albeit predictable error, and didn’t allow individual states or independent labs to develop their own CCP virus test kits until it was much too late.  Predictably, cases mounted in tandem with deaths, doctors and nurses scrounged for PPE or went without, tests were unavailable for all but politicians and movie stars.  US cases surpassed CCP reported cases, causing liberal pundits to break down in snarky fits of glee.  The pressure to DO something was overwhelming.  Locked Down.  An apt term borrowed from our prison system.  It seemed to be the only option available.  Rapid testing and masks for everyone, the Taiwan response, would not be available to the freedom loving people of America.  Those on the right found themselves on the defensive, but the liberty minded would retort that the extent to which a government-led response is mismanaged is directly proportional to the amount of government involvement.  In short… only the naive should be surprised.

So that was looking back.  And in doing so we are faced with some obvious questions.  How did China know to shutdown it’s entire economy for 2 months and quarantine 2/3 of it’s population over a bug that ended up killing only 2,000 of it’s people? That’s incredible foresight… or maybe they knew more about this virus from the start than they are admitting.  It’s impressive that they sequenced the virus 4 days after discovering it as the cause of an emerging epidemic of viral pneumonia.  Very.  Impressive.  Maybe 2,000 dead isn’t such a believable figure either.  This question deserves it’s own post.

The next question would have to be: Why did the US forgo a cheap response (masks and testing) in favor of a catastrophically expensive one (Economic suicide/lock down).  Certainly one can make a believable argument for typical bureaucratic incompetence and lethargy as the culprits.  However, that means that our leaders, armed with the best intelligence gathering apparatus in the world, chose to ignore the evidence from friends like Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Japan in favor of the propaganda claims from an enemy-China.  Does this make sense?  Here’s another thought: heads of state and heads of industry travel in similar circles.  They talk.  Heads of industry also have their own private intelligence services, typically former (sometimes current, shhh..) service members, to help them navigate the threats and opportunities of a rapidly changing world.  It was very interesting that a record number of CEOs took the golden parachute option this January, with massive sales of their company stock on the way out.  This question deserves it’s own post as well because it hinges on two very important conclusions: the global economy was doomed in 2020 without the virus and the global food supply is in jeopardy…

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton