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  • Smart Trading Options for Conservative Investors in 2018

    Smart Trading Options for Conservative Investors in 2018

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    When it comes to the stock trade for the conservative investor, there is no doubt we're talking about stock options. But, what exactly is a conservative approach to trading? And what techniques can the savvy investor utilize in 2018 to manage risk and ensure growth? We've outlined a few options that might be right up your alley:

    1. Covered Call Options

    The covered call is really the most conservative of options and some say it's even more conservative than purchasing the original stock. Frequently used within IRA accounts, the covered call can be approached by a conservative investor from two perspectives:

    • Generate Consistent Income: You can employ this strategy without selling shares of a business while still generating monthly or weekly income. This strategy is usually used to capitalize in the event that your stock price is projected to decrease or not show improvement within in the short-term.
    • Sell ​​Stocks at Premiums Selling stocks above the current price may be useful when you can stipulate the price on a stock with which you'd not be uncomfortable selling. This tactic is useful in getting a stock that you are not in a hurry to offer and the sale of the Call may eventually take the stock but at the cost that you establish when the option was sold by you.
    1. Use Puts as Insurance

    This is a strategy that can be used by you if you anticipate a reversal in a short-term stock price hike. Because you're interested in reaping the long-term benefits, you are interested in taking the short-term profits, therefore purchasing a Put will ensure that if the stock goes down in value, the value of the Put will go up. Furthermore, you can sell the Put at a greater cost than you paid for it and reap a gain while the price of the stock is declining.

    1. Secure Puts with Cash

    Another method of securing your interest in a long-term investment is to hold adequate capital in cash on a stock that may see a fall in price. Of course, you must understand the business you're investing in and set a pre-determined price for your stock Put, but this is a simple method to ensure your long-term investment is protected because when the stock does fall, you can close in on the stock Put price.

    As with any investment opportunity, the strategies for stock options are endless. Although the stock market is normally associated with short-term investments, conservative investors are starting to identify options for long-term investments within the stock exchange system that not only generate income, but add value to your portfolio with minimally involved risk.

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    Source by Chris Bouchard

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  • UK PM listened to his scientists about Covid-19, but they were slow to sound the alarm

    UK PM listened to his scientists about Covid-19, but they were slow to sound the alarm

    UK PM listened to his scientists about Covid-19, but they were slow to sound the alarm 1

    LONDON: It was early spring when British scientists laid out the bald truth to their government. It was “highly likely,“ they said, that there was now “sustained transmission” of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom.

    If unconstrained and if the virus behaved as in China, up to four-fifths of Britons could be infected and one in a hundred might die, wrote the scientists, members of an official committee set up to model the spread of pandemic flu, on March 2. Their assessment didn’t spell it out, but that was a prediction of over 500,000 deaths in this nation of nearly 70 million.

    Yet the next day, March 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was his cheery self. He joked that he was still shaking hands with everyone, including at a hospital treating coronavirus patients.

    “Our country remains extremely well prepared,“ Johnson said as Italy reached 79 deaths. “We already have a fantastic NHS,“ the national public health service, “fantastic testing systems and fantastic surveillance of the spread of disease.”

    Alongside him at the Downing Street press conference was Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser and himself an epidemiologist. Whitty passed on the modelling committee’s broad conclusions, including the prediction of a possible 80% infection rate and the consequent deaths. But he played them down, saying the number of people who would be infected was probably “a lot lower” and coming up with a total was “largely speculative.”

    The upbeat tone of that briefing stood in sharp contrast with the growing unease of many of the government’s scientific advisers behind the scenes. They were already convinced that Britain was on the brink of a disastrous outbreak, a Reuters investigation has found.

    Interviews with more than 20 British scientists, key officials and senior sources in Johnson’s Conservative Party, and a study of minutes of advisory committee meetings and public testimony and documents, show how these scientific advisers concluded early the virus could be devastating.

    But the interviews and documents also reveal that for more than two months, the scientists whose advice guided Downing Street did not clearly signal their worsening fears to the public or the government. Until March 12, the risk level, set by the government’s top medical advisers on the recommendation of the scientists, remained at “moderate,“ suggesting only the possibility of a wider outbreak.

    “You know, there’s a small little cadre of people in the middle, who absolutely did realise what was going on, and likely to happen,“ said John Edmunds, a professor of infectious disease modelling and a key adviser to the government, known for his work on tracking Ebola. Edmunds was among those who did call on the government to elevate the warning level earlier.

    From the outset, said Edmunds, work by scientists had shown that, with only limited interventions, the virus would trigger an “overwhelming epidemic” in which Britain’s health service was not going “to get anywhere near being able to cope with it. That was clear from the beginning.”

    But he said: “I do think there’s a bit of a worry in terms you don’t want to unnecessarily panic people.”

