coronavirus

A Cure For What Ails Us

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Roses are tough to grow you know.   A green thumb helps.  And, watch out for those thorns.

In spite of those obstacles, everything seems to be coming up roses for the hottest political couple of the summer of 2020.  Joe Biden and Kamala (comma la) Harris are having the virtual convention of their lives.

Have you watched it? If you haven’t we can tell you that what you’ve missed is a lot of the “what Trump has done wrong, and why he shouldn’t be reelected.”  A couple of folks named Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton went so far as to say he shouldn’t have been elected in 2016 either.  Trump remains quite the thorn in their side it seems.

But, last night Harris actually shed some light on what Biden would do if he got to prune the roses in the garden on Pennsylvania Ave. for the next four years.  We probably shouldn’t use the words “Biden” and “prune” in the same sentence, but we digress.

“Joe will bring us together to end this pandemic and make sure that we are prepared for the next one,” Harris said during her VP acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Wednesday night.  We knew there was a doctor in the Biden home, but we thought that was Dr. Jill.

Biden must be quite the medical miracle worker.  It turns out that he vowed to cure cancer during a campaign stop in June 2019. “I’ve worked so hard in my career that, I promise you if I’m elected president you’re gonna see the single most important thing that changes America. We’re gonna cure cancer,” Biden said.

That campaign stop was before his campaign stopped traveling.  Maybe that doesn’t matter anymore either.  Joe has been slow to get to a few states, including a vital swing state, Wisconsin.  He hasn’t seen any Cheeseheads in person in the last 660 days.  The doctor no longer makes house calls.

But, there is only so much time in a day or week, or month or year or two.  Joe’s been doing yeoman’s work in his basement which must closely resemble the Johns Hopkins research lab.

He repeated this cancer cure vow during his Super Tuesday victory speech and also added that he would find cures for Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

“We’re gonna invest billions of dollars to find, and I promise you, cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes,” he said.  Who knew that you could throw money at a problem and fix it that easily?

Harris also has her eyes on a different virus.  It’s actually one that is so ugly that you can see it.  The first black woman to be nominated to a major party’s ticket, also described racism as “a virus” in her speech Wednesday night.

“This virus has no eyes, and yet it knows exactly how we see each other — and how we treat each other,” Harris said. “And let’s be clear — there is no vaccine for racism. We’ve gotta do the work.”

If Biden and Harris can cure COVID-19, cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and racism between now and 2024 they deserve our vote.

Period.

End of story.

Almost.

Hopefully they’ll find some time to stop the pesky climate change too.

 

 

Go On, Take the Money and Run.

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Schools out for summer.  Schools out forever.  So sang Alice Cooper.

We always got the summer part.  We never understood the forever part.

Perhaps, now we do.  During these (are you ready?) new normal, COVID-19 pandemic, #aparttogether, together apart, times are changing.  Unprecedented is the time we are told repeatedly.

And with it, our sacred fall NCAA football season is in peril.

It’s one thing for the Ivy League to cancel its fall sports season.  No one watches them anyway.  How about paying a full year’s tuition to Harvard for virtual classes and no sporting life?  If they keep this up pretty soon they won’t have anyone falsifying records and puffing up resumes to get into that dump, but we digress.

But it’s quite another thing when the Big 10 announced yesterday that at best they will only play an in-conference schedule of football games this fall.  Gone amongst other matchups are Oregon and THE Ohio St. U, and Notre Dame v. Wisconsin at Lambeau Field.

Isn’t the appropriate question “why?”  Why drop non-conference games?   The smart money yesterday told us it was about player safety and schedule flexibility.  We think that the smart money forgot to tell us that it’s about money as well.  Isn’t it always?

The argument for safety is that the Big 10 (and when others like the Big 12 and the PAC 12 schedule similarly) can insure across the conference protocols for regular testing and appropriate quarantining while out of conference teams may not have the same.  We can’t have this virus spreading you may have heard.

The argument for flexibility is that you can start the season earlier, later, or provide off weeks within as medical needs warrant.  If you’re only going to have 10 games you’ve found two more weeks within the season plus already scheduled off weeks to rearrange all of it as needed.

Ah, but the argument for money is very real as well.   If you’re going down to ten games, you play bigger opponents every week.  More gate if there is a gate and more TV money follows.  If you’re Michigan St. do you keep Ball St. on the schedule and not pick up a game against Nebraska?  Duh.  Plus you can collect insurance for the canceled Ball St. game.

So, the bottom line is that the Power 5 conferences will find a path, if there is one, to maximize the money.  It’s refreshing that they think his way when the malcontents run around wanting socialism and guerilla gardens in its place, but we digress.

But what about the non Power 5 teams like Ball St.?  Apparently, the answer to the question is the question, “what about them?”  Their guaranteed pay of a million or more to get waxed by the big boys is gone.  If their fans cannot attend their games most all of their revenue is gone too.

Then the question becomes, “are their sports programs gone?”

If they have no football they have no revenue to support the other programs.  If no football, no women’s lacrosse.  For the little guys, is football out for fall?  Is football out, as they currently know it, forever?

Go on, take the money and run.  So sang The Steve Miller Band.

Science and Data Borders on Nonsense

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

To quote Mark Twain, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Perhaps you felt that way when the Democrat-led House finally found what they needed to press on to impeachment of Donald Trump.  It was a “quid pro quo.”  Did you know what that was?  Or, did it send you to the Google search bar?  Worry not, it did for many of us.

Actually it did for too many of us.  That’s why suddenly in all of the interviews of Democratic House Intelligence members and all talking heads on MSNBC stopped using the phrase.  They started using the word “bribery” instead.  Why?  It’s because the Democrats polled the public and quickly realized it was more understandable, hence an easier sell.

The Democrats always poll the public.  It’s why they are so much better at controlling the narrative of the country than the Republicans.  The old, stodgy, white, know-it-all Republicans tell you what they think.  The Democrats tell you what you think.

Which brings us to COVID-19.  There isn’t a leader of a state that is slower to open than some of the rest that doesn’t begin his or her press conference with “we are following the science and the data.”  Clearly “science” and “data” are two words that resonate with America. They asked.  They know.  It sounds so logical why wouldn’t we follow?

Except there may be one little problem.  The White House Coronavirus Task Force response administrator, Dr. Debora Birx had a direct comment or two for Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Apparently, in a two weeks ago task force meeting, Birx and others were frustrated with the CDC’s antiquated system for tracking virus data, which they worried was inflating some statistics — such as mortality rate and case count — by as much as 25 percent, according to four people present for the discussion or later briefed on it.

“There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust,” Birx reportedly said, according to two of the people present.

But that didn’t stop Dr. Birx in the last few days of separate interviews.  In the first she said that an earlier lockdown would not have helped to prevent the spread of the virus.  In a subsequent one she expressed concern that the weeks’ old lockdown was not having a positive effect in Washinton, DC., Chicago, or Los Angeles.

How about a little deductive reasoning?  If an earlier lockdown would not have helped and the current one isn’t, then why did we lockdown?  It must have been because of the science and the data?  The longer you “serve” as a government employee, especially if you have a white coat with your name embroidered on it, the more this makes sense we assume.  Having a scarf must help, too.

Finally, Birx worried aloud that “the fall could possibly bring the virus back as strong as ever.”  Coincidentally, last week, the Director of the National Hurricane Center said “this season’s storms could possibly be more numerous than last year.”  “Could possibly?”  That’s going out on a limb.

Georgia looked at the science and the data.  They said, “enough already.”  So far, so good.  Why?  No one is sure, but the answer must lie in the science and the data.

Meanwhile Trump has had it with the great state of North Carolina’s slow reopening.  In less than 100 days there is this little Republican National Convention of some interest scheduled in Charlotte.  On Monday, Governor Roy Cooper responded to Trump’s tweet, saying, “State health officials are working with the RNC and will review its plan as they make decisions about how to hold the convention in Charlotte. North Carolina is relying on data and science to protect our state’s public health and safety.”

Cooper got it backward.  He said “data and science.”  It’s “science and data.”  Maybe that’s why they are slower to open in NC than in Georgia.

The two states share a little border.  There must be some strong antiviral “stuff” on the Georgia side of that ever so thin state line.

We should ask Birx and the CDC to see what the science and the data tell us about it.

 

 

Trickle Down Faces Fourth Down

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

In 1980 as newly inaugurated President Ronald Reagan strode into the Oval Office the American economy was a mess.  Interest rates reached double digits, unemployment was nearing the same, and inflation was rampant.

One of his economic team’s solution bets was to dramatically reduce the higher and eliminate the highest federal tax rates on the books.  The phrase “trickle-down economics” was born.  In essence if you incent the rich the poor would benefit was how opponents spun the policy.  Political opponents of the Reagan administration soon seized on this language in an effort to brand the administration as caring only about the wealthy.

The holy Reverend Jessie Jackson actually used his outrage against it, or “Reaganomics” as it also was mockingly called, to rally his minority base and make a run a the Democratic nomination a time or two.

Today, we face severe economic challenges as well.  While interest rates and inflation are quite tame, we have unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression over 100 years ago.  Our economic challenges are different, varied, and numerous.

And, like it or not, the effect of “trickle-down” economics is in full view all over again.  If a business cannot open, it’s employees can’t work.  If they can’t work, the gas station sells less gas.  And, so on and so on.

One such “so on” is college athletics.  Yesterday, ESPN published a story with some staggering facts about what has happened in the spring of 2020 to the programs, and more importantly what will happen if there was no college football.  In short, the loss would total $4 billion dollars to the Power Five school’s revenue. It would alter, if not eliminate men’s and women’s revenue loss programs and decimate the administrations that manage them.

But one stat caught our attention more so than all of the others.  Of the 52 public (private ones have no legal need to share revenue info) Power 5 schools included in the Syracuse University study, only 3.8% cite football ticket sales as their biggest revenue source 2017-18.  That’s but two teams of the 52!

The fallout, therefore, from game day sales of shirts, parking, booze, concessions is significant.  If you have no games, you have no parking attendants. Unemployment.  Your popcorn vendor can keep the kernels.  Unemployment.  The t-shirt manufacturer can keep the ink dry.  Unemployment.  The beer distributor can keep the hops. Unemployment.

Even if social distancing forces limiting stadiums to half capacity; half of yesterday is 100% more than nothing.

TV revenue is the most important source of income from these events for many colleges.  The TV trucks don’t drive to the location. The production team stays home.  The TV station ad salesman sells no ads.  The ad agency produces fewer ads. Unemployment times four.  You get the picture, but not on your TV.

Trickle-down, like it or not, is our economy.

How many schools’ athletic departments saved for a rainy day?  Just about as many as American businesses both big and small.

Are you hoping and praying that you will actually be able to see live college football this fall?

So are several institutions and industries that live for live football.

They bet on the trickle-down effect yearly for their livelihood.

 

 

 

Your Body is a Temple

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

As America reopens we don’t seem so open with what we are willing to put into our bodies.

Is a vaccine around the corner?  Probably not, but a recent survey of Americans stated almost 50% would not want it injected into their bodies for fear of side effects.   Another reason cited was the concern that our government would be injecting a microchip along with the antibodies.

Meanwhile, speaking to reporters at the White House, President Trump revealed that he’s been taking a hydroxychloroquine pill daily for a week and a half, along with a dose of zinc. Shortly after the announcement, The Your World with Neil Cavuto anchor called the president’s remarks “stunning” and warned that the drug could kill certain individuals who consume it.

The "Great" Roger Ailes
The “Great” Roger Ailes

Trump objected to the rant and tweeted “@FoxNews is no longer the same. We miss the great Roger Ailes.  Looking for a new outlet!”  The great Roger Ailes’ body of work included a few workplace sexual harassment charges.   We digress.

Nancy Pelosi, head of one body of Congress weighed in as well.  CNN host Anderson Cooper asked, “Madam Speaker, what is your reaction to the president saying he is now taking hydroxychloroquine? Are you concerned?”  She tore up the president like an old speech.  “I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and in his, shall we say, weight group — morbidly obese they say.”

Pelosi knows a thing or two about putting drugs into one’s body.  It must be clear to her that botox is way safer than hydroxychloroquine.  It’s written all over her face.

In her home state, six of seven convicted sex offenders freed in Orange County, California, last month due to fears of the Chinese coronavirus crisis spreading in local jails have since been rearrested for violating their terms of release.  Most of them were taken back in for ridding their bodies of that pesky GPS tracking device.  You have to wonder if they would line up to get the vaccine.  The bright side is virus immunity.  The downside might be a tracking device.

Planned Parenthood leadership is screaming for more money during these #alonetogether times.  Seems like we may have been together during our alone time.  Maybe we are more open to what we put in our bodies?

And this morning Walmart reported first-quarter earnings.  They were impressive.  With revenue over $32 billion, they beat the Wall St estimates by over $1 billion in top-line sales.  Same-store sales were up by 10% percent.  Strong.  A Walmart spokesperson cited “considerable strength in food sales.”

At least we haven’t lost our appetite though it all.

 

A Nightmare Prop Bet

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Yesterday we offered a couple of proposition bets on the NCAA playing or not this fall.  Today we offer a prop bet on the 11/3/20 election.

As #hidenbiden trends on Twitter, we have “Sleepy Joe” at plus $180 to actually NOT be the Democratic Pary’s nominee for President.  You bet $100 to win $180 that Biden goes home in August with his MyPillow.com pillow in hand.    The DNC has to fear, we repeat, has to fear that the sunset is near.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has delayed its convention a month, yet still plans to do it virtually.  Safety is the key they say.  Or, is it?  Why delay it a month if you aren’t physically attending to begin with?

There might have even been a glimpse into that thinking yesterday.  “First of all, our convention has to happen, because we are not officially nominating Joe Biden in order to take Donald Trump,” Xochitl Hinojosa, communications director for the DNC replied during an interview.  “So our convention is happening. There is business that has to happen.”

Or could her combo of words be a gaffe?  Hinojosa has yet to clarify her remarks.  It would be befitting of the party whose presumptive nominee spits out more gaffes daily than the Feds print money.

Take yesterday for example.   Please.  In just one video conference from Biden’s basement, he won the rare Triple Crown.  First, he needed off-camera prompting that he was on the air.  Two, he told the country that in this pandemic we have lost 85k jobs and millions of people.  “Millions of people,” he repeated.  “Millions of jobs,” he finished.  Finally, stammering, to complete the trifecta he forgot the name of one of his top medical advisers.  All three dreadful videos are captured in this article.

Just before Biden went into hiding all of his Democratic challengers obediently folded like some fine sheets made from Giza region cotton.  Crazy Bernie was the lone holdout.  But, he virtually conceded the race when he virtually conceded the race.  Sanders didn’t want to be President anyway.  He just likes to be Bernie for a while every four years.

Honestly, it was funny at the outset.  Now, it’s just said frankly.

He needs the best night’s sleep in the whole, wide world because a nightmare named Trump awaits.

Who will be the nominee if Biden is a no show? That’s a bet for another day to handicap.

For now, take “no Joe” for $100 to win $180.

 

 

 

Hindsight, Foresight, and Throwing Darts.

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

One unlucky BBR staffer was assigned a project that wound up lasting well into the evening.  The loser of the coin flip had to research the states’ stay at home orders, easing of same, and restrictions imposed on both.

The project mercifully was called off around 11:30 pm.  Why?  It’s because there are nearly 50 different answers from 50 states in place to either stay or not in place.

We wonder.

