I was planning on filling all my petrol cans today to take advantage of the low petrol prices, glad I didn't have time. It's gonna be interesting to se what the petrol prices will be the coming days.
Nothing. Petrol prices are based on Jun future that's now trading at 22 USD. Plus taxes and other non-oli related costs reduce price volatility. So don't expect many nice surprises here. I don't really understand any of this. Who, if anyone, can buy oil at those extremely low and even negative prices? What does it mean? There are several reasons for this. First of all, the move is due to the future of May, which will stop trading tomorrow. From Thursday the oil will trade at the June expiration and the price will return to being more "normal" level around 22 dollars. As mentioned all oil related products (gas, heating oil etc) are already priced on Jun expiry. But why May contract has dropped so much? 1. The WTI has a single delivery point in Cushing (OK). All the deposits in Cushing are full, so nobody wants to "buy" oil in that location, because the cost of storage is very high.So nobody want to buy May expiry. 2. There are many "financial speculators", that is, subjects who do not want/can in any case get physical oil delivered in Cushing. This causes the fact that these subjects must necessarily close the position before the expiry of the future and therefore are forced to "sell" the future forcibly. so something like a Long Squeeze3. The June expiration future has an greater open interest and much larger volumes, so this one is more difficult to move with "few volumes" and in fact has fallen much less. That makes a lot of sense, thanks. So, if I were to buy one of those contracts I would be forced to pay for the storage (which probably exceeds the value of the oil at this time) because that is on the contract. I mean, otherwise I could just buy a bunch of those contracts, pocket the negative difference and just default on the delivery. |
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Sooo, anyone knows on whitch platform can I buy WTI oil?
You cant, it's a futures contract. If you buy now, you physically need to go and get the oil. That's why the crash happened and people were closing positions. The next futures that expires trades at around 20$ currently, but this freefall will probably affect that one too. Whoever is currently holding an oil futures contract is playing a dangerous game. It may be dangerous, but it would be fun to buy at least a few futures at negative price so one day I could tell my grandchildren that I was there, I was part of the game. I wonder how much you can buy of that oil at negative rates with say $10 (yeah, a solid positive ten fucking bucks!). |
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I was planning on filling all my petrol cans today to take advantage of the low petrol prices, glad I didn't have time. It's gonna be interesting to se what the petrol prices will be the coming days.
Nothing. Petrol prices are based on Jun future that's now trading at 22 USD. Plus taxes and other non-oli related costs reduce price volatility. So don't expect many nice surprises here. I don't really understand any of this. Who, if anyone, can buy oil at those extremely low and even negative prices? What does it mean? |
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1958 Algerian war.. and donkey was dying from the starvation so soldier rescuing him. Very interesting story indeed: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/soldier-carrying-donkey/Nineteen fifty-eight proved a very successful year for the Legion in another respect — it was awarded a Certificate of Merit for Distinguished Service by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and a similar recognition from the RSPCA in London, after a legionnaire of the 13e DBLE [13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion] rescued a starving donkey and returned it to his base where, renamed Bambi, it served the unit as a mascot. Interest was pricked among the “Anglo-Saxons” after London’s Daily Mail carried a photo of the donkey being carried on the back of a legionnaire. Attempts to award the Certificate of Merit to the generous legionnaire foundered upon [his maintaining anonymity]. However, the Chief Secretary of the RSPCA was informed by the Legion that numerous mascots, “running from the bear to the lizard, passing through monkeys, sand foxes, storks and other birds, hedgehogs, without forgetting of course the multitude of dogs and cats [that] follow each unit in its movements. In certain [units], the number of animals is greater than the strength in manpower.” Especially gratifying was the knowledge that Bambi “at the present time is enjoying an enviable destiny and that he is sharing the life of our legionnaires and even … their beer.” Would be great to see a picture of those animals following the units. |
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^ I don't sympathise you.
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Yeah, nothing worse than a reformed nazi.
I find it amusing that most reformed alcoholics think everyone else is an alcoholic that needs saying. Pepole don't understand that not everyone has their same weaknesses.
I fucking hate those people that cross the street when they see you have a cigarette, as if being within 10 ft of one will give you cancer. those are the fucks that make laws to ostracize others.
I have a friend who gave up her heroin and cocaine addictions years ago. In the process she also stopped drinking and smoking cannabis. Now she tut-tuts anyone who gets high or relaxes with a drink while preaching the gospel of "clean and sober". Only problem is that she smokes 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day and does enough benzodiazepines every day to put most people into a coma. Go figure. Ask any junkie what’s harder to give up. Heroin or cigarettes ? ( and benzo’s ftm) Odds on most will say butts. Go to any NA or AA meeting. Everyone of them are chain smokers and probably most have a benzo/ Xanax addiction be it doctor prescribed or not. It’s a joke really.... So they think they must give up alcohol but don't have a problem chain smoking? Kinda ironic yeah. |
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Una de dos, o el aislamiento ha funcionado... o no funciona (yo creo que sí ha funcionado a la vista de la estadísticas). En ambos casos hay que empezar a desescalar. Ya han ganado tiempo más que suficiente para ampliar la capacidad del sistema hospitalario si no lo han hecho, poco más van a hacer.
Hay que tener en cuenta que siguen sin hacerse tests sistemáticos por lo que los positivos que siguen llegando (en menor proporción) corresponde a hace unas dos semanas en su gran mayoría que es el tiempo que pasa entre que los casos más graves se infectan, sienten los primeros síntomas, empeoran, acuden al hospital, se testean y se notifica el positivo.
A estas alturas ya no hay ninguna posibilidad razonable de eliminar la propagación por completo, sino que tan sólo se trata de mantener el número de casos graves por debajo de la curva de atención hospitalaria, cosa que se está consiguiendo.
En cuanto a los datos de Wuhan ya creo que tenemos evidencias suficientes para saber que son y han sido completamente falsos.
No es que sea "seguro" ir levantando el confinamiento... sino que ya no va a aportar mucho más beneficio.
A partir de ahora estará en cada persona decidir si quiere exponerse al contagio o no. Esto va a durar muchos meses... tal vez años en cierto modo. No podemos mantener la actividad económica parada mucho más tiempo o llegará un momento en que ni siquiera haya dinero para mantener los hospitales abiertos.
Quizás es un poco duro lo que estoy diciendo... pero yo no veo otra alternativa mejor.
En cuanto a la OMS se podrían meter la lengua en el culo después de que ni siquiera declarasen pandemia cuando ya hacía mucho que tiempo que era obvio que esto era una pandemia de libro como nunca antes la ha habido desde que existe la OMS.
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So, been thinking pretty hard...
When exactly did we go from dystopian fiction being cautionary to being a fait accompli?
Clearly, Orwell intended his work as a cautionary tale. Emerging from the trauma of World War II, visions of totalitarian futures in fiction and film seemed to offer the viewer the chance to redeem the past by deciding how not to make the future. But somewhere, we lost our way.
Logan's Run seemed to me, as a child, as cautionary, but was it really just preparing me? Soylent Green?
Blake's 7?
The manifesting of dystopian visions in our present reality represent a failure of imagination on the part of the masses, who have abdicated responsibility for what the future looks like to writers and directors and,
ultimately, to the Hollywood box office.
By Blade Runner, it is obvious that the individual, as reified by Hauer's or Ford's character, is exhausted in its struggle against the faceless state. The die is cast.
Now, the trope of "the future" includes militarized cops and ubiquitous surveillance by default. Endless war and increased alienation from nature.
This is a spell we have cast on ourselves, or at the very least have allowed. We must claim sovereignty over our visions and exert our own imaginative effort if we would have the future be another way.
Choice exists.
We can yet take 1984 as a warning, not as an eventuality.
The rest of this noise is bullshit.
You are right. That previously dystopian future is almost here in many ways... but what is the alternative? What is the choice? In practical terms and applied to the current situation we are already living, I mean. At this time I would NOT be extremely surprised if we are forced to use that activity control app they are talking about to access any public commerce/place or even to be allowed to walk on public streets. And we would even be thankful that at least we can go out again. Mindblowing. |
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Come to find out...that $1200 stimulus check is just a loan. To be paid back in your 2020 taxes.
Link? Do you mean it needs to be repaid in FULL next year even if that were your ONLY income? 0% interest at least? |
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<...> Es sorprendente que, con el tiempo que ha pasado, mirando los datos en frio, la tasa de mortalidad daría 21,42% (fallecidos/(fallecidos + recuperados)). Descarto incluir los confirmados en el cálculo, pues aún no sabemos su devenir (fallecido o recuperado). Claro que, como indicaba el otro día, esta cifra estaría sesgada, en tanto en cuanto a que hay muchos casos recuperados en casa no contabilizados (también fallecidos). La cifra es técnicamente la que sale, pero la lógica y las noticias de casos no contabilizados hacen que, en el fondo, la cifra no refleje más que la inoperancia para obtener aún una cifra real. Esa fórmula sólo puede emplearse a posteriori, no mientras una epidemia está en fase de crecimiento exponencial (aunque ya se esté estabilizando). Aparte de que el mayor sesgo está en el input principal, esto es, los contagiados. Prácticamente sólo se le han hecho pruebas a personas que han demostrado síntomas importantes, osea aquellos en los que van a estar incluidos la mayoría de los que van a morir. A la gran mayoría de infectados asíntomáticos o leves no se les ha hecho prueba, por lo que ni están, ni se les espera entre los "recuperados". No hay ninguna duda de que la cifra real de infectados es, al menos, un orden de magnitud superior. Si tenemos en cuenta que entre esos la mayoría se han recuperado, ya se va aproximando la cifra de mortalidad a la realidad. En realidad todo esto da igual, porque lo realmente importante para nosotros a dia de hoy es la cifra de ocupación de las UCI. Mientras no estén completamente llenas, morirán sólo los que tengan que morir. Si se supera, entonces empiezan a morir más personas que podrían haberse salvado de tener la atención adecuada. De todas formas si se quiere tener una idea bastante aproximada de la tasa de mortalidad, podemos fijarnos en el mejor experimento aislado que tenemos: El Diamond Princess. Esto nos da una tasa aproximada del 1.5-2%... pero hay que tener en cuenta que la edad de los clientes de un crucero suele ser más elevada que la media de la población. La tasa real sobre el total de la población puede ser inferior al 1%. Según edades ya cambia, desde el 0% de 0-9 años, casi 0% hasta 20..... hasta llegar al 20% para el segmento de 80 o 90 años (cifras aproximadas). |
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Call me when we surpass 2009's H1N1 deaths at 575,000 under Obama when the media was more focused on his Nobel Peace Prize than "they're dying!".
Where did they bury the bodies then?
Just to put things in perspective, H1N1 killed an estimated 12K persons in the US over a period of one year (2009-2010). Around the same people (20K) have already died in US from covid during the past few weeks. Also there are places like NY where the incidence is huge. So yes, it is reasonable that one order of magnitude more bodies to cremate/bury in a short timeframe does suppose a little problem. Not the biggest one though. |
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Some feedback on that article:
Jennifer L Kasten, MD, MSc, MSc
COVID-19 4/8: 1) Debunking the "COVID had us all fooled" hemoglobin theory; 2) British NHS cancels 3.5 million inferior-quality Chinese antibody tests.
Firstly, many have read an alternative physiologic mechanism of the coronavirus which has been circulating. The theory was originally published on Medium by a non-MD, non-physiologist; a self-titled "professional disrupter" called Andrew Gaiziunas (AKA "libertymavenstock"), who predominantly is on the internet as a cryptocurrency enthusiast but who happened to read a single non-peer reviewed journal article about SARS-CoV-2 inhibiting human heme synthesis, an education which he felt was sufficient to permit him to comment.
Let's start with the original paper. It involved computer analysis of the predicted structure of the virus' proteins, in three dimensions. (Computer simulation is a common technique in the field of proteomics). The authors noticed, wow, it looks like the structure of a couple of the surface proteins could "dock" with the heme synthesis mechanism human red blood cells employ. "Could" being the operative word- this has never been observed, as the virus is not found in human blood except rarely in ultra-highly-infected people. The authors quite inappropriately titled their paper "COVID-19 Attacks the 1-Beta Chain..." instead of "A couple of proteins in this virus could theoretically bind with the 1-beta chain.. based on our structural simulation."
