As reminders…

Alpha–Variant first identified in the UK

Beta–Variant first identified in South Africa

Gamma–Variant first identified in Brazil

Delta–Variant first identified in India

Also as a reminder:

Ebola:

–Yep, we are back again with another Ebola outbreak! I’ve been a little slow to bring it up, because this one is still a little confusing. Back in Beni, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (yes, it’s in the DRC, yet again), a 3 year old came down with abdominal pain, trouble breathing, and blood in both vomit and stool. This is in the same region that had an Ebola outbreak declared officially over in May, 2021. So our 3 year old unfortunately passes away back on October 6th. As the investigation develops, turns out the neighbors of this kid in the town where he is from had the father and two children die within a two week span at the end of September. Even though they had signs and symptoms suggestive of Ebola, in a region familiar with Ebola, no one tested for Ebola in the neighbor’s family. The first to get sick was a little girl with fever, headache and general malaise in early September. She gets better and goes home, only to show up a week later with diarrhea and vomiting, and dies two days after admission. She pops a malaria antigen test positive. This -should- have been followed by microscopic review of a blood smear to confirm, but it’s not clear if this was done. Then the father gets similar symptoms, and dies. No idea what they tested him for. Finally, another daughter gets sick about two weeks later, similar symptoms, pops a malaria antigen test positive, but dies within two days of admission. No samples were taken for possible Ebola from any of these patients, although it’s all obviously very suspicions. Clearly, they were exposed to malaria, but that’s a little fast for malaria, and so the question has been if these three cases were Ebola too. As of last week, reports in the Telegraph suggested that the Ebola detected in the kid was hardly changed from the Ebola strain that caused the last outbreak. So it’s probable that this was reactivation of Ebola from the last outbreak from an Ebola Jane, and I would say at least likely it got the neighbors AND the three year old who is the only confirmed case thus far.

Thanks to the reader who sent the Telegraph article, who was a little surprised that the journalist writing the article seemed surprised that Ebola could do this. Our reader remembers us covering Ebola’s ability to do exactly this (in fact, years later) which we covered in detail earlier this year.

So if you needed another reminder that the way modern press is done is that there is a race to get everything on the internet first, attract as many eyeballs as possible to it, then do it all over again. This means that a reporter on any given topic is having to become an “expert” in it in a few hours, maybe a few minutes, rarely a few days. If it’s a topic they are not already an expert on, that can be a challenge when it’s things like “current understanding of Ebola biology.”

What other complicated topics might reporters have to tackle, synthesize some sort of simplified explanation, and either NOT know pertinent new facts (literally not knowing what they don’t know about the subject) or just get some of them wrong because they were moving too fast and missed or confused key points?

Again, if you did not read this, worth thinking about, especially when encountering articles trying to “explain” things or postulating causes.

Anyways, as far as the outbreak goes, no new confirmed cases in the last couple weeks. They have traced contacts as best as they can and are starting ring vaccination again. So far, no re-ignition of an outbreak, but it’s clear that Ebola needs to be a little higher up in the differential diagnosis of doctors in the area, so we’ll be monitoring for a bit in case anything pops up.

And yes, it’s not lost on me that this is a perfect illustration of how Ebola will one day, in our lifetimes, jump borders on one of many Ebola Janes out there and cause a mini-outbreak in some part of the world where it does not enter the differential diagnosis (because the doctors there have never seen it in real life before) until it has gotten several weeks head start spreading.

Coronavirus:

–We do have yet another variant of potential concern. There is an offshoot of the delta variant circulating in the UK, associated with recent level to slightly increasing cases there, that is now 8% of new cases. It is not clear yet if this variant is even more transmissible or is getting around antibodies (either vaccine or natural). That said, it has been a slow climb since July for this variant, more suggestive of surprising persistence rather a delta-like sudden leap in high infectivity. My guess, pending additional data, is that this variant is only slightly more contagious than delta (if that), and thus is doing a slightly better job at finding the last susceptible hold outs in the population.

