"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire

Sunday 5th May 2024

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Concrete Analysis

Listen, some people like economics or even love it. Some people understand economics, and most do not. Some people hate econ. One could make a Venn diagram…
Economics, believe it or not is considered by many intelligentsia-type people to be a science. But we consider it to be a discipline with quite a bit of structure to it, with principles but few actual “laws” as in the law of gravity or the Pythagorean Theorem. Take for example what is called “the law of supply and demand.” While it’s true that the more available stuff there is to buy of a certain type, the lower its price, and the more buyers there are for available stuff, the higher its price, there is a generality you can make about the pricing, and some historical and projected information, but nothing like the price is going to be x divided by y equals z.
For example, if US government creates more money, and the money is not justified by an increase in output, inflation will ensue, and when interest rates are raised, the economy will become less efficient (in that less profitability and wages will be available for a unit of goods and services produced) that will apply a brake on prices because there will be less available cash sloshing around to buy crap. Economists love to make equations and then have multivariate solutions to get very precise numbers like a price level to the penny or the inflation rate to two decimals within a percentage point. And then the equations are based on estimates of values that within US economy cannot be precisely known so you end up with a really specific value for an estimate.
These are economic principles which are generally and almost always true, other things being equal, but by no means can you calculate specific costs, prices, wages, profits, GDP, unemployment, or any of the myriad stats economists love to bandy about and argue over. Usually economists don’t agree, and none of them is ever wrong.
“If you lay all the economists end to end, they would fail to reach a consensus.”
Hence, what we’ll be talking about in Concrete Analysis of Econ is going to be general applicability, rarely if anything theoretical, and likewise rarely strictly quantitative. But it will be analytical and the principles applied, when they apply. Lastly, we’ll attempt to come down to how it applies to you, or your fam, or group, or to US population. We have created a temporary document called a “Bid-invoice” that tells you how much some is or will cost you or your kids. Some information in this section will be global, some regional, and some applicable to US or parts thereof.

The Most Uncommon Thing

A couple things bear close inspection among the probably half million in the US thinking about and working on how to handle this pandemic. Well, there are dozens of things to thing about, hundreds, tens of thousands. But let’s get back to principles; I’m talking the basics here. These are three that need some attention.

  • We blew it for testing viral spread mechanics
  • The more infections the more mutations
  • Viral protections are both volatile and “leaky”

(1)We blew it by not testing viral spread mechanics. Let’s talk about this issue. So, I breathe in, I breathe out. You do too, and the air sort of intermingles and after a very short time chaos theory says we just can’t tell what is going on with the air as it moves around. I inhale some of your exhale you inhale some of mine we both get some of the ambient air around and add it to the mix and pretty soon it’s a mess. But it’s not.

If we set up controlled situations, a simulation I grant you, we know the total amount of air each of our lung capacities processed. We know the total amount of liquid or vapor in the air at the beginning and at the end. We know that once the air is being processed, we each are taking in so much liquid vapor and exhaling so much. So, there is a net amount of vapor being added to the air with each breathing cycle, and if we measure this, say, every half minute, we can evaluate how much virus-carrying moisture could be expelled from one person’s lungs, at least to an order of magnitude.

One must admit, that’s a lot more than we know now.

We can model this, in aggregate, and make assumptions about how much vapor we exchange over time. We can get some studies of the load of Virus carried by a volume of this mist, and get an idea of the danger put into the local atmosphere (say in a closet sized space) by one person that can affect another person. We may even get an idea of the number of bad boys (viruses) needed for someone to get the Virus down into his or her lungs, by using chemically spiked mist for one air processor (that would be a human).

Remember, the Virus doesn’t just float around in the air by itself or sit on a cash register key by itself. It is on some wafting nodule of moisture. Presumably, we ingest the moisture, and the Virus comes with it. For the model, we’d figure any moisture from an infected party would be infectious and if it hits the lung proper we would be infected.

For measurement though, since we’re not dealing with a Virus, we can cheat. We know what the police do; they use a breathalyzer to measure alcohol, so we can use a measuring device like that and have only one of the participants drink a pretty hefty amount of alcohol and see how much of that can be measured by the other participant after a time period in a closed area.

Well, this is crude, I grant you. But do you think we’d learn anything from it? I think so. I think it would explain a lot of things to the public too. Maybe some smart scientists out there can use this as a sort of starting point so FOR ONCE WE CAN HAVE SOME SCIENCE ABOUT TRANSMISSION!

(Yes, I AM YELLING)

(2) More Infections, More Mutations

Oh, here we are, we had Alpha and Beta and Delta, and Omicron and some nameless others and some others that petered out…..

Now here we are with Omicron and it’s a lot better because even though it’s way more contagious it’s not a virulent. [you can look this stuff up]

Nope, do not be faked out. It’s not necessarily better in the long run. Let’s talk about that.

People are saying the virus is smart, the Virus is wiley, the Vrus is sneaky.

Hey folks the Virus ain’t none of those. Essentially it’s a pile of molecules which as a life form is still somewhat debatable since it cannot exist really unless it integrates with some of the host’s cells, destroying them in the process (it just craves some cell contents or components). As you may know, that’s the bad part. Do slice and dice to enough lung cells (because the lungs is what Mr. Virus goes when it gets deep inside you), and well, you cannot breathe any longer… but.. it isn’t smart. What it is is a missile programmed to bind to and penetrate human cells using a special shape that the cells cannot defend against, and the “spike protein” is that special shape. But all the Virus entities have that shape and replicates that shape over and over with almost perfection. Billions of times in each human it enters. But if any of the “almosts” get exhaled into another human, then the new shape gets a try out in another host. May be better at destruction, and may be less good. If it’s too good, then the host will die and likely that strain of the virus will be at an end. Almost certainly this has happened. If it’s less good at it’s job, then we get what we may have with Omicron: more transmission, less virulence. But when the virus is infecting more hosts, like this, then the incidence of mutation increases, which could more easily lead to another strain of virus.

So, folks, it’s not so simple here. This is nature and it’s a lot more complicated than human systems. And it’s occurring millions of times daily around the world, just looking for the best formulation and breakout scenario.

We’d better crank out those preventives there, US pharma industry! It’s your challenge. It’s your opportunity. Get it out there so nobody steals your special sauce out from under you. And get it out there to dimmish the chance that Mr. Virus unwittingly unlocks the door to some new reality for civilization or humanity.

(3) “Leaky” Preventions

“I have a mask on; I am safe.”

“You don’t have a mask on; you can infect me.”

“I got vaxxed; I am immune.”

“I am not vaxxed; I don’t believe in it.”

When you get right down to it all these sentences, and dozens of permutations and derivations of them, well, are meaningless.

The Virus is a physiological process. It’s like digestion. You can have all the opinions you want about it, and it won’t change digestion at all. You can even be very committed to your conclusions about these physical processes. And it won’t change them at all.

So this Virus has formed and it’s something pretty dangerous to humans because of its shape and ability to replicate. The shape allows it to penetrate cells, destroy them, use some of the gunk, and then replicate (almost every time perfectly). We certainly can’t deny that there is a Virus and it’s out there doing that. [ok, go ahead and deny it, but please leave me out of that] This Virus, see, it randomly gets into people and bypasses others and has a merry old time doing something that is PURELY PHYSIOLOGICAL based on the physical occurrence of air motion, temperature, humidity, physical location of local bodily orifices, and maybe some personal susceptibility factors we have unfortunately not explored. So sort of like some huge planet sized, three dimensional Pachinko machine the virus finds its way into slots around the world, each slot being one of us. It either takes hold or not; thrives or not; dies out or not; propagates or not; and then reinfects or not. As a byproduct, it may kill one of us. If it does, that stops it from propagating further.  It’s just physical.

But it’s not perfect.

And neither is the mask; some are less perfect than others. Both at preventing export of the Virus and inhalation of the Virus. Masks are “leaky”. Certainly a mask will catch some floating vapor or moisture near your face and keep it from going up your nose or into your mouth. [apparently the Virus can gain bodily access via eye membrane and moisture as well, and we don’t have masks for that[1]]  But a mask won’t catch all of it, and different masks work better and worse.[2], [3]

People keep looking for a specific quantification for this process. Best of all it would be “in every case of x, there will be y.” Something like “if you are in a room with fewer than 10 people for 30 minutes and you all have masks, you’ll all be ok.” Or “gatherings over 10,000 masked people will have 2% contagion.”  Oh, no, Mother Nature, meaning physical properties, is not like that.

But what about vaccinations? Don’t those prevent contagion, prevent catching the Virus, prevent getting sick if the Virus gets inside you, prevent communicating the virus?

The short answer is yes, yes, yes, and yes; also no, no, no, and no.

Back to basics, we are dealing with a physiological phonomona here, and this is biology involving also chemistry and individual bodily response. Just like different bodies will react to heat or exercise or various foods, each body is going to muster its defenses differently with different virulence itself and different capabilities. Remember, the vaccine doesn’t kill the Virus, the vaccine prepares YOU to kill the Virus. Some of us may do that better than others; in fact, some of us will do that btter than others. And then there is the whole co-morbidity aspect of it that put many people at a disadvantage. So when the Virus enters our breathing area, it doesn’t start getting killed, for example, inside our nostrils. It has to enter the bloodstream to do its dirty business and also there to be met by our bodies’ defenses, which are cells themselves. There, a battle to death, literally for our lives takes place. This is mostly taking place and affecting our respiratory system and the cells damaged during the onslaught are mostly destroyed in our lungs. It’s also the area where moisture originates that the Virus hitchhikes out of our bodies to the outside air. While this process is formulaic, it is not identical in every case. In fact, it’s identical in no case. That’s why some people are not even sick and some people die no matter what and everything in between.

The vaccine is also “leaky.” It is not consistent because our bodies are not consistent and the conditions like air flow, humidity, temperature are not consistent.

Just the possibility of our exhaling instead of inhaling as we walk past someone who has the Virus could make all the difference in our lives for us.

Now, one thing that is a dirty, dirty deed played on Americans that our CDC, various CDC talking heads, and our government leaders from both sides is: masks. Obviously, we can build a mask that defeats moisture entering our breathing cavity better than a handkerchief. If one walks through a restaurant and smells the food while wearing a mask, it seems pretty likely what is being breathed is moisture from cooking food. They keep telling us the Virus needs a “vector” and who knows maybe it’s getting in alongside the beef stew you smell. That we don’t have an answer to the question, which definitely is not rocket science, we can blame on those entities I mentioned earlier. That we haven’t asked them up to now, we can blame all of us.

[1] Wouldn’t it be “funny” if a significant amount of transmission was vapor floating into eyes and we haven’t even been thinking about it for two years?

[2] After two years, nobody has indicated a “maximum size texture or weave” that is appropriate for trapping water vapor or molecules carrying the virus. Or a best material, and materials that are probably worthless/useless.

[3] Does anyone wonder why we can create electric automobile plants in the USA in a couple three years, a ventilator manufacturing capability in a half year, and yet we still import masks and face shields?