  1.  Have we all put too much trust in elected officials that know next to nothing about viruses blindly throwing darts at a wall?
  2.  Have we all put too much trust in many doctors(experts) who are in government positions for too long as the politicians are, somewhat blindly throwing darts at a wall?
  3.  We were only supposed to be flattening the curve.  Los Angeles County, “with almost certainty,” will extend the stay at home until sometime in July.  Does LA (and Oregon) know something that most of the other 48 states do not?
  4.  Will someone please inform BBR when, barring a vaccination that all agree to inject, the risk of spreading the virus will go to zero? Or when it will go to a manageable number?  What is that manageable number?
  5. Will someone please inform BBR when the “cost” of catching it is outweighed by the cost of not catching it?  Georgia and Texas amongst others have said that day has come and gone.
  6. Wasn’t the time to lock down two weeks before we did?  Easy to say in hindsight you say?  Correct.  Yet some called for it loudly and repeatedly back on March 1.  But it seems like the time to stop a spread is before it starts spreading.  How do you know when?  You don’t.  So, if you think you are going to need to do it, isn’t sooner better than later?
  7. To those suggesting we should test everyone every time they enter an establishment that “we” think they should get tested we have a question.  When does that need to subside?  When the virus goes away?  When the vaccine arrives?  How do you pay for what you just proposed?  Isn’t it a violation of one’s rights?
  8. To anyone who says anything is too soon?  Is it not your individual decision to do or not do what you wish?  Stay home as long as you wish, but the money to take care of everyone has long ago run out.  Are you listening, Nancy?  Are you listening, Mitch?  Are you listening, Donald?
  9. Can anyone let us know when the Federal Reserve printer runs out of ink?  BBR’s low ink printer notification is on more than it’s off it seems.  That must be one big printer with one very big green ink cartridge.
  10. Why in the world is the stock market going up?  Does Wall St. know that we have to go back to work in order to survive?

Hindsight is indeed 2020.  We already cannot wait until 2020 is indeed behind us.

Made in America?

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

On June 12, 1987, United States President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech in West Berlin.  He was less than 100 yards from the Berlin Wall.   Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which had separated West and East Berlin since 1961.  “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  Though it received relatively little media coverage at the time, it became widely known in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  There is significant debate as to how much influence if any, the speech had on the wall coming down.  But in 1989 down it came as did communist rule and/or occupation in several eastern European countries in addition to the then Soviet Union, now Russia.

There isn’t much debate at all about the influence Donald J. Trump has had in getting a taller and wider wall built on the southern border of the U.S.  Over 125 miles are completed and by winter the guess is that nearly 500 miles will be hoisted.

Reagan wanted to unravel Soviet block countries.  Trump wants to block illegal immigration.  Both walls were or are steeped in controversy and divided opinions.

But the U.S. opinion should not be divided on two other walls.  One is The Great Wall of China and the other is the virtual firewall of the world wide web.

As U.S. companies figuratively lept over the Great Wall to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor to make and eager Chinese consumers to, well, consume U.S. products a bad thing happened.  We lost sight of right from wrong all because all we could see is the almighty dollar, and lots of them.

Forgetting for a minute of how horrifically the Chinese tyrants treat their people day in and day out, focus on the last 180 days.

China either leaked a virus out of a lab or didn’t.  Investigations, in spite of the World Health Organization(WHO), are ongoing.  Regardless, does anyone think that the virus didn’t start in China somehow? China is accused of asking the WHO in January to deny that human to human transmission could occur.  Further, they restricted travel from the Wuhan Provence to other areas of China but not to the rest of the world as the virus spread rapidly around the globe.

They recently revised the cases and deaths in the country, increasing both totals by an even 50%.   Oops, maybe a rounding error was uncovered.  Some medial experts put the actual carnage at 5x to 10x their count.

Yesterday news broke that the FBI is now investigating China as it’s feared that they have continued their widespread hacking of virtual walls.  Except this time it’s even worse.  Now they are trying to hack into pharma company computers to steal the vaccination research being done on the very virus that they let out of the lab or the soup.