–Around the horn then, as you might expect, the UK is in the midst of a steady rise in new cases at the moment. Russia is where the biggest action is currently though. A recent spike in cases there has driven their Rt quite high, and Putin has instituted a week long lock down to try and regain some control of the epidemiology. Poland is also in the midst of a solid wave. Chile and Paraguay have had upticks in the last week which may portend waves for them by early November. Singapore has made headlines. Despite a very high vaccination rate (>80%) among the general public and strictly enforced coronavirus control measures, the very low rate of SARS-CoV-2 transmission has in recent weeks shot up like a rocket. Singapore blames this on release of some control procedures to allow more immigrant workers into the city state, and they brought SARS-CoV-2 with them. Since they are less vaccinated on average than Singapore citizens, and generally in more crowded conditions, this has been the bulk of the cases. Still, like everywhere else in the world, there are some breakthrough cases as well.

–In the US, new case numbers continue to plunge, and even the northern states have seen a relative leveling this week. The Rt for the US has dropped below 0.7 at points this week.

–Of course, big news early this week was Colin Powell passing away from COVID complications despite complete vaccination. He was in his 80s, and by report, was being treated for multiple myeloma when he contracted COVID. Multiple myeloma is a cancer of B-cells (the ones making antibodies, specifically). The mainstay of therapy, if the patient is healthy enough for it, is bone marrow transplant–which requires the entire immune system be nuked from orbit so the donor bone marrow will take. Most centers use age of 77 as one of the main cut-offs for determining bone marrow transplant eligibility (due to expected years of life after the transplant at that age). So it’s unlikely, but not impossible, they were attempting bone marrow transplant given his age. If he was ineligible for a bone marrow transplant, he would most likely have been on either lenalidomide and low dose dexamethosone or lenalidomide, low dose dex, and bortezomib depending entirely on how “frail” he was by medical definition.

Regardless, all of those result in immunosuppression. After all, it’s rogue antibody-making B-cells you are trying to stop with those treatments. Innocent antibody producing B-cells are going to get caught in the cross fire.

So in short, Colin Powell was the almost the prototype of the fully vaccinated patient who is still more likely to have problems if they actually get COVID. In fact, pretty much the exact patient you hope does not catch COVID–and the exact patient you want to be vaccinated to give as much protection as you can, knowing the “as you can” is the most critical part of that phrase.

Again, the vaccines are quite effective (especially at keeping people out of the hospital with COVID), but they are not perfect. Just to throw up last week’s chart again (since it’s digitally handy as I type this):

Look at the 65+ group, even with full vaccination. There are still 0.41/100,000 breakthrough hospitalizations there. That’s MUCH lower than the 3.86/100,000 without vaccination, but means some people are still “winning” a bad lottery. While the overall mortality from COVID is low, that’s conditional. For example, IF you wind up in the ICU with COVID, the mortality is well into the double digits.

Mr. Powell did everything he could to minimize his risk by getting the vaccine. Unfortunately, it does not eliminate the risk. And for Colin Powell specifically, his age and known medical history make him much more likely than average for things to go south if he were to get a breakthrough case.

It’s not clear to me from reports if Mr. Powell’s COVID was caught in time for some of the therapies currently on the market for early COVID either. That might have improved his chances, but again, does not completely eliminate the risk.

So we get a few points from this. 1) The vaccines absolutely work–one high profile “bad lottery” winner does not mean that the vaccines are a public health failure. 2) The vaccines are not perfect either. They will -NOT- completely eliminate risk, but will reduce it a -ton-. Other things you can do to improve your risk is early testing, especially if symptoms are getting nasty, so some of the current and forthcoming treatments for early COVID become eligible. A healthy diet, a healthy weight, and exercise will also go a long way to improving your constitution, and thus your odds, if COVID comes calling. For diet, strongly recommend Layne Norton (Biolayne on YouTube)–plenty of good videos there.

For exercise, the key is to find something active you enjoy doing, can do safely, and thus will do it a lot. Fit your calories to your activity level, and your diet to your calories.

Coming back to vaccine lessons learned, while the vaccine will reduce the risk if you are high risk and still get breakthrough COVID, they do -not- completely eliminate the risk. This is having active treatments for acute COVID is just as important as the vaccines, particularly for -individual- risk if you get COVID.

Otherwise, requiem aeternam, and may his family and all others impacted by COVID losses find peace and comfort.

–In other news this week, you may have encountered headlines like the following this week:

Whoa! “Super-immunity” against COVID by getting a vaccine on top of natural infection!

TELL ME MORE! INJECT IT STRAIGHT INTO MY VEINS!!!

