Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020
Today was sort of a lame day. I gave myself a break from powerpoint except for a quick review of five decks with ten slides each – mainly for consistency – just to find there is none! I suggested to make them consistent, if not the current five, then at least have a format for the next ten or so, so that we at least have similar data for all countries. Looks like this will be a piece of work. Let’s see what the powers that be come back with.
Other than that I spend a chunk of the day attending a virtual conference, so the day feels a little unproductive, but at least it was insightful. Tomorrow I think I will begin research on Sudan, the next country I am to focus on. People assume I know about Sudan, so I had better get up to speed.
The pandemic is giving rise to discussions around basic universal income. This is a concept Andrew Yang ran on for his presidential pitch. With more and more people out of work, food and housing insecure universal basic income is now being discussed for the USA. I have my doubts about this scheme as I tend to side with those saying this is not incentivizing people to work. Interestingly research seems to suggest the opposite. My preference would still be for a negative income tax, where the government pays income tax up to what is considered a livable minimum income; basically, topping up reported taxable income.
Of course, the news is full with Corona. The US it seems is in deep trouble. The WH Corona Task Force, surprisingly it still exists, is expecting the current surge to last at least 7 weeks. I suspect that this will overlap with the next surge caused by Christmas shopping, travel and New Year festivities. I shall reevaluate if we might not be better of staying in Europe until the middle of February, given Germany is doing much better, even if also not great at the moment and partial lock-downs are in place at least until January 10th, 2021. My only worry is the cat as I need to find a cat or better yet a house sitter. Initially, EM’s friend said she would do it. It appears now that she thinks it may be too much of an effort. Likewise, one of my neighbors volunteered her son, but I have not heard back if really, he will do it. Time is starting to run out and I am a little nervous about leaving the house deserted for several weeks, so maybe finding a house sitter is a better option. I just cannot decide.
Meanwhile, the virus is coming closer. The wife and daughter of one of my Aikidoka have tested positive, courtesy of someone at the day care being infected. Fortunately, I have not practiced with him, though he tested negative in the past month or so. Someone else just texted me to say she cannot come on Saturday as she has been in contact recently who has tested positive. So maybe my brilliant friend is right to self-lock down again.
The world total today is 64.2 million in total. The USA has added 184k cases in twenty-four hours to bring the total to 14.2 million cases. Everyone is anxiously waiting for the vaccine to fix it all it seems. At least there is some progress on that front. Breaking news today is regulatory approval of the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine in the UK. The US FDA is expected to license both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna by mid December for emergency use.
It is expected that the first 20 million people to be immunized in the USA will be the elderly in care facilities and health care workers. Next will be people 65 and older as well as high risk people (e.g. immune compromised) and essential workers. The rest of the population will unlikely be in line for a shot any time before April with those who have recovered from Corona last in line as some form of immunity is assumed. I am not entirely sure as to the wisdom of having those economically active be the last people to get shots, especially if the objective is to prevent an economic downturn and with government support running out at the end of December, such a major downturn seems highly likely. As such I have moved my USD savings to Germany today and given instructions to invest all my USD holdings in gold. I am seriously contemplating taking equity out of the house and doing the same. That is a rather speculative endeavor so I shall consult one of my more knowledgeable friends about it.
The Swiss Pharma company Roche has developed and antibody test for which it is seeking emergency use authorization in the USA. I am not sure why one needs more antibody tests, but this one appears to be geared to detect the spike features of the virus, specifically detects antibodies against the virus' spike protein within blood samples. It appears its main function would be to establish post vaccination immunity.
Given no one has a clue how long immunity from a shot lasts this might not be a bad thing.