One New Case of Monkeypox per Week in Portugal

A total of 948 cases of Monkeypox have been registered in Portugal as of November 16. This is the first update of these numbers since October 21 when there had been 944 cases since the beginning of the outbreak.

This means that there have been 4 new cases over a 26-day period, which translates to about 1 new case per week. A clear downward trend has been in place since the start of August.

• July 1 - 415 cases - about 10 new cases per day
• July 7 - 473 cases - about 10 new cases per day
• July 13 - 515 cases - about 7 new cases per day
• July 20 - 588 cases - about 10 new case per day
• July 27 - 633 cases - about 7 new cases per day
• August 3 -710 cases - about 10 new cases per day
• August 10 - 770 cases - about 9 new cases per day
• August 17 - 810 cases - about 6 new cases per day
• August 24 - 846 cases - about 5 new cases per day
• August 31 - 871 cases - about 4 new cases per day
• October 2 - 926 cases - about 2 new cases per day
• October 21 - 944 cases - about 1 new case per day
• November 16 - 948 cases - about 1 new case per week

Assuming a hospital stay of no more than ten days for the infected, there should be no more than 2 cases of Monkeypox currently in Portuguese hospitals. The downward trend indicates that the outbreak may be over by Christmas.

Pride flag

By Gilbert Baker (Vector graphics by Fibonacci) - SVG based on this image, Public Domain, Link

50 New Cases of Monkeypox per Day Worldwide

As of November 14, we've reached 79,000 cases of Monkeypox worldwide. That's fewer than predicted on November 5. We are only seeing 50 new cases per day, while our prediction was for 250 cases per day. We're down from 1,000 new cases per day back in August, so these latest figures are a clear sign that the outbreak is waning.

The worldwide number of cases currently in hospitals can be estimated to be 500 based on an assumption that patients are released within 10 days. That's a miniscule percentage of the total number of hospital beds in the world, which is in the millions.

Assuming that this trend persists, we can make the following prediction going forward:

• July 24 - 17,500 cases, 700 new cases per day, 7,000 inpatients
• August 1 - 24,000 cases, 750 new cases per day, 7,500 inpatients
• August 9 - 32,000 cases, 1,000 new cases per day, 10,000 inpatients
• August 17 - 39,000 cases, 875 new cases per day, 8,750 inpatients
• August 25 - 46,000 cases, 875 new cases per day, 8,750 inpatients
• September 2 - 53,000 cases, 875 new cases per day, 8,750 inpatients
• September 10 - 57,000 cases, 500 new cases per day, 5,000 inpatients
• September 18 - 61,000 cases, 500 new cases per day, 5,000 inpatients
• September 26 - 65,000 cases, 500 new cases per day, 5,000 inpatients
• October 15 - 73,000 cases, 400 new cases per day, 4,000 inpatients
• November 4 - 78,500 cases, 275 new cases per day, 2,750 inpatients
• November 14 - 79,000 cases, 50 new cases per day, 500 inpatients
• November 24 - 80,000 cases, 100 new cases per day, 1,000 inpatients
• December 4 - 81,000 cases, 100 new cases per day, 1,000 inpatients
• December 14 - 81,500 cases, 50 new cases per day, 500 inpatients
• December 24 - 82,000 cases, 50 new cases per day, 500 inpatients

Pride flag

By Gilbert Baker (Vector graphics by Fibonacci) - SVG based on this image, Public Domain, Link

Buying a Car

My wife and I are out looking for a new car. The one we have is a 22-year-old Opel Corsa. What we found was a brand-new Dacia Sandero. That's quite an upgrade. However, there's a problem.

The lady who showed us the car has now told us that they only sell it on credit. We can't pay for the car in full.

But we're not buying anything on credit. It's a matter of principle. We wouldn't even buy a house on credit, so why buy a car that way? We told the lady that we either buy the car without credit, or we won't buy it at all. The answer was that we had to look for some other car. They don't sell their cars to people like us.

I wouldn't have believed this story if it was told to me, but here we are. The car we were prepared to buy is still in the showroom waiting for someone poor enough to buy it.

It appears that the world has gone full credit-crazy at this point. No-one is to own anything without being in debt. That means that everyone in effect is to be a renter. Nothing is to be owned by anyone but the corporations. Even car producers no longer sell their cars. They rent them out. Customers only get to drive their cars if they promise to pay in instalments with interest.

If anyone defaults on their loan, the corporation comes and takes the car. It's returned to the dealer only to be rented out to someone else.

This appears to be the future they have in store for us. However, there are still people out there willing to be paid in full, and my wife and I will just have to look a little farther afield in order to get what we want. It won't be the Dacia that we found. It will have to be some other car.

Since we have most of our savings in real money, as opposed to the fake stuff that people call money these days, we are in no rush to buy. It's not like our money will suddenly evaporate into nothing, as happened to the German Mark a hundred years ago.

Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link

A 37 Billion Dollar Reward for Warmongering

A missile lands in a field in Poland, close to Ukraine. A tractor is hit along with some poor unsuspecting farmer. Zelenski calls for everyone to start World War 3, and Biden calls for another $37 billion of US taxpayer money to be sent as aid to Zelensky and friends.

That's the level of stupid that the world has come to.

Joe Biden receives presidential medal of freedom

By Chuck Kennedy - https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/photos/pb.63811549237.-2207520000.1484275919./10155140878359238/?type=3&theater, Public Domain, Link

Wettest Drought on Record

We had a dry winter last year, and with politicians suddenly back to focusing on scaring us with climate doom after two years of non-stop virus doom, they must have decided on drought as the ultimate catastrophic end to the Iberian Peninsula.

They declared drought as the menace of our time and the end to society as we know it. Politicians would soon have to take on the task of deciding who gets their ration of water and who doesn't, a wet dream for any politician.

But God has a sense of humour. It started raining almost immediately, and the weather has on average been no drier than any other year since their declaration of doom back in March of this year.

The funny thing is that people still talk of the drought with a dead serious face, even as it's pouring with water from the skies. My reply to them is that it's the wettest drought on record. We never had such wet droughts before, so we can only conclude that this is manmade.

Sun

By DracoLumina17 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Collecting my Thoughts on Norse Mythology

I'm having a lot of fun writing my story about Dreufey and her adventures in the universe of Norse mythology, and one of the more entertaining parts of this is the research I'm doing to get all the various characters and places into their correct relation to each other.

This has led me to not things down her on my blog, which I in turn have incorporated into the story. But some things cannot be incorporated into the story because they're too technical. They don't belong in a book that's meant as light entertainment. I've therefore decided to create an appendix where I lay out the technicalities for the interested reader. There, they will find such things as a map of the universe as I've interpreted it. There's also a bunch of notes that are merely there for me as a quick reference.

Norse mythology is complex. There are all sorts of places and beings, and it requires a quick reference chapter to keep track of it all.

China's Three Trillion Dollar Problem

China is heading for a major show down with the West. Among other things, the country aims to conquer Taiwan. This may cost the lives of thousands of people, but that's a price the political elite in China is willing to pay. However, they are not equally willing to see trillions of dollars frozen through sanctions.

Having watched the West's reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they know that any foreign reserves that they have in dollars or euros are likely to be frozen if they engage in direct hostilities with Taiwan, and that is probably too much of a prize to pay.

The only way out of this, apart from abandoning their plans to take over Taiwan, is for China to exchange trillions of foreign reserves for assets that cannot be frozen by the West. A logical first step would be to stock up on commodities, which they have already done. The next step would be to stock up on gold and silver. However, there's little available silver, and the total value of all above ground gold in the world is only 11 trillion dollars.

China has at least 3 trillion dollars in foreign reserves that it needs to convert. With little other choice than to buy gold, that's 3 trillion dollars coming into a market that has no more than 11 trillion to offer, of which only a small fraction is readily available in physical form.

China cannot buy and hold paper contracts, because these can be frozen by the issuers, so they will have to have the gold delivered to them. But how will they do that without driving the price of gold higher? The answer is that they can't. They can play the paper market and try to manipulate the prize lower, but they will at some point have to ask for delivery, and that's when it will become clear to everyone that the demand for physical gold is bigger than can be provided at current prices.

Gold prices may be kept artificially low for a while longer, but if China is to invade Taiwan, they will first have to get their gold delivered home to them, and that will drive the price of gold a lot higher than where it is today.

Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link