Bring In The Clowns

I never thought I would be saying this, but "Bring In The Clowns".  I will reveal these clowns in this blog.

I guess you watched the "medical experts" on TV News tell us all that they just became aware that UV light kills virus including the cornoavirus.  This might look like good news to most, but to anyone with a brain, it reveals that our so called "medical experts" are in fact "clowns".  That's right "clowns".

These people are supposed to know biology and chemistry as well as medicine.  These people are total frauds and here is why.  How important is pure clean water for public health?  It is about number one on the list.  How do we get pure sterile water?  We have to sterilize it some place along the line and how do we do that?  One of the most common is with Chlorine and second is UV and Ozone.  They have to know this sort of thing to do their jobs, if they are not total frauds.

Sportsmen have been using Ozone generators for years to get rid of their smell while hunting or smell on their clothing or the smell of their dogs.  You can buy these generators in any sporting good store! I just spoke to a Veterinarian who graduated form one of our universities and they had never heard of using Ozone to kill smells or to sterilize air and water.  How many clowns do we have?

I first stumbled onto the use of UV to kill organic smell compounds back in 1959.  That's right 1959!  That was a few years ago.  It happened that I shot a buck and took it to my local corner market to have it  cut up.  The owner hung the buck in his cooler and when I walked into the cooler, I noticed two florescent UV blue lights hanging in the cooler.  I asked what those were for and the grocer told me that they were to kill smells and germs.  I have since seen them in several meat processing shops.  I knew from then on that UV light could kill germs and I consider virus as a type of germ.  I have since asked several meat cutters if they ever used UV lights in their shops and all told me that they had never heard of it. How can that be?

I know that some of you have aquariums so you must know something about UV and Ozone.  It is very common to use Ozone generators to clean the water and also add Oxygen to the aquarium.  I have blogged in the past that one of the scariest things is "specialization".  This is where we take a person of low IQ and let them focus into a very small area so that they know just enough to get by in that one narrow area.  It works for a while, but when something unusual like the coronavirus appears these types of people are totally unprepared to deal with it.  Isn't that exactly what is happening when we listen to these "so call" "medical experts"?

People who feel that they don't have to be knowledgeable in some area because they can depend on "experts" have no one else but themselves to blame when things go bad as has happened with the coronavirus.  If you like trusting clowns with your life and those of your children, keep it up!

PS--Here is another one regarding Ozone.  Many class Ozone as a pollutant, because they see it whenever they find "smog".  Ozone is not the pollutant, it is the other organic compound that are also in that same air.  Ozone destroys these organic compounds by oxidation.  It is a lot easier to detect active substances like Ozone than more inert compounds.  Finding Ozone is correlated with the presents of real pollutants.  That is why they look for Ozone.  If they were not also clowns, they would realize this simple fact!   

Coronavirus And Dr Oz

I watch the News just like most people and this morning Dr Oz was being interviewed about the virus.  This blog will explore what he had to say.

The first thing that Dr Oz said that was significant was the in the hospital in New York where he had worked 94% of those who died of the virus had some kind of serious precondition.  Further 85% had at least two of those conditions.  He went on to claim that we needed more testing and more people to track the carriers.  Dr Oz seems like a smart guy, but he is just like most other doctors in the way they think. He is still pushing isolation as the best means to deal with the virus.

I can't figure out why some one with a brain has not asked these doctors what they would do "if" they had data of different values?  What if 10% of he population had the virus. or 20% and right on up?  Would their actions change if they knew those numbers?  My guess is that it would not!  I can see that there might be some logic in general public isolation and tracing if the percentage were small, but when it gets bigger and bigger testing and tracing is less effective and more costly. Isn't it clear if the infection percentage was 100% that testing and tracing would be worthless?  If that is the case, then the logic must have changed some where along the way.  Just where is that "somewhere:?

