As I’ve been reading many of the comments here regarding the Wuhan Coronavirus, it has become obvious that many do not understand exponential growth, or, perhaps, haven’t really realized its implications.

I hope to rectify that.

This is a bit of a ramble. I hope it’s understandable.

Exponential Growth, Introduced.

I’m going to start by going over some mathematics. (Some of you will already know this stuff; I beg your indulgence if it seems condescending, for it’s not aimed at you.)

Perhaps the best place to start is to consider compound interest. Say you deposit a hundred dollars at 5% (OK, in today’s world that’s sheer fantasy, but bear with me).

After a year, you have $105. That’s $100 x 1.05.

After two years, you have $110, right? Wrong!. It’s compounded interest, the interest is paid on the whole starting amount, even the part that was originally an interest payment to you. So, in that second year you’ve made 5 percent off of 105, not 100, dollars, and that’s $105 x 1.05, which is to say $110.25.

So now, $110.25 is your new baseline, going into the third year. And you will make 0.05 x $110.25 or $5.5125, and your bank will probably round it down and hand you $5.51, and your balance will now be $115.76.

If you naively thought that after three years, you’d only have $115, well, instead you have almost $116, and you’ve underestimated your return by 5 percent.

How long will it take to double your money? Not twenty years, but a bit over fourteen years! The rule of thumb is to divide your interest rate into 72. 72/5 gives you a bit over 14.

(It’s a little more complicated if your interest is compounded quarterly, instead of yearly, which is common, or even daily, which is also common, but the principle remains the same.)

To calculate what you’ll have after n years, you can basically do the following. Take your starting amount, $100, and multiply it by 1.05 n times, like this:

$100 x 1.05 x 1.05 x 1.05 x 1.05 x 1.05
(to give you the answer for five years).

But you don’t want to write all that out for all possible cases, so mathematicians have created a shorthand for this. They will write:

$100 x 1.05ⁿ.

The n superscript means multiply whatever it’s superscripted on by itself that many times. It’s called an exponent. And, as another way of talking about the same thing, you can say you’re “raising 1.05 to the nth power.”

And a function where the variable is in the exponent is called an exponential function. So you could write something like:

b = $100 x 1.05ⁿ

and you’ve expressed your bank balance, b, as a function of the number of (whole) years your starting money has been in that account. And of course you could replace the $100 with another variable, p, for principal, and get a more general function, still:

b = p x 1.05ⁿ.

Finally, you can even replace the 1.05 with something like “1 plus the interest rate” and get:

b = p x (1+i)ⁿ.

It’s very important to put those parentheses in; they tell you you’re raising (one plus the interest rate), not just the interest rate, to the nth power.

If you step away from interest rates, per se, and re-label things, the general form of an exponential function becomes:

y = b^x

Now things are really general. n, usually an integer, is replaced by x, which need not be an integer! x could be 2.4, for instance.

Now how the heck do you multiply a number by itself 2.4 times? Well, to make a long story short, you can multiply it by itself twenty four times (raise it to the 24th power) then take the tenth root of that, and 24/10 = 2.4. To make the long story even shorter, well…you just can, and your calculator knows how to do it.

The 1+i is replaced by b for “base,” which is the appropriate name for the number that you’re “raising to a power” or “exponentiating.”

And y, of course is the traditional label for the result of the equation, the dependent variable because its value depends on x, the independent variable, in the manner that’s specified by the the function.

How about setting b equal to 2. Now we have:

y = 2^x

So if:

x is 1, y is 2.

x is 2, y is 2×2 = 4.

x is 3, y is 2x2x2 = 8.

x is 4, y is 2x2x2x2 = 16.

And so on. Each increase in x by one doubles the resulting y. It’s as if you had 100% interest, compounded!

By the way, what if x is zero? How do you multiply a number by itself zero times? Well for consistency any number multiplied by itself zero times is 1. So 2⁰ = 1. And this makes sense. If every step is twice as much as the one before it, it’s half as much as the one after it. Since x = 1 gives y = 2, it stands to reason that x = 0 should give half as much, or…1. You can even carry this into negative numbers. If x is -1, then y should be one half what it is at 0, so y = 1/2. So 2^-1 = 1/2.

[As an aside: Mathematicians love to use 2.718281828… as the base, and they’ve even defined that number to be e. It’s as important in mathematics as pi (π) is. This number is known as the “base of the natural logarithms.” I won’t torture you with it beyond this; we’re sticking to 2 from here on out, we’re going to be talking about doubling and halving.]

So let’s say you have a microbe in a petri dish.

After a day, the microbe splits in half, and you now have two microbes.

Each of those microbes splits again, after another day (two days total) and you now have four microbes.

But that’s just our new friend,

y = 2^x

…all over again, right? Plug the number of days into x and you get the number of microbes. It even works right at the first moment, with zero days elapsed, because, remember, 2⁰ = 1.

So it turns out that exponential functions can describe population growth, too.

But what if the microbe takes a half a day to divide, instead of just one? After 12 hours, there are two of them, after a full day there are four of them, after a day and a half, there are eight of them, after only two days (not four) there are sixteen of them.

There are two ways to adjust the function to describe this accurately.

The obvious one is to gimmick it so that you’re raising 2 to the 1st power after half a day instead of one, and you can do that by multiplying x by 2 (written as 2x), up in the exponent, like this:

y = 2^2x

And this works out, see:

x is 1, y is 2×2 = 4.

x is 2, y is 2x2x2x2 = 16.

You can even put in 1/2 or 1 1/2 for x and it works! This is because you double those numbers and get 1 and 3.

x is 1/2, y is 2.

x is 1 1/2, y is 2x2x2= 8.

Four generations, which produces 16 microbes, now takes 2 days, instead of 4, but still produces 16 microbes.

I said there were two ways to gimmick the equation, and I showed you one. The other thing you can do is change the base. In this case, if you replace 2 with 4, like this:

y = 4^x

…it works properly.

x is 1 day, y is 4 = 4.

x is 2 days, y is 4×4 = 16.

But note, we just tripped over something new.

We know that at half a day, you have two microbes. If you plug 1/2 into the equation, therefore, it should mean:

y = 4^1/2 = 2.

And if you plug one and a half, or 3/2s in, you should get:

y = 4^3/2 = 8.

We’ve just learned what happens when you put a fraction in. The 1/2 gives you 2, which is the square root of four. Raising a number to the 1/2th power is the same as taking its square root!

And we can see something else, too. Let’s look at the second one again, but let’s rewrite 3/2 as 1 + 1/2.

y = 4^1+1/2 = 8.

But don’t we know that 4 raised to the fourth first power is 1 4 [edited at about 11 pm same day], and the square root of four is 2, and that 4 x 2 is 8? It’s as if adding numbers in the exponent results in multiplying!

y = 4^1+1/2 = 4¹ x 4^1/2 = 8.

And indeed, that’s so. And this will be a key thing to remember.

Implications of Exponential Growth

OK, so with that bit of background, let’s take…hmm…1024 microbes in a petri dish. And let’s go back to the case where the microbes split once a day. (And, note this works better if they don’t all split at the same time!)

After the first day, we have 2048 microbes. After the second day, we have 4096 microbes. After the third day, we have 8192 microbes. And after the 4th day, we have 16,384 microbes. We’re doubling every day, but we’re not starting with 1. How do we write this?

We can start with our old friend:

y = 2^x

…to express the fact that we’re doubling every day, but we need to multiply by 1024 to start with.

y = 1024 x 2^x

Work this through and you’ll see it’s correct.

You can even use this to figure out how many microbes you had the day before you started, by setting x to -1, then you have 1024 x 1/2 = 512.

And you can even figure out where you’ll be half a day in. It’ll be 1024 x 2^1/2, and we know 2^1/2 is the square root of 2, which is about 1.414…, so you should have about 1448 microbes.

But wait just a minute! Remember that adding in the exponent is the same as multiplying outside the exponent?

