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Wednesday 11th of November 2020
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Paris @YuneIntoShadows
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The Way We Live Now
World Of Finance
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''You felt the land taking you back to what was there a hundred years ago, to what had been there always.”
Africa
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Title: Elemental Light (Blue) @Alex00762690
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In 1666, a village in England self-isolated to contain an outbreak of plague. Or so the story goes...@1843mag
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Small villages in Derbyshire rarely feature in international news. But today the heroic behaviour associated with one of them, Eyam, during a plague outbreak over 350 years ago, is held up as an example to the world of how we can tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
Eyam has a powerful story: it reputedly chose to isolate itself from neighbouring communities when plague broke out in the village in 1666. The voluntary quarantine cost the lives of many but it stopped plague spreading across the region.
The parallels between Eyam’s self-imposed quarantine and today’s social isolation has found its way into stories as far afield as the Washington Post, France 24 and Canadian TV.
Simon Armitage, Britain’s poet laureate, wrote a poem in response to the outbreak of coronavirus, starting with the moment a parcel of cloth brought the plague to the village: “in the warp and weft of soggy cloth/by the tailor’s hearth/in ye olde Eyam”.
The example of Eyam forces us to reflect on how much we can achieve as communities in the face of a pandemic.
Could we equal the selflessness of these villagers or have we lost our morality and honour?
Can successful isolation be left to our sense of citizenship, our awareness of our duty to our neighbours?
The real history of Eyam’s plague is different from the heroic version reported in these news stories and retold in countless histories, novels and plays.
Its lesson for fighting epidemics is not a simple one about the value of valiant leadership and the virtue of self-sacrifice.
The true story of the plague village shows the problem of drawing on half-remembered histories for guidance on how to respond to extraordinary and rare events like the coronavirus outbreak we are now living through.
By the time plague reached Eyam in autumn 1665, London and several other cities had already been devastated by the disease.
Around 50,000 people had died in the metropolis’s “Great Plague”, about one in five of its population.
No one in England was in any doubt about the severity of the threat.
This was a society with centuries of experience in responding to epidemics that had recurred with deadly regularity since the Black Death of 1348.
Separating the sick from the healthy was widely understood to be an effective technique and the government was well versed in its application.
Our current quarantine regulations, including isolation to slow the spread of coronavirus, are a direct legacy of this period.
Yet against the backdrop of this pus-filled history, the story of Eyam still stands out.
It was a small lead-mining village; by some accounts it had just 330 residents. By the time the plague subsided in November 1666, 259 of them were dead. Houses stood empty where entire families had been struck down. In choosing to stay in their village, the villagers preserved the lives of their countrymen. But the cost was great. “Our town has become Golgotha, the place of a skull,” wrote William Mompesson, its vicar.
In Britain we tend to think about quarantine on a household basis, and the nailed-up doors marked with a red cross that Daniel Defoe portrayed in his famous “A Journal of the Plague Year” (1722).
But larger areas could also be cut off. The cordon sanitaire around Eyam was similar to controls imposed by local magistrates on a number of parishes and villages in the 1660s.
When the country seemed threatened by the plague of 1722, Richard Mead, a prominent physician, argued for isolating outbreaks in just this way, using Eyam as one of his examples.
Eyam’s epidemic has more than corpses to its history. It has star-crossed lovers: Emmott and her sweetheart Rowland, from neighbouring Middleton Dale, who came to look yearningly at each other each day across the quarantine boundary, until one day Emmott failed to appear.
The desperate Rowland returned every day; only after the quarantine was lifted did he discover that Emmott had died months before.
There was a bucolic cast of villagers who together dedicated themselves to protecting the region, surviving by buying food from outside with coins left in vinegar-filled holes on a stone boundary-marker.
A tragic leader, Mompesson, lost his wife Catherine to plague, yet continued to shepherd his flock through the darkness, leading them in prayer in a grassy dell rather than the dangerous confines of the church.
There was even a rival for Mompesson, in the non-conformist priest Thomas Stanley, who had only recently been ejected from the parish vicarage for refusing to accept the restoration of the Anglican church after the civil war.