Like him or hate him(and apparently there is no in-between), Trump has been telling us over and over again that China manipulates their currency, profits unfairly on trade deals, and conducts cyber-attack after attack.

Perhaps it’s time we listen closely, learn fast, and plan accordingly.

We’re in far too deep with a country that is doing everything that others did that we hated just 30 years ago.   Somehow we chose to close our eyes.

What are we going to do about it? And, when?  Soon isn’t soon enough.

“Made in America” sounds good.  “Not made in China” sounds essential.

 

Ten Piece Nuggets-Only in America

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

You’re returning to work.  Your appetite is naturally increasing.  We’re here to help.  Our supply chain, unlike Wendy’s, never runs short.  We’re here to serve.  Nuggets follow.

  1.  Jailed Dallas hair salon owner Shelley Luther is free at last.   One day after a judge sentenced her to 7 days in jail and 7k out of her pocket, sanity got in the way of insanity.  The Texas AG, followed by the governor, quickly acted.  They both suggested that there were better ways to handle a business owner solely interested in reopening.  It was a bad look for the state to say the least.  Maybe a quick trip to the beauty salon will help.
  2.  A Texas judicial watchdog group previously had labeled the judge as “left-leaning.” And, supposedly, people in the system have heard him say that he likes to be extra tough on people with “conservative principles.”  Remember, justice is blind.  In this instance, it was indeed, unfortunately, blind.
  3.  Consider the terrible irony that is a result of an overzealous government wielding it’s power from the start of the Coronavirus till now in this situation.  We let criminals out of taxpayer-funded penal institutions for fear that the virus would spread like wildfire inside.  We told people when they could and could not work.  We told them who was essential and who wasn’t.  A salon owner wanted to work, pay her employees, and stop taking money from our government.  In fact, they would resume paying those same taxes.  When she went in seven days early (tomorrow salons may reopen in Texas) she was arrested, jailed, fined, and sentenced.  She was put in the very same place (jail) that we let criminals out early to reduce the virus’ transmission thereby increasing the chance of transmission to her, her employees, her customers, and her loved ones.  Only in America.
  4. We mentioned yesterday that a good thing happened during this bad thing.  A GoFundMe page to help out Ms. Luther was created.  We even speculated that it would zoom (sorry) to over 100k by nightfall yesterday.   It did.  It did by an additional 400k.  The tally as of late last evening was nearly 500k. Only in America.
  5.  Meanwhile, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo rejected the idea of waving the state income tax levied on workers who voluntarily answered the call and flocked in from out of state to help during the worst of the worst times.  The good governor said that he would like to do a lot of good things but his state was facing a 13 billion dollar budget deficit.  He added that he could do some of those things if the federal government would give him some money.  It sounds like he is asking for a handout, not a hand up.
  6. New York was ill-equipped at the state level as were most.   It had a few ventilators.  It had a few masks.  It has more than a few citizens.  The federal government retro built the Javits Center into a temporary hospital.  It docked one of it’s two floating hospitals in Manhatten.  It retrofitted the ship to handle Coronavirus patients only at the request of Cuomo.  And, now, if it gives NY some money it would be helpful.  And, the national media is handing out plaudits for how “presidential” Cuomo looks, sounds, and acts as governor.  Hmm.  You mean they are thinking Joe Biden doesn’t?   Only in America.
  7. Does any state put any money or supplies away for a rainy day?  Too few.  Does any citizen?  Too few.  If this economic watershed moment doesn’t teach the public and private sector to live below its means, what will?
  8. The rise in the suicide rate caused by lockdowns in Australia is predicted to exceed deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus by a factor of ten, the Australian reported Thursday.  You should reread that sentence.  Australia fears a 50% rise in suicides this year and predicts that the increased rate could linger for years from the fallout of the lockdown.  Let’s hope their models are as inaccurate as the spike, curve, mortality rate, and infection rate models have been so far.
  9. The Washington Post is running a series of articles about POTUS’s decision to get quotes to paint the border wall.  Cost estimates range from $500 million to over $2 billion (if two coats of powder coat are applied).  Trump wants to paint it black.  Why?  It would make scaling it in the summer months significantly harder as black absorbs the sun’s heat making the “The Wall” quite hot to the touch.  Only in America if you can get here.
  10. The Post is outraged at the cost.  Wait until they see the infrastructure proposal tab.   Nevermind that we just appropriated over $3 trillion to assuage the historic economic hardship and fallout from this enemy that we cannot see.  There are too many government initiatives that hand out too much money.  What’s another $500 million to paint a wall?  Planned Parenthood gets $500 million a year and then some.   Would it be better if the wall was called “Planned Immigration?”