So, the Gaiziunas piece started from the assumption that this was scientific fact instead of an extremely theoretical, unproven, unlikely assertion. He was then off to the races. His main premise is that basically COVID-19 isn't a primary respiratory disease, it's a blood disease. It causes organ failure of all organs, not just the lungs, at the same time, and that's what kills people. He asserts they don't have ARDS, but instead red blood cells release maverick, rogue radical oxygen species which causes unmitigated tissue damage.
There is no evidence for any of this, and if anyone took it seriously (treating COVID with blood transfusions instead of respiratory support) it would be extremely dangerous. Let's start: we pathologists can visualize the virus, with our eyes and our light & electron microscopes, infecting the Type 2 pneumocytes of the lungs, along with the cells lining the respiratory tree and associated mucinous glands. We know the virus enters these cells via its spike protein and the ACE receptor. And we also know the virus is generally never found in blood. Unlike the lung cells, we cannot see it in human red blood cells, though we've looked (out of interest in this theory a few people have tried hemoglobin electrophoresis and looked carefully at peripheral smears, and came up with nothing).
We can also see ARDS- there is a specific cascade of visible changes, including the filling of the airspaces with fluid which eventually coalesce into sticky coatings called hyaline membranes. I will attach a nice photo from Xiao et al of the lung pathology in COVID patients to this post, which include virus in the cells. The hyaline membranes coat the gas-exchange part of the lungs, making gas exchange difficult and sending the infected patient teetering off into respiratory failure. That being said- apart from him, there is some interest generated in alternative ventilatory strategies for COVID, because the patients do seem to tolerate hypoxemia (lower blood oxygen saturation) better than other respiratory failure patients, so some critical care doctors are letting them "go lower" to avoid intubation than they would usually be comfortable with.
I want to stress that anyone can come up with a good idea. The fact that Andrew Gaiziunas doesn't have a relevant background doesn't mean that his idea, if reasonable or interesting, shouldn't be considered. But it is rather fun to point out the howlers:
- he describes "high-pressure intubation" instead of mechanical ventilation
- he refers to the malaria parasite as "bacteria"
- he states confidently that ground-glass opacities on CT scan "are always bilateral" [no] in COVID and that this fact is somehow supportive of his theory
- he states the kidneys make erythropoietin which causes an acutely detectable rise in hemoglobin, in a matter of hours (takes weeks
- he states the acute liver damage in multi-system organ failure is due to iron scavenging (takes years)
2) I've written before about poor-quality tests with hasty/improper/skipped validation data and poor cross-reactivity. The damage to the public, if bad tests with lots of false positives due to reacting with "common cold" coronaviruses, is considerable. Britain had made widescale population-level antibody testing a cornerstone of its control & re-entry strategy, but returned the 3.5 million bad tests to China. Matt Hancock, Health Secretary and COVID patient, rightly said "no test is better than a bad test."
I do not trust Jennifer. The biggest problem I see with the hemoglobin theory is that it would have been PRETTY EASY to confirm. Even without any proper clinical studies. Just take one patient that is on ventilation and instead hook him to an artificial lung (blood oxygenator). If it still doesn't saturate well then the theory proves correct, if it does it's bullshit. And why do I say that it is a problem? Because it is well known that the Japanese (at least) have hook some patients to artificial lungs and if the theory was correct they would have immediately noticed something very wrong happening in a big WTF moment. So, unless the Japanese and others that have tried are hiding it, I would call that theory bullshit. |
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Spot on Tyler: In 1920, alcohol was constitutionally banned during the Prohibition movement. In 2020, liquor stores are considered essential businesses during a pandemic. A lot can change in 100 years.
Hello from 1920... Alcohol is banned in my country. So I am doing something illegal in your jurisdiction drinking a bottle of wine. So defining something as illegal, or immoral, is just a very local and relative concept. JSRAW, Indymoney, sorry if my barolo drinking somehow offends you. This is not the point of the whole post, of course! Ilegal is somewhat a relative social construction/custom, not only in the geographical sense but also in the timeline. For example, in the past pederasty was not only legal but a completely accepted and encouraged social custom. Think of what all those fucking philosophers of the past were doing in their free time.... Could the same happen with alcohol some centuries in the future? Who the hell knows. |
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Well, I'm going to shut up about it as I am clearly in the minority.
