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Quarantine Diaries: Day 143

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There’s a lot of talk of the start of a second wave of Covid-19 but I’m not at all convinced that the first wave is over. The 1918-1920 pandemic had three big waves (and a fourth small one) of which the second was by far the deadliest.

As scary as our pandemic is, imagine how terrifying the one from a hundred years ago must have been. They didn’t even understand what was causing it. Virology was still in its infancy. Dmitri Ivanovsky and Martinus Beijerinck had in the 1890’s deduced that there was something smaller than bacteria that could cause diseases, but it wasn’t until the 1930’s and the invention of electron microscopes that something as small as a virus could be seen.

So think what it must have felt like during the 1918-1920 pandemic. Millions and millions dying and nothing to point at as the culprit. So no “race for a vaccine”. No idea of how or even if the pandemic might end.

Not really coronavirus-related (other than that it involves China) but Ben Hunt explains why Taiwan is even more important than you might think: Taiwan is now Arrakis

How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”

This spring, a team working under the president's son-in-law produced a plan for an aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response that could have brought the pandemic under control. So why did the White House spike it in favor of a shambolic 50-state response?

New research suggests COVID-19 can spread via aerosol transmission -- and might affect tall people more

Excellent. I’m 6'4" (193 cm for those of you in Metricland). I take some solace in the fact that the study has not yet been peer-reviewed. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

How the Navajo Nation slowed one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the US

Why Does It Feel Like We're in "Life During Wartime"?

This is why the Federal Reserve is so keen on bailing out bankrupt-in-all-but-name corporations and banks: The laughably hopeless hope is that by propping up the corpses, the populace will discern some faint flicker of life in the decaying carcasses and return to their free-spending ways.

The rebooted White House coronavirus briefings are not going well.

Not coronavirus-related, but potentially a massive disaster in the making. The story is from The Sun, not exactly known for exacting journalism. Nonetheless: New China cover-up fears with world’s largest dam ‘on brink of collapse risking tidal wave that could wipe out cities’ Um, tidal wave? What would the tides have to do with it?

Chris Martenson and Mike Maloney discuss the prospects for gold and silver in a world where coronavirus lit a match that’s leading central banks to burn down the house: