*My apologies to BGE for getting this up so late. It’s been an odd morning. It’s still a very important thing to get out there. – SAH*

The Chinese Matter – by BGE

In November 1971, not long after the Nixon administration ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold, then Treasury secretary John Connally told his counterparts during a G10 meeting that “the dollar is our currency, but your problem.”   Despite the Bretton Woods era being long gone, this remains true today.  The US Dollar is the world’s reserve currency and this simple fact is the root of our “Exorbitant Privilege” and a primary reason that China’s huge holdings of US Treasuries are their problem, not ours.

Certainly, China could dump their holdings or choose not to take up the waves of Treasuries coming on to the market, but only at the cost of completely wrecking their economy.  The logic of tyrants is not the logic of a free society, but even a tyrant must ensure that those who maintain him in power are fed and well-oiled or he ends up dead, often messily. Wrecking the Chinese economy, which is weaker than popularly believed, would damage those on whom the tyranny depends for support. Crucially, this includes the Army and Intelligence functions whose senior officers have become rich through state-owned corporations.

Finally, it might not work as intended.  The conventional wisdom seems to be that China’s dumping US treasuries would cause interest rates to increase (bond prices move opposite to rates; high rates mean low prices and low rates mean high prices,) thus driving up US interest payments and, in classic mercantilist fashion, wrecking US exports and giving China comparative advantage through a weak renminbi.  Certainly, it would produce a couple of interesting days on the markets but, unless a new reserve currency emerges, a return to economic normality would also mean a return to the dollar shortages that existed up to the day the world hunkered down.  That there was, and will be again, a shortage of dollars may seem paradoxical, but it is very real and arises from the dollar being the world’s reserve currency and China faces the largest dollar shortage of all.

So then, what is a global reserve currency?  Simply put, a global reserve currency is a means of exchange for world trade.  Before the war, it was gold and silver, since the war it’s been the US dollar.  The world needs dollars to intermediate global trade.  The more global trade, the greater demand for dollars.

To give an example, a Swedish export firm is selling product to a Japanese import firm, delivery in three months .  The Japanese firm doesn’t go out and buy Swedish Kronor, rather the Japanese firm goes to its bank and buys a Eurodollar deposit maturing in three months.  The Japanese bank sells Eurodollars forward for three months for kronor to the Swedish firm’s bank, who provides Kronor to the Swedish firm.  (this example and several that follow come from Jeffery Snider at Alhambra Investments.)  While this seems unnecessarily complicated,  scale and liquidity make it routine and much more efficient than the Japanese firm trying to find someone who is selling Kronor.

The key here is the notion of the Eurodollar.  A Eurodollar is simply a dollar liability outside the United States, mostly in London and Tokyo.  The term arose during the 1970’s as oil producers put the proceeds of oil sales into European banks outside the control of US authorities.  These banks, and this includes the overseas parts of American banks, began to use these deposits as funding for US Dollar lending and the money multiplier allowed the supply of dollars to increase immensely while the US money supply need not change.  This seemed to overcome Triffin’s Dilemma, the conflict of interests between short-term domestic and long-term international objectives.  There’s a catch, which we’ll come to later.

Let’s turn, then, to China.  Dollars flow into China through investments and the proceeds of merchandise trade.  China ships goods to the United States and is paid in dollars provided through the Eurodollar system.  The Peoples Bank of China (PBC) ends up with a lot of them and buys US Treasuries.  At the same time, the PBC issues Chinese currency, the renminbi.  The renminbi is not a convertible currency,  it’s essentially domestic scrip.  China has few natural resources and needs to import most raw materials.  For that they need dollars.  Since no-one outside China wants renminbi, it is not a stretch to say that the Eurodollar is the Chinese currency, as it is for most countries world-wide.  Europe, the UK, and Japan have large enough internal markets that their currency has value apart from the dollar, but for China and the rest, no.  For international trade you need the dollar.

This is power, this is hegemony, this is the exorbitant privilege that d’Estaing spoke of.  The military might of the US helps keep it in existence and the productivity of the American economy makes it credible, but it’s the power of the dollar that keeps ally and enemy in line.  The United States can do what other nations cannot and there’s little the other nations can do about it.

We’ll return to China, but first let’s return to the Japan/Sweden example.  The banks perform two key intermediate functions here, first is facilitating trade between currencies (here Kronor and Yen) the second and more important is time.  Delivery is in three months and the bank has done what is called maturity transformation.  They have taken money today for delivery three months from now.  Maturity transformation is the fundamental social function of bank’s always and everywhere.  They borrow short and lend long. This is by nature unstable and, when coupled with leverage, the cause of all banking crises, but it is the key step that allows strangers to trade at a distance and its benefits have long outstripped its cost.

Now the catch I mentioned above.  Money and Banking textbooks begin with the notion that policy makers decide on money supply and execute through some sort of reserve ratio, either to gold or deposits with the central bank.  It isn’t that way and hasn’t been for a long time.  The money supply is limited only by the balance sheet capacity of the participating banks and the balance sheet capacity is limited by the amount of good collateral available.  The Eurodollar market is funded by something called a Repurchase Agreement or repo.  Essentially, a money market fund lends money, usually overnight, to a financial institution secured by collateral.  Before 2008, a great deal of the collateral was prime commercial paper, which included (e.g.,) mortgage obligations.  Since then,  only first world government bonds will do.  This is why German or Japanese bonds can have negative interest rates.  The banks do not hold them to earn interest, they hold them as collateral to meet the margin call when BofNY Mellon comes calling. For dollar loans, only US treasuries will do and there’s not enough of them to meet all the calls on them.  This is the dollar shortage I spoke of.  Triffin’s Dilemma is alive and well.

Chinese firms need dollars to buy raw materials today for delivery for dollars in the future.  For this, they go to Chinese banks who borrow short and lend long.  The key difference is that both the borrowing and the lending are in dollars not renminbi and the borrowing is usually off-shore. The big four Chinese banks used to have a surplus of dollar assets over liabilities (around $125B in 2013,) but have had a deficit since the end of 2018.  They have huge, mismatched short-term liabilities that they need to roll over continuously and their counterparties require US Treasuries as collateral.  The only source of this collateral is the US Treasury holdings of the PBC.  Were the collateral to be insufficient the banks would have to reduce their lending or, potentially, call loans in, which tends to lead to rolling defaults.

China was an economic basket case before the Wuhan Flu.  Debt to GDP ratios had skyrocketed and there was a great deal of over capacity in the system.  All numbers out of China are suspect, but the reported GDP growth rates were a function of growth in leverage not growth in productivity.  They had reached the Ponzi finance stage that Minsky described. They resemble Japan in the early 1990’s where demographic weakness and excessive leverage blew a bubble that the Japanese economy has not fully recovered from almost 30 years later.  The key difference is that Japan was rich and China is not and Japan had accumulated genuine capital through their innovation and reputation for quality.  China does not innovate, it steals, and has squandered what little reputation it had.

The rot in China is concentrated in the state-owned conglomerates.  These state-owned firms are hugely inefficient and there is massive over-capacity.  They have built empty cities, bridges to nowhere, railroads that don’t work, and hospitals that fall down.  Their products are shoddy where they are not actively dangerous.  The contaminated virus tests and PPE that fall apart when touched are recent examples of Chinese build quality.

These firms are owned by the state, but the returns go to highly placed state functionaries including high ranking military and intelligence officers.  They have become rich and powerful and are the constituency that Bloomberg spoke of when he said that Xi had to “satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.”   The common people of China are no concern to Xi, but he must look after those who maintain him in power.  This is the logic of tyranny.

Thus, to Xi’s dilemma.  To work off this over capacity and maintain his power, China must increase exports, since, as a centrally planned state, it cannot burn off the excess since doing so would lead to a crisis in the regime.  They cannot increase exports because there was excess capacity throughout the world in the period leading up to the crisis and that excess capacity has increased since.  Oil futures have never “sold” at a negative price before.

With all that has gone on, who will buy and who would buy from China?  If they cannot export, they face collapse since they are all highly leveraged, in dollars so the central bank cannot simply print money.  What they can do is horde US Treasuries and buy as many as they can to shore up the state-owned industries.

Were they to fail, the collapse would roll through China destroying the middle class and possibly leading to famine in the provinces.  Xi does not answer to the people, but he does require the military to fire on the crowd if necessary and the military must count on its soldiers, or at least its sergeants.  They backed the regime at Tiananmen Square, but it is not clear what they would do if called on to fire on a crowd when their people back home are starving.  Famine has been the cause the removal of the mandate of heaven from many a Chinese emperor and could well be again.

So, China is very weak and the biggest risk to the rest of the world is error, either on our part or theirs.  Regarding our part, we really must question how far China’s corruption is embedded in our political, business, and media institutions.  We must also question why our politicians seem hell bent on destroying the economy.  Stupidity and fear are usually sufficient explanations for folly, but at the very least we should question whose interests are being served and why.

