We may be immune to the Wuhan Flu

From Gail:

COVID-19 is incredibly contagious. COVID-19 transmits extremely easily from person to person. Interpersonal contact doesn’t need to be very long; a taxi driver can get the virus from a passenger, for example.

The virus likely remains active on inanimate surfaces such as paper, plastic, or metal for many days. Human pathogens may remain infectious for up to eight days.

The only way to avoid spreading COVID-19 seems to be geographic isolation.

Perhaps 80% of people seem to get a fairly light form of the COVID-19 illness. Groups that seem particularly prone to adverse outcomes include the elderly, smokers, those who are obese, and those with high blood pressure, diabetes, or poor immune systems. Males seem to have worse outcomes than females.

People with East Asian ancestry (Chinese, Japanese, or Vietnamese) may have a higher risk of adverse outcomes than those of European or African ancestry. One of the things that is targeted by the disease is the ACE2 receptor. Hungarian Jews have few of them.

"We also noticed that the only Asian donor (male) has a much higher ACE2-expressing cell ratio than white and African American donors (2.50% vs. 0.47% of all cells). This might explain the observation that the new Coronavirus pandemic and previous SARS-Cov pandemic are concentrated in Asia."

My conclusion is in the title. I am the most optimist person on Earth and the Illegally Occupied Territories.

Water consulting is bad business

My alma mother TAHAL Water Consulting is in trouble and its CEO Bracha has resignes after the failure of selling the company to FIMI Funds. The agreement was that FIMI Funds will invest up to US$35 million in Tahal and float the company on TASE. From the money collected from buyers of the shares, FIMI would pay part of the purchase and have total control. The banks holding the loans of TAHAL and the monstrous amounts guaranteed for the completion of ongoing projects had given green light to financial operation. But the transaction failed somewhere. Simply, agricultural and infrastructure consulting in the Third World is no business. For one, Israeli experts are very expensive and two, water and civil engineering has become low tech and foreign experts are not needed anymore. 

The Guns of August

I am reading Barbara Tuchman's book on WWI. It describes the details of the calculations of the French and the German armies. The armies marched (imagine walking from Aachen to Paris with a bayonet in hand) and roads and marching days had to be calculated with precision while there was no wire communication among the units. Generals strategized without precise information and they were under tremendous stress and used to blank out. All those flanking maneuvers suddenly brought up the memory of my readings in the Circulo Militar of Buenos Aires. I was 14 and searching Buenos Aires public libraries for information about the rocket technology for the project we were doing with a Dutch school friend, he was fabricating the explosive fuel and I was trying to design and procure pipes. The Military Club was sited in an impressive palace in the most elegant neighborhood, surrounded by elaborate iron work gates. Inside there were large brown leather lounge chairs and sezlongs, with quiet old people reading the papers.

I took out the Military Science journals and read the articles. Remember one about artillery and rockets, with simple equations to calculate range. There were articles about the Triple Alianza (Paraguay) war, that struck me as uninteresting. Horsemanship and river crossing. I soon dropped out of the rocket project, the others were obsessed in building wood and iron pipe pistols, which they did.

Cursed Computer

I am desperate finding a file received yesterday. They sent me a DWG and a PDF version, and they do not match. Asked to send it again, and once more the DWG is different. The architect insists that I do not know how to open the zip file, showing his autocad literacy and my ignorance. Yet still I have two different versions and the contractor already is boring holes and demolishing walls. Oh, sweet gods of the computer, please lift the curse from my machine! 

The Deep State takes over

 

STASI  was the East German State Security Organization. Its motto: Schild und Schwert der Partei   (Shield and sword of the Party). Every State has an organization of that kind, from the Krypthaya of the Spartan State to President Putin's alma mater to Germany's Defense of the Constitution something. That is the real Deep State. The real source of power. The Chinese State is in crisis mode and has drawn the sword from its scabbard and replaced all local authorities with heavyweight political police officers. Pic. Ying Yong, the new boss of Hubei province. 

The rules have changed, it is hardball from now on. 

Cutie

cutie

High IQ people doing crazy things

The Chinese people are among the most intelligent so I wonder what to do with Emperor Jingdi's tomb. He built an underground tomb (pic. Han Yangling Museum in Xi'an, China) full of clay sheep, pigs and other domestic animals, so he would not starve in the netherworld. His colleagues were even crazier, they manufactured clay soldiers by the thousands to guard them. My father explanation was that there is something wrong with the human mind.