    Johnson, who himself has sickened with the virus, moved more slowly than the leaders of many other prosperous countries to adopt a lockdown. He has been criticised for not moving more swiftly to organise mass tests and mobilise supplies of life-saving equipment and beds. Johnson was hospitalized on April 5 and moved to intensive care the next day.

    It is too soon to judge the ultimate soundness of the UK’s early response. If history concludes that it was lacking, then the criticism levelled at the prime minister may be that, rather than ignoring the advice of his scientific advisers, he failed to question their assumptions.

    Interviews and records published so far suggest that the scientific committees that advised Johnson didn’t study, until mid-March, the option of the kind of stringent lockdown adopted early on in China, where the disease arose in December, and then followed by much of Europe and finally by Britain itself. The scientists’ reasoning: Britons, many of them assumed, simply wouldn’t accept such restrictions.

    The UK scientists were also mostly convinced – and many still are – that, once the new virus escaped China, quarantine measures would likely not succeed. Minutes of technical committees reviewed by Reuters indicate that almost no attention was paid to preparing a programme of mass testing. Other minutes and interviews show Britain was following closely a well-laid plan to fight a flu pandemic – not this deadlier disease. The scientists involved, however, deny that the flu focus ultimately made much difference.

    Now, as countries debate how to combat the virus, some experts here say, the lesson from the British experience may be that governments and scientists worldwide must increase the transparency of their planning so that their thinking and assumptions are open to challenge.

    John Ashton, a clinician and former regional director of Public Health England, the government agency overseeing healthcare, said the government’s advisers took too narrow a view and hewed to limited assumptions. They were too “narrowly drawn as scientists from a few institutions,“ he said. Their handling of COVID-19, Ashton said, shows the need for a broader approach. “In the future we need a much wider group of independent advisers.”

    Michael Cates, who succeeded Stephen Hawking as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, is leading an initiative by the Royal Society, the UK’s leading scientific body, to bring modellers in from other scientific disciplines to help understand the epidemic.

    “Without faulting anyone so far, it’s vital, where there is such a lot at stake, to throw the maximum possible light on the methods, assumptions and data built into our understanding of how this epidemic will develop,“ he told Reuters.

    In a statement to Reuters, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said the government was delivering “a science-led action plan” to contain the outbreak. “As the public would expect, we regularly test our pandemic plans and what we learned from previous exercises has helped us to rapidly respond to COVID-19.”

    A LOW RISK TO THE PUBLIC

    When news came from China in January of a new infectious disease, Johnson had reason to believe his country was well prepared. It had some of the world’s best scientists and a well-drilled plan to deal with potentially lethal pandemics. Perhaps, some scientists say in hindsight, the plan made them slow to adapt.

    For many years, the Cabinet Office – a collection of officials who act as the prime minister’s direct arm to run the government – took the threat of pandemics seriously. Presciently, it rated pandemics as the Number 1 threat to the country, ahead of terrorism and financial crashes.

    At the centre of planning was a small group of scientists, among them Edmunds. His research group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine runs one of the two computer modelling centres for epidemics that have mostly driven government policy. The other is at nearby Imperial College. Edmunds remembers that early in the outbreak, the data from China were sketchy, in the period “where the Chinese were trying to pretend that this wasn’t transmissible between humans.”

    Edmunds and his colleague at Imperial, Neil Ferguson, were part of an alphabet soup of committees that fed advice into the Cabinet Office machinery around the prime minister. Both were founders of the flu pandemic modelling committee, known as SPI-M, that produced the March 2 report warning of more than 500,000 deaths. This committee had met together for nearly 15 years.

    Ferguson did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article.

    Edmunds and Ferguson were also part of NERVTAG, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group. Both too were members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, known as SAGE, that advises the government in times of crisis. SAGE reports directly to Johnson and the government’s main emergency committee, COBRA.

    At first, when NERVTAG met on January 13, it studied information from China that there was “no evidence of significant human to human transmission” of the new virus, according to minutes of the meeting. The scientists agreed the risk to the UK population was “very low.”

    The evidence soon changed, but this wasn’t reflected in the official threat level. By the end of January, scientists in China began releasing clinical data. Case studies published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, showed 17% of the first 99 coronavirus cases needed critical care. Eleven patients died. Another Chinese study, in the same magazine, warned starkly of a global spread and urged: “Preparedness plans and mitigation interventions should be readied for quick deployment globally.”

    Edmunds recalled that “from about mid January onwards, it was absolutely obvious that this was serious, very serious.” Graham Medley, a professor of infectious diseases modelling at the London School and chairman of SPI-M, agreed. He said that the committee was “clear that this was going to be big from the first meeting.” At the end of January, his committee moved into “wartime” mode, he said, reporting directly into SAGE.

    Dr Jon Read, a senior lecturer in biostatistics at the University of Lancaster, also a member of SPI-M, said by the end of January it was apparent the virus had “pandemic potential” and that death rates for the elderly were brutal. “From my perspective within the sort of modelling community, everybody’s aware of this, and we’re saying that this is probably going to be pretty bad,“ he said.

    But the scientists did not articulate their fears forcefully to the government, minutes of committee meetings reveal.

    On January 21, scientists on NERVTAG endorsed the elevation of the UK risk warning from COVID-19 from “very low” to “low.” SAGE met formally for the first time the following day about the coronavirus threat. So did COBRA, which was chaired by Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who would contract the virus himself in late March. He told reporters after the meeting: “The clinical advice is that the risk to the public remains low.”

    In response to questions from Reuters, the government’s Department of Health declined to clarify how the risk levels are defined or what action, if any, they trigger. In a statement, a spokesperson said: “Increasing the risk level in the UK is a belt and braces measure which allows the government to plan for all future eventualities.”

    Two days later, China put the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began, into a complete lockdown. Hubei, the surrounding province, would follow. But already, 17 passenger flights had flown directly from Wuhan to Britain since the start of 2020, and 614 flights from the whole of China, according to FlightRadar24, a flight-tracking service. That meant thousands of Chinese, some of them potential carriers, had come to Britain. On April 5, scientific adviser Ferguson said he estimated only one-third of infected people reaching Britain had been detected.

    As they watched China impose its lockdown, the British scientists assumed that such drastic actions would never be acceptable in a democracy like the UK. Among those modelling the outbreak, such stringent counter-measures were not, at first, examined.

    “We had milder interventions in place,“ said Edmunds, because no one thought it would be acceptable politically “to shut the country down.” He added: “We didn’t model it because it didn’t seem to be on the agenda. And Imperial (College) didn’t look at it either.” The NERVTAG committee agreed, noting in its minutes that tough measures in the short term would be pointless, as they “would only delay the UK outbreak, not prevent it.”

    That limited approach mirrored the UK’s longstanding pandemic flu strategy. The Department of Health declined a request from Reuters for a copy of its updated pandemic plan, without providing a reason. But a copy of the 2011 “UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011,“ which a spokesman said was still relevant, stated the “working presumption will be that Government will not impose any such restrictions. The emphasis will instead be on encouraging all those who have symptoms to follow the advice to stay at home and avoid spreading their illness.”

    According to one senior Conservative Party politician, who was officially briefed as the crisis unfolded, the close involvement in the response to the coronavirus of the same scientific advisers and civil servants who drew up the flu plan may have created a “cognitive bias.”

    “We had in our minds that COVID-19 was a nasty flu and needed to be treated as such,“ he said. “The implication was it was a disease that could not be stopped and that it was ultimately not that deadly.”

    While the UK was prepared to fight the flu, places in Asia like China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea had built their pandemic plans with lessons learned from fighting the more lethal SARS outbreak that began in 2002, he said. SARS had a fatality rate of up to 14%. As a result, these countries, he said, were more ready to resort to widespread testing, lockdowns and other draconian measures to keep their citizens from spreading the virus.

    Scientists involved in the UK response disagree that following the government’s flu plan clouded their thinking or influenced the outbreak’s course. The plan had a “reasonable worst case” scenario as devastating as the worst predictions for COVID-19, they note.

    Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, and a member of the SPI-M committee, said COVID-19 did behave differently than an expected pandemic flu – for example school closures proved to be far less effective in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. But, broadly, “the government has been consistently responsive to changing facts.”

    By the end of January, the government’s chief medical adviser, Whitty, was explaining to politicians in private, according to at least two people who spoke to him, that if the virus escaped China, it would in time infect the great majority of people in Britain. It could only be slowed down, not stopped. On Jan 30, the government raised the threat level to “moderate” from “low.”

    The country’s medical officers “consider it prudent for our governments to escalate planning and preparation in case of a more widespread outbreak,“ a statement said at the time. Whitty did not respond to questions from Reuters for this article.

    A TIME TO PREPARE

    On the evening of January 31, Boris Johnson sat before a fireplace in 10 Downing Street and told the nation, in a televised address: “This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama.”

    He was talking of finally delivering Brexit, or what he called “this recaptured sovereignty.” Until that moment, Johnson’s premiership had been utterly absorbed by delivering on that challenge.

    With Brexit done, Johnson had the chance to focus on other matters the following month, among them the emerging virus threat. But leaving the European Union had a consequence.

    Between February 13 and March 30, Britain missed a total of eight conference calls or meetings about the coronavirus between EU heads of state or health ministers – meetings that Britain was still entitled to join. Although Britain did later make an arrangement to attend lower-level meetings of officials, it had missed a deadline to participate in a common purchase scheme for ventilators, to which it was invited. Ventilators, vitally important to treating the direst cases of COVID-19, have fallen into short supply globally. Johnson’s spokesman blamed an administrative error.