Back to the death rate.  I would like to see data that reflects the probability of death by the virus for each group with the preconditions identified by Dr Oz.  I would also like to see a better analysis of the 6% who did not have the identified preconditions.  I have a feeling that those in that 6% did have some kind of problem with their immune system that the doctors just did not identify or their test showed a "false negative".  Did you ever have a doctor tell you that you had a problem with your immune system?  I don't think so.  What kind of test do the doctors do to determine if you have a lowered immune system?

Why have there been almost zero deaths of people under and 10 years?  Our medical community should know that.  I was raised on a farm and when one of our cows had a calf, the first milk from the mother was not white, it was dark brown, but the calf drank it anyway.  They call that milk "colostrum".  It is some kind of special milk that the cow produces to give her new calf special immunity.  If you were to take the calf away from the mother right after birth and feed the calf regular milk, you would run a high risk that the calf would get sick and might die.  I don't think that most people know that.  It is the same with mother and their new born. My point is that the only reason that animals and humans can survive in a world full of viruses and bacteria is that we have an immune system to protect us.

The medical community understands this to a degree with their work on vaccinations which trigger the development of new immune antibodies, but they don't appreciate things that strengthen the immune system generally. In a prior blog, I pointed out how different  Oriental Medical philosophy is from our own.  It is also cheaper and just as effective.  Do you know of anyone who drinks colostrum?  The most important vitamins that strengthen one's immune system are C and D.  Most of us get vitamin D from exposure to Sun light or milk.  What most people don't know is that the color of your skin affects this process.  Black people do not produce as much vitamin D as White people given the same Sun exposure.  That is why people who live far from the equator are more white and people who live closer to the equator are more dark.  Along with other Black health factors, this may be one of the reasons that so many Blacks have died from the virus.  Remember that Blacks never lived in places like New York that is so far from the equator.

Why is there also, so little analysis of those who have continued to work?  It seems to me that we have a perfect test situation where we have people who are still working.  If we want to restart the economy, why is there not more attention to these people?  How about farmers or loggers who work outside and have less contract with other people?  It has been my observation over many years that there is a very sophisticated selection process for kids who become doctors.  It focuses on kids who can "regurgitate" the answers on "true" "false" tests.  They can memorize data, but have little idea about the significance of that data.  Further, they have problems with the identification of "new" patterns in their observations.  They tend to be very good at following recipes or protocols that have been written by someone else.  Ask your doctor if they have ever produced a protocol and I can tell you that none have.  Starting to see the problem when they are confronted with a new situation like this virus?  They want to apply their old protocols which clearly are not appropriate.

I think that you can see why many outside of the medical community are so pissed off.  The medical community does not have a very good track record in this epidemic and many people know it.  We need to take in the batting average of the doctors who are up at the plate before we bankrupt our country.  We need to look behind the curtain on this one!


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What Is Fauci's Objective Function?

We should have been looking at this before.  It is not too late and I will explore this in this blog.

Before we can judge if Fauci's decisions and recommendations are correct, we need clear agreement on the "objective function".  Exactly what is that?  We don't have an agreement, because we have not been working on an agreement.  It appears that all the discussion is dominated by medical people who are looking thru the telescope from the big end.  Because of that what would you expect form a bunch of medical people?  I just heard one say that we should not open up the economy if it would cause the death of one more person.  Further, he said that we should do "every thing that we can" to save the life of people.  This sounds a little like the doctor's oath, "Do no harm".  This is the typical risk adverse attitude that most of our politicians have too.  They would rather do nothing, rather than be accused to doing the wrong thing.  This is a sick attitude and most of you know it.

Here is my shot at an "objective function".  \

Based on a life being worth $100,000 for each life year saved and a job lost worth $10,000 per month lost and for every week a family is home bound worth $5,000 and every company with less than 240 employees going out of business worth $500,000.

In this objective are both gains and losses and the best solution is one that ends up with the lowest cost.  Isn't that a logical way to look at this?  I could have a more complex objective, but as it gets more complex, it decreases the chances that correct decisions could be reached.

