Corona Virus Flu - Page 2

Whether or not the corona virus is a problem may not matter. The global reaction is as though it was the black plague ! .... lol.

For all practical purposes it's the real deal so just go with it. Times of turmoil create opportunities for profit.

< Laughing at myself > Copper is my latest obsession. I was looking back at the historical spot copper charts the other day and it hit 4.50 $/lb back around 2012 when the world was coming to an end.



I was going to make a trip to the yard this week but i think i'll hold off for awhile and see how this all plays out. I work hard for that copper and would much rather be paid 4.00$ a lb instead of the 2.00$ a pound they're paying right now.

Well, for whats it's worth this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to sell my #1 and #2 copper, my #2 insulated, my aluminium, shred, some of the circuit boards I have but not all and I have a package to send to one of the buyers.

My decision is not based on the virus, the price of gas, the stock market or OPEC.

My wife has had 10 back surgeries in the past 30 years and she's going to get a really nice comfortable chair.

Originally Posted by ChildhoodDream

I don't care much for the taste of store bottled water. And I prefer drinking out of glass when possible.

I will also stock up on food items when the price is right that I know I will use. There are the basics

I have cut down on MEAT, sugar, salt, most "snack" foods and other "food" items that are not worth eating when you do the proper math's.

We are NOT designed for meat eating anymore then we are designed for consuming alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and other "poison's" that are popular.

But we are the humans that want what we think we want.

It's not a bad idea to get your water tested. Natural water sources like drilled wells are just like anything else in nature. They vary with the seasons. Sometimes the quality is good and othertimes not so much so. It's always been that way. I remember hearing a story from one of the local historians a few years ago. One of the offshore islands here had 10 families with 45 children back in the late 1800's. They always drank from a well that was under the influence of surface water. Some kind of disease got in there and killed off 30 of their children one winter. Truly tragic.

That's one of the reasons i prefer bottled water from a trusted and reputable source. There's a lot of testing & quality control going on behind the scenes that you never know about. We usually pick up 10 - 15 cases when it's on sale at the store. We're not purists or anything. It's just generally a more sanitary way of getting your drinking water. Maybe leads to better health if you don't consider the risks of plastic packaging.

With all due respect ... gotta call bull on consuming meat and some of the other so called poisons. I would agree that our bodies haven't had enough time to evolve so that we can safely consume some of the processed stuff.

The thing is that we're omnivores. Human children especially need meat proteins for proper growth & development. Alcohol is a food stuff as long as it's not consumed at a rate faster than our body can process it. Tobacco,marijuana,alcohol,coffee,and teas have been around since before written history.

The main point is moderation in all things. That's where we get into trouble. We don't moderate ourselves. We take things to excess. ( Lol ... myself included ... it's not like my poop doesn't stink. )

I do get the vegan thing though. Old Henry David was a big proponent of eating beans. That man loved beans. It's a lifestyle choice. It's got it's upside and downside just like any other choice.

You can make your own hand sanitizer with 60% alcohol and aloe vera
Or use rubbing alcohol we wipe stuff down with it
1. Keep calm
2. Wash your hands
3. Keep cooler stocked

Originally Posted by Patriot76

It is interesting that on the day it was announced that toilet paper was in short supply (hoarding), Joe Biden told an auto worker that he was "full of sh*t. My question is what do the politicians know that we do not?

What a bunch of crap?

Not gonna do it.... Uh-oh.... Someone hacked my account...

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

If you wanted to know what you SHOULD stock up on....basically nothing...just keep your gas tanks full, buy an extra first aid kit, maybe a live trap, I've been through alot of scares, russian aggression when I was a kid, y2k, 9/11, sars, housing bust (which was probably the legit scare) and a few small scares until now. Stupid(uninformed) people buy tp and water, smart people buy filters and medicine, first aid stuff, extra fire extinguishers...car parts, bicycle parts...etc. Buy a fishing pole, line and some hooks if you dont have one. Buy a live trap. Just saying.

Maybe all of the bruhaha about the Corona virus is just media hype. It's like the little boy who cried wolf. There comes a point where you get deaf to it.

The "norms" are a bit different here. It's life by the seasons so you work hard in the spring,summer, and fall so that you can put up enough provisions to get you through the winter when there's no money coming in. We buy food , water, soap, & TP by the case cause it's cheaper that way. Fill the freezer & fill the oil / propane tanks. All that good preppin' stuff so we're all set to get through the winter.

It's normal for the power to go out during a winter storm. We had an easy winter this year, but it's not unusual for the power to be out for a week or more. The first thing you notice is that you have no water because there's no electricity to run the well pump. The second thing you notice is it gets cold FAST.

You have to be able to do for yourself in a rural area. I would set the priorities a bit differently.

1: Water

2: Food

3: Shelter from the elements

4: Energy .... stockpile firewood, diesel, heating oil, gasoline, propane, and so on. ( It won't go to waste. You'll definitely use it up. )

5: A generator or generators. They work hard and tend to fail at the worst possible time. It costs about 350.00$ a week in fuel to run one.

6: Emergency equipment like chainsaws and snow plows. That way you can either cut or plow your way out.