For China’s part, the biggest risk is human error.  There is a logic to tyranny, but tyrants are human and humans are not always logical.  Tyrants also rule alone and there is very limited resilience in a centrally controlled economy.  Lastly, the Chinese are often degenerate gamblers.  As drink is to the Irish, gambling is to the Chinese.  Xi is a tyrant, no-one is likely to tell him the truth since the truth might get the messenger killed, rather they will tell him what they think he wants to hear and he has been gambling not knowing the true odds and, thus, making mistakes.  His handling of the virus has been disastrous and he is making a very bad mistake in Hong Kong.

I mentioned above that there are two sources of dollars for China, investment and the proceeds of merchandise trade.  Much of the foreign investments come into China through Hong Kong since, under the one country two systems agreement, you could get your investments out of Hong Kong.  The risk was seen to be much lower.  No more.  By crushing dissent in Hong Kong, China risks losing a large portion of their dollar funding.  What price ego?  If they lose their dollar funding, where will they get oil or any of the other things they would need to make war

So, while China seems strong, it is weak.  Its economy is very shaky and Xi’s gambling could wreck it and cost him his life.  The US appears weak but is strong and that strength is why the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency.  The US economy before the current stupidity was a function of two things, the first is productivity, the US worker continues to be the most productive in the world.  The second is demographics.  The US had an “echo-boom” as its baby boomers had children.  Europe didn’t, Japan and Korea didn’t, China put in the one-child policy and managed to produce a slow-moving demographic disaster.

Precipitous action by China either through dumping their treasuries or invading Taiwan would be disastrous for them and fatal for Xi. The world runs on dollars and the demand for them is still higher than supply.  The only risk to is our politicians and I truly believe they are also gambling not knowing the odds.  We must defend our liberty and, if we do, all will be well.

Noli Timere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we start hearing reports of entire dairy herds, refined for generations being sold for hamburger, of entire herds of pigs being slaughtered and buried, and as our chickens are not coming home at all but being destroyed at the peep stage, all because of strangle points in distribution, it is time to ask: Has any other nation ever done this to itself in history?  And has any nation done this to itself without an open civil war.

And I can’t imagine any other country — except those who are blindly following our example — doing this for so little reason.

Looking at democrat governors running around proclaiming only vote by mail in their state, it’s easy enough to know what they get out of it — i.e. the chance to never be voted out again. Dictatorship for life — but why does the president continue to go along with it? Even when he, himself, called attention to the facilitation of fraud by that method of voting. (Which among other issues, when combined with motor voter (the poison pill that Clinton introduced to the American system of elections) allows untold numbers of foreigners to vote themselves bread and circus at the American tax payer’s expense. This is I am sure what Newsom is counting on both with his “bailout” to illegals and his changing of his state election laws to all vote by mail.  Again, I am telling you, no state that goes all vote by mail ever elects anyone who challenges the left.  Btw, Pennsylvania has done that too, so Trump might already have lost the election.) And yet the president keeps going along with the insanity and listening to the “experts” even as Americans get more and more fed up. And frankly, if he doesn’t see it, he should pay attention. Because the media won’t report it it doesn’t mean it’s not happening, as he should know from his election.  No, I have no idea why he’s sleep walking through this and frankly I’ve considered everything from his being drugged to his germophobia interfering with his rational thought.  Yeah, I know the press also keeps feeding him polls that say how much people approve of being locked in forever, but does he not remember Hillary Clinton had the election walking away, according to the same polls.  Frankly, all that he has keeping him from falling into an abyss right now is that none of us wants the left-now-calling-themselves-socialists-but-really-communists to take full control.

Which brings us to what the left thinks it’s doing, besides stealing the election and taking down Orange Man Bad.

For some time now I’ve had the suspicion, not just from their politicians but from their artists that the left has absolutely no clue where food comes from, or how difficult it is to get it from the fields and barns to the average urbanite’s table.

It’s not just their continuous yapping about sustainable this and sustainable that, and local sourced whatevers (a fine thing in California, but in Colorado which is frozen six months a year, and arid the rest, local sourced is a luxury for very wealthy people.) It’s the fact that they routinely create worlds that make no sense whatsoever.

Having been indoctrinated into Marx and — most of them — raised at a level where they never had to worry about missing a rent payment or a utility bill, they literally seem to think of a job as an imposition, a form of exploitation.  Some dastardly “capitalist” takes their fine mind, honed in the best Gender Studies texts in the universe, and makes them spend eight hours a day proofing, or filing, or doing some other form of distasteful work.

In their minds, this is not necessary, and they’re not contributing to the prosperity of the nation.  No one is. If the farmers stopped farming, food would just magically appear in the grocery stores, or something.

We can see this in Occasional — very Occasional — Cortex’s insistence that we come out of lockdown and go into general strike, because of course the freedom to go to work is not freedom.  This is why the press keeps insisting that the demonstrations of Americans who want to go back to work are being “financed” by plutocrats on the right. This is why they think that the entire country can have a rent holiday for months and nothing bad will result. (Like, you know, the landlords having their properties foreclosed for lack of mortgage payment.)

And this is why they don’t understand supply chains, nor that meat packing plants cannot have “social distancing” inside them and continue functioning at maximum capacity, nor that when farmers slaughter vast parts of their herds, there is no coming back from that, because you cannot breed cows, or pigs, or hatch chickens fully grown.

I HOPE for the sake of America that we have enough “give” in the system that we won’t see outright FAMINES in the richest country the wold has ever seen.  I’m starting to have doubts, and I’m planning accordingly.  Plan you accordingly as well.

As for the rest of the world? You’re on your own, and I’m sorry to say you might not even have America to kick around anymore. Those fervid wishes you expressed for decades, that we’d be as socialist as you are?  Well, Americans do everything bigger and better, even ruining themselves, and I hope you enjoy it.

You won’t even get a lot of tourism from us, because our airlines cannot keep maintaining their entire — already very aged — fleet of airplanes and are already sending a lot of them into permanent retirement. Which will make flights more expensive because — something else the left never got — when something it’s scarce its price goes up.

I don’t think the left sees any of this, or if they do is dimly and in a positive — for them — light.  They think that a lot of us will die. In their fantasies, it is always their political opponents who die, not the vast numbers of useless, young, neurotic urban voters who support them.  They think to usher in the Green New Deal with no cows, and less flying, and–

And they’re insane.  They’re as insane as communists always are who think that destroying a functioning system will usher in THEIR revolution and paradise.

I recommend P. J. O’Rourke’s Eat The Rich as an introduction to economics because it’s funny and relatively painless.  However, I also recommend John Ringo’s The Last Centurion for an introduction to what happens when you forcibly stop America, the turbine of the world economy.

I will also remind all the democrats thinking the end game is to steal elections and this will hold forever that their experience is with a relatively prosperous, well-fed country where the citizens can travel to other states when your state has gone insane. (And alas bring their mentally deficient voting patterns, but that’s something else.)

When the country is hungry — this will be a very hard winter — and there are actual people in distress (not the phony baloney distress that the dems have used forever, gathered from messed up studies) well… I don’t think you’ll like what you get.

You see, you miscalculated. Europe could have almost a century of playing with socialism and not starving, because it was being protected and to an extent fed by America for all that time.  Fed? Well, sure. While we didn’t outright ship food to them, we produced such a vast surplus it was easy enough to feed the world at a discount rate.

Those wheels will come off.  And people are going to get angry. Really angry.  And sure, the younger ones might voice socialistic bullshit, but honestly, those will be the WEALTHY younger ones, who are going to be very shocked their Marxist bullshit shield doesn’t protect them.

As I said last week, I don’t know what comes next. I know what I’m seeing now, particularly with the president remaining stuck in how cautions we have to be as we re-open, is not filling me with confidence.  The stage is set for a sh*tshow where we could get anything.

Anything, that is, except socialism or communism for any long period of time.  Why? Because they can’t kill enough of us fast enough (though they’ll try.) And socialism and communism throughout the world — sorry guys — only survived for any length of time with America’s tacit support.  Yeah, I do know the calculations of the cold war. I lived through it. But the fact is the USSR would have starved and probably rebelled if it weren’t for us feeding them. Same for every other communist country.  We’ve enable China’s fascism by making them most favored nation.

Well, congratulations leftists. Above I should have mentioned that this is not exactly self-inflicted.  This was a masterly move in the cold civil war, whether or not at the behest of the left’s Chinese masters, who knows.

What we do know is that they’re owed congratulations.  They captured the brass ring and brought a command economy to America.

And we’re all — everyone of us — going to feel it this winter and over the years to come.  At a guess it will be ten years before we can take food in the stores for granted, let alone all the stuff that used to be made in China thanks to the left’s very real greed for profits and disdain for free men and women.

I’m hoping — and willing to work for — America wins this and the fifth column is the one who hurts most in the flames they created.