(just not literally, as the article specifically cautions against getting -deliberately- infected by COVID to get some of this sweet, sweet super-immunity for yourself)

So if you clicked that Yahoo/USA today headline or something similar you encountered this week, what you got is a take on a recent peer-reviewed report in Science, which is a pretty major journal. This is not the Journal of Obscure Medical Trivia or anything. It’s a good report and you can find it here. It looked at antibody and T-cell responses, both CD4 and CD8 subtypes of T-cells, in patients with just the vaccine and those who got vaccinated on top of a recovered infection. They looked for type of response, magnitude and duration.

Don’t worry–we won’t sciencepalooza this report. Instead, I am going to present a series of “money” quotes from the published scientific paper itself and translate them from science-ese in italics below.

• What The Authors In Science Said: “However, due to distinct trajectories, both SARS-CoV-2 naïve and SARS-CoV-2 recovered individuals had similar frequencies of Spike+ and Spike+ RBD+ memory B cells at 6 months post-vaccination (Fig. 2C), perhaps reflecting some upper limit to the frequencies of antigen-specific memory B cells that can be maintained long-term.”

Translation: 6 months after vaccination, patients who had COVID before vaccination and those who didn’t had similar levels of anti-Spike memory B cells. There may be an upper limit on the number of memory B-cells your body can keep around, and both vaccination and natural immunity plus vaccination seem to reach it.

• What the Authors In Science Said: “Memory T cell responses have also been shown to be less affected by variants of concern than humoral immune responses.”

Translation: Remember when we said in previous updates that T-cell response, and T-cell memory response, is generated by both vaccine and natural immunity and may be as, if not more, important than B-cells, especially in acute infection? Well, what they are saying here (and actually citing 2 other studies) is that memory T-cell responses are less affected by variants of concern–mutations in the spike protein that help SARS-CoV-2 hide from antibodies are NOT helping it hide from T-cells, and probably why no variant yet has fully broken through established immunity.

• What the Authors In Science Said: “Taken together, these data indicate that mRNA vaccination generates durable SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ T cell memory in individuals who were not previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and only transiently boosts these responses in SARS-CoV-2 recovered individuals.”

Translation: The mRNA vaccines generate good T-cell responses in patients who had not caught COVID before. These T-cell responses are only -temporarily- increased above vaccination alone in patients who recovered from COVID, then got the vaccine. Vaccine boost in these patients is minimal and temproary.

• What the Authors In Science Said: “While cTfh cells may be important in the early stages of vaccine response, these data indicate that the durable component of the memory CD4+ T cell response at 6 months post-vaccine is largely composed of Th1 cells, and boosting of pre-existing immunity with mRNA vaccine does not change the magnitude or subset composition of the CD4+ memory T cell response.”

Translation: Getting a vaccine booster shot after you have natural immunity does not change the magnitude or type of memory T-cells.

• What the Authors In Science Said: “Vaccination uniformly shifted SARS-CoV-2 recovered individuals at 3 months post-vaccine to a region defined by high levels of all antigen-specific immune parameters analyzed (Fig. 6A). This region was largely unoccupied by SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees, underscoring the unique potency of reactivating pre-existing immune responses. These uniquely high responses were transient, however, as SARS-CoV-2 recovered individuals at 6 months post-vaccine shifted toward the UMAP space occupied by memory timepoints in SARS-CoV-2 naïve individuals at 3 and 6 months post-vaccine.”

Translation: Any boost you get in response to get a vaccine after recovering from COVID lasts 3 months at the most and is back to vaccine-only baseline by 6 months.

• What the Authors In Science Said: “Indeed, a longer interval between infection and vaccination correlated with a significantly greater neutralizing antibody recall response to D614G, with similar trends for B.1.351 neutralization and for binding antibodies to Spike and RBD (Fig. 6F). Thus, these data suggest that there may be some benefit to a longer interval between initial priming and subsequent restimulation or boost of immune responses to SARS-CoV-2.”

Translation: Giving a vaccine dose to a patient who literally just got over COVID doesn’t do anything to help their immune response. Vaccines sometime later, at least months later, appears to be the best bet for the small and -temporary- benefits in immune response seen when recovered patients got a “booster” like this.