We’re multiplying outside the exponent. Can we express 1024 as 2-to-the-something power, and add it?

Well, yes you can. As it happens, 1024 is 2¹⁰. (And you thought I’d pulled that number out of my rectal database!)

So you could write your equation for starting out with 1024 microbes like this:

y = 2^x+10

You have your “two to the x” and your “2 to the tenth power” put together in the exponent.

Let’s say your petri dish is full at 1,048,576 microbes. This is 2²⁰. So it will happen when x is ten, in other words after only ten days.

If, on the other hand, you start with only one microbe, your petri dish is full after twenty days.

If you go to a jumbo petri dish, twice the size of the ordinary petri dish, then it takes eleven days to fill (if you start with a thousand microbes), or twenty one days (starting with one microbe).

Doubling capacity does not double the number of days you can run your experiment. It adds ONE day. And in general, any realistic increase in capacity adds very little time to how long you can let the exponential function run.

I’m going to say that again, in a slightly different way:

When dealing with exponential growth, increasing capacity doesn’t buy you much time.

And I will say it again because it’s important.

When dealing with exponential growth, increasing capacity doesn’t buy you much time.

It’s also true that reducing the size of the population by, say, half, doesn’t buy you much time either. If you were to kill half the microbes in the petri dish at any time in the process…you’ve bought yourself one day. It doesn’t matter whether you kill half of them after day 1 (going from 2 to 1) or on day 19 (going from about half a million to a quarter of a million). You still hit a million one day late, on the 21st day.

But there IS one hope. You can slow things down, greatly, by changing the base to something smaller or by being able to divide the exponent (which as we saw above, are equivalent). Either one of these has the effect of increasing the doubling time, which works proportionately.

If you double the amount of time it takes for your microbes to double, you have twice as much time before they fill the petri dish. Here’s the formula:

y = 2^x/2

The exponent is x/2 instead of x.

And it works, it now takes 40 days to go from one microbe, to a full petri dish, instead of 20 days.

If you’re dealing with exponential growth, increasing the doubling time by X percent buys you X percent more time before you’re overwhelmed. Decreasing the doubling time, on the other hand, is a really, really good way to fuck yourself over.

More generally, you can write the equation like this:

y = 2^x/d

…where d is the amount of time it takes to double. If d is two days, then it takes two days for x/d to equal 1, and thus it takes two days to double. Make d 3 or 4 or 27, it works the same way.

Applying This To Epidemics

Epidemics start out as exponential growth. They start out that way, but eventually, the curve bends over, and then there is a decline. But for just a moment, let’s look at the “growth” part of things.

The number of people who have the disease grows exponentially.

The number of people who have the disease bad enough to need the hospital, is smaller, but still grows exponentially.

The number of people who die from the disease, is smaller yet, but also grows exponentially.

In fact, if 12.5 percent of the people who catch the disease need to be hospitalized, all you’ve done is take the exponential growth function for the number of people who have the disease, and stuck a 0.125 in front of it, like this:

y = 0.125 x 2^x/d

…but that 0.125 is basically -3 doublings! So basically,

y =2^{x/d – 3}

(It’s a rule of mathematical notation that you divide x by d, then subtract 3. You do not subtract 3 from d, then divide that into x. That would be written as x/(d – 3) if that was intended. Many a computer bug comes from people not using parentheses when they should have.)

And likewise, something similar happens with the percentage of people that die. All three double at the same rate, but, in essence, their starting points are different.

So if you’re watching an epidemic, and a thousand people catch the disease in, say, 30 days (that’s doubling every three days), and then one person dies…you will have a thousand deaths 30 days later. By which point, a million people have caught the disease.

As I said before, the exponential growth at some point stops. Clearly it must stop once the entire population has caught the disease. There’s no one new to catch it and double the number of victims. But usually it stops well before that point. This is attributed to the bacterium or virus becoming less virulent over time.

And that’s a key point.

It’s why we want to increase the doubling time. Because that way fewer doublings happen before the reversal happens, and that means fewer victims.