From now on, throw nothing away. I had two large bags for donation to Goodwill, but they won’t be going out. Most cloth is made in China.  I’m also looking at discount fabric on line.  If you can get books on things like how to make clothes, and anything else you might need.  Store what food you can. Don’t throw that busted computer away, but see what you can cannibalize, and if it can be made functional with a different operating system (though replace it now, while the parts are available.)

This winter is going to be very very bad.  Depending on how much our local dictators strangle the local economy, it would be earlier than winter.

You guys are smarter than the average bear. Find ways to prepare including essential medicine.  I’m engaged in a mini-campaign of making sure my family will survive this. The least of my efforts is the Victory garden, because I SUCK as a gardener.

Oh, yeah, if like me most of your money is made on line and by virtue of computer work: get batteries. I doubt power will go out completely, but extra batteries for your laptop can be charged and held ready if it becomes erratic.

And yes, in the middle of this I’m going to continue slogging out fiction (and articles) because that’s ultimately my best contribution to society.  And hell, people will need distraction.  So, tend your garden, make your bed. Take care of what you can. Prepare to survive and have those you love survive.  And keep perfecting whatever marketable skills you have.

Meanwhile stay aware of what is going on.  At some point I need programmers for a project, and it’s great that they’ll be unemployed and willing to work on spec, right (Spit.)  No, it’s not, but it might help us get out of this.

We will make it through this.  We will survive.  When the elections are massively rigged in November and the left’s spokeszombie or wicked Uncle Bernie win?  Well, the left will find out that hungry and angry people don’t roll over like a contented and fat populace does.  (And btw, I haven’t even mentioned what this is doing to health care, to trucking, to just about everything imaginable. We were sitting pretty to survive decoupling from China, but now we’ll be so screwed.)

Their imagined utopia won’t materialize.  They won’t like what comes next. Because after this the media will have lost all their power, and Americans will have seen what happens when you believe “experts” and “models.” They’ll have felt it.

And hey, chances are all of us will also be much leaner. (Wry.)  The Chavez diet plan works like a charm.

Be not afraid.  Prepare as well as you can — knowing my readers that will be about 120% more than needed — but don’t stay locked in fear and despondence.

The left is crowing all over this is their chance to institute their “plan” for the world.  But remember they don’t know where food (or anything else) comes from.  While all of us, if not in training or profession stand in solidarity with the sons of Martha. We know things must be done, beyond the consciousness raising session. And we’re not Chinese. Or Russians.

Make sure the poison pill they’re feeding us ends their illusions.  Stay alert for opportunities to do well and to change things: when the wheels come off there are great opportunities for smart and creative individuals.

They want to destroy the Republic. Don’t let them.

Sursum Corda. You are our best weapon.

 

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn.

A short story of banishment and magical intrigues.

Cecily had been a lady-in-waiting. Exiled to Clearwater — for her health — after she angered Queen Blanche, she has nothing to do but wait.

Until an ambassador is sent there, for his health, and Cecily finds that the court intrigues reach farther than she had known they could.

I HAVE A STORY IN THIS. VERY SURPRISINGLY, MY SECOND EVER WORLD WOKE UP FOR IT. MAYBE THE TRILOGY WILL BE WRITTEN NEXT YEAR?

When Valor Must Hold

Fifteen tremendous authors. Fourteen extraordinary stories. One outstanding anthology.

It is a time of high adventure! A time for noble men and women to say “No!” to the evils that will befall their families and friends if they don’t rise to the task at hand. If their valor doesn’t hold, civilization will fall.

Fifteen authors have spun fourteen tales of hateful wizards, treacherous seas, and scheming foes. Of times when ancient evils roamed the Earth, looking for souls to claim, and dark prophecies foretold what would happen if the Evil Ones were allowed to succeed. This anthology has all of this and more.

When Valor Must Hold focuses on heroes worthy of facing such enemies. A tiny brownie stands up to a massive ogre. A mother races to protect her children. A hunter chases raiders. A guardian serves his king. Heroes lead forces into battle against overwhelming odds. There’s even a goblin trying to save his people by stealing dwarven rum.

Inside are fourteen fantastic stories of enemies testing the valor of heroes great and small. If their valor should fail, they will lose far more than their lives.

Will their swords shatter shields? Will their magic shine forth? Or will they see their homes and families perish when they fail? Step inside and find out!

 

 

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: SPADE

 

*For the previous chapters, please go here. These are posted first draft, as the brain dictates to the fingers which are remarkably stupid. Eventually it will be cleaned up and fixed just before page is made secret/taken down and the book is published. At that time I will take lists of typos or volunteers to proof read. For now, it’s written in a hurry, usually an hour before it goes up. And, let me remind you, it’s free – SAH*

Shadow (continued)

Albinia was not stupid, or at least no more stupid than anyone else.  At least from reading novels and listening to Mama’s stories of Mama’s own youth, Al thought she might be rather cleverer than the common run of people.

But right now all her belief in her excellent intellect amounted to nothing.  What a ridiculous situation to be in.

She recognized what the monster was, of course — any half trained witch would do so, and she  was a little more than half trained — he was a Gather.  Gathers were creatures created entirely by a spell, and formed of the nearest, most abundant material.  She should possibly be happy that the creature had been made of the pervasive coal smoke that permeated the city and not, say, from the equally pervasive stone used to make the buildings.  Or perhaps from people, she thought, as that too was abundant in London. She shivered.  She was not absolutely sure if Gathers would collect people, should they be directed, say, to the middle of a crowd.  She was sure, however, no people would survive such an experience.

Her arms aching, getting increasingly cold this high, where the wind blew with an extraordinary chill, she returned to her impossible predicament.  The problem with this is that, while she knew very well how to form a Gather, and therefore was absolutely capable of un-forming it, to dissolve this one meant to fall head first into London.  And die. There was no way in that short space she would have time to say a spell to break her fall.  But her arms hurt, where she held on to Lord Michael, and she was cold, and she was sure wherever the Gather was taking them it could be no good place.

Just as she thought that, she heard Lord Michael shouting, “Miss Blackley!”  As he spoke, he reached out his arms, and held her in turn. “You should not have held on to me. My family would have given you hospitality. There is–”

It occurred to Albinia, and what a time to think of it, that not only had she been very forward and rude in holding on to a man she barely knew but that he might very well think she was trying to trick him into marriage.  She had some idea that mama and her friends had tried such tricks when young, and even though she didn’t know much of society, she knew they were wrong.

“I couldn’t let you be taken alone. The creature is probably evil. And you’d saved me before,” she shouted back.  Her voice was not very loud, and he looked back at her, and she could see he was trying to make an attempt to understand.  Just as she thought this, she saw his lip twitch in amusement and didn’t know why.

“I thank you,” he said, his voice very formal.  But she could tell he was upset.

 

The Tower

Michael had never understood why people fell in love. It seemed an extraordinary thing to happen, that suddenly upended all your thinking and all your plans for the future. A very uncomfortable thing, too, since he couldn’t imagine marriage would be very comfortable, forever having to consider another person in your plans.  Bad enough that one had siblings whom one had to consider and plan for.

And of course he was not falling in love with Al–  Miss Blackley. For one, he barely knew her.  And for another, he wasn’t quite sure what falling in love was like. When Caroline had come back from her adventures in fairyland, it had all been about how Akakios gave her flutters in her stomach and made her mouth dry.  Michael had thought that it might be successfully treated with a purgative and some bleeding, but when he’d told Caroline that, she’d punched him.

However, now, being carried by a smoke Gather over the city of London — and what a spectacle it must be. He could almost hear the shouts from the people below — he realized that while he still did not have any intention to fall in love, he could almost understand why people did.

Not only was Al quite beautiful — well, maybe not conventionally beautiful, but he found her very pleasing to the eye — but also she was the bravest girl he’d met since his sister Caroline.  Ridiculous, of course. What did she think she could do to save him from someone who had sent this large a Gather was quite beyond him. And she must know, from the spelled boat, that he was quite a competent magician himself.

But of course she had not thought of that. She had simply charged in to protect him. Which was beyond stupid very endearing.  He held on tighter to her, her warmth welcome, and did a minor spell so he could speak without having to shout, and be heard too.  “I have no idea where it is taking us.”

“Nor I,” Al said. “Though I can’t believe something that broke into your brother’s house can have good intentions towards us.”

“No,” Michael agreed. “And it is quite stupid too. Because he must know that the moment he stepped away, my brother would be called there would be quite–”

At that moment he stopped. Not because he wanted to, but because everything must stop in the In Betweener.

He did not even know you could take any Gather through the In Between, and he held his breath — not that it made any difference, since you couldn’t breathe in the sheer nothing of the place, and hoped that the creature, such as it as, had enough purpose to be able to drag them through and to wherever it had come from.

This of course resolved the problem of how the smoke Gather had dared to break into the house of the prince consort, let alone how he intended to get away with it.

You could track people through the In Between. Unless where they landed was time dislocated or indeed a parallel universe, he would be found. Sooner, rather than later.