But many elements of this colourful history are missing from contemporary accounts. They are more story than history.
This includes the village’s central claim to heroic sacrifice: its choice to cut itself off.
That the village was quarantined is not in question. But the notion that the villagers heroically imposed isolation on themselves has no foundation in any of the early sources.
The spirit of self-sacrifice that we are now being asked to emulate is a myth.
None of the original sources, including Mompesson’s letters, mentions the village choosing its own quarantine.
They instead note the success of that isolation and the leadership it demanded. That is not surprising, from the perspective of the period.
By the 1660s quarantine was a well-established public health technique, but it was something enforced by the state, not enacted by public spirited communities – in part because, for some, the temptation to break out was always too strong.
If the story of Eyam sounds like a romantic novel, that’s because large parts of it were invented. The spirit of the story owes much to the imagination of Anna Seward, a noted 18th-century poet whose description of the plague – in a letter written in 1765 – appeared in an edition of her letters edited by Walter Scott, a historical novelist.
Seward was the daughter of the village vicar, and had been powerfully moved by Mompesson’s letters. “Your heart will expand over this faithful picture of elevated worth,” she wrote.
Yet most details of the story first appeared in writing only two centuries after the events they describe, when William Wood, a local historian and tax-collector, published a popular local history book, “The History and Antiquities of Eyam” (1842).
Even Wood eventually grew concerned about the accuracy of these stories: later editions bore the title “Legends of the Plague” instead.
Wood’s writings helped nurture Eyam’s place in the popular imagination. More than 10,000 people attended a remembrance service there in 1934.
By the time of the Festival of Britain in 1951, the village’s heritage had become such a staple of British history that plaques with the names of villagers who had died in the plague were arbitrarily placed on the walls of village houses, though there was almost no evidence of who had lived in which cottage.
Today its 1,000 inhabitants host tens of thousands of visitors a year, and the local brewery offers the thirsty a choice of craft ales: “Bubonic Orange”, “Quarantine” and “Black Death”.
Eyam has continued to capture the creative imagination. In October 2018 “Eyam”, a new play based on the plague, was performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. The story “is a fascinating one – do look it up, it’s all true” read one review.
Only a few thin strands of evidence connect the rich stories that have been woven around Eyam’s epidemic with recorded history. The sum total of records from the plague itself is scanty: three letters by Mompesson written in 1666, the parish’s burial register and inscriptions on graves scattered around the village.
Only two other written sources, one from 1702 and another from 1722, have credible claims to drawing on actual witnesses, and even they are second-hand, from the sons of the two priests, Mompesson and Stanley.
Though there is no source for the claim that the village isolated itself, there is evidence that points in the other direction: people did flee Eyam to escape the plague.
Deaths were concentrated among poor households, suggesting that many wealthier villagers who could afford to leave had made a run for it before the quarantine was imposed.
Mompesson had sent his own children to his uncle in Yorkshire. Tellingly, one of the few sources surviving from a neighbouring community suggests that Eyam’s remaining villagers may have been given no chance to leave (much as Chinese troops blocked people from leaving the city of Wuhan after a lockdown was imposed there in February).
There are records showing that the city of Sheffield employed officials to restrict movement, paying constables to keep people from nearby Fullwood Spa “in the time that the sickness was at Eyam”.
If the villagers did not isolate themselves does it make them any less heroic? Perhaps not.
Even if constables stood on parish boundaries, complying with the quarantine demanded a thousand everyday acts of bravery by those affected.
These are a quieter form of heroism, but no less courageous for it.
If the villagers did struggle to keep going and remain within the confines of their parish, and if it took the threat of force to remind them of the need to stay inside its boundaries, then they offer a more realistic guide to how we may act now.
It is easier to serve the greater good if we don’t have to seek within ourselves all the discipline that this demands.
The risk that covid-19 poses to most of us is slight compared with the dangers that Eyam’s villagers faced.
For all that, we should be careful not to ask too much of each other.
Effective quarantines need both external and internal reinforcements if they are to succeed. Heroism is not a substitute for government action: we need both.