    A Downing Street aide told Reuters that from around the end of January, Johnson concentrated his attention increasingly on the coronavirus threat, receiving “very frequent” updates at least once per day from mid February, either in person or via a daily dashboard of cases.

    In the medical and scientific world, there was growing concern about the threat of the virus to the UK. A report from Exeter University, published on February 12, warned a UK outbreak could peak within four months and, without mitigation, infect 45 million people.

    That worried Rahuldeb Sarkar, a consultant physician in respiratory medicine and critical care in the county of Kent, who foresaw that intensive care beds could be swamped. Even if disease transmission was reduced by half, he wrote in a report aimed at clinicians and actuaries in mid-February, a coronavirus outbreak in the UK would “have a chance of overwhelming the system.”

    With Whitty stating in a BBC interview on February 13 that a UK outbreak was still an “if, not a when,“ Richard Horton, a medical doctor and editor of the Lancet, said the government and public health service wasted an opportunity that month to prepare quarantine restriction measures and a programme of mass tests, and procure resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment for expanded intensive care.

    Calling the lost chance a “national scandal” in a later editorial, he would testify to parliament about a mismatch between “the urgent warning that was coming from the frontline in China” and the “somewhat pedestrian evaluation” of the threat from the scientific advice to the government.

    After developing a test for the new virus by January 10, health officials adopted a centralised approach to its deployment, initially assigning a single public laboratory in north London to perform the tests. But, according to later government statements, there was no wider plan envisaged to make use of hundreds of laboratories across the country, both public and private, that could have been recruited.

    According to emails and more than a dozen scientists interviewed by Reuters, the government issued no requests to labs for assistance with staff or testing equipment until the middle of March, when many abruptly received requests to hand over nucleic acid extraction instruments, used in testing. An executive at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford said he could have carried out up to 1,000 tests per day from February. But the call never came.

    “You would have thought that they would be bashing down the door,“ said the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. By April 5, Britain had carried out 195,524 tests, in contrast to at least 918,000 completed a week earlier in Germany.

    Nor was there an effective effort to expand the supply of ventilators. The Department of Health told Reuters in a statement that the government started talking to manufacturers of ventilators about procuring extra supplies in February. But it was not until March 16, after it was clear supplies could run out, that Johnson launched an appeal to industry to help ramp up production.

    Charles Bellm, managing director of Intersurgical, a global supplier of medical ventilation products based outside London, said he has been contacted by more than a dozen governments around the world, including France, New Zealand and Indonesia. But there had been no contact from the British government. “I find it somewhat surprising, I have spoken to a lot of other governments,“ he said.

    Countering such criticism, Hancock, the health minister, said the government is on track to deliver about 10,000 more ventilators in the coming weeks. One reason Britain was behind some countries on testing, he said, was the absence of a large diagnostics industry at the outbreak of the epidemic. “We didn’t have the scale.”

    GAME OVER

    It was during the school half-term holidays in February that frontline doctor Nicky Longley began to realise that early efforts to contain the disease were likely doomed.

    For weeks now, doctors and public health workers had been watching out for people with flu-like symptoms coming in from China. Longley, an infectious diseases consultant at London’s Hospital for Tropical Diseases, was part of a team that staffed a public health service helpline for those with symptoms. The plan, she said, had been to make all effort to catch every case and their contacts. And “to start with, it looked like it was working.”

    But then, bad news. First, on Wednesday the 19th of February, came the shock news from Iran of two deaths. Then, on Friday the 21st, came a death in Italy and a bloom of cases in Lombardy and Veneto regions. Britain has close links to both countries. Thousands of Britons were holidaying in Italy that week.

    “I don’t think anybody really foresaw what was happening in Italy,“ Longley said. “And I think, the minute everybody saw that, we thought: ‘This is game over now.’”

    Until then, Longley said, everyone felt “there was a chance to stamp it out” even though most were sceptical it could be done long-term. But after Iran and Italy, it was obvious containment would not work. The contact tracing continued for a while. But as the cases in London built up, and the volume of calls to the helpline mushroomed, the priority began to shift to clinical care of the serious cases. “At a certain point you have to make a decision about where you put your efforts as a workforce.”

    Edmunds noted that Iran and Italy had hardly reported a case until that point. “And then, all of sudden you had deaths recorded.” There was a rule of thumb that, in an outbreak’s early stages, for each death there were probably 1,000 cases in a community. “And so it was quite clear that there were at least thousands of cases in Italy, possibly tens of thousands of cases in Italy right then.”