I have a feeling that what we are now doing is running up the penalties much more than the life years are worth.  Think of this,  A person who has serious health problems and is 80 years old who would die in 5 years anyway is worth $500,000.  I am sure that keeping 24 families cooped up at home for 5 weeks would amount to $600,000.  It would also put 5 companies out of business for a total cost of  $2,500,000.  Now, what do you think?  It looks to me like what we are doing is not worth it when you look at the real cost.

PS--If we were to use the logic that Fauci advocates we would make every street intersection a clover leaf in order to save a life.  A life has a value, but it is clearly not infinite!  When you hear people say that, "You can not put a value on a human life", you know that they do not have brain.  We have limited resources and with Fauci's decisions, we have even less.  The number of lives we can save goes down as our economy goes down.  That is a fact.

Coronavirus And Bank Robbers

Here is a new idea that I think you may enjoy.  It is a different way to look at the coronavirus and I will explain the idea with a story.

We start off with a small country that has a long history of people being very honest and respect for the property of others.  In this country they don't even have banks.  People have different amounts of money and they keep it at home under their mattress.  Everyone is happy with this situation, but one day someone finds that their money has been stolen.

This brings up the attention of every one and they all set about trying to find the robber and before you know, they find the robber.  They hang him and that is the end of the problem for years.  The country is happy and continues to keep their money under their mattresses.  This solves the problem for years and years, and one of the local news papers writes up the story and the idea of finding and hanging the robber and it spreads all over the country. The people of this country now knows how to deal with robbers.

Years pass by and one day the country is awakening with robberies all over the place.  It is clearly an epidemic of robberies, but the country knows how to deal with this kind of situation.  They find one of the robbers and hang him immediately.  For some reason there are so many robbers that they can't seem to hang them fast enough.  The only choice is to make everyone stay at home so they can protect their money.  It does seem to work, but they notice that, after a while, the people don't have  money any more under their mattresses because they were not working and had to spend their money for food.  It was clear to all that finding and hanging the robbers was not working and was causing many of  the people to die of starvation.  What should they do?

Someone came along and proposed that the people take their money out from under their mattresses and put it into banks with strong vaults.  Many of the people did not want to do this because it had not been used before and thus was not proven.  No one could find a news story of where this new idea had ever been tried or proven.  A few of those who were on the verge of starvation revolted and demanded that people put their money in banks where it could be better protected and thus put the robbers out of business, and it worked.  There were now very very few robberies because their money was now protected.

Does this sound like a familiar story?  At first, when there was only one or two robbers, finding and hanging the robbers solved the problem, but when there were many robbers behind every tree, the only way to protect the money was putting it into a strong bank vault.  Since the coronavirus goes after the older citizens and the virus is all over the place, isn't it more logical to protect these older citizens than trying to find all the infected people and keeping them away from older people?

Coronavirus Life Year Impact

If you have read my blog on "life years", then I won't reexplain it here.  What I will try to point out is that we need to look at the coronavirus in a totally different way using "life Years".

I am going t keep this simple so that more people can understand the concept of life years.  One way we determine how significant the coronavirus is, is to compare it with other way that people die.  You can't just say that any death for any reason is a crisis.  It has to be done by some kind of comparison to other reasons that people die.  With me on that?

To make my point, I am going to keep this short and just use a few comparisons.  I could make a list including 99% of the reason people die, but just a couple will make my point.  Here are the numbers:

(1)  Deaths from auto accidents----------------125,000
(2)  Deaths from drug over doses--------------245,000
(3)  Deaths from coronavirus-------------------   70,000

I should have used some data where deaths were less than the coronavirus, but this will do.  Next, look at the average age of the people who died in each group above:

(1) 31 years
(2) 28 years
(3) 61 years

I need to add on other piece of data and that is life expectancy of each of these groups given the ages:

(1) 84 years
(2) 85 years
(3) 87 years

If these numbers look off, it is because these are conditional probability numbers. As you know, the normal life expectancy numbers are based on people at age "1" and these people are older.