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They fancied themselves free, wrote Camus, ―and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.
Misc.
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―In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.
A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.
But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.
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Political Reflections
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Azerbaycan Cumhurbaşkanı Aliyev'den Paşinyan'a: "Ne oldu Paşinyan?" @AjansHaberResmi
Law & Politics
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The victorious President of Azerbaijan taunts the defeated Armenian Prime Minister — “what happened to Pashinyan?” @b_judah
Law & Politics
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"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow." @jenmercieca
Law & Politics
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"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda.."
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Whoever Controls The Narrative Controls The World
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"if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism;" @jenmercieca
Law & Politics
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"on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism;"
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"instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."
Law & Politics
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"instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness." Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 382
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The "political technologist of all of Rus." And non linear War Specialist Vladislav Surkov.
Law & Politics
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With a flourish he sponsored lavish arts festivals for the most provocative modern artists in Moscow, then supported Orthodox fundamentalists, dressed all in black and carrying crosses, who in turn attacked the modern-art exhibitions. @TheAtlantic
The underlying aim, Surkov says, is not to win the war, but to use the conflict to create a constant state of destabilised perception, in order to manage and control
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A decade of "semiotic arousal" when everything, it seemed, was a sign, a harbinger of some future radical disjuncture or cataclysmic upheaval. Whoever Controls The Narrative Controls The World
Law & Politics
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Is Barr appointing Jeff Sessions to lead the voter fraud investigation? @JackPosobiec
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WE WILL WIN! @realDonaldTrump
Law & Politics
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09-NOV-2020 :: The Spinning Top
World Of Finance
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The World has spun at dizzying speed in 2020 and is bookended with the Decapitation of Qasem Soleimani and then the Political decapitation of President Trump by the [not so] ''Sleepy'' Joe Biden and who exits stage left twittering into the wilderness or is it Trump TV?
The demise of the Reality TV Star turned seriously vaudeville with Mr. Giulani mounting the last stand from the Four Seasons Total Landscaping next to Fantasy Island Adult Books across the street from the Delaware Valley Cremation Center.
Some Folks seem convinced that the Prophet of Populism Donald J. Trump is going to lead his 70m Disciples into some major 5th generational chess moves but surely just as likely is an Unfolding psychological breakdown played out in front of our eyes on TV like Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of Salesman
“You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.”
“If personal meaning, in this cheer leader society, lies in success, then failure must threaten identity itself.”
I’m tired to the death. The flute has faded away. He sits on the bed beside her, a little numb. I couldn’t make it. I just couldn’t make it, Linda.
Counterintuitively, The Trump Vladislav Surkov Talking Points which of course always feature George Soros are strangely ineffective and a little like a receding tide.
Biden has stayed on Point and his pithiness has been the clearest Signal in the Noise. The American Electoral System has emerged unscathed and in fact looks robust.
“My take on Trump is that he is an inevitable creation of this unreal normal world,” Adam Curtis says.
“Politics has become a pantomime or vaudeville in that it creates waves of anger rather than argument. Maybe people like Trump are successful simply because they fuel that anger, in the echo chambers of the internet.”
The Single biggest Issue remains how Biden engages with the Algorithmic Master [Blaster] and Sun Tzu Maestro ''
''The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting''
Xi salami-sliced his way into a deeply forward position during the Obama Administration and in 2020 snaffled up Hong Kong, marched 400 kilometers into Indian Territory and the Straw Man Narendra Modi has not even uttered a word and Xi might even decide to roll over Taiwan during this Interregnum
Xi did not even turn up for Trump's beloved Trade Deal and then proceeded to shred it and surely the apex of his achievement in 2020 was releasing a bio-engineered #COVID19 and spreading it around the World with the help of all the ''shameless pro-Party hacks who chirrup hosannahs at every turn''
'’Zoonotic’’ origin was one that was accelerated in the Laboratory.