    Amid the dreadful news from Italy, the scientists at NERVTAG convened by phone that Friday, 21st February. But they decided to recommend keeping the threat level at “moderate,“ where it had sat since January 30th. The minutes don’t give a detailed explanation of the decision. Edmunds, who had technical difficulties and couldn’t be heard on the call, emailed afterwards to ask the warning to be elevated to “high,“ the minutes revealed. But the warning level remained lower. It’s unclear why.

    “I just thought, are we still, we still thinking that it’s mild or something? It definitely isn’t, you know,“ said Edmunds.

    A spokesman for the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, didn’t directly respond to Reuters questions about the threat level. Asked whether, with hindsight, the scientists’ approach was the right one, the spokesperson said in a statement that “SAGE and advisers provide advice, while Ministers and the Government make decisions.”

    HERD IMMUNITY

    On Sunday, March 1st, Ferguson, Edmunds and other advisers spent the day with NHS public health service experts trying to work out how many hospital beds and other key resources would be needed as the outbreak exploded. By now, Italian data was showing that a tenth of all infected patients needed intensive care.

    The following day, pandemic modelling committee SPI-M produced its “consensus report” that warned the coronavirus was now transmitting freely in the UK. That Thursday, March 5, the first death in the UK was announced. Italy, which reached 827 deaths by March 11, ordered a national lockdown. Spain and France prepared to follow suit.

    Johnson held out against stringent measures, saying he was following the advice of the government’s scientists. He asserted on March 9: “We are doing everything we can to combat this outbreak, based on the very latest scientific and medical advice.”

    Indeed, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE, had recommended that day, with no dissension recorded in its summary, that the UK reject a China-style lockdown. SAGE decided that “implementing a subset of measures would be ideal,“ according to a record of its conclusions. Tougher measures could create a “large second epidemic wave once the measures were lifted,“ SAGE said.

    On March 12 came a bombshell for the British public. Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, announced Britain had moved the threat to UK citizens from “moderate” to “high.” And he said the country had moved from trying to contain the disease to trying to slow its spread. New cases were not going to be tracked at all. “It is no longer necessary for us to identify every case,“ he said. Only hospital cases would, in future, be tested for the virus. What had been an undisclosed policy was in the open: beyond a certain point, attempts to completely extinguish the virus would stop.

    The same day, putting aside his jokey self, Johnson made a speech in Downing Street, flanked by two Union Jacks and evoking the spirit of Winston Churchill’s “darkest hour” address. He warned: “I must level with you, level with the British public – more families, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

    For most Britons, it came as a shock. Several of the next day’s newspapers splashed Johnson’s words on their front pages.

    Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, who chaired SAGE, said in a BBC interview on March 13 that the plan was to simply control the pace of infection. The government had, for now, rejected what he called “eye-catching measures” like stopping mass gatherings such as football games or closing schools. The “aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not to suppress it completely.” Most people would get the virus mildly, and this would build up “herd immunity” which, in time, would stop the disease’s progress.

    But by now, the country was rebelling. Major institutions decided to close. After players began to get infected, the professional football leagues suspended their games. As Johnson still refused to close schools and ban mass gatherings, the Daily Mirror’s banner headline, summing up a widespread feeling, asked on March 13: “Is It Enough?”

    The catalyst for a policy reversal came on March 16 with the publication of a report by Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College team. It predicted that, unconstrained, the virus could kill 510,000 people. Even the government’s “mitigation” approach could lead to 250,000 deaths and intensive care units being overwhelmed at least eight times over.

    Imperial’s prediction of over half a million deaths was no different from the report by the government’s own pandemic modelling committee two weeks earlier. Yet it helped trigger a policy turn-around, both in London and in Washington, culminating seven days later in Johnson announcing a full lockdown of Britain. The report also jarred the U.S. administration into tougher measures to slow the virus’ spread.

    Ferguson was now in isolation himself after catching the virus. Testifying by video link to a committee in Parliament, he explained why he and other scientific advisers had shifted from advocating partial social-distancing measures to warning that without a rigorous shutdown, the NHS would be overwhelmed. The reason, he said, lay in data coming out of Italy that showed large numbers of patients required critical care.

    “The revision was that, basically, estimates of the proportion of patients requiring invasive ventilation, mechanical ventilation, which is only done in a critical care unit, roughly doubled,“ he said.

    Edmunds had a different explanation for the policy shift.

    What allowed Britain to alter course, said Edmunds, was a lockdown in Italy that “opened up the policy space” coupled with new data. First came a paper by Edmunds’ own London School team that examined intermittent lockdowns, sent to the modelling committee on March 11 and validated by Edinburgh University. Ferguson’s revised Imperial research followed.

    Woolhouse, the Edinburgh professor, confirmed the sequence.

    Edmunds said these new studies together had demonstrated that if the British government imposed a lengthy period of tougher measures, perhaps relaxed periodically, then the size of the epidemic could be substantially reduced.

