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BILLIONS AND TRILLIONS

We all now are able to take the rapid at-home COVID-19 test.  But few know when to do this.

  • Say you suddenly appear to have symptoms like fever, cough, congestion or sore throat, and immediately take a fast antigen test, where you can see your result in 15 minutes.  If negative, feel assured.
  • However, when symptoms begin, you won't test positive until three to five days later
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  • Thus you MUST take a second test in this time frame to ascertain that you are negative.
  • The problem is exactly when?  Second day?  Third?  Fourth?  Fifth?  Many say fifth?  Very confusing.  No consensus.
  • False negatives occur all the time.  False positives are rare.
  • The safest measure is to take both the fast test and a PCR test, which needs to be sent to a lab and can take a couple of days for the result.
  • Thus, the safest strategy is to:
    • Quickly rapid test yourself if you have any kind of condition that suggests you might have COVID.
    • If negative, feel good, but isolate yourself.
    • 3-5 days later take a second test.
    • If negative, you're probably okay.
    • Isolating yourself for up to five days even though you're okay, seems a bit much, and few do this.  Thus, the community continues to suffer.
    • Here is the part that is confusing.  The CDC says if you think you have been exposed but show no symptoms, DON'T immediately test.  Wait 5 days, and if negative, test again in one to days.  Pray that they both are negative.
    • If you can also take a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test in the first sequence, that would be advised.
    • There is a third test called ID NOW, a 15-minute rapid molecular test..  Not as sensitive as PCR, but better than antigen.
    • Remember that if you test positive, symptoms or not, you need to be careful, wearing a mask around people, for at least 10 days.

  • All at home PCR tests still need to be sent out to a certified lab.
  • There is such a thing as a same day PCR test, provided at special diagnostic and urgent care clinics.
  • Did you miss those free Federal rapid test kits?  There were two.  There is now third offer, also free.  Click here.  Need help placing an order for your at-⁠home tests?  Call 1-800-232-0233 (TTY 1-888-720-7489).
  • We personally now have around 20 test kits, virtually all from the Feds, and these also happen to be the number one best-seller on Amazon, iHealth test.  While we got ours free, Amazon charges $17 for two kits per pack, with a shelf life of 9 months.
  • Check with your medical insurance company to confirm coverage should you to purchase them.
  • Of course, the best way to avoid needing to be tested...or living longer...is to be vaccinated and boosted twice!!!

Another depressing note is that it is looking more and more like COVID-19 will stay with us, like the many varieties of the seasonal flu.  Everyone would be expected to be infected every three to five years or so.  The big difference is that it is a roll of the dice for you to become a long hauler.  You could lose the function of an organ, like your kidney.  Some say long COVID could affect from 14% to 30%, and if you escape this fate, the next time you are infected, will again have those odds facing you.  So do you retract as a homebody and avoid people, or try to live a new normal life?

As today is Tuesday, I again reach back to the past, and will select my posting of 29 July 2008 on:

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BILLIONS AND TRILLIONS

The Huffington Post today published my article on "Billions and Trillions." The interesting thing about these posts is that there are instant comments. My posting on "Why Is There No National Energy Policy" drew more than 100 comments. Some of the responses are downright derogatory, so I ran a check on who these people were, and invariably, they were connected to the Heartland Institute and Cato Institute, which are funded by companies such as Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. They are paid to undercut anything on global warming or renewable energy. Yet, there is something about internet portals such as the Huffington Post, for the concept can lead to exponential propagation of ideas to influence decision-makers. Protest marches are so last generation.
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Carl Sagan wrote a book entitled Billions and Billions. While we tend to get wrapped up in our own infinitesimal problems, keep in mind that it takes light 100,000 years (travelling at 186,282 miles/second) just to get from one end of our Milky Way Galaxy to the other end. The closest spiral galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away. Yes, if we can ever design a spacecraft to travel at the speed of light, it would take two and a half million years to reach our closest true galaxy. And, there are more than 100 billion galaxies in our universe. But let's think small.
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Modern man, homo sapiens sapiens, only arrived on the scene around 100,000 years ago. In a few years, the World population will approach 7 billion people. We first reached 1 billion just about 200 years ago, zooming to 6 billion in 1999.
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Apparently, Everett Dirksen never did say "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." Or, at least the Dirksen Center could not find anything in their files to verify that statement. Laid end to end, a billion one dollar bills would circle the globe at the equator four times. A trillion would take us from Earth to our Sun. One thousand billion dollars amount to a trillion dollars.
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How far does a sum of one billion dollars go these days? We are paying $1billion/year to Pakistan for counterterrorism. There is a billion dollar large floating golf ball (really a radar station stationed in Alaska) that spends many holidays in Pearl Harbor. Each space shuttle shot is supposedly about a billion. The Lighthouse, a 984-foot skyscraper designed by American architect Thom Mayne, being erected in Paris, will cost a billion. The Freedom Tower (1,776 ft) has been financed for $3 billion. Each Nimitz class aircraft carrier carries a $4.5 billion tag.  
(I might add that we added the USS Gerald Ford, left, in 2017 for more than $13 billion.)
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What about rate of usage? For the past decade, the U.S. Department of Energy has annually spent less than a billion dollars for renewable energy research. The Bush budget for this coming year remains less than $1 billion. Farm subsidies will amount this year to $25 billion. And farmers are doing well because of the ethanol debacle. Our arms shipment to Middle East countries (not including Iraq and Afghanistan) will this year add up to $63 billion. We will spend around $600 billion this year in the U.S. on gasoline. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz (Harvard economist) estimates the cost of the Iraq War to be $3 trillion, that is 3,000 billion dollars.
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A few months ago, President George Bush requested a $3 trillion Federal budget, predicting a budget shortfall of $407 billion. But, it was this week reported that this deficit will actually be closer to $500 billion. Our overall Federal liability (national debt social security, etc.) is $57.3 trillion, or about $500,000/household. Our gross national product is about $13 trillion, while that of the world is $65.6 trillion (we are 20% of the world).  
(The Gross World Product today is around $100 trillion).
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How are our companies doing? Just four oil companies (Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips) last year earned $100 billion in profits. Quarterly reports show that record profits are continuing this year. In 2007, General Motors lost a record $39 billion, and Ford just posted a worst ever quarterly loss of $8.67 billion. Toyota seems poised to sell more cars than GM this year. Our airline companies are predicting a total industry loss of $13 billion this year. But we're talking paltry billions here.  
(Oil profits amounted to a record $237 billion in 2021.)
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Going back in time, the Manhattan Project (to build a couple of atomic bombs) cost $2 billion, or $21 billion in current dollars. The Marshall Plan for post-war Europe cost us $13 billion over four years, or $80 billion today. The Apollo mission cost about $23 billion spread over 13 years, or $140 billion today.  (
This sum is up to $247 billion in 2020 dollars.)
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So if Peak Oil and Global Warming are so dreadful, why don't we just start a new Manhattan Project for a sustainable world? Well, the International Energy Agency last month reported that it will take $45 trillion to insure that our climate only rises about 5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050. The Manhattan, Marshall and Apollo efforts combined, in today's dollar, only amounted to $0.24 trillion. 
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Do we have a problem? Try dividing 0.24 into 45. You will obtain a figure of nearly 200, which means that for the world to take immediate action just to suffer an uncomfortable temperature rise would cost about 200 times more than Manhattan/Marshall/Apollo combined! Remember, the U.S. Congress this year killed the global warming mitigation bill and only included about a billion dollars for renewable energy research, while the G8 Nations in Japan weakened their resolve to tackle this problem. Oh, yes, our Congress, though, somehow, in no time at all, for them, actually found $300 billion to bail out our so-called housing crisis. What's going on? It really does not matter, for those were billions. The reality is that the $45 trillion IEA estimate could well be $450 trillion if you look closely at what actually has to be spent to control carbon dioxide by 2050.   (Unfortunately, we have recently only been spending around $0.6 trillion/year.)
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Yes, the Pickens' $0.7 trillion wind farm initiative helps and so does the Gore $5 trillion renewable electricity for the U.S. proposal, which most pundits panned as impossible. Forget about billions and trillions. Don't waste time with more or less taxes. Why not just take that quantum leap to a free Green Energy Age, as explained in my HuffPo of July 17?  (Thus, rather than more money, the problem is a lack of will.  Fourteen years after this posting, global warming is just not important enough for the World to take seriously.)
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The price of oil sunk today to $121.90/barrel (or $2.88/gallon). Predictably, the Dow Jones Industrials jumped 266 to 11,398.

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Interesting to note that if you go to the right column, the price of petroleum today (7 June2022) is about the same as it was in 2008.  Nearly 15 years later, the Dow Jones Industrials are up to around 33,000, or almost tripled.

The following year, 2009, I posted on Trillions and Quadrillions.  I'll end with the final paragraph of this article:

Well, anyway, summer is still to come, who knows what next shock looms and we are beginning to enter new territory: quadrillion dollars. A Katrina victim is suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for $3 quadrillion. NASA once reported that an ounce of anti-matter would cost $2.3 quadrillion to manufacture, if they could do it. All this is meaningless, of course, but five years ago, 
CNN.com
 reported that global warming solutions could cost up to $18 quadrillion, which was the highest end determination of expenditures required by 2100 of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2003. But who takes them seriously? Not the G8 nations.

The one TV entertainment event worthy of your watch begins this Thursday, June 9 at 8 pm EDT on all network channels.
  • Name them, they will anchor for their station:  Rachel Maddow, Lester Holt, Anderson Cooper, etc.
  • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is overseeing the Republican response, aided by Jim Banks and Jim Jordan.  They could have picked more innocent victims
  • Expect former VP Mike Pence to participate in some way.
  • Oh, Fox News will not bother, but Fox Business will.
  • Will it be partisan?  Of course.
  • There will be special witnesses shown live, plus pre-produced video.
  • Is former President Donald Trump guilty as could be charged?  Sure.  He has already been impeached twice.
  • The House panel has interviewed 1000 people and viewed 140,000 documents.
  • Chaired by Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), with vice chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).
This whole spectacle will drag through the summer for Democrats to make Republicans look unpatriotic and split, with Donald Trump to be coddled so his influence will doom many Republican candidates.  Like the seven states today having primary elections, it is all about the November 8 general election.  Republicans will hope to gain control of the House.   The majority of pundits write and talk about the usual mid-term reversal, but I think Democrats will add ten seats there.  Democrats will probably also increase their Senate status, but not reach 60 seats.  A lackluster Biden record will look a whole better than the degenerative Trump-effect.

I'll close with the triumph of BoJo.  Who?  Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived that no-confidence vote.  But it was much closer than expected.  The vote was 211 to 148.  Unlike our POTUS, the UK leader is not voted into office, but appointed by the majority party in the Parliament, which today is the Conservative Party.  The issue was that he had stupidly held and attended parties during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, known as Partygate.

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