There is also a non negligible possibility that #COVID19 was deliberately released
It is impossible to ignore the introduction of a PRRA insert between S1 and S2: it sticks out like a splinter. This insert creates the furin cleavage site
The CCP appears to have modeled its lockdown fraud on Event 201, so Gates, Hopkins, and the WEF would play into their hands [@MichaelPSenger]
Forcing professionals into their homes forced them into the CCP’s controlled information environment. Isolating intelligent people in the digital realm allowed the CCP to control public opinion through its army of bots and stakes in most media sources. @MichaelPSenger
They now turn to rule over the people by means of what could be dubbed “big data totalitarianism” and “WeChat terror.” @ChinaFile #COVID19 Xu Zhangrun
Also 和谐 hexie over the eyes means "harmony" (from former Pres Hu catchphrase). In China if you've been censored you've been "harmonised".
That‘s right, we, We the People, for [as I have previously said] how can we let ourselves ―survive no better than swine; fawn upon the power-holders like curs; and live in vile filth like maggots?
you will all be no better than fields of garlic chives, giving yourselves up to being harvested by the blade of power, time and time again. @ChinaFile #COVID19
It’s no coincidence that “Zoom meetings” suddenly became the staple of professional work. Zoom is the CCP’s personal panopticon—the CCP can and does tune into Zoom calls anytime they want. What better way to monitor dissenting opinions.@MichaelPSenger
The CCP’s financial ties with social media companies and nonprofits tasked with policing “misinformation” would facilitate the censorship necessary to prevent leaders from easing the public’s COVID hysteria. @MichaelPSenger
The Infodemic as per the preeminent Exponent @DrTedros
“We call on all countries to implement decisions that are evidence-based and consistent,” said Tedros. Roger that. [Epsilon Theory]
There‟s just one problem.
The “evidence” here – taken without adjustment or question from the CCP – was a baldfaced lie. And everyone at WHO knew it.
Fake news is now defined as anything that disputes WHO data, which means that fake news is now defined as anything that disputes the official China party line.
Where possible, China wants to criminalize any speech ... any social media ... that does not follow the official party line. Where it‟s not possible to criminalize that speech, China wants to ban it through the cooperative censorship of global tech and media platforms.
#Coronavirus how the @WHO is leading the social media fight against misinformation @DrTedros @SCMPNews http://j.mp/32gPzxX
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Global confirmed cases surpassed 50M yesterday. The current rate of change is 60% faster than it was for the last 10M cases, now averaging 580k new cases per day. @yaneerbaryam
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Global confirmed cases surpassed 50M yesterday. The current rate of change is 60% faster than it was for the last 10M cases, now averaging 580k new cases per day. US, India, Brazil, France, and Russia are the five countries with the most confirmed cases.
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27-JUL-2020 :: Drinking the Kool-Aid The exponential moment is still in front of us. #COVID19
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.@Presa_Diretta on SARS2 origins doesn't pull any punches. English subtitled, undubbed interviews of many top experts on the question: Could SARS-CoV-2 have emerged from a lab? H/T @Ayjchan
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’Zoonotic’’ origin was one that was accelerated in the Laboratory.
Misc.
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There is also a non negligible possibility that #COVID19 was deliberately released
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The Vaccine News Is Good. Here’s the Bad News. @ForeignAffairs @Laurie_Garrett
Law & Politics
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What a difference an election makes. Stock markets all over the world are soaring, both because Joe Biden has been elected the 46th president of the United States, immediately establishing a prestige-packed COVID-19 task force, and because the New York-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that its candidate SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is 90 percent effective in blocking infection with the coronavirus.
A sense of hope has imbued financial markets.
“The results are really quite good, I mean extraordinary,” pronounced Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Minutes after New York stock markets opened Monday morning, nearly every index soared to historic heights, with the Dow gaining nearly 3 percent by the end of the day.
Pfizer stocks surged 7.7 percent, and its German vaccine partner, BioNTech, got a 13.9 percent boost.
And it is all, indeed, very good news. But there are important caveats to consider that should temper the momentary euphoria.
These include the current state of the pandemic, the ongoing management of the United States’ catastrophic COVID-19 crisis by lame-duck leadership in the White House and health-related agencies, limited information provided regarding the Pfizer vaccine, and doubts about the ability of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to manage a successful rollout of mass immunization across the United States.