But the finding would take time.  And Michael had learned, long ago, that there was only one reason for someone to take him and delay pursuit, but know they could not evade it.  That reason was undoubtedly murder.

Oh, sure, there were times when kidnappers wanted money, but the son of a duke and brother of the future prince consort, from a family with extraordinarily high magic would be too high a prey for that. If all they wanted was money there must be far less dangerous people they could kidnap. And with more to give.

And also kidnappers would need to be reasonably sure they could extract money before the victim was found. No such thing here.

So the only reason they could have for kidnapping Michael in this fashion was because they wished to kill him, and perhaps disappear into the multi-verse before they could be traced.

The idea was obscene, and he felt his stomach clench in a ball of ice as he realized he’d brought Albinia, an innocent, into this perilous situation.

Just as he thought that they came out of the In Betweener, and the Gather was now taking very large strides in fog over the tops of a seemingly endless green forest.  In the far distance, he could see a stone tower, but in the fog he couldn’t even tell if it was a functional tower or just ruins.

Why would anyone want to kill him? People might have vendettas against his brothers, both very important people, or even against his father, though his father was vanished and officially dead. But why kill him?

The Gather was moving lower.

“Do you think we could survive the fall?” Al asked, showing she was in the same point in her thought.

He shook his head.  And then why they might want to kill him came to mind with a startling clarity.

He had never paid much attention to Seraphim’s job as the Royal Witchfinder.  The position entiled going to other worlds and rescuing people from where magic might be forbiden.  But Seraphim said onne had to be careful. Loathing magic per se was not a bad thing, if most people in the world were without magic. Because magic practicioners, given their immense advantage, could do very bad things indeed.  One of which was gather power through virgin sacrifice.  And those  sacrifices seemed to work better with a person of high birth.

The Gather was now at a point they could jump and perhaps even survive the experience.  Feeling cold all through, with a cold that had nothing to do with what appeared to be a pleasant, cool morning in this universe, he frantically assembled the spell that would drop the Gather.  As he clamped it on the creature, he had a feeling it would fail, which meant the magic making it was immense.

“Hold,” Al said, before he could pull the final twist that would cause the Gather to– well probably not to do much, given his insufficient power.  “I will help.”

On top of his she threw her magic, which he was surprised to find was quite powerful.

And then she pulled the piece holding the creature together.

It sounded exactly like a balloon out of which air had been let: a long prolongued whine of air excaping.  And then it came apart, suddenly, in a noxious smell of coal smoke.

And they were falling.

Michael fell to the branches of a tree, managing to shift position just enough to land solidly on his behind.  It rattled his brains, nonetheless, which must explain why the first thing he did, as soon as his head cleared was to look around and yell “Al, where are you?”

Negative Oil – by BGE

All sorts of impossible things happen all the damn time on Wall Street.  Negative interest rates? Pay for the privilege of lending money, crazy talk.   Well, right now you would pay Germany 0.436% per year for the privilege of lending them money for ten years.  There’s a good reason for this, but it seems mad.  On Monday, 20 April 2020 the price of oil, or to be accurate May 2020 WTI, went negative.  At one point, you would be paid $38 to take a barrel of oil off a desperate speculator.  How did this happen?  Well, there are real supply and demand reasons that prices are low — the lockdown, Saudi Arabia vs Russia – but the reason they went negative is that we are talking about paper oil not physical oil.

I’m not an oil guy, or a commodities guy, I’m a credit guy, but futures are ubiquitous in the markets.  When we speak of oil prices we are not speaking of what you pay to take possession of a barrel, we are talking about a benchmark futures contract price. Futures are financial derivatives that oblige the buyer to buy or sell some underlying asset at a predetermined price and date.  They can be contrasted with options, which are financial derivatives that give the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell.  There is a futures market for just about anything that is delivered in the future: corn, oil, pork bellies, stocks, bonds. Futures are standardized, trade on exchanges, and are regulated by the CFTC. There’s a thing called a Forward, which is like a future, but is traded over-the-counter with custom terms and conditions.

Futures are used by sellers (e.g., oil producers or farmers) to hedge the price of an underlying asset to prevent losses from a decrease in price.  They’re  used by buyers (e.g., airlines) to prevent losses from a future increase in price.  They’re used by investors (I’m going to call them investors since the distinction between investment and speculation is in the eye of the beholder,  like scholar) to speculate on the direction of prices, either up or down, using leverage.  If you ever “locked in a rate” on a home mortgage, you’ve basically entered into a futures contract (ok an option.)  Essentially, the hedger is transferring the future price risk to the speculator  This is a zero-sum financial transaction, but not a zero-sum social transaction, since both sides gain.  The hedger benefits from the locked in price and the speculator benefits from, or is damaged by, the volatility.

There are a couple of terms that you need to know.  The spot is the price of a fixed quantity of an asset delivered at a specific place, right now.  Backwardation is when the futures price of an asset is lower than the spot and is often a sign that investors expect the price to fall over time.  Contango, a word much loved by word nerds  is when the futures price is higher than the spot and can be a sign that investors expect prices to rise but is usually associated with the cost of carry (e.g., storage, spoilage.)  Markets tend to be in contango, but prices usually converge to the spot as the contracts approach expiration.

Contango can be weird.  It can cause a bet on rising oil prices into a loss, even though prices increase, if it is steep enough.  Not long ago, contango in oil was so severe that investing in the front month created a 15% monthly headwind.  Oil had to go up more than 15% for you to profit.  Some financial advisors will tell you to include a small commodities position to “hedge your life.”  Good advice, but the ETF’s available to the average person won’t work because of contango. Caveat emptor.  I’ll come back to this since it’s a contributor to the negative prices.

Last bits of background.  Most investors are not interested in delivering or receiving the underlying asset.  What they’re interested in is profiting on the changes in price. Thus, most contracts are closed before expiration, which is usually the third Friday of the month, but May 2020 WTI closed on Monday.   These contracts usually contain a provision to roll the contract forward.  Most investors buy on margin. That is, they use borrowed money.  The initial margin  can be only a few thousand dollars to control 1000 barrels of oil.  If the position starts to lose money, the broker will ask the investor for more money to cover the loss. If the investor doesn’t do so fast enough, the broker sells out the position and the investor has to make up any loss.  This is called the maintenance margin.  These, and the notions of limit up and limit down, which I won’t cover, are key things that make futures very volatile.  The position doesn’t have to move very much to cause large losses.

To oil. Most people think the price they see in the papers is the price of oil.  Nope, there is no “price of oil.”  Oil has different grades, different storage requirements, different everything.  A barrel of oil delivered in NY Harbor is different from a barrel of oil delivered in Bahrain.  A barrel of oil from the North Sea is very different from the sludge you get from Mexico and Venezuela.   What you see in the papers is the price of the “front-month” oil futures contract trading on the NY Mercantile Exchange for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate grade oil delivered on a specific date at Cushing, Oklahoma.  Phew. This is the US oil price you see in the papers. You might also see something called Brent Crude, which is the same sort of thing for North Sea oil.  There’s something called spot, but it isn’t very important to the markets. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) collects weekly spot and future prices from all over the world, so you can see what this means if you’re interested.

Demand for oil has collapsed because of the lockdown.  At the same time, OPEC has been breaking up and Saudi Arabia and Russia entered into a mutual destruction pact to increase production.  The conspiracy theory is they did it to wreck US production since the US becoming a net oil exporter is the most important strategic event since the fall of the Berlin Wall.  We don’t have to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, we just have to be able to close it.  In any case, there’s oil sloshing about all over the place.  Tankers are sitting fully loaded  and Cushing, OK is about 2/3 full.  It’s very difficult to turn off an oil well and, if they have no place to put it, they’ll have to burn it off.

Let’s go back to two things from above.  First, most of the trading in oil is done by professionals who buy or sell the futures contracts themselves all day every day.  However, there are also Oil ETF’s, that allow an investor to buy into this market without being a professional.  They are derivatives of a derivative in fact.  Nothing wrong with this per se, but there had been a large flow of funds into these ETF’s by individuals and hedge funds.  A pro will hedge his position, but the ETF’s have tended to be one-way bets.  Second, these ETF’s tend to invest in the nearest date contract, in this case May 2020, which expired on Monday.

There are all sorts of monkeyshines around expiration dates as the traders try to shove the prices around.  In a leveraged trade small changes can lead to big pay-offs.  Some of that was in play here, but what we had  was what is called a “crowded trade” where there are too many people who have made the same bet.  If that bet goes wrong, you get a rush toward the exits and, occasionally you get the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire.

There were a lot of outstanding long-contracts and those holding them had to either take delivery or sell the equivalent amount of oil, (i.e., pay someone else to take it.)  There are few buyers of oil, that’s what dropping prices mean, so selling was difficult to impossible and the investors typically have no ability to take delivery – space in Cushing does no good to a trader in NY.   The pro’s knew this, so they shorted the contract, driving down the price and forcing the longs to sell at still lower price, which caused a spiral down in price.  You might have heard of a short squeeze, this is a long squeeze and contango gone wild.