Here is the punch line in "life years" lost due to death.

(1) 84 - 31 X  125,000 =  6,625,000
(2) 85 - 28 X  245,000 = 13,965,000
(3) 87 - 61 X   70,000  =   1,560,000

Notice that the impact of the coronavirus is clearly much less in life years than the other two forms of death.  What we need to do is to totally revise how we look at the data related to the cause of deaths and life years is the parameter that we all should be using.  With the normal data and analysis, auto deaths are 2 times that of the coronavirus, but if you look at it terms of life years, it is 4.2 times.  That is a big difference and I think I used a conservative number for the coronavirus of 61 average years of age.  Had I use a higher number, the difference would have been even greater.

Coronavirus True Impact

It is difficult to judge between different decisions or alternatives it you don't have a clear means of judging the merits of the different decisions or alternatives.  This blog will try to shed some light on this important point.

We all know that one can not live for ever., but we would like to live as long "as possible".  Maybe that should have been as long "as economical" or as long "as justifiable". or as long " as fair".  Think about a life boat with 5 or 10 people on it.  All would like to live as long "as possible", but what exactly is that?  Starting to see how complicated this is?

Most people have thought little about this subject and thus are in a very poor position to cast a vote.  Here are a few simple facts that might help.  What is the average age of persons in the USA?  I looked it up and it is approximately 38.  What is the average life expectancy?  It is about 80.  What does that really mean?  If we start off with 100 people born on the same day, 50% will have died by age 80.  Where it gets a little more complicated is if you as a person who is 65, how long they expect to live it won't be 15 years.  It will be more and the reason for that is that he is now a part of a different statistical group, not the ones he was born with.  Many of those have already died.  He can expect to live much longer than just 15 years.  How about a person who is 85, how long can they expect to live?  They too are part of a different statistical group because they have already lived to age 85.  Starting to see where this is going?

How can the average age of the USA be 38 when the average life expectancy is 80?  It is because we keep adding young people at the bottom faster than those at the top die.  In Japan, where the birth rate is less than the death rate, the average age is actually going up.  Their average life expectancy is going up too, but that is due to a different cause.

With this preparation, let's get into the Coronavirus. I am going to start using those 100 people born on the same day that were the basis for the 80 year life expectancy.  I am going to estimate the number of "life years this group of 100 experienced by the area under the cure.made up of two trapezoids.  the first is from at zero to 80.  The area is 6,000.  The area of the triangle from 80 to 100 is 500.  This is logical if you think about it.  Ask yourself, "how much living was there by this group of 100 before age 80 compared to after 80.  By the numbers 12 times as much living took place before age 80.  The total amount of living turns out to be 6,500 life years.

Now, let's see what the impact would be if the curve ended at 90 years rather than 100 for that 50%  who did not die due to the coronavirus.  That number turns out to be 250.  Here is the impact on that 6,500 life years 3.8% reduction in life years.  That was if 50% of those over 80 died early.  Even if  all of those over 80 died at age 80, we would only be looking a a reduction in life years of 7.7% in life years.

Here is another point that we should think about.  We spend about 18% of our GNP on medical and of that over 50% is spent in the last 3 years of life.  What are we getting for that amount of money and reduction in the quality of life for the others?  Some how we have to start thinking in terms of the big picture and not just saving grandma, no matter how much it cost.  If those people in that life boat only thought like we now are thinking about the coronavirus, you can bet that 100% of those in that life boat would die!

Coronavirus And Economic Efficiency

What does the coronavirus have to do with efficiency? Not much, but it is meat for this blog.

