I have my doubts related to the pandemic. Please explain the following:

1. The virus originated from China. How China has remained free from the virus for the past many months, despite having such a huge population and a vaccination rate of less than 15% of the population? UK has vaccinated more than 50% of the population, and still dozens of deaths are reported from there every day.

2. Why the spikes from CoVID 19 occurs at a time when anti-China politicians face elections? Trump lost the election probably due to CoVID 19 in November 2020. Biden is regarded as much more pro-China when compared to Trump. Similarly there was a big spike in India, a few weeks before crucial state elections were due. The ruling party is very anti-China, while the opposition is pro-China and had signed a MoU with the CCP back in 2008.

3. How come China is the only country that has the capacity to export vaccines, when all the other countries are struggling to secure enough doses?

That money could be better spent elsewhere. I saw the recent movie Silk Road. It was an independent production, and therefore failed to garner much hype. I felt bad, because the movie was 99% accurate about Ross Ulbricht and the dark markets. But the problem is that it is extremely hard for the independent productions to attract large viewership. Hollywood is being dominated by a handful of powerful producers. And this is why I am of the opinion that crowdfunding the movie may be a bad idea.

At this point, they could have avoided the festival (Kumbh Mela), since it has been blamed for a least some of the spike. But the government needs to investigate the origin of the double mutant strain of the Coronavirus (B.1.617). I am feeling something fishy about this strain. Why it is limited to India and not found in any of the neighboring nations? Anyway, indications are that this wave might be levelling off. For the last 2-3 days, there is a slight decline in the number of new cases.

There are large number of countries which imported Chinese vaccines to vaccinate their population - Chile, Turkey, Morocco, Serbia, Hungary, Brazil, Cambodia.etc. And one thing is common with all these countries. All of them are witnessing a surge in daily CoVID infections and deaths. Countries like Chile have administered the first dose to almost 50% of their population, and still it doesn't seems to be having an impact on containing the pandemic.

What do you want the ordinary citizens to do? Rebel against the government? These things are very easy to say, but extremely difficult to implement in reality. Stalin ruled the USSR for three decades, exterminating 60 million people during that period. Why didn't anyone had the courage to stage a coup and overthrow him? The answer to that question will be applicable to Venezuela as well. In dictatorships, there is hardly anything that the ordinary civilians can do. Blaming them for the dictatorship is illogical.

Stock markets may be booming due to monetary inflows from foreign agencies. There were reports that some of the Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) from the middle-east heavily invested in the American stocks during last year, when there was a market crash. But this inflow can get converted to a net outflow, in case the crazy proposal to tax capital gains tax at 40% is implemented. But for now, the middle class is happy with the market rally. They are benefitting from the higher stock prices.

If you check the posts, I was the first one to point out that Abid Ali was batting on 215. To say that someone batting on 215 missed a triple century is like saying that someone on 15 lost his chance for scoring a century. If we go by this logic, then the captains won't be able to declare the innings. I am not sure about 260, but if Abid had scored 280 or 290, then the captain (Babar Azam) would have definitely allowed him to complete the triple ton. I don't know what these people are smoking, when they expect Abid Ali to score another 85 runs when two tail end batsmen are batting with him.

Virat Kohli is a very good player, but not a good captain. I would rather agree with Cricinfo's choice of Kieron Pollard. His win percentage in matches which he captained Mumbai Indians is quite high. MS Dhoni hasn't performed very well as a player in IPL 2021, but I would still rate him as one of the best captains. Steve Smith may be another option, but right now I can't consider too many other players for that role. As far as I am concerned, it has to be either Pollard or Dhoni.

If Abid Ali wanted to score a triple ton, then he should have scored runs quickly. Team always come before the individual records. Anyway, what is the point in scoring a test triple against Zimbabwe? Their bowling is actually worse than many of the associate teams. And how can you say that someone who is batting at 215 is close to a triple century? This is ridiculous. Will you say that Sajid Khan narrowly missed a century by 80 runs, since he got out for 20? If Abid had scored 280 or 290, then I would have agreed with you. But this just doesn't make any sense.

Tens of thousands of athletes and other personal will be traveling to Japan. Since Pfizer vaccine has an efficacy of 95%, we can expect upto a thousands athletes to test positive for the virus in case the pandemic spreads inside the bio-bubble. But since Japanese organizers are quite efficient in maintaining the bubble, I don't think that there is much of a chance of that happening. The event has to go ahead. We can't shut down the entire planet for years, just because of some virus.

