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Another variant. When will this be done? Not for a long time. I look for great investments in the metaverse.

There’s a new variant. It’s called BA.2. It’s 1.5 times more transmissible/contagious than Omicron.

CNBC reports Pfizer and Moderna have started clinical trials on Omicron-specific shots.

I’m getting ready for my second booster shot.

Will this ever go away? Will I ever be able to live a normal life? The short answer is not for a long, long time.

Yesterday The New York Times ran a piece:

What We Can Learn From How the 1918 Pandemic Ended

Most histories of the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed at least 50 million people worldwide say it ended in the summer of 1919 when a third wave of the respiratory contagion finally subsided.

Yet the virus continued to kill. A variant that emerged in 1920 was lethal enough that it should have counted as a fourth wave. In some cities, among them Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Kansas City, Mo., deaths exceeded even those in the second wave, responsible for most of the pandemic’s deaths in the United States. This occurred despite the fact that the U.S. population had plenty of natural immunity from the influenza virus after two years of several waves of infection and after viral lethality in the third wave had already decreased.

Nearly all cities in the United States imposed restrictions during the pandemic’s virulent second wave, which peaked in the fall of 1918. That winter, some cities reimposed controls when a third, though less deadly wave struck. But virtually no city responded in 1920. People were weary of influenza, and so were public officials. Newspapers were filled with frightening news about the virus, but no one cared. People at the time ignored this fourth wave; so did historians. The virus mutated into ordinary seasonal influenza in 1921, but the world had moved on well before.

We should not repeat that mistake.

True, right now we have every reason for optimism. First, Omicron cases are declining in parts of the country. Second, nearly the entire U.S. population will soon have been either infected or vaccinated, strengthening their immune systems against the virus as we know it now. Third, although Omicron is extraordinarily good at infecting the upper respiratory tract, which makes it so transmissible, it seems less able to infect the lungs than earlier variants so it is less virulent. It is entirely possible and perhaps even likely that, spurred by a better immune response, the virus will continue to decrease in lethality; indeed, there is a theory that the 1889-92 influenza pandemic was actually caused by a coronavirus called OC43, which today causes the common cold.

All of which makes overconfidence, indifference or weariness, after two years of battling the virus — and one another — a danger now.

Signs of weariness — or misguided hope — are everywhere. Although more than 70 percent of the adult population is fully vaccinated, progress has stagnated, and as of Jan. 27, only 44 percent had received boosters, which provide vital protection against severe illness. Although most of us, especially parents, want schools to stay open, parents have gotten only about 20 percent of children ages 5 to 11 fully vaccinated. As in 1920, people are tired of taking precautions.

This is ceding control to the virus. The result has been that even though Omicron appears to be less virulent, the seven-day average for daily Covid-19 deaths in the United States has now surpassed the Delta peak in late September.

Worse, the virus may not be finished with us. Although there’s a reasonable likelihood that future variants will be less dangerous, mutations are random. The only thing certain is that future variants, if they are to be successful, will elude immune protection. They could become more dangerous.

That was the case not only in 1920 with the last gasp of the 1918 virus, but also in the 1957, 1968 and 2009 influenza pandemics. In 1960 in the United States, after much of the population had achieved protection from infection and a vaccine, a variant caused peak mortality to exceed the pandemic levels in 1957 and 1958. In the 1968 outbreak, a variant in Europe caused more deaths the second year, even though, once again, a vaccine was available and many people had been infected.

In the 2009 pandemic, variants also emerged that caused breakthrough infections; one study in Britain found “greater burden of severe illness in the year after the pandemic” but “much less public interest in influenza.” Researchers blamed the government’s approach for that. In the first year, the public health response was “highly assertive,” chiefly in providing information; there were no lockdowns. In the second year, they found, “the approach was laissez-faire.” As a result, “a large number of deaths, critical care and hospital admissions occurred, many of these in otherwise healthy people of working age.”

Such precedents should make us wary. Vaccines, the new antiviral drug Paxlovid and others could end the pandemic, once billions of doses become widely available globally and if the virus does not develop resistance. But the end is not going to arrive anytime soon. The immediate future still depends on the virus and how we wield our current arsenal: vaccines, masks, ventilation, the antiviral drug remdesivir and steroids and the one monoclonal treatment that still works against Omicron, social distancing and avoiding crowds. As a society, we have largely abandoned the public health measures on that list. As individuals, we can still act.

