Discombobulated

[flowerbug]

Wastewater Surveillance

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

covid.cdc.gov

that graphic is anything but intuitive or obvious. i didn't have much time to look at it this morning. i'm not sure i want to go back! lol

 

[digitS']

"off-the-charts wacky," Imagine, paying to take oil off your hands!

US oil prices turn negative as demand dries up

Coronavirus downturn has put major pressure on oil prices with demand slumping and storage running out.

www.bbc.com

This Would Be Like the Supermarket Paying Customers to Take Home Bottles of Milk ... so, that there would be room in the coolers for the next shipment. Well, I guess those record profits are good for something!

I've noticed a recent drop locally of 20 cents for a gallon of gas. Burn IT!

 

[flowerbug]

"off-the-charts wacky," Imagine, going from a week-long Bear Market to paying to take oil off your hands!

US oil prices turn negative as demand dries up

Coronavirus downturn has put major pressure on oil prices with demand slumping and storage running out.

www.bbc.com

This Would Be Like the Supermarket Paying Customers to Take Home Bottles of Milk ... so, that there would be room in the coolers for the next shipment. Well, I guess those record profits are good for something!

I've noticed a recent drop locally for 20 cents for a gallon of gas. Burn IT!

that was a while ago.

times have changed and will continue to change. in a few more years perhaps there will be enough less demand for gas that prices will fall even more. dunno. producers will end up just making less and that will prop the price up... or ship it all overseas.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Or oil and natural gas will continue to be used for other products like fertilizer, plastics, pharmaceuticals, and many other things that it will still be valuable, even if energy goes very green. One projection I saw was that hydrocarbon production will need to continue to grow even if most of it is not used for energy. Not sure I totally believe that but I have no doubt a lot will be needed in the future.

Oil is a global commodity. Demand in China or Japan affects prices and availability in Europe and the US. Refineries are built to process a specific crude. A refinery designed to process light Saudi crude can't handle heavy shale oil. Some crude is "sour", contains sulfur so the refineries need special equipment made from certain materials to handle it or even ship it. I worked on one project to remove sulfur before it was shipped. They have piles of sulfur so big they could be seen from the space station. The scale can be massive. The multinational oil companies try to operate exploration, production, refining, transportation, and sales somewhat efficiently. Messing up a small part of a finely tuned machine can mess up the entire thing.

The world is constantly changing. You can say "Woe is me!" and gripe and complain or you can change with it. One heavy steel construction fabricator that built a few offshore oil platforms when I was in that business is now getting in the business to build offshore platforms to support wind farms. Look for opportunities instead of just complaining. How is your buggy whip stock doing?

I spent a few decades working in the oil patch. A pattern emerged. Demand for oil or natural gas went up, the price went, oil companies started investing more, and eventually production went up. Some of those projects could take years from start until they finally had production. It's not the type of thing where you snap your fingers and things change. But eventually production went up so there was enough to meet and exceed demand or something happened to drive the demand down so investment stopped. Soon production declined. It s a pretty obvious cycle if people bother to look. Of course politicians on either side can't admit this. They need to whip up their base to a frenzy so those donations and other support keep rolling in.

I'm not trying to be an apologist for the oil companies. They have warts, I've seen them, just like any big business and most small businesses. I'm certainly not defending any politician. Even if they know how the world works and try to make it work better, if they came out and said so they would neve get elected or reelected, they wouldn't even be able to raise enough money from "party" donors to be able to enter the primary. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is a horrible system but it's a lot better than anything else.

Rant over. I'll crawl back in my hole.

 

[digitS']

Oh yes it was -2 years. Thanks for noticing, @flowerbug.

I was reading current information about gas prices, following a link, and I hadn't noticed the date. (Deleting the words above that make it sound like it's current .)

Still, it highlights the ups & downs of the market. You know, the current local drop of 20¢ reflects the price of gas during my childhood ... of course, the $ had a higher value in those days!

Steve

 

[digitS']

. How is your buggy whip stock doing?

Oh, it's all part of the trust I've got set up and part of my children's inheritance.



I hope that hole is in your garden, Ridge', and you are refilling and Growing something there this season!

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

... To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is a horrible system but it's a lot better than anything else.

Rant over. I'll crawl back in my hole.

i've always said it is the best system that money can buy. from my cynical side. much can be done to improve it yet in some ways i also don't want it to be too efficient. like in matters of science where you do learn more as time goes on so perhaps some hasty short term decisions don't really work out. you have to be able to go back and try again and to take a different direction. our government is not at all set up to allow those kinds of tests and changes. instead as different states we can do smaller and more isolated experiments, but then it may take quite a long time for improvements to be learned, tested, explored and understood before they get around to other states and then again you end up having some problems solved by circumstances apart from what the government might be doing.

i'm pretty sure i don't know what i'm talking about but i've thought that if we want a less corrupt government and one that is representative of the population being governed we could do random selection from the voting age populations and i doubt it could be any worse than what we have now. yes, i'm not giving a lot of details of such a system - someday i should really write this up in detail and put it on the website too along with all the other things there.

 

[flowerbug]

the numbers keep falling for Michigan and that is good. i never really trust the Monday numbers and i don't know why they're not keeping up with the current day numbers like they used to do before. oh well... i don't expect to see a big spike from the Omicron variant that is now becoming dominant. we'll see - i hope i'm not surprised. now heading into spring and summer and more people being outside should help even more.

3/14	699	140	63	496	32,443	909	30
3/16	665	141	61	463	32,561	1,171	25
3/18	624	127	55	442	32,611	1,019	24
3/21	572	117	57	398	32,619	955	23

 

[digitS']

Reported in New England Journal of Medicine:

"... a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, adaptive platform trial involving symptomatic SARS-CoV-2–positive adults ... A total of 3515 patients ..."

Effect of Early Treatment with Ivermectin among Patients with Covid-19 | NEJM

Original Article from The New England Journal of Medicine — Effect of Early Treatment with Ivermectin among Patients with Covid-19

www.nejm.org

"There were no significant effects of ivermectin use on secondary outcomes or adverse events."

 

[flowerbug]

Reported in New England Journal of Medicine:

"... a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, adaptive platform trial involving symptomatic SARS-CoV-2–positive adults ... A total of 3515 patients ..."

Effect of Early Treatment with Ivermectin among Patients with Covid-19 | NEJM

Original Article from The New England Journal of Medicine — Effect of Early Treatment with Ivermectin among Patients with Covid-19

www.nejm.org

"There were no significant effects of ivermectin use on secondary outcomes or adverse events."

even with repeated studies showing the same thing some people (including doctors) will not let this go.