Get back to work when we tell you.  Only in America.

Let’s Hope So.

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Yesterday CNN ran a story that we feel has not gotten near enough attention.  For our sake, we hope it isn’t as Donald Trump labels it, “fake news.”

We quote CNN.  “373 employees and contract workers at Triumph Foods in Buchanan County, Missouri, have tested positive for coronavirus. All of them were asymptomatic, according to a press release from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.”

Testing at the plant began last week with results coming in over the past few days, the release from DHSS said.  As of April 30, at least 1,500 had been tested, a previous release said.  A first test a week earlier of 707 of the now nearly 1500 resulted in 92 asymptomatic positives.
So what does this all mean?  We hesitate to speculate as there are no health care professionals on BBR’s burgeoning staff, but we will anyway.  The ball bounces a bit below, but stay with it.
1.  In a week’s time the positives went from 92 of 707 to now 373 of 1500.  That’s a pretty aggressive acceleration.
2.  Yet every one of them, we repeat, EVERYONE of them, are asymptomatic.
3.  This almost seems impossible.  373 people of various ages, races, gender, and health conditions, all living near each other are positive asymptomatic.  Unless it isn’t impossible.  And, let’s assume for a minute that it isn’t.
4.  If you believe the CDC’s RO, (pronounced r naught) a mathematical term that indicates how contagious an infectious disease is for Coronavirus, then you can buy into the rapid spread in a contaminated closed environment where many come together.  It’s unfortunately why nursing homes and hospitals are incubators for it.
5.  So, how many other environments that are similar have had a similar spread?  We won’t know that of course until tests are repeatedly and readily available.
6.  But, strong logic would make an argument that its more than a few and likely way more than a few.
7.  So, how many Americans are positive and were asymptomatic in the past or present?  As stated above, we won’t know that of course until tests are repeatedly and readily available.
8.  So, now go back to the first documented case to hit American soil.  On January 19, 2020, a 35-year-old man presented to an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Washington, with a 4-day history of cough and subjective fever tested positive.  He wasn’t asymptomatic.  But how many before him were?  We’ll never know.
9.  But if 373 and counting can all hand it off to one another asymptomatically, how many handed it off prior to the above positive symptomatic case?  We’ll never know.
10.  Which begs the question?  How many people in America today are positive?   If you buy into the snowball downhill theory loosely outlined above it could be many.  It could be many as in tens of millions.  Are we speculating?  Yep.  That makes us almost as accurate as the experts it sadly seems.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the U.S. coronavirus response coordinator, dropped the following comment on Fox News on Sunday.  “I think we underestimated very early on the number of asymptomatic cases,” Dr. Birx said. “And I think we’re really beginning to understand there are people that get infected that those symptoms are so low-grade that they don’t even know that they’re infected.”

So if you’ve bought in this far, we have but one more small leap of faith to ask.  How immune then is the herd at this point?  Probably way more than we realize.

Nearly 70,000 deaths in the U.S. is nearly 70,000 deaths too many, make no mistake.  Of course, we hope that the CDC has made no mistake when counting as well.

The country is “reopening.”  If the asymptomatic headcount is way higher than thought maybe the “second wave” or “next spike” will be far less than even the most optimistic projections.

Let’s hope so.