    Still, without a vaccine or effective treatments, it’s going to be hard to avoid a substantial part of the British population getting infected, said Edmunds. “Until you get to a vaccine, there is no way of getting out of this without certainly tens of thousands of deaths,“ he said. “And probably more than that.”

    Now subject to intense public scrutiny, the modelling teams at universities across Britain continue to work on different scenarios for how the world can escape the virus’s clutches. According to Medley, the chairman of the SPI-M pandemic modelling committee, no one now doubts, for all the initial reservations, that a lockdown was essential in Britain.

    Medley added: “At the moment we don’t know what’s going to happen in six months. All we know is that unless we stop transmission now, the health service will collapse. Yep, that’s the only thing we know for sure.” – Reuters

    UK PM listened to his scientists about Covid-19, but they were slow to sound the alarm
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    https://www.thesundaily.my/home/uk-pm-listened-to-his-scientists-about-covid-19-but-they-were-slow-to-sound-the-alarm-GE2237109

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  • More wind, less hot air

    More wind, less hot air

    Predictions about how much wind power will be in place by the year 2040 have been too conservative according to research published in the International Journal of Energy Technology and Policy.

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  • The Life of Ezra Pound by Noel Stock

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    A review of The Life of Ezra Pound by Noel Stock must begin by acknowledging the phenomenal achievement of its author. It is comprehensive, detailed, forensic, appreciative, critical and illuminating, a massive achievement of analysis, research and insight. At around 200,000 words it is also a commitment, not for the fainthearted or for anyone with only a passing interest in either poetry or the history of the twentieth century. But it is also something else, something that, despite the magnificence of its scholarship, provokes this reader to focus on issues that are external to the text, itself. But more of that later: first, the book.

    Ezra Pound was undeniably one of the greatest figures of twentieth century literature. Unlike his illustrious contemporaries and friends, however, Joyce, Eliot and Yeats among them, his name has seemed to slip from the mainstream since his death in 1972. I read his great achievement, the Cantos, when I was at college. I did not understand them. In some ways they feel less like a work of poetry than a lifetime achievement, a creatively conceived and sometimes over-presented commonplace book into which fell, in poetic form, a distillation, a reflection or sometimes mere mention of whatever disparate material that Pound obsessed over at the time. The Cantos were Pound’s creative life, but we must not forget the massive amount of other material, his journalism, music, prose and economics, for want of a more accurate word.

    Pound was one of the founders and movers of literary and artistic movements: Imagism and the Vorticism among them. They were perhaps not the most enduring of directions. He was American but seemed more at home in England and then Italy, neither of which chooses to honour his achievements on their soil. But what is strongly felt about this man from the start is his conviction of, perhaps his obsession with his own genius. He was utterly sure he would contribute to the arts and perhaps even change their direction. He seemed to consider his legacy immortal, even before it had been created. He felt he was something new, original and enduring. And all this when apparently no-one even wanted to read his material, or formally give him time of day. And not only did he seem to deny his failures, he didn’t even seem to register them. The limitations were always somewhere else. In the early years, he thus seemed like a self-publicist, with is achievements acknowledged before they were achieved, like a modern self-published author who writes five-star, best-seller reviews of his own work. Nowadays, that surely would never do!

    But eventually, perhaps by sheer dogged application alongside considerable talent, Pound received the recognition he thought he deserved, though perhaps never in our own contemporary, blunt instrument yardstick of success – sales. Certain academics loved him. Others did not. He himself had high hopes of a Nobel Prize.

    Noel Stock includes copious quotations from Pound’s verse, always with critical assessment, sometimes with criticism. The Cantos were so far reaching in their intellectual coverage that it may appear from the outside that no-one without the full gamut of requisite skills would understand them. And given that these skills comprise, amongst other things, a knowledge of Dante and medieval Italian poetry, Confucius, Mencius and Lao-Tze in the original Chinese, troubadour songs in their original langue d’oc, Noh theatre texts in Japanese, Pound’s own experimental English, besides knowledge of the Classics and their metres, one might presume that there might be few modern readers of his work. This is probably accurate. But there is more to the modern shunning of Pound’s work than its overtly elitist intellectual demands. And it is here that this review needs to diverge from literature, poetry and indeed Ezra Pound, himself, to address the related concepts of fascism and racism.

    The main reason why today Pound’s name remains passé is his espousal of fascist ideas and his overt antisemitism. He went to live in Italy. He regarded Mussolini as rather a good thing. In Italy at the time he was hardly alone in this belief. He adopted Hitler’s aggressive antisemitism because he was fundamentally opposed to capitalism, if it meant what he saw as a banking and economic system dominated by Jews, the foundation of this belief being a bank owned by the Rothchild family. He also took to broadcasting pro-fascist propaganda (in Italian and English) on radio during World War II.