I come from a business background where efficiency was the name of the game.  It still is, but there some aspects that need to be further looked into.  I think that most of us know that the economy can grows in only a limited number of ways.  Those are (1)  More workers, (2)  Higher efficiency from a fixed number of workers, or (3)  Paying workers more  Of these three, the best one is (2).  When we look back at the economic past, we often find these working in combination and if the reason for a growing economy is driven by (1) and (2), we don't have inflation.  The answer for the recent growth in the USA economy without inflation is (2), efficiency.  With the rapid application of new computer driven "tools", workers are much more "efficient".  If you follow this, you will understand the following.

The coronavirus has hit bars and restaurants very hard.  It is predicted that many will go out of business and never come back. To understand what is going on we need to look deeper into efficiency.  Restaurants provide "food" for people and bars provide "liquor", but if you notice that during this pandemic that no one has starved  Sales of food and liquor has gone thru the roof, that is if you don't net it out with the decline in restaurants and bars.  People are still eating and drinking.  They may, in fact, be eating more and drinking more.  How can that be?  I see the reduction in both restaurants and bars a shift toward better efficiency!  People can eat more and drink more ans end up spending less.  People are actually ending up saving by not going to restaurants and bars.  If this pattern continues more people with have more money to spend some other place.

I just watched Alton Brown on one of his cooking shows demonstrate how much a person can save by eating at home.  He took a $125 fancy steak meal and did the whole thing at home for about $25. His steak was as good or better than the restaurant steak.  He had a great bottle of wine for less than 25% of what it would have cost in the restaurant and bar. That is a measure of the efficiency that is possible with the decline in restaurants and bars.

What about the people who work in these places?  They are doing work that is clearly not efficient and thus, most should go out and get a more productive job.  The many of them who dropped out of school or did other irresponsible things in their youth only have themselves to blame when they find it hard to get a job that demands more skill.

One further point.  We hear that the mix of costs in restaurants and bars is different from other types of businesses and it is.  A disproportionate amount of the restaurant and bar revenue appears to go to the land owner for rent.  This says to me that we need to "follow the money" when our government wants to give these restaurants and bars "your money".  It seems clear from what these people are saying that the money we give to the restaurant and bar owners is destined to end up in the pockets of rich land owners.  Does this sound like some thing out of  the middle ages?

The efficiency problem with restaurants and bars is not something new.  It has been here all along and the coronavirus just exposed it for all to see.  Since man invented his first tool, it has been greater efficiency that has driven the growth in quality of life for the human race! Don't forget that!

Coronavirus And Six Foot Separation

Are you getting tired of officials telling you to keep a six foot separation to avoid getting the Coronavirus?  People are still thinking "digital".  This blog may sound like a repeat.

I blogged a few back about the fact that most people only think "digital" when the world is "analog". Our officials who have been telling us that sex foot separation is safe are now changing their tune.  Here is a example.  Did you ever hear anyone tell you that you can not smell a skunk beyond 50 yards?  I did not think so.  The reason is that down deep we are "analog" people and would not buy that statement in a minute.  If you were up wind, you might not be able to smell a skunk beyond 50 yards, but what if you were down wind?  You could smell one for a mile!  It is the same with this Coronavirus.  It is like giving a "yes" and "no" answer to something that does not have a clear "yes" or "no" answer. 

I don't know if this would work or just confuse people more, but maybe we need to start adding probabilities to our digital answers.  In the case of the six foot answer, why don't they add that this is safe 95% of the time?  I know what the next question would be and that would be how far away to I have to be to be "safe"?  In this case meaning 100% safe.  The fact is no distance is 100% safe, it is just the greater the distance, the greater the safety.  Is this getting a little boring?

I have not even gotten into the quality of the tests.  If you have a brain, then you know that no test is 100% accurate.  All tests have some level of false positives and false negatives.  That is a fact.  Now the question is how to deal with explaining the test results. If you try to keep it simple for the simple minded public, eventually you will live to regret it.  When some exception comes along, you are going to be accused of being dishonest.  That is how it works.  If the public understood Bayes' Theorem, it would be easy to explain and for them to understand, but that is wishful thinking. 

With something like the Coronavirus that starts out very slow, a test that has a modest percentage of false negatives can be almost worthless.  Think about it this way.  It is like looking for a needle in a hay stack.  It is so easy to miss the few needles because of  all the hay you have to sort thru. The results are that you only find a "small" percentage of the needles.  If there are a lot of needles in the hay stack, with the same method, you will find a much "higher" percentage of them.  Do you understand that?  This is how it works with stopping the Coronavirus.  When the virus starts out it is a low percentage so you need a test that has very few false negatives. It is like you can not miss even one needle in the hay stack!

My bottom line is that we have to start thinking "analog" where there are very very few situations that can be described and either "right" or "wrong".  This applies to almost every thing and we ignore this fact at our peril.  

Restaurants Bars And The Coronavirus

Here are some of my comments on restaurants and bars after we get back to work after the coronavirus is under control.

There has been a guy on the TV News who does the "Bar Rescue" show who claims that restaurants and bars will have to reduce their number of tables and chairs by as much as 50%.  He claims this will be required to maintain social distancing.  This may be true if they do not do anything else.  There are a lot of things that they can do to compensate for possible re contamination.Here are some of my ideas.

I have been an advocate from the beginning to see if we can kill the virus after it has exited the individual in different forms.  I proposed that Ozone and Ultraviolet light could both be used for this purpose in a restaurant and bar.  Since Ozone smells and can attach a person's eyes and lungs, it may not have a use if customers are present, but it could be used to sterilize the property when it is closed and people are not present.  Ultraviolet, on the other hand, does not have many of the bad sides effects that Ozone has.  It can be used when customers are present as long as it does not shine directly into customer's eyes.  The owners could require customers to wear protective glasses to avoid any eye problems.  I don't think this would be too much to ask.

The property could be easily equipped with ultraviolet air purifiers that was also equipped with special filters.  Remember what it was like in these places when customers were allowed to smoke in bars and restaurants?  The air smelled and so did your clothing when you go home.  Many homes have these kinds of air sterilizer and purification system now, and I think that some restaurants and bars may also have them now.

It may also be possible to automatically sterilize table and chair settings with powerful ultraviolet light systems that were directed to tables when people were not present.  I don't think this kind of system would be too complicated or expensive.

Restaurants and bars may also have systems that screen customers before they enter the property or may require customers to pass thru some kind of sterilizer system on their way into the property.  They could also require the customers wear a badge that proves that they have been tested by some approved agency within 24 hours of entering the property. Finger prints could also be used.

From my list above, I think that you can see that it would be very possible and practical to reopen bars and restaurants very soon.   

Pocahontas

While being quarantined, I had a chance to read the book "Pocahontas, The Life And The Legend" by Frances Mossiker. It was very enlightening and I would like to share some of my impression in this blog

On the cover is a picture of Pocahontas painted in England in 1616.  It is the only "original" painting of Pocahontas.  You see paintings all over the place which were painted from the "minds" of the painters.  Frances sets the stage with a little history before the Jamestown group arrived in 1608.  Remember that Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, over 100 years before. I did not realize before, but the Pope had a lot to do with how the land in the New World was divided up.  Since England had thrown the  Catholic Church out of England a few years before, the Pope did not assign any land to England.  He divided most of it between Spain and Portugal.  That is why all the countries South of our border speak either Spanish or Portuguese.  For the next 100 years the Spanish and Portuguese plundered the New World and stole most of the Gold while keeping England out of the party.

From the time Columbus discovered the New World, the Catholic Church had a problem.  According to their teachings, everyone came from Adam and Eve, so they had no explanation for the Indians.  They were not sure if they were humans or not and many concluded that they were not.  This allowed them to treat the Indians like animals which they did. Did you ever hear about this before?  I didn't, but it may account for how the Europeans treated the Indians.