And reducing the doubling time is important for another reason. Remember I mentioned that some fraction of the people end up in a hospital? THAT, it turns out is the critical constraint. We only have so many hospital beds, and even fewer ventilators (as the current disease requires for treatment). If the exponential growth hits that limit, then many victims cannot be treated, and will be left to die. There’s no way around that.

Adding hospital capacity by (say) kicking ever non-epidemic patient out is a stopgap, likely to stave things off by one or two doubling periods, at most. Remember, any realistic increase in capacity gets overwhelmed in short order!

We have to slow the doubling rate. That buys us time, time for the pathogen to weaken, time for us to come up with new treatments, maybe even time for us to come up with a vaccine that will cut the new number of victims to nearly zero.

How do we increase the doubling rate? Well, a given person who has the disease (whether he knows it yet or not), can only give the disease to people he contacts, or who contacts anything he left the pathogen on (he sneezes near them, touches a doorknob after wiping his nose and then the new victim touches the doornob, etc.) If you can reduce this number, you’ve reduced the doubling rate. That’s why washing your hands, avoiding direct contact, etc., are so important.

It’s important whether or not you think you, or the other person, have the disease, because you can have the disease days before you know it, and be giving it to other people and never even know it.

They are MORE IMPORTANT than any travel ban President Trump could impose, in fact. Because the only thing the travel ban does is reduce the number of carriers. Remember what I said about killing half the microbes in the petri dish? It buys you ONE doubling time and only that. Reducing the current number of carriers–unless it is all the way to zero, only buys you doubling times.

This is why I simply don’t buy arguments that now that we’ve gotten rid of travelers coming in, so we’re basically all right. No, because we have a resident population of contagious people. And it seems small now. But so what? It just means we’re in an early part of the nasty exponential curve.

And with the Wuhan Coronavirus, the doubling period is about three days.

And exponential growth is why I lost my patience with people jumping someone who claimed there were 1700 victims now, when (apparently) one source showed 1200. The original poster was trying to explain exponential growth, and someone was quibbling over today’s numbers. Even if the original poster’s number was twice as big as it should have been…it buys you one doubling period.

And with the Wuhan Coronavirus, the doubling period is about three days.

And people who compare it to the flu, saying only X number of people have died, compared to this year’s flu.

Just give it a few doubling periods. And with the Wuhan Coronavirus, the doubling period is about three days.

No, we HAVE to increase the doubling time. The measures (and advice) Trump outlined on Friday, at last, address this. All the private closures of big-crowd events address this, all the people cancelling plane rides and cruises (or having the carriers cancel them) help too. They represent fewer opportunities for people who have it, to give it to someone else which means one victim takes longer to become two victims.

It’s all about that doubling rate, not today’s absolute numbers.

We can defeat this thing this way, before we become another Italy. (But for now, we have the same doubling rate they do, and we’re 11-16 days behind them.)

The irony is, if all of these measures, which some describe as “panic,” work, someone will come along and say, “See they weren’t needed!” Yes they were.

Viruses

My main point made, I’ll talk, some, about viruses.

It became apparent in the 1800s that many diseases were caused by bacteria. But a whole host of other diseases behaved like bacterial diseases–they got transmitted by the same sorts of events–but no bacteria could ever be seen under a microscope.

Whatever was carrying these diseases was too small to be seen.

Eventually, these things were “seen” under an electron microscope. The objects in question were too small for visible light to show (they were smaller than one wavelength of light–which is pretty doggone small, a bit less than a thousandth of a millimeter, tops). But they were larger than the wavelength of an electron, so an electron microscope could see them.

These viruses were, in fact, way too small to be alive. It takes a certain amount of chemical “machinery” to make a cell, that is capable of producing all the sorts of molecules it needs to function and be able to reproduce, by copying the DNA, copying everything else in the cell, and splitting.