    Normally, my reviews are consciously detached. I try to review the book, not myself. Likes and dislikes are, to me, wholly nebulous and indefinable and even passing whims that are always less significant than considerations of communication or achievement of ends. In the case of The Life of Ezra Pound, the subjective “I” must be included, since our appreciation or not of this poet’s writing now seems to depend wholly on our individual take on his politics, despite his being be neither analytical or pro-active in his views, as this biography clarifies. In some ways, his politics were as transient as his current interests, as expressed in the meanderings of the Cantos. But what now can we make of Pound? Should we even try to understand him? Is dismissal the preferred option? I would say that he is worth the effort. Not the use of “I”! And this is not because I think Pound is a particular genius, overlooked or even readable. And I certainly do not see his actions as pardonable! And here I beg your pardon for making this book review become something personal, something about me and not about the book, but I assure you it is relevant. Please exit here if you are wary of the personal.

    I remember in the recent past a well-known British television presenter saying on-air that the music of Wagner was not played in her household because of the composer´s antisemitism. I remember another celebrity saying that antisemitism was the flavour of Wager´s age, and that rejection of the composer´s work on those grounds alone ought to prompt a similar rejection of everything artistic or otherwise that came out of mid-nineteenth century German culture.

    In the not too distant past I re-read Adam Smith´s Wealth of Nations. In my review I concentrated on those aspects of the analysis that might contradict the completely neo-liberal interpretation of the work. I was perhaps wrong to do so, but I wanted to challenge the idea that there is just one way to read Smith´s notion of free trade. Embedded within Smith´s thesis, however, are assumptions about human progress and worthiness. The Hindoo, the Mussulman and even the Catholic have their place in history and civilisation, but the heathen is judged to be a primitive sub-human. I do not recall Smith referring to ´The Buddhist´, but that may be my own failure of memory. In today´s politics, how many of the neo-liberal, perhaps neo-conservative supporters of their own notions of Smith´s concepts of free trade also regard those not associated with an organised great religion as both uncivilised and sub-human? And, given that the assumption appears to run throughout the work, should that alone disqualify Smith´s views on other subjects or his contribution to economics? Another position that almost dominates sections of The Wealth of Nations is that there is no economic activity that is or could be greater than the total that describes the state. How many of these same free marketeers would share Smith´s oft-stated revulsion of the very idea of a transnational corporation, which he regarded as necessarily market-distorting and almost automatically corrupt? This is recognized in antitrust and anti-monopoly legislation, but how often is this side of Smith´s work quoted? My point here is that we can choose to be selective, and usually do.

    I am tempted here to introduce the composer Anton Webern into the argument. A member of the second Viennese School, Webern espoused the atonalism of his associate, Schoenberg. Webern was perhaps the artistic opposite of Ezra Pound, being prone to destructive self-criticism and a desire for an extreme succinctness of expression. But Webern, like Pound, thought that fascism might be more sympathetic towards “high art” to which he aspired than the mechanisms of capitalism that concentrated on what it could sell. He thus initially espoused fascism, eventually to his own and his associates´ cost.

    After this considerable diversion, there is eventually a moral, and that is to beware anyone touting answers, especially those based on interpretations of the past in anything other than its own terms. Which brings me to Brexit! It might seem quite a jump, but it does follow. Trust me!

    I have recent personal experience, albeit apocryphal, that suggests the prime motivation among the British working class leave voters who surely swung the referendum result was “getting rid of all the foreigners.” I use quotes to emphasise that this was expressed to me personally and verbatim, with stress on the “all”. I had just finished The Life of Ezra Pound and I felt immediately a strange yet strong link with Pound´s antisemitism, which was founded on nothing less than trying to find someone to blame.

    Perhaps we should not judge Wagner, Adam Smith or even Ezra Pound using the moral perspective of our own time. For if we did that, and rejected any espousal of either racism or religious bigotry, how much of our human past would we retain? And, given the above Brexit opinion, is the moral perspective of our time significantly different from that of the 1930s, or even the 1850s, or 1770s or indeed any other time in our conflict-ridden blame game of history?

    The Life of Ezra Pound is a forensic biography of a poet. It describes a life lived in its historical and cultural context. Like all books committed to communicating its subject, it is a masterpiece that takes the reader way beyond the confines of its subject and thereby achieves a permanent relevance. Revisit this past. We must never deny it existed or forget its consequences. But it reminds us that as individuals, communities and societies, there is no rule that precludes the repetition of error. And neither is there any rule that insists that a current moral ground need be any higher than any other existing folly, contemporary or past.

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    Source by Philip Spires

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  • 8 Tips to Help You Make an Online Dating Site Work for You

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    Today, online dating websites use artificial intelligence to help you get in contact with the right person. If you are looking for an effective way of making your favorite dating sites work for you, our expert tips may help you. On these platforms, you can get advice on relationships and dating. Plus, you will get a lot of relevant quizzes.

