OCD cubed
I've decided watching the COVID-19 pandemic is like a reality show version of Universal Paperclips or some other incremental game. Perfect for my OCD. An incremental reality show. The way the numbers relentlessly double or triple every week, and spread from one country to another.
I know the numbers represent sickness and death, but there is a beauty to the mathematical procession, and the models people build to predict the behavior of the virus. I've been interacting with some epidemiologist modelers on Twitter. Revising my own model. I underestimated the fatality rate, and I also completely missed the bimodal nature of the fatality rate -- how the fatality rate quadruples when local health systems become saturated. That was the missing link -- that's how you fit the data to both Wuhan and everywhere else.
There's also the fascinating breadth of human behavioral and political responses to this new vector, and the way COVID-19 is triggering the long-delayed next recession -- popping some of the asset bubbles that have been growing relentlessly over the past nine years.
The government debt bubble is still OK, though ... it will be the last bubble to pop. It might not pop this go round. Maybe the next recession will be the demise of government debt. I don't know, we're still very early to this new story. Gold will skyrocket when the government debt bubble pops, that's what I'm planning for.
Anyway. The combo of pandemic, recession, and presidential election year is about as OCD as I've ever faced in my life. I need to make sure I take breaks for fun and remain as healthy as I can be.
It helps that I'm no longer a weird guy predicting disaster all on his own. The disaster is becoming more obvious to everybody else each day. That provides me with some comfort, that I don't have to figure out how to fix this myself. We're all going to fix this together.
I know the numbers represent sickness and death, but there is a beauty to the mathematical procession, and the models people build to predict the behavior of the virus. I've been interacting with some epidemiologist modelers on Twitter. Revising my own model. I underestimated the fatality rate, and I also completely missed the bimodal nature of the fatality rate -- how the fatality rate quadruples when local health systems become saturated. That was the missing link -- that's how you fit the data to both Wuhan and everywhere else.
There's also the fascinating breadth of human behavioral and political responses to this new vector, and the way COVID-19 is triggering the long-delayed next recession -- popping some of the asset bubbles that have been growing relentlessly over the past nine years.
The government debt bubble is still OK, though ... it will be the last bubble to pop. It might not pop this go round. Maybe the next recession will be the demise of government debt. I don't know, we're still very early to this new story. Gold will skyrocket when the government debt bubble pops, that's what I'm planning for.
Anyway. The combo of pandemic, recession, and presidential election year is about as OCD as I've ever faced in my life. I need to make sure I take breaks for fun and remain as healthy as I can be.
It helps that I'm no longer a weird guy predicting disaster all on his own. The disaster is becoming more obvious to everybody else each day. That provides me with some comfort, that I don't have to figure out how to fix this myself. We're all going to fix this together.