People are getting impatient. Especially the children and the youth don't want to remain confined to their houses all day. Unfortunately, now the number of new infections and deaths are rising, due to the spread of the delta variant. At this time, if the restrictions are relaxed, then it will result in huge tragedy. Restrictions can be removed once the population achieves herd immunity from 80% vaccination rate. Until that is achieved, everyone needs to strictly cut down on their travel and outdoor activity. 

I've been saying this from the very beginning. No vaccine can be 100% effective against viruses (they can be 100% effective against bacteria). And these vaccines were created after studying the genetic structure of the original strain (Pfizer and Moderna are having an efficacy of 95% against the original strain). Therefore their efficacy against mutated strains will be low (as per reports, Moderna is 76% effective against delta variant, while for Pfizer it is 42%). Sputnik V claims to have an efficacy of 84% against delta and 92% against the original strain, but independent third parties haven't confirmed this.

I don't have much hope for the England batsmen. Apart from Joe Root, none of them are able to handle the Indian bowlers. However, their bowlers are in good form and I am sure that they have learnt their lesson during the second test. Things are not going to get easy for the Indian batsmen, especially given the fact that players like Pujara and Rahane have been in very poor form for a long time now. And I still believe that without the 90 run partnership between Shami and Bumrah, India would have lost the second match.

When Ishant got out, India were at 209/8 (lead of 182 runs). If the target was less than 200, then England would have chased it with relative ease.

One of the most popular franchise T20 leagues around the world, the Caribbean Premier League 2021 edition will be starting next week. As usual, there are a number of big names, both from West Indies and from abroad participating in the tournament. In the Indian subcontinent, the matches will be shown live on Star Sports, with Hostar providing live streaming. Kieron Pollard, Andre Russell, Nicholas Pooran, Sunil Narine, Shimron Hetmyer, Dwayne Bravo, Andre Fletcher are some of the big names from West Indies. Among the overseas players, we have Faf du Plessis, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Hafeez, Mohammad Amir and Colin Munro.

The data that you have posted is misleading. It says "70% of the adults". Herd immunity can't be achieved by fully vaccinating 70% of the adults (also the data released by CDC is not for full vaccination, but includes partial vaccination as well). For herd immunity, 70% of the total population needs to be fully vaccinated. This should not be too difficult to achieve, since the US has already started vaccination among the 12-17 age group. And regarding the third dose (booster shot), that is required as the antibodies from the vaccine lasts for only 6 to 12 months. So after this period, you need to get a booster shot.

The issue with the current bunch of vaccines is that even two doses won't give you lasting immunity. You need to take a third (booster) dose after 6-12 months, and this need to be repeated until the pandemic is contained. For the pharmaceutical companies, this pandemic is proving to be a goldmine. Pfizer, for example has posted their highest ever quarterly profit. Moderna failed to scale up production during the initial stages, so they couldn't benefit fully. But real time data shows that their vaccine is more effective against the delta strain, when compared to the one from Pfizer.

It was only natural. Cryptocurrency sector represents a combined valuation of close to $2 trillion, which is around 0.5% of the total global wealth. Do you really think that Google can afford to ignore this sector, especially at a time when their revenues are saturating? I heard from my friends in India that they could notice ads of various Bitcoin exchanges in TV channels. A couple of years ago, this was sort of unthinkable, as the government was planning to impose a blanket ban on cryptocurrency. The message is clear - cryptocurrency is no longer on the fringes and it is mainstream.

Latest stats from 18th August 2021.

Total market cap: $1,907,105,427,485 (-1.05%)

Bitcoin: $842,720,077,347 (44.188%)
Bitcoin forks: $16,451,836,574 (0.863%
Stablecoins: $114,386,660,500 (5.998%)
Altcoins: $921,304,347,688 (48.309%)
Tethered BTC: $12,242,505,376 (0.642%)

This is the change compared to my last post:

Bitcoin: -0.920%
Bitcoin forks: +0.030%
Stablecoins: +0.121%
Altcoins: +0.783%
Tethered BTC: -0.014%

You can't say that there was no impact from the ban on mining in China. Because the hashrate went down by more than half, after the ban was announced. Prices went down by quite a lot, and for a brief period the Bitcoin prices hovered below $30K level. However, it is another fact that the exchange rates recovered very quickly. The miners were able to resume their operations with relative ease after they transported the equipment to Kazakhstan and other neighboring nations. Doesn't matter for the Chinese regime. They are still having wet dreams about e-CNY replacing BTC in the market.

Wrong.