While Biden supporters danced in streets across the country following the Nov. 7th announcement that the ticket garnered more than the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the tumultuous election, COVID-19 spread nationwide to historic, tragic levels.
According to Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 tracker, the world total of officially tallied cases topped 50 million, with 1 out of every 5 known cases having occurred in the United States.
The United States also accounts for 19 percent of world deaths: 1.3 million have died of COVID-19, about 240,000 of them in the United States.
These numbers grossly understate the true scale of the United States’ and the world’s coronavirus cases and deaths, but accurately depict the sorrowful trends.
Over the election-tallying weekend, more than 230,000 new COVID-19 infections were reported in the United States, with Nov. 8 marking the fifth day in a row that new case totals exceeded 100,000.
As of Monday, a whopping 43 states saw their COVID-19 totals jump more than 10 percent compared with week, with hospitalization rates skyrocketing, as well.
Cases are even climbing unacceptably in states that have had the virus under control for six months: New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts.
Overseas, the COVID-19 crisis is out of control in most of Europe, the United Kingdom, and key countries in the Americas.
And throughout the world, the virus’ rampage is so taxing health facilities that all sorts of nonviral diseases are claiming the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are unable to get care for everything from diabetes to advanced cancer. If unabated, the pandemic could well surpass the estimated 50 to 75 million lives lost in the flu pandemic of 1918.
Leaders in several states that had long supported President Donald Trump’s opposition to lockdowns are now calling for strict COVID-19 control measures, including mandatory mask-wearing and closures of many businesses and forms of entertainment.
In medical circles around the world, the mood is decidedly anxious. And conspiracy theories, opposition to economically painful lockdowns, and anti-vaccine sentiments are rising everywhere.
On Nov. 9, Biden released the names of a 13-member COVID-19 task force that will lead his administration’s response to the pandemic and the seven guiding principles under which they will operate. But the Trump administration remains in charge of COVID-19 for more than two months, with the virus spreading inside the West Wing of the White House and the president’s lead scientific advisor, Scott Atlas, advocating what amounts to a do-nothing approach to COVID-19 control. Insiders say a mass exodus is already unfolding as Trump-appointed health officials are sending out their resumes and searching for new jobs—by Thanksgiving, many key posts may be unfilled.
In October, when the United States was seeing 50,000 new cases per day, the cautious Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington predicted that by around Inauguration Day, deaths could reach 2,200 daily, with a cumulative total of 386,000.
But since that Oct. 22 announcement, the daily infection total has more than doubled, and deaths have risen to more than 1,100 per day.
If these trends go unfettered for more than 70 days, the United States’ official death tally could top 400,000 around Christmas, deaths might exceed 2,500 a day, and hospital wards across the country will be full.
Meanwhile, the lame-duck leadership at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must swiftly assess data from Pfizer to determine whether the vaccine is indeed safe and 90 percent effective, as the company claims.
The only public “data,” if it can be so dubbed, is found in a corporate press release. While the FDA and researchers worldwide await further details, the company’s numbers are encouraging.
In an ongoing phase-three trial, 38,955 volunteers so far have received two doses of the vaccine. To date, 94 of them have become infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Though exact numbers are not provided by Pfizer, the company has said that most of those 94 infections were placebo recipients and that the vaccine was “more than 90% effective.”
The Phase 3 trial is not over. More than 4,500 volunteers haven’t yet had their second injection, or reached the one-week post immunization time point for COVID testing.
And Pfizer has agreed to keep tracking all of the participants to see whether their immunity holds up for two weeks. So far, no side effects have been reported.
Seven days. Nothing more is known.
If that protection turns out to be durable for, say, a full year, the Pfizer vaccine might be deemed a spectacular success.
But nobody is going to wait a year to find out. The moment the FDA approves the product, Pfizer says in its press release, “we expect to produce globally up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.”
If we assume that Pfizer’s vaccine is a home run, mass immunization offers huge hurdles. The product is unlike any vaccine ever used, for any disease.