The viruses were nothing but RNA (DNA’s less sturdy cousin) and a coat of protein. The virus cannot reproduce the RNA within it, nor can it produce the coat of protein. It’s not alive. It’s nothing more than an inert envelope full of instructions on how to produce more such envelopes; it needs something else–the cells in your body–to execute the instructions.

That’s why no antibiotic will kill it. It’s not alive. Even an “anti viral” drug doesn’t destroy the virus.

The virus reproduces by getting inside one of your cells. Once in there, the outer protein coat dissolves, and the RNA instructs the cell machinery on how to make more viruses. The cell machinery is designed to do whatever the RNA in the cell tells it to do, and it dutifully does so. (The cell’s original RNA comes out of the nucleus, it’s created by transcribing the DNA, and this happens in an orderly fashion so the cell makes what it needs to function.)

The virus RNA gets copied, and the protein sheaths are copied too. Eventually the cell is full of the damn things and bursts–releasing hundreds of new copies of the virus out where they can infect new cells.

An antiviral, as I said, doesn’t kill the virus, but it does slow this process down. Maybe slows it down enough that the body’s immune system–which can destroy viruses–has time to learn how to do so before the virus kills the host.

Slower is better; that’s the moral of this post.

Welcome to Friday’s OPEN THREAD at the QTree! It’s the weekend and time to crack open a beer and put some steaks on the grill! Thank you for the Thursday hand-off TrumpIsMine. Thank you to Wolfie for keeping us all organized, up and running. What would we do without FLEP’s News Roundup to keep up? Thank you, Flep. Hat tip and a hearty thank you to Wheatie, Dep, BakoCarl, Michael, all contributors and the lurkers!

We don’t believe in political correctness at QTree. Free Speech is practiced here. ENJOY IT. Use it or lose it. This board will remain a REFUGE for those who need civility, either some or all of the time. Important Guidelines are outlined here in the January 1st open thread, with an addendum on 20191110. In other words, please keep it SOMEWHAT civil. We have a new board – actually a new SITE – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

It’s Friday the 13th. We’re not comfortable on defense. Time to get back on offense.

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It’s one day before PI day, 3.14. I’m making a peach pie. We may have to do a PI thread, an area where QTreepers excel.

It’s two days before the Ides of March. Feel like sharpening some knives, Brutus?

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We need an enemy we can see, not some invisible boogeyman virus.

And we want our money back from the CCP. Their intentional secrecy cost the world 2 months, thousands of lives, trillions of dollars. Donald Trump was right along. He told us that China “girlfriend” was no good. She was a tramp, a backstabber. It’s time to break up with China. We thought we could change them, but no. Well, we have learned our deadly lesson, an 8 trillion dollar lesson. The heck with that. Party is over. Time to kick that Bi$ch to the curb.

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And here’s the deal. AFTER the breakup with China and the return of the engagement ring (most favored nation), there will be no moping around, no recession/depression, no crying in our beer. The USA is still the most handsome guy in town, best economy, best workforce, best leadership. Ahhh yes, the USA is a downright sparkling fellow. The USA is irresistible.

“We’re going to approach globalization a lot differently than we did in the past”, say the pundits. Gobsmack! It’s about time they started listening to us. Here’s another one, “We’re forecasting a massive shift in manufacturing in the USA”. How long have we been screaming about this? FINALLY!! Ya’ think it might be a good idea to manufacture our own medicines, instead of our mortal enemy? The boys from Harvard and Yale were wrong. The truck drivers and the waitresses in the red state were right….. and we knew it all along. It’s why we elected Trump. Did it take a global pandemic for the chickens to come home to roost on Wall Street?

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We don’t fly to Europe, South Korea, or China too often anymore, and it might be worth 8 trillion dollars if the idiots in Washington, DC, finally fix the problem. Of course, we would love to close our border while we are in mortal danger from a GLOBAL PANDEMIC, but thanks to the Dems, we can’t. Again, Donald Trump was right about the border as well.

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And the 200% increase in ammunition sales this week? We’re NOT wrong. We’re right. Gee whiz, how many times has Trump been right????