As a further speculation by your author here, this also suggests that the immune system does indeed rally the troops when it runs into SARS-CoV-2 again, and the immune response comes back vigorously. This will make determining susceptibility by antibody titers alone a clinical challenge, because that titer can drop, only to roar back when the immune system meets SARS-CoV-2 later down the road. Your memory cells are lions in winter. While lower titers correlate with increased risk of breakthrough symptoms, that correlation is imperfect for this exact reason.

• What the Authors In Science Said: “Overall, these data suggest that boosting of infection-induced immunity with mRNA vaccination does not dramatically enhance already durable memory B cell or memory T cell responses. Rather, the benefit of vaccination in the context of pre-existing immunity may be limited to a significant but transient increase in antibody, with some of this benefit to antibody levels remaining at 6 months.”

Translation: Emphasis mine in the quote above. Antibody levels get higher for 3 months, may even stay a little high at 6 months, if you get a vaccine after recovering from COVID. But it does NOT enhance already durable memory B and T cell responses you got naturally when you beat COVID and doesn’t seem an especially compelling medical reason to get vaccinated if you already have antibodies from a previous natural infection.

In other words, the conclusion is the exact damn opposite of the Yahoo headline and one sentence synopsis above, and calls into question whether they, or the “experts” they quoted therein, even bothered to read this paper.

–I have forgotten to include this in the last 3-4 updates, but no longer! Speaking of persistent immunity (this one looking at those recovered from COVID naturally), we are now up a year detecting adequate titers of antibodies after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Read about it here. As a reminder, SARS-CoV-1 antibodies were still detectable 17-18 years later in patients in South Korea who got over the infection with the older cousin. This current paper also emphasizes something we have in previous updates–detectable antibodies are more likely the more severe the initial COVID symptoms were.

–And going back to vaccines for a moment, FDA is allowing “mix and match” boosters. This appears to be based mostly on the safety experience from places like the UK, which has been doing this for its second dose for awhile.

–We also had some more all-timers from Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci was quoted as saying that the J&J vaccine, which did, indeed, get recommendations for a second shot for complete vaccination after we went to press last week, “should have been two shot from the beginning.” He even intimated that the FDA considered insisting on a second dose based on the data at the time, but opted against.

If you’re wondering what that data is, you can find the publication of it here. J&J itself showed ~67% efficacy against moderate to severe COVID overall after just one shot. That is comparable to single dose results for mRNA vaccines like Pfizer (maybe even a little better), but definitely less than the 90% of the mRNA vaccines with two doses which were already available at the time. Real world data has been less robust with the J&J, probably a combination of it being used less often and thus not making many of the studies we have Sciencepalooza’d recently, but the trend has been towards that 67% efficacy or so.

So yes, Hypothetical Reader, I can hear you asking: “Wait, if it should have been two dose from the beginning, and that was the behind the scenes interpretation of the data they submitted at the FDA, why the hell didn’t they just make the J&J two doses when they gave it an emergency use authorization? Or at least recommend a booster for it sooner than this?”

I hear you Hypothetical Reader!

If I had to hazard a guess–and I do, because I was not behind the curtains in Oz when they made this call–they authorized a “one shot” vaccine figuring it would get more people who were less likely to sign up for any part of a two dose regimen at least some protection.

And to answer your other question, Hypothetical Reader, yes, the J&J vaccine was the one they were giving preferentially to the homeless, rural and other access challenged demographics–precisely because it was “one dose is sufficient”. Here’s one of many contemporary articles about that exact use: https://www.wsj.com/articles/johnson-johnsons-covid-19-vaccine-emerges-as-preferred-shot-for-homeless-11617530400

The lack of transparency about the exact decision process on the “one shot” approval for J&J is troubling. This seems to be an awful lot like “surgical masks will not protect you from COVID” advice from Dr. Fauci followed by “masks are of course required” debacle that he then went on to proudly say was a necessary lie. Dr. Fauci’s statements on the behind the scenes interpretation of the J&J data are of similar ilk. Whether or not this is the case, it certainly gives the impression that a less effective single dose regimen was given full imprimatur because the real decision was to get a single dose something out there to get vaccine reluctants or hard to vaccinate populations at least some protection. Why the “white lie” was deemed necessary, and a nation of grown adults, could not be told that this vaccine likely needed a booster, but would give at least some protection in single dose and was thus better than nothing, escapes me. The white lies don’t help. They just destroy the credibility of the authorities, who continue to reinforce their willingness to obfuscate to you for what they believe your best interests are.

The demonstrated willingness of those in charge to lie to us for their perception of our benefit, and their belief that it is necessary to do so, is troubling.

Fauci should have been fired the deliberate “white lie” over masks at the very beginning of this. He’s still not helping now.

Well, other than helping the Bonfire of Institutional Credibilities grow and grow…

–And my fellow physicians on this list, let me be clear, it is your credibility that Dr. Fauci is immolating, because your white coat is seen by your patients as the part of the entire medical decision making process that they contact directly. Even though these are decisions clearly being made on politics that you have no part in making. The “COVID grenades” that they are tossing so casually while they are in your examination rooms being seen for something else? (if they are not now, keep watching–they will). At the risk of the mind reading fallacy, I will postulate that those are really a test of you, my fellow physician. And your patients are really watching your face closely as you respond–trying to decide if you are as ethically challenged as the guy they trot out on TV to tell them white lies about their health and what is best for it.

And no, you didn’t sign up for that.

–Socioeconomic:

Headlines are coming almost faster than can be covered. So it’s a lot, but I actually should be able to keep this brief. Let’s start here first.

It was the best of times:

It was the worst of times:

We’ll come back to the “worst of times” again in a moment. I want to discuss the “best of times” headlines first, because this “Americans are buying just too much stuff you guys!” and that the economy is secretly AWESOME has become another one of those “appears from nowhere, with everyone using the same language and ideas” stories.

It’s a narrative.

Most of which is based on the US Census Bureau’s monthly report of retail sales, showing that retail sales are up 0.7% in September, a double digit increase over last year’s (COVID lockdown) September, which, despite the lock down, was higher than the 2019 September numbers.

Now, I know what you are thinking, Hypothetical Reader, because it is exactly what I was thinking reading this:

“The US Census Bureau reports the estimate of monthly retail sales from the gross receipts in a survey of retailers in a variety of industries and goods. So total sales went up–but the problem right now appears to be shortages of actual stuff everywhere, soooo…..

…Does the US Census Bureau count the actual units sold when it does this survey?”

Because here’s the thing, just to take a ridiculous example. Say in August, widgets are priced $1 per widget. US retailers sell 10 million widgets. The US Census Bureau will report this as $10,000,000 of sales of widgets in August. Now it’s September. The price of widgets has gone up–they are now $12,000,000 per widget. One widget is sold for $12 million. If they don’t adjust the data for units sold, the US Census Bureau will report this is $12,000,000 in sales of widgets in September–a 20% increase in the sale of widgets in one month! Huzzah! Or, on the other hand, you are just capturing inflation if the same number of widgets moved, but the price was higher because of inflation. In fact, with enough inflation, you can sell less widgets (because more people think them too expensive right now) and still see increased gross receipts if the US Census Bureau is not making any kind of correction for price of the goods sold in their survey.

So does the US Census Bureau adjust this data for price of goods sold, to get an accurate measure of how much stuff is really moving in the economy?

I looked it up. That’s right–where else are you getting pandemic scientific commentary that also checks the methods for the US Census Bureau monthly retail sales reports? Where else?!?!?!

Oh, gotdamut…. The US Census Bureau adjusts for everything but price changes.

So is it true? Is there an everything shortage because we have bought all the things on Amazon, and really, it’s just because Prime two day delivery has it all arriving at once at the shipyards and the warehouses and they are just having so much trouble sorting it all out you guys?

Hard to say. The other metric that keeps getting tossed around in these articles is the inventory to sales ratio, which you can see here:

That’s the inventory retailers have on hand per sale of that inventory. A higher number means a higher chance they have another widget in the back to put on the shelf for someone else the moment you walk out the door having bought a new widget for yourself. The spike in 2020 is the COVID shutdowns last spring/summer and the drawdown has been sharp since then. The question is whether that is because so much stuff is moving through the economy, being bought and consumed, or if that drawdown in inventory because less stuff is arriving in the back of the store to be put on the shelves. Both result in empty shelves, taken to their extremes. The truth is most likely some combination of the two. Per this recent article, warehouses do seem to be full–but at the same time, stuff is now taking longer than ever to transit to where it is needed to be.