What is actually injected is messenger RNA (mRNA)—the genetic blueprint for protein production—triggering human cells to manufacture millions of copies of the spike protein that protrudes from the surface of SARS-CoV-2 viruses.
As those spike proteins circulate in an immunized person’s body, they hopefully make antibodies and other immune system components to fight it off.
Thus, the mRNA triggers production of decoys that train the immune system to “see” the virus if it arrives in the body and destroy it.
But mRNA is very unstable. To prevent breakdown, it must be stored right up until the time of injection at a temperature of at least -103 degrees Fahrenheit—well below anything a standard freezer unit can manage.
Few health departments, hospitals, or doctors’ offices currently have stockpiles of dry ice or ultrafreezers that can manage to consistently hold temperatures that low, and none have piles of portable units that can do the job.
Dry ice in coolers could do the job, but the world is facing a shortage in pure carbon dioxide, which becomes dry ice when frozen.
Meanwhile, vaccine opposition runs high across the United States, with polls showing that roughly one-third of Americans would be unwilling to roll up their sleeves for a new coronavirus immunization.
The Biden administration will have to convince a deeply polarized nation to trust the government and get vaccinated.
Few local and state health departments have the capacity to carry out immunization without substantial federal support, vaccine education, and implementation.
On Oct. 18, the National Governors Association, which is currently led by Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, posted dozens of logistical questions states have for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which will be in charge of mass immunization, and of the White House.
The organization asked who will pay for purchase of special freezers, teach vaccinators how to do their jobs and conduct mass education to counter anti-vaccine rhetoric.
Meanwhile, Biden hasn’t yet named his future CDC director. Morale in the much-maligned agency has reached toxic levels, and the Atlanta-based institution’s relationships with state and local health agencies has deteriorated.
The success—or failure—of a mass immunization campaign in the United States will rest squarely on the shoulders of the person who next leads the CDC.
The news of the Pfizer vaccine and Biden COVID-19 task force are reasons for optimism.
But both sources of hope will be sorely challenged in coming months by Trump administration inaction, soaring COVID-19 infections, and the lack of a genuine infrastructure across the United States for mass immunization.
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Salvation through vaccination would be dangled like a cat toy in front of fearful populations, each vaccine proving futile—but a great excuse to bill national governments for mandatory vaccine programs @MichaelPSenger
Law & Politics
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Salvation through vaccination would be dangled like a cat toy in front of fearful populations, each vaccine proving futile—but a great excuse to bill national governments for mandatory vaccine programs, another milestone in the end of human rights. @MichaelPSenger
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THE VACCINE STORY IS ANOTHER MYTH
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No-one has ever produced a safe and effective vaccine against a coronavirus. Birger Sørensen, Angus Dalgleish & Andres Susrud
What if, as I fear, there will never be a vaccine. I was involved in the early stages of identifying the HIV virus as the cause of Aids. I remember drugs companies back then saying there would be a vaccine within around 18 months. Some 37 years on, we are still waiting. Prof ANGUS DALGLEISH @MailOnline
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On the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine: publishing interim results through a press release is neither good scientific practice nor does it help to build public trust in vaccines. @richardhorton1
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An announcement should come with full publication of a peer-reviewed research paper in a scientific journal.
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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." - Professor Allen Bartlett The Spinning Top
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Malcolm Gladwell „‟Tipping Point‟‟ moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. It‟s the boiling point. It‟s the moment on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards.
Just to be clear, both worldwide daily cases and worldwide daily deaths are now rising and at their maximum.
Global record 642,697 new #COVID19 cases yesterday grew total cases 1.3% yesterday to 49,314,356. Total deaths now 1,242,618 with exponential increase of 0.64% per day accelerating faster than cases. @jmlukens
Global #COVID19 cases exponentially growing on average 1.12% per day and now total 49,824,177. World on track to 100M cases by end of year at current rate. @jmlukens
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I have been watching True Detective "Time is a flat circle. Everything we have done or will do we will do over and over and over again- forever."