Cabot and Drake were official pirates for England who raided the Spanish Gold ships.  It was during this first 100 years that Portugal and Spain brought most of the African slaves to the new world..  While Drake was raiding the Spanish, he had to sail around the Horn to California to get away from the Spanish fleet.  Did you know that Drake landed in California "before" the Jamestown settlers landed in Virginia.  It was almost 20 years after Jamestown before the first Pilgrims arrived.  You would think that the Pilgrims were "first".

The new settlers to Jamestown were surprised that the Indians were "farmers" not hunter gatherers.  Some of the village communal farms were as big as 200 acres.  The Indians also had sophisticated political systems too. Had it not been for the goodwill of the Indians, the first Jamestown settlers would have all starved to death.  It is sad that this goodwill was not reciprocated.

John Smith and Pocahontas are key people in our history teachings and it appears true that Pocahontas, as a teenager actually saved the life of John Smith.  Her father, the chief, was going to execute John Smith when his daughter begged to not kill him. Because she saved him it was the tradition that Smith literally owed her his life.

Pocahontas was very independent and she became a Christian.  It is not clear why she married  John Rolf and went to England with her child, Rolf and some members of her tribe.  While there she met the Queen  Her husband returned to Virginia to make a buck.  He appears to have been very greedy and much less concerned about his wife, Pocahontas.  After a few years in England, they decided to return to Virginia.  Pocahontas got tuberculosis while in England and died just as their ship was going down the Thames River.  She was buried in Gravesend, but the brave site has been lost.

Rolf ended up with big land holdings in Virginia and ended up as a very profitable tobacco farmer.  John Smith never owned any land in Virginia since all land was awarded by the Queen and Smith was not in good standing with the Queen.

PS--I have traced my family tree back to Jamestown where I found that I am a direct descendant of  Pocahontas.  As it turns out there are approximately 750,000 people in the USA who can trace their lineage back to Pocahontas. The uncle of Pocahontas, who went to England with her, wrote some accounts of the event that are also interesting.  I purchase the Mossiker book in Tennessee from a "Trail of Tears" museum a few years ago. That is another story!

Sugar And The Coronavirus

Is sugar and the Coronavirus related?  Well, they are and I will show you how in this blog.

First a little history.  Sugar cane was first brought to Jamestown in 1619 so that British settlers could make sugar and get rich by selling it back in England.  The rich land owners who got their land from the Queen of England were able to get special protection passed in 1670 that prevented competition. Most of the slaves that were imported into the English colonies were for growing sugar cane and making sugar, not to pick cotton.  Even after the revolution from England, the new USA government was quick to pass more protection for the sugar industry in 1789.  Since then the regulations and protection have only gotten stronger.  It is estimated that today we pay over $4 billion above the world sugar price for our sugar.  This $4 billion ends up in the pockets of the sugar cane and beet farmers as well as the sugar industry.  You don't see this in your taxes, because it is done behind the curtain in the form of a restriction on imports to protect the most powerful farm lobby in the USA!

Now, what does this have to do with the coronavirus?  A lot!.  While our elected government has been protecting the sugar farmers, they seem to have turned their backs of the rest of us.  They let the greedy companies here in the USA import most of our critical medicines from other countries while protecting a very few rich sugar farmers.  I don't think that most of you knew that!  Now that you do, what do you think we need to do about it?  The sugar industry has gotten special protection since 1670 thru today.  That is 350 years right under our noses.  

The price for sugar here in the USA is about 3 times what it cost on the world market and we still protect our sugar industry.  What if we had only a fraction of this same protection for our pharmacy industry?  Very good question.  Would you trade a few rich farmers for a good supply of medicine here in the USA?  You bet!  When you have a few facts, isn't it interesting how your attitude changes about things.

PS--I read that about 50% of those who have died from the coronavirus in Louisiana were suffering from diabetes.  Further, did you know that the average American consumes 77.1# of sugar per year. Sugar seems to be in almost everything we eat.  It has not always been this way.  It is clearly not good for our health!.