The global “just in time” inventory system is at the point of “cascading disruption.” That’s a complex system, and the “answers” and “explanations” that, no really, everything is awesome–people are just buying way too much stuff to sort it all, you guys, is a little too facile.

In fact, we’ll get back to reasons to doubt that explanation in a moment…

In other socioeconomic news, you have hospital strikes in California over wages and working conditions involving thousands. A Minnesota hospital had to close its ER and urgent care due to strikes among its nursing staff over pay and benefits. Other strikes and walkouts have been popping up. Boeing employees are lining the streets against vaccine mandates at their company. Delta walked back its vaccine mandate, and just Tuesday, Southwest dropped the plan for unpaid leave for any employees not compliant with its vaccine mandate. Employees of Southwest also picketed their headquarters over the weekend about vaccine mandates.

(Following up Southwest from last week’s report is Epsilon Theory’s better and more nuanced approach–the flight outages were probably a combination of managerial incompetence and at least some call offs by disgruntled staff, who have been disgruntled for awhile)

That said, there continue to be internet rumors of “sickouts” and walkouts in many other companies with impending vaccine mandate deadlines too. The spokesman for the Chief of Naval Personnel was quoted by Task and Purpose as stating that sailors who are discharged for refusing vaccination could have to repay special and incentive pays, retention bonuses, money from any of the Navy’s collegiate programs including the Navy Health Professions Scholarship Program and Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate course, among others.

The fact the Navy even thought to make those threats gives one pause.

That said, the Navy reports that 94% of active duty sailors are fully vaccinated at this point, and 72% of reservists, so readiness may be less affected than morale.

Among all of the pay/benefit and vaccine mandate strikes, you are starting to see headlines about “capital versus labor” and I even saw one (before I saved, unfortunately) with employment experts claiming this is the best possible time to ask for a raise. Plenty of e-ink being spilled wondering if this is the beginnings of labor re-capturing some of the share of income it has lost to capital/management, and the ratio of CEO pay to the median of said CEO’s employees coming back down to earth a bit.

A lot of that will depend on height and duration of inflation, and if any pay raises are over and above the rate of inflation. Otherwise, we’re just losing ground slightly less quickly.

There appears to be no near term end in sight for inflationary pressures. As “worst of times” above mentioned, China is still having inflation and power generation issues. India is now having trouble sourcing enough coal to keep the lights on. Zinc has hit a 14 year high in the past week as European smelters have had to halve output due to the energy crunch. Before you ask, 3/4ths of zinc is used industrially as galvanized iron or steel to protect from corrosion, and as alloys in bronze and brass. Craziest place zinc issues might show up for you? The US penny is only copper plated. It’s actually mostly zinc, and there have been talks about phasing it out for a long time now because it costs more to mint a penny than what a penny is actually worth. And that linked article is from 2019, before the 2021 zinc price spike.

Aluminum output has also been reduced by major producers around the world. Aluminum, along with carbon and magnesium based alloys, has been a major part of “lightweighting” cars, especially important for hybrids and electric vehicles to maximize miles per charge of their very heavy main batteries. But also for gas engine vehicles as well, to maximize fuel efficiency. Aluminum has a ton of other uses, including canned beverages. If you have seen a noticeable absence of these goods, well, it’s either because, per the White House Press Secretary, everyone buying them before you get to the store, or because the price and availability of aluminum for canning has been a major issue for nearly a year now. And getting acutely worse.

Anecdotally, speaking to some readers with long experience in manufacturing, the strain on factories is worse than what you are reading. Some of them are having difficulty getting mission critical parts from suppliers because the suppliers are themselves having mission critical issues getting raw materials. And the impression I get is that this is very much a supply issue, and not running short because the demand is so high they are just burning through all available inventory.

And just to save us time, here’s some quick hitters via Rabobank:

“China is already not exporting fertilizer; or refined fuels; and now it is cutting magnesium production, where it holds a near-total monopoly. It will no doubt serve the local market first, as with phosphates and fuel, but this will hit exports, and leaves EU car producers with stocks that will be depleted by end-November, after which factories likely grind to a halt. Note that in 2001, Europe was forced to close its remaining magnesium production as a consequence of dumped Chinese imports. In North America, Ford has already had to shutter a plant in Mexico due to a shortage of materials.”