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International Markets
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Daily activity indicators for #China, #Japan, #Germany, #Italy, #Spain, #UK, #Canada, and #US source: bbg h/t @biancoresearch @averygrrl
World Of Finance
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There is no V shaped recovery coming in 2021. Thats just a Fantasy.
"As a consequence of decades of economic mismanagement, sequential resuscitations and constant bailouts—most especially during the past three years—vast portions of the global economy have mutated into a ‘zombified’ state." @mtmalinen
And the Virus is not going away anytime in fact it is now exponential.
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There is no V shaped recovery coming in 2021. Thats just a Fantasy. The Spinning Top
World Of Finance
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So, I reiterate my earlier stance, the is NO actual #recovery . We live in a mirage of an economic recovery, kept alive with (artificial) monetary, fiscal and regulatory support. @mtmalinen
World Of Finance
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So where do we go from here in the Markets? The one consistent Theme is The Print Shop The Spinning Top
World Of Finance
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Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ
World Currencies
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Euro 1.1818
Dollar Index 92.677
Japan Yen 105.40
Swiss Franc 0.914835
Pound 1.3272
Aussie 0.7310
India Rupee 74.2925
South Korea Won 1110.31
Brazil Real 5.4152
Egypt Pound 15.65
South Africa Rand 15.5584
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Dollar Index Chart INO 92.677
World Currencies
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Euro versus the Dollar Chart 1.1824
World Currencies
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Commodity Markets at a Glance WSJ
Commodities
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Gold 6 month INO 1976.00
Commodities
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Crude Oil Chart INO 42.16
Minerals, Oil & Energy
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CHART OF THE DAY: The price of palm oil, the world's most widely used vegetable oil, has risen to an 8-year high. Palm oil accounts for ~35% of total vegetable oil consumption @JavierBlas
Minerals, Oil & Energy
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Africa 1,765,672 total #COVID19 cases exponentially growing 0.71% per day on average. 12,200 avg daily case increase up 20% past 2wks. @jmlukens
Africa
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38,747 total deaths exponentially growing on average 0.79% per day and accelerating.
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So far Africa has dodged the Virus from a medical perspective though it remains in my view a slow burning Fuse and we all know by now ''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics'
Africa
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For much of the year, #SouthAfrica accounted for around half of new confirmed #COVID19 cases... But during what looks like a #SecondWave, cases are increasing more rapidly and at greater numbers across the continent. @Covid_Africa
Africa
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Conclusions
Africa Ex South Africa is accelerating
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Turning to Africa The Spinning Top
Africa
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So far Africa has dodged the Virus from a medical perspective though it remains in my view a slow burning Fuse and we all know by now ''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics'
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Morocco 4,436 avg #COVID19 cases per day up 33% past two weeks. Algeria avg cases per day up 93% past 2wks. @jmlukens
Africa
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COVID-19 avg Daily Case Increase #Algeria: 93% #Botswana: 75% #Uganda: 74% #Ghana: 71% #Kenya: 62% #Nigeria: 51% #Morocco: 33% #Libya: 5% #Angola: 4%
The real challenge is the Economic Emergency.
The latest Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa projects economic activity in the region to decline by 3.0% in 2020 and recover by 3.1% in 2021. @IMFNews
The IMF is so bright eyed and bushy tailed and I want some of whatever Pills they are popping.
Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance now has a Nobel Prize Winner whom I am reliably informed
PM Abiy His inner war cabinet includes Evangelicals who are counseling him he is "doing Christ's work"; that his faith is being "tested". @RAbdiAnalyst
@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province.
Democracy from Tanzania to Zimbabwe to Cameroon has been shredded.
We are getting closer and closer to the Virilian Tipping Point
“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street''
Political leadership in most cases completely gerontocratic will use violence to cling onto Power but any Early Warning System would be warning a Tsunami is coming
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10 NOV 14 : African youth demographic {many characterise this as a 'demographic dividend"} - which for Beautiful Blaise turned into a demographic terminator
Africa
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Martin Aglo, a law student from Benin, told Reuters: “After the Arab Spring, this is the Black Spring”.We need to ask ourselves; how many people can incumbent shoot stone cold dead in such a situation – 100, 1,000, 10,000?