The United States is a long way away from herd immunity, as only 50.50% of the population has been vaccinated till now. 70% to 80% coverage is needed for herd immunity and none of the states in the US has achieved it. You can check the numbers here:

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

And almost 99.5% of the new COVID deaths in the United States are among people who are not fully vaccinated (i.e. 49.5% of the total population). The fully vaccinated people, who comprise 50%+ of the population accounts for just 0.5% of the deaths. So the probability is 200 times lower for those who are fully vaccinated. My source is here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/07/01/995-of-people-killed-by-covid-in-last-6-months-were-unvaccinated-data-suggests/?sh=5a4d49a2493d

The series is not yet over and three test matches remain. If Indians get overconfident, then they will end up losing the series. The weather seems to be improved in England and it won't be impossible for the hosts to win the series by a margin of 2-1 or 3-1. And trust me, this has happened to the Indians manytimes before. And apart from Rahul and Rohit, none of the Indian batsmen are in good form. The victory in the second match temporarily took the focus away from the poor form of Pujara, Rahane, Kohli and Pant.

The normal route can take anywhere between 3 and 10 years. But in case of vaccines such as AstraZeneca and Sputnik V, they were given EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) in less than 6 months, and the phase III trial data was published later. And with the mutant strains, I guess booster shots will be authorized even quickly. At this point, no one can afford to wait 3+ years to authorize a vaccine, as the confirmed death toll is moving towards the 5 million mark. That means we may need to take a certain amount of risk, regarding the side effects.

The ICC has released the schedule for T20 World Cup, after a lot of delay. The preliminary phase will start on 17th October, when hosts Oman will face Papua New Guinea at the Oman Cricket Academy Ground. For India, the first match is against Pakistan on 24th October. They will face New Zealand on 31st October and Afghanistan on 3rd November. The participation of Afghanistan is in doubt BTW, due to the civil unrest in that country. I guess if they are unable to participate, then the UAE may replace them.

The partnership between Shami and Bumrah changed the course of the match. I don't know what happened to the England bowlers. Mark Wood was in terrific form, and the way he chokeslammed Cheteshwar Pujara was exceptional. But the same Mark Wood failed miserably against two genuine tailend batsmen. Even the ever reliable James Anderson proved ineffective against the two. And the England captain made the big mistake of giving maximum number of overs to his least effective bowler (Moeen Ali).

Any asset is extremely profitable, if you invest during the early stages. If you had invested $1,000 in the Amazon IPO, then you would be richer by $1.2 million today. On the other hand, if you had invested the same amount in the Microsoft IPO of 1986, then you would be having shares worth $3.7 million right now. The same is applicable for Bitcoin as well. The exchange rate stood at $0.0008 per coin in 2010. Eleven years later, the exchange rate stands at $46,000. That is an increase of more than 50 million times.

Why blame the banks? They are just following the orders from the government. In recent times, the government attitudes have changed. Many of the governments are trying to win electoral support by distributing freebies. And this requires huge amounts of cash. The tax rates are already high, and they can't be increased further. So the only option left is to print more and more banknotes. For the common people it means that their purchasing power goes down in the near future. But their only focus is on the temporary gains.

You can't compare Bitcoin to other assets such as gold coins, stocks and bonds. The number of people who invest in these assets are manitimes higher than that with Bitcoin. The acceptance and adoption of Bitcoin is going up with every passing year, but it will take many decades for BTC to catch up with the mainstream investment assets. But then, stocks and bonds have existed for many centuries. Gold is being used for many thousands of years. But Bitcoin was first mined in 2009 and it is just 12 years old.

LOL.. it looks like the dark market admins are always one step ahead of the FBI guys. Silk Road went down in 2014, and the FBI seized a considerable amount of the coins escrowed there. But now they are saying that they don't control 75% of those coins. And now Ross Ulbricht also doesn't have a reason to help them, since he was handed down a very unfair prison sentence. The FBI may arrest one or two dark web masterminds every now and then. But as long as the demand exists, new ones will appear in the horizon.

The current system, which uses fiat currency is not a very sustainable one. The governments are taking loans like there is no tomorrow and the det-to-GDP ratio is already higher than 100% for most of the countries. At some point, it is going to implode. We already saw this happening in certain countries such as Greece and Cyprus. A higher debt ratio means that the national currencies will rapidly lose their purchasing power and those who have savings denominated in the fiat ends up on the losing side. Bitcoin can emerge as a hedge in such situations.

The bowlers didn't got any additional support from the pitch. I couldn't notice any substantial bounce or seam movement from any of the bowlers. The England batsmen were out of form and that was the reason for their batting collapse. Even in the first innings, if you take Joe Root's innings away, almost none of the other players contributed with the bat. And in the second innings it got worse, since Root also fell before he could get to the half-century mark. The Indian pacers bowled with a lot of discipline, and the credit should go to them.