At the end of the day none of this really matters. This was a problem in paper oil, not oil. Some hedge-funds lost money and some got wiped out, we’ll see over the next couple of days. But, Brent didn’t do this, shares in Exxon barely budged on the day and are up today and the June 2020 WTI contract is selling for about $15.   Once the lockdown ends and demand returns the storage issue will ease and this will become a Wall Street legend like the day the Hunt’s tried to corner the market or the Crash of ’87.  It does illustrate the only eternal Wall Street wisdom, no-one knows nothin, and is  an object lesson that you should always understand what you’re buying.

Caveat Emptor

 

 

 

 

Healthcare Charlie Foxtrot  by Scarlett Doc

Since social distancing interventions have been implemented to limit the spread of COVID-19, many industries have faced significant changes in the way they function.  Some businesses have been temporarily shuttered.  Others continue to function with work-from-home initiatives.  Still others remain open with significant operational changes.  While these changes have been implemented with the goal of ‘flattening the curve’ to limit impacts of the virus on our healthcare system, blanket expansion of these interventions into the healthcare system may be causing more harm than good.

Much like the rest of society, the healthcare system has been modified to shift emphasis to essential services, while limiting services deemed nonessential.  Many outpatient offices have closed or switched to tele-health visits exclusively, lab and imaging centers have stopped taking non-urgent appointments, and non-emergent surgeries have been cancelled or postponed.  As a healthcare worker whose social circle is dominated by other healthcare workers I have been privy to the impacts of these changes on a variety of patients, and the potential downstream effects are concerning.

For example, multiple cancer patients have had their post-chemotherapy tumor resections postponed until after the various ‘shut-down’ directives are lifted.  Prompt tumor resection following chemotherapy reduces chance of tumor recurrence and improves long term outcomes.  Delaying resection could prolong chemotherapy treatments – which result in immunosuppression in addition to multiple other side effects – and ultimately lead to increased risk of infection, worse outcomes, increased healthcare burden, and increased morbidity and mortality.  Patients presenting with lumps and bumps that may be cancer have had diagnostic biopsies postponed – early identification and treatment of cancer is vital to prevent spread of tumors to other organs.  For patients being discharged from the hospital after surgery, treatment for life-threatening illness, or psychiatric stabilization, locating appropriate follow up is more complicated now.  Many offices are not taking new patients, and those who are often offer only tele-health visits.  Close follow-up with monitoring of vital signs and at least a targeted physical exam is important to prevent complications and readmissions.

The patients falling in the uncertain land between routine follow up and emergent care are also encountering difficulty accessing appropriate care.  Uncomplicated injuries such as a broken arm or torn ligament can often be managed in person at an outpatient orthopedic or primary care office, and imaging can be done at an outpatient imaging center.  In states and counties with stay-at-home orders in place, these outpatient services can only be accessed in person with an order from an emergency physician.  As a result, other-wise healthy patients are being diverted to the emergency room, where they are more likely to be exposed to infections such as COVID-19.

If the emergency physician doesn’t place a referral for an orthopedist and imaging, patients are often left in the lurch of delayed care.  Non-life-threatening acute injuries, without appropriate and timely follow up can become chronic injuries that require more significant intervention when finally addressed, take longer to heal or heal incompletely, or can become complicated by infection.  This translates to increased morbidity, increased mortality, preventable complications and increased healthcare utilization.

For patients who can get in to see a provider for an orthopedic injury, many will require occupational or physical therapy to help restore function and prevent muscle atrophy.  Occupational and physical therapists are important not only for patients recovering from broken bones – their interventions can reduce pain and improve function for patients with chronic and soft tissue injuries, stroke and other neurological injuries, and patients recovering from surgery.  These types of therapy often require hands-on assessments and use of various tools (weights, resistance bands, balance balls, etc.) that are shared between patients.  Due to the high risk of infection and the non-emergent nature of the care, these therapy offices have almost entirely closed across the country.  While not immediately apparent, patients who don’t receive timely access to this follow up intervention can suffer from delayed restoration of function, increased morbidity, decline in quality of life, and an overall increased burden on the healthcare system.

While many patients receiving routine follow-up care may find themselves mildly inconvenienced by closed outpatient offices, there is a minority who are disproportionately affected.  Many effective medications require regular monitoring of labs to prevent adverse outcomes and help attain and maintain therapeutic levels of medications.  Clozaril, for example, requires lab draws as often as once a week.  It is an antipsychotic that, while very effective, can cause significant damage to the immune system.  Regular lab monitoring and strict reporting requirements have produced a system that closely monitors patients for this severe outcome and forces intervention if it develops.  Restrictions have been temporarily lifted to allow patients to fill their scripts without labs, but the system is there for a reason, just like monitoring guidelines for other drugs and illnesses exist for a reason – to prevent negative outcomes and catch problems before they land a patient in the emergency room.

In closing down healthcare indiscriminately, we have created delays in care that is known to reduce negative outcomes down the road.  Delays in non-emergent care place patients at risk for increased complications that can result in more office visits, more emergency room visits, decline in quality of life, and increased morbidity and mortality.  The appointments and surgeries that are being postponed will still be there when stay-at-home restrictions are lifted, in addition to the routine burden on the system.  These delays will catch up to us. The healthcare system moves at a constant, rapid pace, and we just stopped the factory for over a month.  A month of follow up appointments. A month of surgeries. A month of therapy appointments. A month of new but non-emergent injuries. A month of labs and imaging. A month of acute complications of chronic illnesses. A month trying to avoid overwhelming our system with one illness. I think we will find when things open again that instead of being overwhelmed with one illness, we will be overwhelmed with all of them.

In addition to delaying care, we are putting healthcare staff out of work.  Hospitals and offices can’t afford staff they aren’t using and therefore have been implementing furloughs, mandatory PTO, and letting staff go.  Hopefully those nurses, techs, CNAs, doctors, ARNPs, PAs, CRNAs, etc., will still be around when we need them, otherwise facilities will be even less equipped to accommodate the increased demand that will develop when we open again.

In sum, the effects of halting care for over a month will reverberate for years – first in the surge of appointments that will likely exceed non-emergent capacity, then more chronically, with the illnesses that worsened or the increased complications from surgeries, supportive treatments, and diagnostics withheld. I don’t know that the chronic effects will be as marked as the acute, but the longer this shut-down goes on, the worse it will be.

These outcomes could be mitigated if we opened up healthcare prudently.  Sure, keep the at-the-door screenings.  Continue to limit the number of visitors in the hospital and companions at appointments.  But also, take a page from grocery stores and reserve early morning appointments for elderly and immunocompromised patients who are most at risk for infection.  Transform our waiting rooms to resemble pediatric waiting rooms with separate areas for patients with possible communicable infections as opposed to patients coming in for routine follow-up care or orthopedic injuries.  Where this can’t be done effectively, modify outpatient schedules with specific times for ‘sick’ and ‘well’ visits.  Educate patients about appropriate use of masks, gloves, hand-washing, and hand-sanitizer, and make these available in the waiting area and throughout offices.  Continue to utilize tele-health visits for appointments that don’t require a physical exam, and employ medical device companies to outfit our patients who require regular monitoring of blood pressure for example with the appropriate equipment to monitor from home and communicate these values with their providers.  Put our physical therapists, occupational therapists, lab technicians and imaging technicians back to work, with extra time between appointments to clean equipment properly.

Shutting everything down comes at a future cost, but we also can’t resume business as usual.  Many of these operational changes will benefit patients not only in limiting transmission of COVID-19, but also influenza and other communicable diseases that are omnipresent.  We should have been doing these things before COVID-19, but we can’t go back, only forward.

 

 

I consider this a very unlikely scenario, but not impossible. What is the way back from, say, Venezuela?  Do they even remember how to be free?
A subtitle of this would be “Teach your children well.” If we we go down for the long count, we can only hope that our grand kids or great grand kids will fight where we didn’t and bring back America.

Something like this was the deep background of the DST world, before the scientific glam. Now, take heart, since I first wrote that under Clinton.  And we’re not — knocks on head — there yet.

Keep going.  This is a very scary possibility but about as unlikely as the Pie in the Sky one. Take no counsel of your fears.

Someone said the future is a boot stepping on a human face forever.  They omitted saying that the past is that too. Heinlein pointed out that misery and poverty is the natural state of the human race and the “good luck” respites come when the individual is given freedom. But they usually don’t last.

It started with Winnie the Flu, and looking around and wondering why everyone else had gone mad.  Shockingly even a lot of people who were smart and whom you’d have considered rational and freedom lovers went all in on the side of the lockdown, and swore it was all justified, even though the rules made no sense and most of them had nothing to do with disease.