John M. Barry, the author, is a distinguished scholar at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.”

Early thoughts on the metaverse

Pick your explanation:

+ The metaverse is a brilliant way for Facebook to deflect government criticism. Change your name to Meta.

+  It’s a  catchy term created in 1992 in a science fiction book called Snow Crash you haven’t read and probably never will.

+ The metaverse is some thing out there in computerland we might, one day, use.

I’m less a visionary than a skeptic. I recognize that things ar changing. My first Internet line had a speed of 300 bits per second. That was 1970. I could only send text. No pictures. No videos. No movies. No games. Today my Internet line is over three million times as fast. This means I can transmit and receive all the above in a split second. I can write this blog and fill it with images and videos.

What’s next for the metaverse? Some thoughts:

+ As I walk down Fifth Avenue my smartphone will light up with products I might like in the stores I’m walking past. “Please stop, visit and get 15% off.”

+ When I’m on my exercise bicycle I will wear a headset that will give me a virtual 3D trip to all sorts of exotic places. I’d like to be riding my bicycle down the Champs Elysees or perusing the shops on Oxford Street in London, or rafting the Grand Canyon.

+ I’d like to ski Zermatt in Switzerland, again. I’d love to walk on the moon.

+ I’d like to play tennis with Rafael Nadal. He’ll never play me on a real tennis court. But he could play me on a virtual tennis court — perhaps Monaco which is red clay and has a nice view of the Mediterranean. A smart computer could figure out my moves and anticipate which shot Rafa is going to throw back at me.

+ I’d like to see real estate properties for sale shown in a more interactive way than today’s boring PowerPoint slides. I want to walk through a house for sale at my pace. I’d like to focus on aspects of the house that I’m interested in buying. I’d like to fly a virtual clone over the neighborhood.

+ I’d like to be transported back to hear Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech. The metaverse cold become a much better learning tool than what you get today with a teacher, a book and an uncomfortable desk.

There’s talk that the metaverse will only be truly successful when you’re not certain any longer if you’re in reality or in the metaverse. That’s stretching it. There’s plenty of useful and fun things you can do with enhanced computing — or in the metaverse —  or whatever you want to call it.

What does this mean for our investing? There are three areas:

+ Headsets. Te first thing to understand is that there’s a huge number of headsets around, Bestreviews.com tested 54 models and chose the five best. Which did not include Facebook’s Oculus. It also explained that the terms augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are often confused. Augmented reality is any hardware or software that overlays text or graphics on real-world images or video. Virtual reality is any hardware or software that places the user in a completely artificial environment.

+ Software. I haven’t seen any that warrants my investing. Except maybe some of the gaming companies.

+ Semi-conductor chips. Nvidia comes to mind. It’s still way overpriced. Put in a limit bid at $220. Maybe you’ll snag a few.

Ego has no bounds with the man destroying Burma (aka Myanmar

If I were in Burma, I’d be in the medal making business. He’s never fought a real war in his entire life.

Myanmar’s economy, already one of Asia’s poorest, was 30 per cent smaller than it would have been without the military takeover and coronavirus pandemic, the World Bank said last week.

I visited Burma in 1966. It was a truly wonderful place. No more. It’s what happens when an incompetent dictator — he’s called Min Aung Hlaing — takes over, kills and locks up all the people who don’t like him. More and more each day.

If you want to read more about how this nutcase is destroying Myanmar, click here

These two clips from a recent SNL are hysterical

Click on whatever you  see. Or load this blog in your browser and click on the images. Click here.

Favorite photo

On the future

The gurus think we’re in a bear market.

Bear markets have big bounces — like the last few days.

If you’re in a mind, you might try some of the hedging strategies I wrote about yesterday. Click here.

It’s OK to sell something you’re down 15% or more.

Oil stocks, like CVX, XOM, FANG and DVN are going up. I never thought I’d own oil stocks. But here I am.

This morning it was 5 degrees Fahrenheit in Columbia County, NY.  Cold but bright blue skies and gorgeous sunsets. This is last night.

That mountain is about 50 miles away, across the Hudson River.

See you tomorrow, or so. — Harry Newton