3 Minute Gold News

A synopsis of The Council on Foreign Relations discussion on threats to global health and biosecurity amid the worldwide coronavirus outbreak.

by: Elaine Diane Taylor

PAST PANDEMICS
Seasonal flu is very transmissible and has a mortality rate of .1%.

SARS was less transmissible but has a mortality rate of 9 – 10%.

MERS was less transmittable but has a mortality rate of 36%.

The pandemics we’ve seen in our lifetimes – 1957, 1968 and 2009 – had a mortality of 1.3, 1.4, and 1.6%.

The catastrophic pandemic of 1918 (The Spanish Flu) had a mortality of 1.82%.

CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus, Covid-19, is a highly transmissible virus that has a calculated mortality rate of 2%.

It’s really lower than that because the only calculation now is from the cases that come to the attention of health care providers.

There are many more cases that haven’t been tested, or have no symptoms or minimal symptoms.

When you expand the number of cases by multiples, five-fold, to include the ones with no or minimal symptoms then the mortality rate should be 1% or less.

A person with no or minimal symptoms transmits the disease easily.

The testing going on today is only at labs.

There is no point-of-care test available yet.

The CDC test is accurate but not sensitive enough to test positive if the person is newly infected.

We don’t yet know the magnitude of this virus.

We can care for the few travel related cases so far.

We use identification, isolation, and contact tracing.

But what about the countries that can’t afford to do that? (India? African continent?)

The more their cases cascade into a sustained transmission the more it becomes a classic pandemic.

There’s now a WHO team in Beijing. It will help to get a handle on this and understand it more.

We don’t know the magnitude of this but what we do know is very disturbing.

80 – 90% of U.S. health care products are sourced from China or India, and India gets its raw materials from China.

There could be a significant impact.

If China crashes then the U.S. has a significant problem.

If this turns into a pandemic then the strategy changes from “containment” to “mitigation”. Things like having people stay in their own homes, tele-working, closing schools, and social distancing.

Scientists are modelling out the .1% mortality rate of the flu to a 1% mortality rate for coronavirus, and will analyze what that means in terms of hospitals’ ability to manage the cases, and other needs like supply chains.

For example, N95 masks flew off the shelves and you can’t find them anywhere.

Health and National Security are intertwined.

The 1918 Flu happened during WWI, and more soldiers died of the flu than died of combat actions.

The Diamond Princess showed the virus has a high degree of transmissibility.

We’re in historic times.

The race against the microbe.

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Fourteen Days

All best practices fall on the grass
Perfecting the silent pass
All fine intentions cruising at last
Take to the sea and the task
Clustering rage
Recounting ways
Trust in the microbrewed age
Has sailed
For sale
All is hidden what ails.
All best practices glide round the globe
Perfecting the silent pass
All fine intentions homeward at last
Take to the sky and the task
Harrowing gasp
Nothing to mask
Trust in the media age
Has paled
Pale
horses graze on the past.

Fourteen days at last.

words and music | Elaine Diane Taylor

©2020 Elaine Art & Media

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From the World Health Organization press conference today, February 21, 2020:

There’s a narrowing window of time to contain the virus.

There’s a rapid increase in cases outside China.

Scientists around the world are working on the data and they will give their analysis & recommendations. The WHO will then pass any decisions on to the public.

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My thoughts…

A few days ago the WHO was urging countries to get ready for the arrival of the coronavirus Covid-19. They kept saying there’s only a window of time to contain it. Their aim is to have the health care sector ready before they start testing more people. As stated above, there are many cases out there that aren’t being tested because symptoms are mild or non-existence, and they don’t count in the number of cases yet. Yet the infected person can be passing on the virus without knowing.

Plus, everyone is very concerned with supply chain issues. China manufactures so much of what we use. Might be a good idea to get a supply now before an official pandemic is declared, if it goes there. At that point the cats out of the bag. Good to have an emergency supply of food and water anyways.

My guess is that they are trying to buy time as they prepare hospitals for the spread, and rush to develop drugs to help. A vaccine is 18 months away.

The financial system is getting ready for a reset anyways. Maybe it will be done under the cover of the virus.

Gold and silver have risen, as they do in global uncertainty. Global capital has been in flight towards the States because the worldwide central banking system is strained to the mex, and the central banks have been flooding the world in new debt to try to keep the financial system afloat.

But in the last few days the metals have jumped. Up over $20 an ounce today. Concerns about how goods are going to be shipped and received from China, and maybe elsewhere soon, is starting to concern people. How will companies fulfill? I think this is just the beginning of the beginning. Always good to have a hedge.

GOLD PRICE

Today: Gold is at $1,642.70 U.S. per ounce.

via Kitco.com

Over the past week:

via Gold.org

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Nothing on this site is intended as individual investment advice. We’re all watching which way the wind is blowing.

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Coins and Crowns

words and music Elaine Diane Taylor
SOCAN/ASCAP
from the album Coins and Crowns available on iTunes

Single featured in Episode 1 of Mike Maloney’s documentary series Hidden Secrets of Money.

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Thank you to Jim Rickards for including me in his bestselling book The New Case for Gold.

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A Terrible Breeze (Nuclear War)

The news comes down
A little bluebird sings
Words of war
Fire and furious things
Of testing might
‘Til no patience knows
If keeping still
Still keeps you safe at home

It’s a terrible breeze
They speak of today
Of threats that used to live a world away
We all know wind
Can blow both ways
And a terrible breeze can blow it all away

A worldwide net
Sees our village grow
Until we all forget
What each one used to know
How a blind bird’s wings
Can reach the shore
And turn the wheel of peace and war

Village fools sinking down, down, down
Debt and gold wound in numbered shrouds
Deal of a life it’s bread and clowns
Can we afford another go around?
The news comes down.

It’s a terrible breeze. The news comes down.

Single available on iTunes

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Not Much of a Holiday (Bank Holidays and Media Persuasion)

words and music Elaine Diane Taylor

SOCAN/ASCAP

Single available on iTunes

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Preparing for the Fall live boutique album available on iTunes — featuring Wag the Dog, Black Swan Dive, American Pie and Gods of the Copybook Headings.

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The Gods of the Copybook Headings

words by Rudyard Kipling and music by Elaine Diane Taylor

SOCAN/ASCAP

from the album Preparing for the Fall available on iTunes

The copybooks of the early 1900s gave us all the wisdom we need. The sayings that were copied are the truths, the gods, of our world. All the empires who followed the gods of the marketplace instead have fallen, and there’s terror and slaughter when the gods of the copybook headings return. The lyrics are by Rudyard Kipling. One of my gurus.

Another Week on Wall Street

words and music Elaine Diane Taylor

SOCAN/ASCAP

from the album Coins and Crowns available on iTunes

See the bankers wave their Wall Street wands and conjure piles of paper green. Naked short selling is like betting that your neighbour’s house will burn down. But in this scenario it happens to burn down. If the bankers win then we lose the whole world as we know it. I wrote this in 2009, with a lyric “A little grease (Greece) is floating out to sea, and little pigs (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) are bobbing up and down, they’ll send a storm and we’ll see, when the tide goes out who’s naked on the beach“, and it’s coming on now. The world is changing as we know it.

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3 Minute Gold News – Coronavirus – Covid-19 – February 21, 2020