More corona humor: a “relaxing” guided meditation with Curb Your Enthusiasm’s J.B. Smoove on YouTube
The coronavirus has given rise to a host of new slang terms. Here, from Dictionary.com, are some that you may already have added to your vocabulary:
* rona – an informal shortening of coronavirus (“Yeah, I don’t know about you, but homeschooling my kids during the rona ends up in a lot of Frozen 2.”)
* doom-scrolling (“I was up until 2 am last night doom-scrolling about coronavirus news.”)
* covidiot (“Don’t be a covidiot by going to the park to play hoops with your buds!”)
* moronavirus – another way of saying covidiot (“My roommate is such a moronavirus. He went to the beach today with a huge group of friends.”)
* quarantini/coronarita (“Frozen pizza in the oven? Paw Patrol queued up? Think it’s time for a quarantini/coronarita.”)
* coronials, quaranteens, coronababies – the hypothetical generation of children conceived during COVID-19
* covidivorce – filed as a result of a couple’s experience in quarantine
* coronacation – corona-compelled staycations due to cancelled classes, shifts, etc.
* zoom-bombing – when uninvited guests disrupt a virtual meeting on Zoom with obscene, violent, or offensive words/images
Click here to watch Bill Gates’s chilling warnings to Trump – before the coronavirus outbreak hit.
A really cool and easy way to make a mask…Video
More viral humor: “Butt-Cleaning Robot – No More Toilet Paper!”
Cyber trickery is raging now that millions of Americans are working remotely. Here are some tips to avoid being duped:
* Verify that you’ve got the right person when reaching out to any publicly published help or support lines.
* Be on the alert for phishing attempts, including social media, text, or phone scams.
* Never click links in emails, texts, chat messages, etc. unless you are 100% sure you know who or where it came from. Even then, check again.
* Never answer calls from a number you do not recognize. If they have something important to say, they will leave a message.
* Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. will never call you because your licenses are out of date. If someone calls claiming to be from one of these companies regarding an outdated license, hang up.
(Source WestWord)
In what world can you take this seriously?
The MIT Enterprise Forum of South Florida recently hosted an online forum titled “The Importance of Diversity and Inclusion in the Workforce and Leadership Teams.” They hyped it this way:
In addition to discussing topics on diversity and inclusion we plan to discuss technology tools that have allowed the expansion of telecommunication of business practices in the global market. How can companies of all sizes leverage these tool to enhance and improve work life balance even during a time of global or personal crisis…. Please join us to hear from experts in different industries how they are coming out ahead even in these challenging times.
Facts That Informed This Essay
* The seasonal flu kills between 12,000 and 61,000 people a year.
* In Italy, about 10% of people known to be infected have died. In Iran and Spain, the case fatality rate is higher than 7%. But in South Korea, it’s less than 1.5%. And in Germany, the figure is close to 0.5%.
* A study published in mid-March estimated that in Wuhan, the chance that someone who developed coronavirus symptoms would die was actually 1.4%.
* Estimates for the West Nile virus, which appeared in the US in 1999, were higher than 10%. But wider testing eventually found hundreds of thousands of people who’d been infected but never got sick enough to notice. The real case fatality rate in the US turned out to be less than 1%.
* There are only about 180,000 ventilators in the US and only enough respiratory therapists and critical-care staff to safely look after 100,000 ventilated patients.
* Coronaviruses tend to be winter infections that wane or disappear in the summer. That may also be true for COVID-19, but seasonal variations might not sufficiently slow the virus when it has so many immunologically naive hosts to infect.
* When people are infected by the milder human coronaviruses that cause cold-like symptoms, they remain immune for less than a year. By contrast, the few who were infected by the original SARS virus, which was far more severe, stayed immune for much longer. Assuming that COVID-19 lies somewhere in the middle, people who recover from it might be protected for a couple of years.
* The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed and distributed a faulty test in February. Independent labs created alternatives, but were mired in bureaucracy from the FDA. In a crucial month when the American caseload shot into the tens of thousands, only hundreds of people were tested.
On Friday, I talked about what might happen in the gold market and explained how I use bullion gold as a wealth management strategy. I referenced ideas from Tom Dyson. Here are his latest thoughts.
Gold: The Basics
* The price of the metal has increased substantially over the past 50 years.
* Its price is driven, like most commodities, by supply and demand.
* The lion’s share of the world’s gold is held in the vaults of governments and central banks, but a good deal is also held in storage by individuals or worn as jewelry.
* Gold is also used in industry, although this factor is less important in terms of its price because the quantities used are modest.
* Gold continues to be mined, but the supplies are limited and the mining gets more expensive as stores are depleted. Production has leveled off since 2016.
* Investment demand, especially from large ETFs, is another factor underlying the price of gold.
* The price of gold is generally inversely related to the value of the US dollar because the metal is dollar-denominated. As a result, gold is often seen as a hedge against inflation.