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Yeah, it’s over alright. Trump was right and WE were right to elect him. Politicians, their lobbyists, and the media lied. The corrupt agencies helped them all to rob the American people. The mask has slipped. Their errors and greed are now killing Americans, as if the 30K dead from opioids wasn’t bad enough. The establishment is done. It was an epic fail.

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And the pandemic of Wuhan Flu is “in your face” proof.

We will get through this, and we’ll clean up the mess for the blissfully ignorant, but this time, we will insist on better leadership. In the meantime, say a little prayer for our President, his family, and their team.

Remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights.
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone – no skimping when it comes to pie.

See you all at Wheatie’s tree house in the morning.

No doubt, this is a storm alright, a full-blown war, with no bullets. We’re wading into a subject we don’t know much about……… but we need to learn about, ASAP!

Petroleum is one of the top three imports/exports of every nation on earth. Remember, Saudi Arabia only has one product = oil. Russia has two products, Oil + weapons manufacture. As President Trump and the US Military annihilated ISIS, and Afghanistan begins to settle, the world is returning to peace. Well, peace is bad for an arms dealer. Add to the mix a virus, global pandemic, caused by China’s negligence ……

We’re in uncharted territory. Many of us have traded stocks, bought futures, and a few of us in this group sold stocks, gold, REIT’s, FOREX,…… The commodity guys, no problem,…… I knew a guy who blew $250K on silver futures in a single morning back in ’81……… He was never the same…….And we all knew a bond daddy (because those are the boys who pick up the bar tabs), but the oil contract guys…… hmmm…….. we stayed away from them. They were always a little squirrely.

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Nonetheless, it is time to talk about what happened on Sunday night between Saudi Arabia and Russia, the agreed upon oil production of OPEC countries, price per barrel in the open markets, OPEC’s friends (Russia), how it tanked the USA market, and how the oil dominance of the USA affects geopolitics and creates ripples across the globe. Along the way, hopefully, we will all get up to speed on this subject.

Here’s the back story as I understand it: First and foremost, remember, crisis breeds opportunity. We’re all in a crisis right now, because of China, so…… look for the opportunity.

Remember the oil embargo of the 70’s and the birth of OPEC?

Well, in 2018, the USA became the #1Producer of Oil and LNG, in part, because of the Shale Revolution: https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/opinion/2018/01/19/u-s-becomes-leader-oil-production/1048266001/ We were thrilled with President Trump and Sec, Rick Perry and their efforts to unleash American Energy.

American dominance in the energy sector was a stabilizing geopolitical force. It meant we didn’t have to fight wars in the Middle East…… because we had our own oil. OPEC fights didn’t matter to us anymore, because we could boost production and supply our allies. As the USA gained in strength, the other primary head oil producers, Saudi and Russia, fought for customers in the long shadow of American power.

So, about 3 years ago, Saudi Arabia invited Russia to join OPEC, not as a member but as a “friend”. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2020/03/09/russia-will-beat-saudi-arabia-in-this-oil-price-war/#61ebf8c914a6 In the beginning, everyone got along just fine. Saudi lined up sales to China and Russia was making deals with Merkel in Germany.

Back in December ’19, the House of Saud released for public offering shares in Saudi Royal Aramco and it was widely hailed as the world’s most valuable company.

Over 20% of the Saudi public bought shares, and MANY in the Kingdom borrowed money to buy into the stock. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2020/03/09/russia-will-beat-saudi-arabia-in-this-oil-price-war/#61ebf8c914a6 This guy, below, Salman Al Saud, the Energy Minister for Saudi Arabia, did a great job. His future looked bright.

Well……. from $36USD/share, the stock went up to about 38USD/share but began to drift downward……… reaching $29USD/share on Monday. Why? Because Aramco had huge contracts with China and China’s economy tanked because of the Wuhan virus……… or the WinnieThePooh Flu….. again, negligence of the CCP caused the problem. Secrecy of the CCP did not contain the contagion.