And finally, numerous states across the nation have schools that are suspending school lunches because they cannot get enough food, or food consistently, from their suppliers. Seriously. Just Google it.

Now, this is NOT a shortage of food. The problem is getting the food and other supplies to where it is supposed to be.

This is an under-reported problem. For some kids, the school breakfast and lunch programs are the only way they eat during the school year. We covered previously that loss of access to these meals was one of the major challenges for prolonged periods of remote learning during lockdowns last year. Now, it’s supply chain problems getting food to the schools.

This is why I have some doubts when the White House Press Secretary tells me these issues are a “good thing” and really because we are all buying too much shit on Amazon. Because I cannot fathom how hitting that “1 click buy” button is happening so often that food for school lunches is not making it to the schools. Those are not easy dots to connect.

All I can say for certain is that the data suggest there is a big problem getting things to where they need to be. For the globalized economy we have, that is a huge problem. We also clearly have issues coming down on the supply side as well, with all the stories above of shuttered or reduced production of major, important raw materials. Growing, global inability to source enough energy cheaply will result in supply issues as well, and anecdotally, already is affecting ability to produce new stuff. Both of those make stuff scarce, which only makes inflationary pressure worse, which leads to strikes and walkouts because everything costs more so people need to be paid more.

Again, not my area of expertise, but right now we have growing problems getting the stuff we have to where it needs to be, and what certainly looks like near term issues coming making new stuff to replace the stuff we have used. My gestalt is that we are at “cascading disruption”. The risk remains if this tilts towards “cascading failure.”

Looking around at the international leadership, their character, their track records of leading through global crisis here recently… they got this right?

Right?

–Seems like a good time to link these sections of previous updates again:

23 Feb 2020

16 Apr 2020

04 Jun 2020

–Completely unrelated, any updates on Ghislaine Maxwell? Any new leads on that whole Epstein pedophilia ring thing? FBI ever get its time to talk to Prince Andrew? Haven’t been able to find anything lately, and they’ve had some time to develop the situation. Certainly.

–As for China’s hypersonic missile test (or “spacecraft” as China’s state media put it), if that is for real, that changes the calculus completely for Taiwan. That puts carrier groups in range no matter where in the deep ocean they are, and the “defend Taiwan by standing off in the deep ocean and using carrier based planes and missiles to close the strait of Malacca” strategy goes out the window. To defend that threat, you probably need missiles in space to kill anything hypersonic the moment it launches. Again, this is why Space Force, much mocked when Trump announced, has not gone away…. You’re in a new Cold War, and a new kind of arms race, for sure.

–Your chances of catching Ebola are equivalent to the chances that a shark, attracted as they are by electromagnetic radiation underwater, senses the flow of electrons in a deep underwater cable somewhere in the ocean. These cables are the hardware of the internet, connecting entire continents and letting information and communication flow. The shark doesn’t know this. The shark doesn’t care. It’s one giant swimming stomach, in eternal motion in the seas, and has been for millions of years. And the evolution of hundreds of millions of years causes the shark to do what it knows and does best.

A sudden, powerful flex of the tail, and a terrifying, crushing blow from the jaws, and one of these underwater cables is snapped. Bitten clean through.

Tragically, this bite comes at an inopportune moment. A very critical transfer was coming through that exact cable at that exact time, and disrupts a software change in sensitive infrastructure. The system crashes, and even more unfortunately, this is perceived as a work of hackers. Sabotage. A deliberate attack, in a region where nation state tensions were already running high.

They have planned. They have prepared. They release their own hackers, striking back at the nation state they believe responsible.

Swaths of the internet start to go out. Policies labeling this as acts of war are acted upon. Planes, missiles and drones spin up.

The hypersonics and ICBMs cross in mid air.

Beneath the waves, a disappointed and still hungry shark swims away, off again on the eternal prowl. The land above is nuclear ash, which, for a time, blots the sun. The shark knows only that the waters got a little colder for awhile. Certain food got harder to find. Others got easier. And then the waters warmed again. The cables it mistook for an electrical signal from the nervous system of a giant, wounded fish and bit? Never makes that mistake again.

The cables have all gone silent, quiet in the dark eternal night along the ocean floors.

–Your chances of catching coronavirus are equivalent to that shark scenario being more likely than you think.

Maybe someone should update this one?

<Paladin>