Author: J. Sands Loch

Student and teacher of reality in all its forms. I self-published my personal experience of discovering and trying to understand and use a model of reality based on the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Surfing the Multiverse: Finding Happiness One Universe at a Time Available on Kindle and from Amazon, and found in blog post form at: SurfingTheUniverse.com

20200414T Day 105: Earth Population 7 Billion, 777 Million, 777 Thousand, 777

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According to https://www.worldometers.info, where I often go for data on COVID-19 cases, the population of Earth surpassed 7,777,777,777 today. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch it right as the counter turned, but for randomly checking I think I got pretty close at only 2,229 off. That is definitely within the measurement error, especially given that we are in the middle of a deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

According to https://ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths, 140.66 million humans will be born on Earth and 60.20 million humans will die during 2020. As a second reference, https://www.wolframalpha.com gives 141 million births and 58 million deaths.

I don’t believe either of these have taken into account the additional deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been 137,108 official COVID-19 deaths according to https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html.

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Since not all deaths are counted and since we are in the middle of the first of an unknown number of waves this year, then I’m going to assume that deaths-to-date is 10% of the total for the year.  Let’s say 1,371,080. Taking the average of 60.2 and 58 million gives us a 59.1 million original death estimate, which is 0.7599% mortality rate for today’s population of 7,777,777,777. Adding 1,371,080 deaths to 59.1 million, the expected number of deaths during 2020 is 60,437,080 which increases the mortality rate to 0.7770%.

20200413M Day 104: Dr. Robin Armstrong, M.D. in Texas, Interview with Joe Piscopo about COVID-19 Treatment at Nursing Home

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Dr. Robin Armstrong, medical director of The Resort at Texas City nursing home. April 7, 2020. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

SANTA CRUZ, California – I have been interested in treatments for COVID-19 since my brother sent me a treatment involving hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin. When I heard that a doctor in Texas, near my hometown, was treating patients at a nursing home, which was on Logan Street, I had to learn more. Here are the notes I took from an interview that Dr. Robin Armstrong had with Joe Piscopo on April 13.

JP: Are older folks affected most?

RA: Yes, they are more predisposed to COVID-19, just as with other similar illnesses.

JP: Does this virus keep circulating in a closed area?

RA: Yes, this virus is transmitted very easily with RO of 2-3. It can live on surfaces up to 48 hours. That’s why this virus is different. It’s also different because people shed the virus while they are asymptomatic.

Susan, 68yo: If symptomatic, do I ask for a drug from the beginning, or wait until breathing problems occur.

RA: We really don’t know. In our nursing home, we wait until someone becomes symptomatic. The majority of people have mild symptoms and get over this. In India, they are taking it prophylactically now. I’m not recommending that yet here.

JP: Hydroxychloroquine usage in India?  The deaths there are much less.

RA: A friend of mine in India says people there are taking hydroxychloroquine prophylactically. Patients having mild symptoms are improving. Our study is suggestive that it works as well. Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin together are effective at moderating mild symptoms.

JP: What about platelets?

RA: You can harvest blood plasma with anti-covid-19 antibodies and some people have had success with that. This is for very ill hospital patients. My goal is to keep people out of the hospital.

JP: [Asked about politics]

RA: I’m on the Republican national committee now and that’s why some in the mainstream media has been attacking me regarding this treatment.

JP: What is the agenda of the mainstream media in attacking this?

RA: Their entire focus is on defeating Trump and anything that brings him down, that’s what they are aiming for. I treated my patients based on the studies out of China and France – not because Trump suggested it.

RA: We have an ample supply of it – Bayer is the maker of it – it shows promise and we should be prescribing it for people.

JP: Texas will open soon I hear?

RA: I’m sure hoping so. Texas has not been as hard hit as New York City. We are more spread out and rural, so it’s harder for the virus to jump from person to person. We need to listen to the scientists and do it in a wise manner.

 

 

20200412u Day 103: Stock Market Thoughts and Predictions

Santa Cruz, CA: Last week the stock market had a good week – one of the best in quite a while. A few days ago I spoke to a friend from the future who is betting against the market. She is not alone. I just googled “hedge fund bets on sell off” and found the following – interesting from Nov. 22, 2019!

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Ray Dalio replied to the WSJ by posting that it is misleading to report that he had a bearish view of the stock market and that his hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, had no “net bet” that the stock market would fall. What seems clear is that he was hedging his stock portfolio to protect it from a drop in the overall market.

So, Ray was apparently feeling the recent market plunge back in October of last year and started buying “insurance” against a total market correction. It would require delving into conspiracy theories to ponder the reasons why he felt the need for such insurance. Perhaps he took notice of the Event 201 Pandemic Simulation Exercise. From the website:

Event 201, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact

In an article from almost a month ago, Bridgewater has placed even bigger bets – $15B against Europe and UK. From the article:

The world’s biggest hedge fund manager’s short positions amount to more than $5.3 billion in France and $4.7 billion in Germany, while in Spain its shorts add up to almost $1.4 billion and $821 million in three Italian companies.

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Data was not available to show whether Bridgewater, which has $160 billion in assets under management, holds more European stocks than it shorts.

Another hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman, posted about a 100x return on his company’s website:

On 23 March, we completed the exit of our hedges generating proceeds of $2.6bn for the Pershing Square funds, compared with premiums paid and commissions totaling $27m.

I’m sure if I searched I could find other examples of huge bets against the market. Given the fear caused by the pandemic, and the obvious negative effect it is going to cause on the world economies, a bet on the market failing seems like a safe one. However, my thought is that any bet on a failing market should be truly a hedge in this time of uncertainty and act to cushion the loss in value of a net long position. By being long on solid companies and adding a hedge against the entire market dropping, hedge fund managers should be able to sleep better at night.

My thoughts on where the stock market is going is all of the above. It will drop due to the increasing costs of the pandemic, it will rise due to the monetary and governmental stimulus, and it will stay the same due to the balance of these two. There are a set of universes for each of these three scenarios and I would like to plan so that my portfolio stays roughly the same in each of these cases.  For bonds, I like floating over fixed, shorter over longer, and treasuries over non-treasuries. For real estate, I like residential over commercial. For equities, I like American over non-American – although the stronger dollar is going to be a weight on American companies. For currencies, I like the Dollar over the Euro and Yuan and the Yen over the Dollar. For precious metals, I like Silver over Gold. There is a high likelihood that one or more fiat currencies experiences hyper inflation and the Dollar is not immune.

20200411S Day 102: Sheltering Solo

Santa Cruz, CA: I spent day 102 in my own place sheltered in place with only myself. For the prior month, I’ve been living in a community house with 8 or so other people. Now, I have a studio by myself – although it’s in the back of another community house with 8 or so other people. It’s a bit of a universe surfing hack to change the minimum amount of things between universes as you can in order to achieve the effect you want. So, while I could have moved into a studio that wasn’t in the back of a community house, it is more likely that I would have never moved at all and stayed in the universe where I was still in the original house. In a way it took less “free will energy” to move into my studio because it has characteristics of the universe from which I came.

There is enough difference though that I should be able to make other changes that I want. One is to get back to more creating vs. consuming. In going down the wormhole of the coronavirus pandemic, I found myself consuming more and creating less. So, to extract myself from the coronavirus pandemic set of universes, I should have an easier time if I also move toward creating more and consuming less. I’m still targeting June 8th, 2020, as the date to exit this pandemic wormhole and look for a new wormhole to enter.