Back to the oil producers. When your customers don’t need to buy your little barrels of oil, life is not good. Saudi was in trouble, falling stock price of Aramco had 20% of the public a little worried. Economies all over the globe were retracting, decreasing demand for oil all over the globe because of China. By Mid-February the meetings of OPEC began. Saudi proposed a one million barrel a day price cut to stabilize production with demand……. otherwise, too much demand was pushing down prices. Russia saw this as a “personal problem” for Saudi and their customer, China. Vladimir, sensing opportunity, went all……… suspicious cat on Saudi.

“Russia clearly knew that Saudi sales to China had been hurt by Coronavirus and it figured that it should not have to cut its healthy production and sales to stabilize the market for everyone else.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2020/03/09/russia-will-beat-saudi-arabia-in-this-oil-price-war/#61ebf8c914a6

Because Russia was a friend of OPEC, Russia had a veto vote. If one member vetoed, then no one would lower production. Over last weekend, Russian Energy Minister, Alexander Novak, lowered the boom. No deal.

Mohammad was not a happy guy and swished his pretty robes.

Saudi Arabia then decided to cut the price at which it will sell oil to Asia and other markets, in a bid to increase its own sales and likely to punish Russia as well. News also came that Saudi Arabia would increase its own oil production in April to at least 10 million barrels per day, which is high, but still within its OPEC quota. The price of oil plummeted around 30% when trading opened Sunday evening, US time.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2020/03/09/russia-will-beat-saudi-arabia-in-this-oil-price-war/#61ebf8c914a6

Of all the OPEC countries, Saudi has the lowest cost of production and the greatest ability to ramp up production with excess capacity. Therefore, the decision was easy for Saudi. They were trying to grab new customers away from Russia. The antagonism, however, rattled the markets.

While the boys fight (Mohammad and Vlad), we will have excess capacity and more oil than we need. Inventories came in this morning at + 7 million. With the economies of the world making plans for “containment” of coronavirus (caused by China’s negligence), brokers anticipate lowered global need as the virus reverberates around the world. That means lower prices in the oil markets for the next several months.

And all of a sudden, our friends in Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio (necessary for the election of 2020), and North Dakota, are in trouble. If oil remains below $50/barrel for an extended period of time, they’re out of business. Just a few minutes ago, report from the market floor on FOX Biz, we’re seeing hundreds of layoffs in the oil sector and an expected decrease of 300K barrels a day in production.

…………. Which fits in nicely to Russia’s grand overall scheme of destroying fracking in the USA. I remind you all of our report, almost exactly a year ago, March 6, 2019: OMG, Tom Steyer+Green Movement+ Hillary+ a whole bunch of Russians. The Mask Comes Off. https://wqth.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/omg-tom-steyergreen-movement-hillary-a-whole-bunch-of-russians-the-mask-comes-off/

We know real Russians have secretly funded the green movement and the anti-fracking movement in the USA because we tracked the money. Although we attribute the energy boom to President Trump, the signs of success in fracking were clearly apparent during the Obama Administration. The trajectory for American leadership in oil was bound to happen. Take a look at this article from back in 2012: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/us-to-become-world-leader-in-oil-and-gas-thanks-to-fracking-8307372.html

A fight for customers and dominance in the oil sector will be an all-out war and one which the USA must win. Countries such as Russia and OPEC nations tend to squander their natural wealth, fund terrorists and wars, cause disruption, and these leaders have not been kind to their citizens. It would be a good thing for a country like the USA to hold sway in this arena. Difficult to imagine President Trump standing on the sidelines and watching our position as leader of the energy sector cede to Russia and/or Saudi Arabia.

Can’t see it happening……..

Might be time to discipline the toddlers, Russia and Saudi, and get the kids out of the mud.

Please, t

This will serve as our live thread for the President’s this evening, addressing economic and health concerns of Coronavirus because of the negligence of China’s CCP.

GST – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbbmrvA6vLw

CSPAN – https://www.c-span.org/video/?470284-1/president-trump-addresses-nation-coronavirus-outbreak

This afternoon the President met with CEOs of the nation’s biggest banks, which remain strong. We’re not in a financial crisis:

Here are the President’s remarks from Capitol Hill after meeting with Repub Senators.

Here is the one from yesterday:

The Media should view this as a time of unity and strength. We have a common enemy, actually, an enemy of the World, the CoronaVirus. We must beat it as quickly and safely as possible. There is nothing more important to me than the life & safety of the United States!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2020

2 nd Sunday of Lent
March 8, 2020

“Alone, but Not Alone”

Gen 12:1-4
II Tim 1:8-10
Mt 17:1-9

My Brothers and Sisters in the Lord –

Human beings were not created to be alone. We all need one another. We need each other for support, for encouragement, and for all the learning and development that are necessary for a fully human existence.

Without loving parents, children wither and become emotionally underdeveloped. Without teachers, we would know far less. And without mentors, we would not develop the skills and the creativity that benefit the world around us.

However, we must listen and respond positively to all that is good that our teachers and mentors share with us. Sometimes this takes real faith and trust on our part. We must walk with our mentor through the various stages of the process that results in the desired outcome. This walk will take courage and commitment; it will have its struggles and missteps. And yet there is great satisfaction when we, at last, accomplish all that we set out to do!

Our life with God is very much like what I have just described. God has much to teach us. God will use parents, teachers, and mentors to help us on our journey to Him. It also helps to have others around us who are on the same journey. However, sooner or later, we will be on our own with God alone, because our particular journey is unique and special to us!

Abraham was someone who was called by God to something far greater than he ever dreamed. God made promises to him that required blind faith and trust in an outcome that went far beyond his lifespan. Although Abraham believed and trusted, he also made mistakes. He doubted and he complained to God. At times he did things in his own way with troublesome results. But he learned from his mistakes and he, gradually, became a great blessing for all the world!

Jesus was taught and mentored by Joseph and Mary. Moreover, he listened to God throughout his life. We don’t know all that Jesus foresaw about his future; but, like many of us, he probably had hints or intimations about the future and how it would unfold.

Jesus was, no doubt, led by the Holy Spirit when he took Peter and the Zebedee brothers up on the mountain. There, a marvelous encounter took place! He spoke with Moses and Elijah! Moses was God’s lawgiver of the Old Testament, and Elijah was one of God’s great prophets. They became mentors for Jesus on his own journey and for his own passover from this life!

The disciples must have felt blessed at first, as they witnessed the encounter with Moses and Elijah and the divine light emanating from Jesus. But they were overcome with fear at the voice of God. They were told, in no uncertain terms, that they must listen to all that Jesus would say in the future. This also meant that they would have to implement his words in their own lives! This would be a daunting task for the disciples just as it is for us today!

Even though we have teachers, mentors, and fellow travelers – even though God is calling us – we still experience hardship as part of our life in this world. Today, St. Paul teaches us that we must bear hardship for the sake of the good news, the gospel, that Jesus brought to the world. Living as a disciple of Jesus will always take courage and commitment. But God will give us the strength and the grace to face whatever we encounter.

Paul goes on to say that God has saved us through Jesus. He also calls us to a holy life – a life that is a blessing for others in the love and the kindness we bear toward them. This is not something we can achieve without God’s grace and power – for we are weak and prone to make mistakes!

Brothers and Sisters, because we were created for God and on a journey to God, we all need teachers and mentors – we, also, need each other. Yes, there is a part of us that must walk alone with God. Yet, it is comforting to know that others are doing likewise – along with us and often beside us – as part of the community of disciples which is church!

So, let us pray, today, that we draw closer to Jesus, who is our ultimate mentor – May we hear and listen to the voice of God in the many ways it can come to us – May we assist one another on our mutual journey – And may we always be faithful to the Gospel as true disciples of Jesus!

Amen.

March 8, 2020 Msgr. Russell G. Terra
Saint Joseph Roman Catholic Church, Redding, CA
*http://www.stjosephredding.org/parish-homilies.html

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