Not only were the numbers visible to anyone and you didn’t need a mathematical genius to see the virus was nowhere as deadly as advertised — not in a first world country — there was the obvious insanity that the New York City subway continued running through this, New Yorker’s ability to travel was unimpaired, despite being a hot spot, but New Yorkers screamed at everyone wanting to re-open the economy and save us from famine. Or the fact that most large cities had policemen enforcing draconian locked-at-home measures, while the homeless roamed more freely than ever, congregating in empty sidewalks and parking lots and — how strange — still alive and unharmed.

BUT the few people who screamed about this were dismissed as “denialists.”  Apparently denialists of the end of the world.

And the government band played on.

And the two weeks turned into a month and a half to three months lockdown, destroying businesses, livelihoods, lives, and disrupting many supply chains including those for food. The fact people were confined in the house, watching TV 24/7 and that TV was non stop doom porn didn’t help.  It never occurred to anyone that if TV could dramatize everyone under 80 who died, it was because there were so few of them.  Instead people panicked.

Bizarre abilities were attributed to the virus, including of flying 17 feet and hanging suspended in the air for hours.  Like the original research that prompted the order on six feet distance, this should have the additional “in laboratory circumstances. And if humans breathed aerosol.”  While there’s water vapor in your breath, you don’t BREATH water particles large enough to have the virus in them. And short of a sneeze or something similar you don’t breath 17 feet out. But people believed this. And didn’t realize “virus” is a viral load so small it couldn’t infect anyone.

There were protests, but a lot of states clamped down on them, and as things reopened the protests died down.

And the virus returned in the fall, and the hype and panic started again. In a transparent bid to recrash the fragile rebuilding to win the elections and get power, the media servants of the left party started the “We’re all going to die” drum.  And people obeyed.

There was a “temporary” lockdown in November and in the all vote by mail the left party won a stunning victory that might or might not have more votes than logical or plausible.

But people were too scared, some of the virus, some of the already precarious conditions. Too busy trying to find food.

The unlocking in December was trusted-people first.  And in the aftermath — because the virus was so bad, you see — strict tracking of every citizen was instituted. Strict social credit too.

Want to keep a blog, or talk on your phone more than peer-to-peer one person at a time? Your social credit has to be perfect.

No one knows how many people died the winter of 20/21 or how many by famine and how many by bullet.  Many a hunter in the woods, accidentally uncovers a mass grave, but if he knows what’s good for him, he doesn’t talk, and when the police who track the phone he must carry later ask what he saw, if he knows what’s good for him, he saw nothing.  With a few years of staying silent, he might be trusted again.

And he has to be trusted. Everyone does. Otherwise buying necessities is impossible. They’re so scarce anyway.  And having a job is a privilege. Receiving your dole if you don’t work is a privilege too.

There are occasional rebellions, attacks on important people. Or at least that’s the rumor. But it’s never reported.

If you manage to kill someone important on camera, you just sealed a death warrant for everyone you know. And the viewers, if they’re smart, will forget.

Periodically, if the rulers sense something particularly unsettled, they might lock down an entire region. It’s always a “virus.”

After 2028 they stopped bothering with the elections.  We don’t know why power changes sometimes, only that the new face shows up on TV and nothing changes.

But we’re living. More or less.  Most people live.  We’re told people abroad aren’t that lucky.  of course, no one not cleared has gone abroad in a long time.

Maybe some day someone will rebel in the name of freedom again, but food is so scarce, and even talking of how things used to be will get your ration card pulled.

So, all we can do is dream.

 

Before I begin, I want to make clear you guys understand I consider this one and the next one the most unlikely scenarios.  Even more so than pie in the sky.  And that this one is almost impossible to write, because the possibilities for “where do we go next” are endless.  This one is not impossible, though.

I also want to point out, as always, that what we see is a combination of all of them, and varying WIDELY among states.

This one took me a long time to think through, so another thing I want to make clear is that once the rocket goes up for the boogaloo, EVERYTHING is on the table.  Everything?  Everything. From a complete break up of the US (though that will take time, because right now the population is too mixed) to a Napoleon figure who buys us a temporary respite and might actually form an “American Empire” depending on internal pressures at the time, and how bad the rest of the world is, to well… the other side of winning. Which is the last scenario, only in that one there’s no boog.

And whatever the result is, even if order is ever restored, you’re probably going to lose everyone who is now 55 and older in the next five years.  Both because we’re not really good to go running around the mountains with various weapons, and because we’re more susceptible to viruses and illnesses that always accompany war. (Always? Always. They’re a symptom of disruption and bad nutrition.)  BUT mostly because our life expectancy as humans hasn’t changed that much without more or less constant intervention. Remember Shakespeare was “very old” at a year older than I?  Yeah.  Without the thyroid meds, I’d — if still alive — now be unable to keep a coherent thought for more than two minutes. Frankly, I was already there, I just could force it, but it took a lot of effort.  A LOT.  And at any rate, I’d probably have died of a heart attack by now.

A lot of us have this sort of thing. It’s honestly not a big deal. It’s not a life-or-death thing if you can get one tiny, little, cheap pill a couple of times a day.  However, failing that, your life expectancy is markedly shorter. That will leave what comes after in the hands of people under that age.  Most of whom have no clue what the US or the Constitution mean, by design of the lefties.  Remember that.

So, with that — the third best option….

It was around June the rocket went up.  No one was quite sure what caused it, because it didn’t happen in JUST one place, but seemed to happen everywhere in the space of a week.

About half of the nation was open for business then, but there were lags, one of them being getting hospitals open again.  (Operating on a tight margin, a lot of them were unable to come back from the lock down anyway) another one being getting food to the stores regularly.  The glut of beef caused by the slaughtering of dairy herds that farmers had trouble feeding, led to a lack of milk, which in turn, started turning into a lack of meat, as the glut ran out.

Worse was the fact that the lock downs were increasingly crazy and inconsistent.  And that some states opened up, then closed down tight after ten new cases hit the hospital.

Someday when there is enough leisure and money somewhere to study the matter, someone will discover the true, first trigger to armed insurrection.

Was it when New Jersey, for the upteenth time blocked a protest and started arresting protestors?  Was it people protesting the closure of their local hospital being shot on by state guard in another state?  Was it the food riots in Chicago? Or the subway riots in New York City?

Figuring it out is more complicated because the media never reported these until it was everywhere at once.  People woke up one morning to find out the nearest large-ish city was burning, there were shots nearby, and large, angry mobs in the street, and your nearest highway was bound to be blocked.

They did the sane thing and hunkered down, this time for cause, turned on the TV — mostly showing governors assuring people everything was all right — and waited for things to calm down.

They didn’t.

As chaos deepened, everything descended to rumor and confusion.  As those who had seen these situations before warned, you’re never aware of how messy things will get, until you find yourself in the middle of it.  You can’t tell what a mob is, even if you happen to be on their side, and they’re likely to go for you or not…. on a minute’s decision.  All the crunchy cons, who dress like hippies, are as likely to get hit by a conservative armed group as are hard lefties who dress like hippies. It’s all on the look.

We are in the tenth year of the rebellion.  You’d think it would have burned out by now, but there is just enough coherence and order to keep food on the table — sort of — most places.

Yes, the US army has engaged, but no one is even sure on what side.  The answer is probably “on all”.  We believe they are trying, most of all, to restore peace, except there is very little left.  And a conventional army always has trouble with guerilla warfare.

Ordinary Americans still live, through this.  Those who can work from home, if home is in a safe place and they can find a market for their work.  And you remember how you hit the net during a snow storm, to find out what streets were safe to drive on? Same thing. Only it’s with gunfire and explosions as the risk.  Informal networks, both of neighborhood and on line also communicate when food is available and where.  You might even be able to find your local doctor, who is often operating way outside his specialty and with no materials but is better than nothing.

The possibility of driving to the grocery store and finding yourself in the middle of a pitched battle is always there.

Some small towns are fine, operating normally — as normally as it’s possible under this — but they are very careful whom they let in.  You have to be known or known to someone.  Big cities, not one is quite sure.  People still seem to be living among the burned out hulls of high rises, and there is even some sort of work going on.

There are reports of insane dictatorships in some states, and some parts of big cities, but no one knows for sure. It might be fiction.

“Journalists” and big media were the first casualties, either killed or simply ignored until they disappeared.  We won’t say they didn’t deserve it.

There are rumors of a force marching on Washington DC to capture it and make some sort of order. Some people say it is the US military itself. Other people… well, reports vary.

Orders are given periodically purporting to come from the government, but since everything comes through informal networks, it’s impossible to be sure.  We thought they had a network just for this?

This can’t go on forever.  Right now, what’s happening is people leaving places they feel are hostile to join either family or their ideological brethren.  That too is an order of sorts. The population is choosing territory.

But ideologies are confusing.  Apparently younger people never learned much of what the republic was founded on.  The one thing we fear is that this is lost forever.

Those of us who were science fiction fans when this started keep saying that at this point Starship Troopers is a best case scenario.

And it could be worse.

 

 

 

 

I’m continuing the four paths leading forward from where we are now.

Four is a gross oversimplification, of course, as there are probably hundreds, and each of these will partake a bit of the others.