This has become a trend now. A number of whales are entering the cryptocurrency sector and are trying to pop up shitcoins such as Doge and Ripple. They know that they have missed the boat with Bitcoin. So they are manipulating the smaller coins. And the impact is very visible in the cryptocurrency market. Dogecoin has gone up by almost 25,000% during the last 12 months. But once the manipulation is over, it will come back to its previous level (i.e $0.002 per coin). It looks as if all the coins, other than BTC are being manipulated now.

Don't know whether the OP is just lying or not. But in my case, I first registered to this forum in 2012 and back then I had purchased BTC at around $10 per coin. Back then I never thought that BTC would climb to five digit prices and so I was not very serious about it. In 2013, I lost around 2/3rd of my coins to a scam. And in 2015, I sold a majority of what remained at around $250 per coin. Now I have around 10% of my original coins remaining in my wallet. But I don't have much regrets. I am luckier than 99% of the guys here, who entered the cryptocurrency sector mostly in 2017 or later.

The government can't do anything if the people refuse to obey the rules. I am a regular visitor to India for the last two decades and nowhere in the world you can find people who have such scant respect for the laws and regulations. Most of the Indians believe that it is cool to break the laws and show their arrogance in front of others. If people had obeyed the social distancing protocols, then this third wave could have been avoided. And it is always easy to blame the government for the current situation.

Here are the latest stats from 9th May 2021.

Total market cap: $2,427,591,552,369 (+10.10%)

Bitcoin: $1,078,790,197,908 (44.439%)
Bitcoin forks: $35,180,575,798 (1.449%)
Stablecoins: $87,140,720,676 (3.590%)
Altcoins: $1,216,563,567,704 (50.114%)
WBTC: $9,916,490,283 (0.408%)

This is the change compared to my last post:

Bitcoin: -3.551%
Bitcoin forks: +0.247%
Stablecoins: -0.083%
Altcoins: +3.398%
WBTC: -0.010%

In India, the infection seems to have plateaued. Now it is spreading to the neighboring countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh. I am really concerned about these two, as they don't even have proper medical infrastructure. Myanmar is another neighbor which is in very poor state as far as the medical infrastructure is concerned. The only solution is to vaccinate as many as possible, but there are not enough vaccines available for 1.4 billion people. If the population was lower, then this fiasco could have been avoided. Perhaps now the Indian politicians can think about implementing strict family planning policies.

The last part is also not very practical. The miners are not answerable to the American authorities, especially since >95% of the coins are mined outside the US. Anyone can purchase the fresh coins from miners in China or Iran, or even Venezuela, and use them to fund the mixers. How the Americans are going to prevent this? And how many of the mining pools have KYC activated? Even if KYC is mandatory, will the mining pools in China be willing to give that information to the IRS?

Right now the vaccines seems to be working against most of the strains. And manufacturers such as Pfizer have invented additional booster doses, to take care of the new strains. But overall, it is the vaccine availability that is causing headaches. Outside the developed world, none of the countries seems to have fully vaccinated (2 doses) more than 5% of their population. And now very small number of deaths are being reported from the developed nations. The vast majority are now being reported from developing countries such as India and Brazil.

So $33,690 for an EV, with a range of 424 km? Looks like a very attractive option. And now the crude oil prices are going up once again, and that reduces the attractiveness of the gasoline run vehicles. But there is a catch. This $33,690 is including "potential savings". The purchase price is $39,490. A lot of potential buyers will look into the purchase price, rather than the price after all the savings. So that comes to around $40K, which is still somewhat affordable for the middle class families in the United States.

My single most important issue with the Biden tax plan is that for the successful people ("wealthy" or "super-rich" as per the Democrat almanac), now the long term capital gains tax will be equal to the income tax. In states such as California and New York, this group will be forced to pay taxes above 55% on top of their gains from capital assets. Now this is more like wealth confiscation rather than taxation. Because if the government wants to tax capital gains on par with income, then they need to reimburse capital losses as well (in cash, not in credits). Else it is going to wreck the economy in the long term.

Why cutting their share is out of the equation? Also, they are no longer placed in the first division of test cricket and not a part of the World Test Championship (WTC). So why should they receive around $12 million every year in the form of ICC funding? As far as I know, only a very small portion of this amount reaches the players. The remainder is siphoned away by the corrupt administration. It is very unfair on the part of the ICC to provide funds to Zimabwe, at a level which is 20x or 40x when compared to promising countries such as Nepal and Papua New Guinea. Even Ireland and Afghanistan receive only around $5 million per year as ICC funding.