This is another point: there is a threshold beyond which the incumbent can’t go. Where that threshold lies will be discovered in the throes of the event.
The Event is no longer over the Horizon.
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@TunduALissu
Law & Politics
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Africa 12,377 avg #COVID19 cases per day exponentially growing 1,774,325 total cases 0.71% each day. 303 avg deaths per day up 34% past two weeks and now totals 38,983. @jmlukens
Africa
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Ethiopia Clash Sparks Bond Slump Amid Emerging-Market Rally @markets
Africa
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Investors in Ethiopia’s Eurobonds are losing out on the rally in emerging-market debt.
The country’s 2024 dollar securities dropped for a fourth day on Monday as conflict in the northern Tigray region continued.
Clashes between government soldiers and fighters loyal to the region’s ruling party stoked fears of a broader civil war at a time when the government is struggling to end ethnic violence shaking Africa’s second-most populous country.
The country’s $1 billion of Eurobonds maturing in 2024 have declined 2.8% this month, the most after Venezuela among emerging-markets.
A gauge tracking developing-nation dollar-denominated debt rose 1.6% in the month through Friday.
“We do not think that the conflict has materially increased the risk of default for the time being, but with tensions simmering on several fronts across the country and region, continued escalation could distract from reform efforts and undermine Ethiopia’s investment case,” said Patrick Curran, a London-based senior economist at Tellimer.
“Against this backdrop, the political risk premium will remain elevated.”
Yields on the 2024 notes rose nine basis points by 2:14 p.m. in London, bringing the increase in the past four days to 111 basis points.
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@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province. The Spinning Top
Africa
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Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance now has a Nobel Prize Winner whom I am reliably informed
PM Abiy His inner war cabinet includes Evangelicals who are counseling him he is "doing Christ's work"; that his faith is being "tested". @RAbdiAnalyst
@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province.
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In Ethiopia's Tigray and Amhara regions, trucks packed with armed militia and pick-ups mounted with machine gun are rushing to the frontline of a conflict some fear could escalate into a full blown civil war. @D_J_Doyle
Africa
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Africa
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Ace Magashule latest (and biggest) would-be casualty of SA anti-corruption drive @financialtimes @davidpilling
Africa
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South Africa All Share Bloomberg
Africa
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Dollar versus Rand 6 Month Chart INO 15.56
Africa
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Egypt Pound versus The Dollar 3 Month Chart INO 15.635
Africa
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Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg
Africa
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The ratio of debt-service costs to exports for Kenya remains above the 21% threshold recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) @coldtusker
Kenyan Economy
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Kenya is among highest accumulators of external debt, the International Debt Statistics 2021 by the World Bank Shows.@TheStarKenya
Kenyan Economy
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The report, which analysed external debt accumulation by 120 low and middle income countries between 2009 and 2019 shows that Kenya’s external debt grew four times, among the highest in the series.
According to the report, the total external debt grew to $34.2 billion (Sh3.48 trillion) last year from $8.55 (Sh872.1 billion) in 2009; only second to Ethiopia whose external debt grew almost five-fold during the decade.
The report shows, Kenya’s external debt stock ratio to exports grew from 49 per cent in 2009 to 146 per cent, indicating tough repayment hurdles.
The ratio of debt-service costs to exports for East Africa’s biggest economy remains above the 21 per cent threshold recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The country's total public debt is currently at Sh7.o6 trillion, two trillion shy to the Sh9.1 trillion limit set last year.
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09-DEC-2019 :: Time to Big Up the Dosage of Quaaludes
Africa
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22-MAR-2020 :: COVID-19 and a Rolling Sudden Stop
Africa
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18.76% Today, 1,344 people have tested positive for the virus, from a sample size of 7,162 tested in the last 24 hours @MOH_Kenya
Africa
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''Viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics' Turning to Africa The Spinning Top
Africa
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Kenya Shilling versus The Dollar Live ForexPros 109.05
World Currencies
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Nairobi All Share Bloomberg
N.S.E General
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Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg
N.S.E General
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Every Listed Share can be interrogated here
N.S.E General
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