And because the usual suspects will think I am sketching my idea of Utopia, let me point out my idea of Utopia is Pie in the Sky where Marxism is defeated without blood and the future gives freedom to every weirdo (I are one) and oddling without fear. And where the boundaries of humanity’s hope are enhanced by technology.

HOWEVER if we’re going to boog, this is the best case scenario. And frankly it’s as much “pie in the sky” as the previous one because the possibilities of it going very, very ugly are much higher.  Once you toss the dice of civil war, it could be worse. And probably will be.  (BTW all of these are scenarios in which the US survives as a nation, though perhaps in the last two only in name. The ones in which we break apart and become neighboring hostile nations are all worse. For us, and for the world.)

So, here we go.  2020, later referred to as “the year we saw clearly.”

As the lockdown extended into July in some places, and the other places were far from normal, as the obviousness mounted of shortages, and that those who had presumed to tell us what to do were not only wrong but criminally so, unrest started to happen.

The fourth of July was bad across the country, as the nation woke to what had happened in Sacramento, and there was a brief attempt to demonize “militias” which had worked so well under Clinton.  But while horrified by the events shown on TV, America as a whole had listened to the media for the last time. So the attempt had the opposite effect.  One on one, neighborhood by neighborhood, neighbors started talking, organizing. At least in the functional parts of the country, this resembled more a mutual aid society.  “Oh, your computer needs a part my dead computer might have.” and “I see little Timmy has outgrown his shoes. Well, since they still won’t let thrift stores happen and clothing stores are having supply issues, let me see if I have a pair Billy wore only for a month before his growth spurt.”

The internet is up, and the part of America that does things and learns things (the majority of it given a chance) is hitting you tube for gardening videos, shoe repair videos, canning and food preserving suggestions, and generally busy as a bee.

In the functioning part of America — everywhere but some cities, really — things are tight and bad, but not horrible.  The other parts of America receive aid from the federal government in the form of supply trucks.  Cereal and rice normally sent to the rest of the world, are distributed to American citizens.  Special diet? Well, no room, really.

Some people still doing very well even in urban enclaves. And some have formed their own mutual aid societies.  Some not so well.

As cold hits and  the personnel to man power plants isn’t always available — the authorities are still being paranoid about colds and there are union rules — even those who are self-sufficient pass some very cold nights.  Media’s dramatization of homeless freezing in the streets is shrugged off by a population that is scrambling for the next meal (having money doesn’t mean there’s food you can afford.) Strangely a lot of the homeless clean up. More than freeze or starve? Who knows. It’s not like the media covers those.  There are also some brutal crimes, some food riots, neighborhoods perceived as “rich” under siege by those who wish to redistribute.  No one knows how many. The media makes it sound like “they’re coming for you next, and you must elect socialists to save you.”  The socialist rethoric is now strident.  You’re fairly sure 2020 has lasted a lifetime. Your doctor is still only sporadically in, as your local government takes sudden panics over “infection.” And you know damn well that grandma wouldn’t have died of her cancer if she’d had some chemo. She was only in her early seventies, too, and you were counting on her for babysitting.

When the famine hit in the rest of the world, including parts of Europe, most people didn’t even notice.  They noticed the push at the border. They noticed politicians talking about the brotherhood of man and how we should open our borders and ship all our food abroad.  In a leaner — literally — and more food-anxious population this goes over like a lead balloon.

Which is probably why all hell breaks loose when the election results come in and the international socialists won.

Isn’t it weird it should start in Boston, so long a bastion of that exact ideology.  Maybe there are places that are fated.

No one really knows what happened. Yes, there are people who save to take their kids to see the monument and the liberty bell that was broken out of bounds to ring that day.  But no one really knows the rights of it. Was it really a riot over representation and vote dilution? Or was it over food? Or was it, as the media tried to say for a while, “white supremacist” guerillas?  There are learned people writing learned books about it.  It’s fascinating to the part of the population fascinated by that. Not very large, since few have the leisure, time and excess wealth to devote to such things.

This time, though, it wasn’t like Sacramento.  It was more like the powder keg we’d long been tapping dancing on went up, all of a sudden, without warning.

They don’t recommend you teach your kids about the winter of 20-21 until they’re mature enough. They leave it to you to decide what mature enough is, but for most people it’s just before franchise. Which is now 21 in most states and restricted in the way each state decided.

The left as it was before the boog — and it is a mark we are still Americans that that fossilized joke made it into teaching materials — would say the franchise was racist, sexist….  Whatever.  In most states both men and women can vote, and all colors.  Note “in most states.”  The franchise is universal, but you have to qualify, but the qualifications vary by state.  Because those decisions went back to the states. Because the insanity of treating the entire country as NYC taught people that it’s better to be local. Really local. That’s the other thing: you want to run in a state, you’d best have been born there.  And for voting…. well, we think the minimum qualifying residence is 5 years. Those jokers in Ohio were always lax. Also they wanted to attract population, despite their winters.

Most states agree that you’re an adult after you served in the army or have been married for 3 years with at least one child.  SSM?  Well, some states allow it. Cut your cloth to fit your pattern. You might have to immigrate to another state. Yes, it’s a pain now a days. But that’s the result of sending power back to the states and disempowering the out of touch feds.

Whether the fiddly bits of the person you marry are unlike yours or not, devolving to local rule means Mrs. Grundy has a say.  The Karens didn’t go away. But instead of policing you for compliance with mask policy or compliance with the latest SJW command, after the boog the Karens want you to know you should be married, faithful and living a life just like everyone else.

We never go social credit or intrusion by the state. But we find out the tyranny of our neighbors is just as strong.

Oh, the boog was brief but horrible.  Between it and increasing economic disorganization, we lost more people and wealth than we could afford.  The US is a young country. Neighborhoods are full of children. Most of the children are either homeschooled, or schooled in neighborhood-arranged schools so the parents can go to work.  Admission to college (rare) or trade school is by merit exam. No one collects data on the race of the applicants. They seem representative of the area it’s drawn from.

But college or trade school come after the army.  Mandatory for men. Voluntary for women.  Strangely no one complains women aren’t given combat posts, by and large (there are exceptions.  The beast is always hungry), probably because serving in the army has a real chance of dying.  People joke about it, nervously, as “have two and one for the war.”  Most people have more, simply because they remember the twenties and how the elderly with no support network …  well, most of them didn’t starve. But it wasn’t pretty.

People from the late 1900s would say we’ve become a militaristic society. It’s true to a point.  There are very few men who didn’t serve, and a bit of the mannerisms and attitudes translate to civilian life.

But you see, it wasn’t a choice.  We caught that nuke right after the boog, because no one was paying attention to what was going on abroad, as our media tried to shape, instead, what they wanted to happen in the US.  And then there was that EMP attack. Not as much damage as there might have been, but let’s say the winter of 21-22 also shouldn’t be talked about to young children.  So our young men go to war. Because the world is a mess. And we don’t want the — real, this time, not orchestrated — border-rush of — real, this time, not orchestrated — refugees and starving families of 22.  No one should ever have to shoot desperate people. But the US was too close to the edge, itself.  And the rest of the world…. well, if the Europeans wouldn’t involve us in their to-the-death knife fights, it would be nice. But you know that’s not how it works.  And we do need to protect trade, such as it is. And even with news being all weird and non-centralized, what happened in Frankfurt should never happen again anywhere.  We’re not the world’s police, but cannibalism, really? in the twenty first century?

China went very quiet after the nuclear exchange, but we still patrol the seas. Japan is rebuilding and has A birthrate. As we said rebuilding. Russia is a permanent threat, as they’ve been most of their history, and airplanes and guided missiles allow them to threaten the world, not just their neighbors.

Anyway, your kids will come back from service, and tell you they can’t tell you everything but you catch a look sometimes, a shadow in their eyes.

And if you lose a child…. you might never know how or where.

Those who remember civil liberties don’t like this and talk of the real danger of military dictatorship.  If we elect the wrong man — or woman — and particularly if a bio agent really hits us and it’s worse than the panic of 2020.  This is why the obsession with devolving power to the smallest unit. And giving states more say than the Feds. But people who lived through the boog as adults remember how fast things can change, and get nervous.

How free are people?  Well….  Most of the country they’re okay, at least in terms of the government.  There are pockets where we hear of odd things. But it’s so difficult to get unbiased news. (Shame what happened to those TV stations, but we sort of understand. People blamed them for the madness and destruction of 2020. They weren’t wrong.) You hear it from your neighbor who has an internet gaming friend on the other coast, and who heard it from a cousin’s friend.  It’s possible none of that is true.

Still, we know from our own neighborhoods that we’re not free-free.  You might be free in law, but Karen would like you to know they saw you smiling at the guy from the garage at the fourth of July barbecue. And don’t tell her he’s your cousin. She’d have heard.  And your kids will be laughed at in the neighborhood school, and damn it, you’d better behave. Because, well, at some point you might need the neighbors’ help.