But I am pretty disappointed, people talk a hell of a line about libertarianism and self reliance until the free shit shows up.
Not everybody is a libertarian here even if some of its ideas are good and more reasonable than socialism. Also... As an example, the socialist+comunist joint government we currently have in Spain has (almost) approved a "minimum vital rent" of 500€. Am I against it? Yes. Would I take the money if I could? Fuck yeah. It's not that they are forcing you to renounce your ideas for getting the money... Plus, in the case of US, I would consider it a "compensation" for the depreciation of your FIAT savings (and maybe other assets) derived from the massive money printing. If everybody takes it, and you don't, it's not that they are "richer"... it's just you that are poorer than you were before the "airdrop". |
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You had a way better argument when you talked about possible (yet not probable) long term effects than when you started talking about the reasons the NORAD command would lock themselves. Reasons for that:
1) They are not kids 0-9 years old... I hope. Most probably most of them are way more than 20 years old.
2) They are surely an absolutely critical service and as such they need to keep operating without the less possible disturbances... and an uncontrolled virus spread between them would surely be a big one.
3) The whole world is in a critical state, something that could be used to take advantage by some enemy no matter if, officially, they are at DEFCON 5.
That being said, and once the argument about NORAD has been proven to be irrelevant in this case, I will come back to the kids problem: Most if not all of them will be infected anyways as soon as you reopen physical schools. Or maybe your plan is to never do that until we have a vaccine and have also studied its long term effects? Years?
Also, and while I am NOT a Pharmacist, the main reason ACE-2 binding viruses (mostly coronaviruses AFAIK) do affect lungs and heart is because that's where most of those proteins are present in the human body, and also because it would usually have the effect of an ACE "spike" due to the relative ACE/ACE-2 unbalance caused by the spread of the virus.
Another reason is because many people that do already have a weak cardiovascular/respiratory system are taking ACE inhibitors (anti-hypertension) as part of their treatment which, coincidentally, makes for a higher amount of ACE-2 proteins available to bind to -> Weaker cardiovascular/respiratory system + higher probability of infection + higher speed of reproduction once infected = BOOM!.
So you are somewhat confusing cause and effect here... even though, in practical terms, the effect would be greatly influenced by the cause.
Yeah, you are citing organs where ACE-2 proteins are most present, but once the viral load has been reduced/eliminated and only antibodies are present and no damage has been done to those organs (which basically is what being asymptomatic means) no further damage should be reasonably expected to those organs UNLESS there is a relapse of the infection.
I can't positively say that after being "cured" there is not a possibility for a relapse or for reinfection... but I am making an educated guess here that we should have probably already noticed that... more so when there have not been any single critical case of some child (0-9 without any comorbidity) dying from coronavirus yet.
... oh good, that all sounds so reassuring. You go first, send your school-age kids, grandkids(?), nephews, nieces out to get the Communist Dragon Virus and report back to us how that goes? .... mmmkay thnx. Ok.. What's the alternative? I guess you don't plan to send them to school or letting them go out because they will MOST PROBABLY get infected anyways. What's your plan then? |
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I doubt we are ever going back to physical schools.