Sad to say ... but the time of transition from winter to spring is the worst part of our cold & flu season here. It's a normal year after year thing in this place. That's where we are right now. Our local nursing home went into lockdown yesterday. Nobody in or out except employees. I don't quite believe it .... but they claim that the mortality rate can hit 90% when any flu strain gets loose in there. I have seen a high mortality rate in years past but not that high.

My son lives over on the mainland and he's been down with the flu for the last couple of weeks. He's on the mend but it's two weeks of lost wages.

Seeing as it's coming this way ... i stocked up on cold medicine last night. It stinks because we just don't stock enough medicine in our store. Te shelves go empty once the various seasonal illnesses have hit the community. It happens every year.

I give. I'm not buying it. The cost of fighting corona virus is not worth the cost to the economies of the western civilizations. I think we are being played. For what this is costing our economy (trillions, maybe even tens of trillions of $'s), we could have built thousands of temporary treatment buildings, had hundreds of thousands of oxygen producers capable of providing for hundreds of patients, and enough people trained well enough to be able to comfort an influx of sick people. This is not killing people wholesale and is nowhere near doing so.

Our monetary policy has just been turned on to firehouse. Banks no longer have ANY restrictions to lending and the government has let them know they will be there at the end of the day with a truckload (actually, a check) of cash. We are being played and at this moment, I'm not sure if it is the Chinese to destroy a competitor and economy and civilization by scaring us into thinking it was something that had to be controlled by draconian means, or if our government is not letting a good emergency go to waste. My thought is the former with the help of the latter. To me, it appears people in our country have been so poorly educated, or specifically educated to believe, total safety is a goal that can be achieved.

And I knew an old lady
Who swallowed a minister
Is'nt that sinister?
To swallow a minister
She swallowed a minister
To catch the goat
And she swallowed a goat
To catch the dog
And she swallowed a dog
To catch the cat
She swallowed the cat
To catch the bird
And she swallowed the bird
To catch the spider
That wiggled and jiggled
And tickled inside her
And she swallowed th spider
To catch the fly
But I don't know why
She swallowed the fly.
- I guess she'll die

Glenn Beck talked about nursery rhymes being told to children to educate them of scary things and asked if this rhyme might be created to warn people of the tendency of a cure being far worse than the condition. He used the US efforts to fix Keynesian economics using more drastic Keynesian economics solutions. The fix always starts out small and grows and grows until.... I guess she'll die.

In 2 weeks, everybody on a welfare benefit will be getting a extra NZ$65, thats about US$45.
Last year our Goverment implemented a 'Winter energy payment' of NZ$20 to help pay for electricity for heating.
Its just been announced that they are doubling it, plus a extra $25 per single person for extra costs involved in the Corona virus.

Unemployment benefit is NZ$196 ( US$126 ) a week, plus extra for rent over a certain amount.
For 'Supported living' ( cant be expected to get a job ) its NZ$268 + extra for rent or such over a certain $ amount.
Plus extra for medicines/Doctors over a certain amount.

That doesn't seem like the best way of doing things. Just start giving $hit away ? Nah ... the heck with that. Make em' go out and earn it. An empty belly is a great motivator to get em' up and earning their keep again !

I know ... i probably sound like some callous A-hole but i've found that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. It's easy to make things worse while you're on your mission to make the world a better place.All it takes is just a bit of poor judgement.

It's not the best thing, but it doesn't seem as bad to loan somebody a few bucks when they're in a bind. It's a hand up ... not a handout.

Whether or not it's a good idea to borrow money so that you can lend it out to people in need is another question.

That seems to be the long and the short of it. We've had a pretty good run of financial responsibility here in the states for awhile now. The dollar seems as though it's been gradually gaining in value and prices have been fairly stable. Our Federal Reserve has been doing a decent job of managing the economy in a prudent way. That all changed the other day. They dumped a whole bunch of money into the economy to help deal with this "crisis".

That's probably good enough for the short term but there's likely to be a price to pay in the long run.

Six months or a year from now .... we're likely to see a slow economy coupled with higher prices. That's kinda sucky.

Likely to be good for scrap metals & PM's though. Gold works opposite to the value of the dollar. When the value of the dollar goes down ... the price of gold goes up.

Same/same with base metals and other commodities but the price swings aren't always as drastic as you see with PM's.

I certainly wouldn't want to be a catalytic converter buyer right now. Rhodium has dropped roughly 7,000.00$ / ounce in the last 30 days !

You would totally lose your ass on that one.

I'm not a business man but it sounds like a great time to stop selling and continue buying catalytic converters. Yes? No? Maybe?

It's been said before but the word "crisis" in Arabic also means opportunity. A guy that REALLY knows what he's doing could make a lot of money fast right now.

The fool with gold fever will lose his shirt. I'm thinking about the cat buyer who paid over 600.00 $ for a junk cat from a yr 2000 Ford Escort. That one was mentioned in another thread recently. I would hate to be that guy.

It's a high risk environment.

Timing is everything. For example: The perfect time to sell Rhodium was about a month ago when it was at it's peak.

The perfect time to buy Rhodium would be when it bottoms out.

JMHO ... this would not be the time to either buy or sell cats because PM's are so volatile right now.

I would be looking around for other opportunities. Buy low ... sell high.

The best way to make money is to not tell others how they should make or not make money. Or tell others how YOU are going to make money. Find something you can get from the backside.

I want to try an experiment. Abbott Labs stock.

Good Job. You just proved half my point.