There are no internal passports.  But few people travel. “Foreigners” has come to mean “people from another state.”  Part of it honestly was the loss of airline fleets during the whole mess. And we never really had the money to recoup.  Sure, you can travel by car. But those stories you hear, from over in the next state make you a little hesitant.  Those who do are considered wild and crazy.  And wild and crazy isn’t good.  They might tolerate you if they know you really well, in your local area. BUT, well…. traveling might not be too bright. Every place has bad elements, and if you run afoul of those, well…

The “new normal” is probably hardest of all on people who stick out. No, not skin color (though of course in some areas that makes you stick out, but if they know you, you’re fine. OTOH be pale in a predominantly dark neighborhood, and just arrived and you’ll at least be shunned till they get to know you.  Though probably not a lot worse than any stranger is shunned. And the reverse is true, also, color wise, of course.) and sexual orientation — well, we hear stories of some parts of the US, but we don’t know if they’re true — but just strangeness.  Are you one of those people who reads weird stuff? Or likes to wear clothes not befitting your age? Or just styles her hair weird? Do you let your garden get full of weeds because you were busy building a dragon sculpture? Well…. You won’t get attacked. Not most places. BUT let’s say if something happens the neighborhood will assume you did it. And if we get in straits again…. well.  So outwardly we’re a very conformist society. Probably not as bad as Japan pre 2020.  PROBABLY. Well, not most places.

Oh, the economy?  It’s doing fine. Rebuilding. See, you don’t need to live where you work, if you have a job that’s not serving the locals.  Most of those are intensely local, and most kids are trained for trades.  But if your trade is computer-based or can be done remotely, you can work anywhere, and often do.

The internet is up, and some people call it “relief valve for eccentrics.” (Or Odds as odd people call it.)  The most common reason to move across states and endure the time of suspicion and disenfranchisement is this guy/gal you met online.

World trade is a more difficult matter. And produce and such tend to be more regional, as does manufacturing of essential stuff like medicine, or clothing.  Our diet is more seasonal and not as varied, but we’ve learned. Almost everyone has stores “in case.”

The big cities recovered too. Some people will always want to live where the excitement is.  Honestly, if you’re an odd, it’s the best place to be, and lots of artists flock there, which creates its own gravity and people are less likely to ask you why those two young ladies stayed at your place last night.  Less likely but not unlikely, mind you.  Cities have neighborhoods. Neighborhoods have their own Karens.  Everyone hates the Karen, but no one does much about it.

To someone from the 20th century, our cities would look cleaner and safer (most places. If you don’t stick out.)  Homeless?  Well, you might see some vagrants, but the drug trade hasn’t really recovered (pot, sure, some places, but honestly vegetables pay off better and there’s only so much land and time to tend crops. No one much cares if you have a few plants in your garden, as long as the neighbors aren’t allergic, and you’re not visibly stone in public. Like being drunk in public, Karen will enforce her displeasure on those.) And most people in genuine need get looked after by charitable organizations. A lot of them are those who were late middle age and managed to live through the boog. (A minority.)

Your doctor, by the way, might live across the country. But the local nurse will take your vitals and confer with him or her over the net.  Most people are okay with their care. Most care is pays-in-cash. Charitable organizations help with the rest. In a few states the state will help if no one else will.  People are starting to live really long again, so we must be doing something right. Some states allow for more experimental drugs than others. There are complaints both ways.

All in all?  Well….  Libertarians complain. Marxists…. Not many of those around, or at least not vocal. For one, we’re seeing how his “planned economies” are playing out in most of the world.

Land of the Free?  Well, sure. I mean, as compared to what? It’s not like we’re locking you in for months and preventing from working at your trade. That idiocy told its own tale.  Your rights are respected in most states (the ones that don’t, well, the feds take years and years to decide to intervene, so some people pack up and leave.  It’s not as common as you’d think). Unless they’re violated by your neighbors, but you take it up with them.

We lost untold people and wealth in the boog. Our world is smaller, more restricted, both in self-expression and in expectations. It would seem miserable to people from the 20th century. But we’re doing all right. We’re rebuilding. And tech allows us to be a little richer, and have a source of escape.

Of course there ain’t much for space exploration, though there are rumors the army is doing stuff up there, at least to prevent us from being suckerpunched.  But we’re not sure, because, well, news is local and sometimes it’s just rumors. And military secrets are kept, which is justifiable in a nation at war on many fronts.

Sure, we don’t like it, but then again no one asked us.  (And honestly, most of us died in 20-21 — SAH)

But you know what? People aren’t hungry. And most people have all the freedom they need in their day to day life.  People who’ve been in the army or the few that have traveled abroad, will tell you it could be worse. A lot worse.

(And probably will be – SAH)

UPDATE AND IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR COLORADO PEEPS: GRIDLOCK PROTEST AT THE CAPITOL TODAY AT ONE. MAKE JARED POLIS CRY AGAIN!

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM NITAY ARBEL:  Operation Flash, Episode 3: Spring Awakening.

The third installment of the alternate history series where Hitler and Himmler were assassinated in March 1943.
A desperate military situation forces Carl Goerdeler’s Emergency Reich Government (ERG) to make a bargain with the devil.
Across the Channel, Winston Churchill plays for time as he pursues a separate peace with Goerdeler.
Two old acquaintances make the first steps on a long march toward national atonement.
And meanwhile, the ERG’s deadliest enemy lurks within its gates.

FROM NATHAN BISSONETTE:  Kobold and Centaur.

Worst Prom date ever. Steph only went with Sam because nobody else asked her. Besides, it’s just for Prom, right? It’s not forever. But that was before the little man with pointed ears handed them enchanted scrolls that sent them out of this world. Now she’s stuck far from home in a different body. Can Steph and Sam make it home in time to save the Earth without getting killed? Or killing each other? And what about the Prince?

FROM THOMAS SEWELL: Techno Ranger: A Sam Harper Military Thriller.

North and South Korea are on a collision course with the prospect of reigniting war in this action-packed military thriller!

1LT Sam Harper, surfing engineer, tries to fit in on his new job. He’ll risk everything to prevent mass destruction.

Sam’s intelligence analysts identify security vulnerabilities in a government lab in Seoul.

Meanwhile, his CIA ex-girlfriend complicates his life with her spy priorities.

A desperate North Korean general sends a naive Special Forces lieutenant and his team across the DMZ to steal nuclear materials technology.

Sends them disguised to infiltrate the top-secret lab Sam protects.

Sam will need all his combat and technical skills to safeguard those he cares about, but his involvement with a traitor and a CIA temptress may teach him the wrong lessons about who to trust.

FROM MARY CATELLI:  Enchantments And Dragons.

A wizard must produce justice enough to satisfy a dragon.

A young man tries to rob a tiger’s lair.

An enchantress tries to keep a court safe while they ignore the perils of misusing her magic.

A lady finds that court intrigues can spread even to the countryside.

And more tales.

Includes “Over the Sea To Me,” “Dragonfire and Time”, “The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn”, “The White Menagerie”, “The Dragon’s Cottage,” “Jewel of the Tiger,” and “The Sword Breaks.”

FROM PAM UPHOFF: War Party.

Ice is a powerful magician and trained warrior. His day job, however, is political analyst, and it is once again election year.

Hopefully with fewer explosions and snipers than the last one, but in the Empire of the One, what sounds like a boring desk job is anything but.

Especially when al old flame gets pissed enough to jump into the presidential race.

Between assassins on the loose, duels to the death, and a sense of something nasty coming his way, Ice is going to be busy.

ALMA T. C. BOYKIN:  Gloriously Familiar: Familiar Tales Book Eleven.

Dragons, fires, a haunted piano, and a haunted young man.

Six stories of mystery, history, memories, and adventure. From a quiet mage with silver knitting needles to an accidental dragon and an ancient story teller, to a Mare of Unusual Size and a Familiar of Unusual Activity, there’s something for everyone in this collection. Meet new friends, catch up with old ones, and wonder with Lilia if André ever will learn.

 

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: EXTEND.*

 

*The management wishes to emphasize it is not responsible for the Vignette TeamTM handing you guys these straight lines.  Also it wants to declare in advance that “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I can’t do anything with these three.”

Addendum: I would also like to thank you for prayers.  I’m feeling better. (I think I’ll go for a walk.)  Though still somewhere between baffled at this mass psychotic episode and enraged at the destruction wrought, I now have hope sanity is reasserting itself, at least that brand of very American sanity that consists of saying “No, you can’t tell me what to do.”  I also have found a renewed hope that just as a small dose of a pathogen can vaccinate the potential host against the real disease this bit of craziness will inoculate America against the idea of a government that can violate your rights and destroy your life at will.  No, it’s not guaranteed. Nothing ever is. I also suspect it’s one of those vaccines that needs regular boosts.  But in the sense that the burned hand teaches best, this insanity of “rule by experts” and the (I am sure) pain we’ll all experience for a couple of years might teach us to avoid the worst. Keep praying. – SAH