Really? Also they will never come out of house? I mean... they are kids... when out it will be very hard to make them adopt proper physical distancing and all that. |
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No he is not. Sending kids back to school is the last thing we should do. Dropped the vid right there. Send workers back so we can afford to treat and hopefully eventually cure this plague. School kids are the biggest infection vector. Parent your children for a while, for once. In fact it is kids who should be sent to Corona "Summer" Camps to get properly infected and get them back with their parents when they test inmune. Win-Win. We could have had all of them already inmune if we had do that as soon as the lockdowns started. ... this is a bad idea until long term effects of the virus are fully known. In fact, there are no known clinical studies that a bout of Covid-19 even gives immunity to Sars--Cov-2, that I'm aware of, at this point immunity or "herd immunity" is just a nice politicly-expeditent hypothesis. If this is a "designer virus" with some special traits bestowed upon weapons-grade constructions, sending kids to summer camp to bathe in the bioweapon virus is akin to genocide, of your own kind. Long term effects could include, HIV-like symptoms compromised immune systems, weakened respiratory and heart systems (pulmonary/cardiac), blood disorders, brain function impediments and infertility are outcomes I have come across in the literature associated with ACE2-carrying cells in human organs. This is dangerous thinking considering it to be like a turbo-charged cold/flu. It is nothing like that at all. NORAD command DO NOT lock themselves underneath Cheyenne mountain for a turbo-charged flu. Use your fucking common sense you idiots, why would you send your kids out to "get it" when the US Army is locking themselves away? You had a way better argument when you talked about possible (yet not probable) long term effects than when you started talking about the reasons the NORAD command would lock themselves. Reasons for that: 1) They are not kids 0-9 years old... I hope. Most probably most of them are way more than 20 years old. 2) They are surely an absolutely critical service and as such they need to keep operating without the less possible disturbances... and an uncontrolled virus spread between them would surely be a big one. 3) The whole world is in a critical state, something that could be used to take advantage by some enemy no matter if, officially, they are at DEFCON 5. That being said, and once the argument about NORAD has been proven to be irrelevant in this case, I will come back to the kids problem: Most if not all of them will be infected anyways as soon as you reopen physical schools. Or maybe your plan is to never do that until we have a vaccine and have also studied its long term effects? Years? Also, and while I am NOT a Pharmacist, the main reason ACE-2 binding viruses (mostly coronaviruses AFAIK) do affect lungs and heart is because that's where most of those proteins are present in the human body, and also because it would usually have the effect of an ACE "spike" due to the relative ACE/ACE-2 unbalance caused by the spread of the virus. Another reason is because many people that do already have a weak cardiovascular/respiratory system are taking ACE inhibitors (anti-hypertension) as part of their treatment which, coincidentally, makes for a higher amount of ACE-2 proteins available to bind to -> Weaker cardiovascular/respiratory system + higher probability of infection + higher speed of reproduction once infected = BOOM!. So you are somewhat confusing cause and effect here... even though, in practical terms, the effect would be greatly influenced by the cause. Yeah, you are citing organs where ACE-2 proteins are most present, but once the viral load has been reduced/eliminated and only antibodies are present and no damage has been done to those organs (which basically is what being asymptomatic means) no further damage should be reasonably expected to those organs UNLESS there is a relapse of the infection. I can't positively say that after being "cured" there is not a possibility for a relapse or for reinfection... but I am making an educated guess here that we should have probably already noticed that... more so when there have not been any single critical case of some child (0-9 without any comorbidity) dying from coronavirus yet. |
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No he is not. Sending kids back to school is the last thing we should do. Dropped the vid right there. Send workers back so we can afford to treat and hopefully eventually cure this plague. School kids are the biggest infection vector. Parent your children for a while, for once. In fact it is kids who should be sent to Corona "Summer" Camps to get properly infected and get them back with their parents when they test inmune. Win-Win. We could have had all of them already inmune if we had do that as soon as the lockdowns started. Wow. You've been thinking about this. That just might work! Of course it would. And the logistics wouldn't be that hard... We already have a lot of vacant installations and plenty of inmune adults that could do entertainment jobs, some teaching, some guarding, etc etc... And it would probably be easier for the kids (lots of fun - way better than stay trapped with their parents) and for their parents. Also, on come back, we could use them to go to the supermarket, the pharmacy, whatever... giving them instructions by cellphone. Heck, we could even rebuild a society supported by child labor like the Chinese! Another WIN-WIN! Ok, maybe not the last part... but we need to get 'em all inmune asap. Then they can donate their blood antibodies to their parents... Fuck, another WIN-WIN! |
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No he is not. Sending kids back to school is the last thing we should do. Dropped the vid right there. Send workers back so we can afford to treat and hopefully eventually cure this plague. School kids are the biggest infection vector. Parent your children for a while, for once. In fact it is kids who should be sent to Corona "Summer" Camps to get properly infected and get them back with their parents when they test inmune. Win-Win. We could have had all of them already inmune if we had do that as soon as the lockdowns started. |
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