    Since these platforms attract millions of visitors on a regular basis, experts say that you have to use the right approach to make the platform work for you. Let’s read some tips.

    Set your Priorities

    First of all, you need to set your priorities, which means you need to set criteria for things you are looking for in your desired partner. Therefore, what you need to do is do your homework before you start your search. Also, this will help you create a short list of potential candidates.

    Consider your Interests

    You may want to choose a site that can match your interests. Your next move is to opt for a platform that you think can help you get the person you are in search of. On big platforms, your chances of finding the right person will be higher.

    Have a Live Chat

    Although it’s nice to chat with your partner online, it can’t be an alternative to a face-to-face conversation. If you are just getting started, meeting in person may not be possible. So, it’s a good idea to have a live video chat. This will help you find out if you can take it to the next level.

    Be Realistic

    Although you may find exactly the person you are looking for, make sure you are realistic. In other words, your expectations should be realistic.

    Personality Tests

    It’s interesting to run some personality tests, but don’t think that they are perfect. The matching bot of the dating site can’t beat personal experience. So, what you need to do is have an open mind about the person who the algorithm think is not good for you. That guy or girl may be an excellent prospect.

    Beware of Dishonest People

    While communicating with a prospective date on a dating website, make sure you trust your gut instincts. You can use many ways to find out if they are lying to you. Make sure you do all you can to be conservative and protect yourself.

    Safeguard your Self-Esteem

    If you don’t find your desired person even after several days, don’t lose heart. Even after trying your level best, if you fail to achieve success, we suggest that you sit with a close friend for suggestions. This will help you avoid mistakes that you might have made during the process.

    Create a Catchy Profile

    Make sure you prepare your profile carefully. Ideally, your profile should be a clear description of who you are. This will help others find you more easily. If your profile is poorly made, you may have to face disappointments.

    In short, these are some techniques that can help you make an online dating site work for you.

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    Source by Shalini M

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  • Conservative Radio Host’s Prescription Drug Addiction Story

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    In recent years, the prescription drug addictions of many public figures have come to light. One of the most tragic personal prescription drug addiction stories in recent years is that of radio commentator Rush Limbaugh. He achieved a level of fame, wealth, and influence that most people would envy, but he dealt with a privately devastating prescription drug addiction.

    Rush Limbaugh is a prominent conservative talk show host and author. Around 20 million listeners tune into his radio show Monday through Friday. He wrote several books that have become bestsellers and have sold millions of copies. His conservative opinions (including calls for personal responsibility and clean living) and quick wit made him a national superstar; many people were shocked when it developed that he was addicted to drugs, himself.

    In October of 2003, Palm Beach County Police linked Rush Limbaugh to the illegal black market of prescription drugs. Limbaugh admitted that he had become addicted to prescription pain medication several years earlier, when he underwent a spinal surgery. The surgery was unsuccessful and the radio commentator continued to experience excruciating pain in his lower back and neck. He claimed that he checked himself into treatment centers on two previous occasions to try to quit using the pain pills.

    Though Limbaugh spoke out against drug use many times on his radio broadcast, he came clean about his own problems soon after the story broke in other news outlets. He made no excuses for his addiction and entered a treatment center for a third and final time.

    Rush Limbaugh has since returned to his radio show and claims that he is now drug free, but the ordeal lost him the respect of some of his former listeners and provided those who disagree with his views evidence that he is a hypocrite.

    While Rush Limbaugh recovered relatively quickly from his addiction, he went through many hard times before being able to cure his addiction, and the severe hearing loss he suffered was likely a result of the drugs he was taking. The hearing loss seems to have been adequately resolved with the use of a cochlear implant. However, many personal prescription drug stories do not end as well as Limbaugh’s; some end in death.

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    Source by Damian Sofsian

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  • Can I Turn My MLM Success Stories Into Testimonies?

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    One can use MLM success stories in many different ways. This includes testimonies that can be placed on the site in different locations. They can be broken up and separated to maximize the impact of the pages for your visitors. So, in turn yes, you can use MLM success stories as testimonies. There are different ways to present them to help you gain the traffic and success you want to achieve. Come and explore some ideas that have been developed over time with much success and sometimes failure.

    MLM Success Stories Broken up and displayed on key pages

    One way to drive success to your site is to break up your MLM success stories into bite sized testimonies and place them on key pages of your site. This could include your passive products, main store front, contact, homepage and landing pages for your email. These have been quite successful for various business industries and are still used to help convert visitors into leads. You may only want to display up to three small stories on the pages, you can always link to the full testimony that is not in your active menu.

    If you do use your MLM success stories as testimonies on your pages. You can present them as text, video, or even audio clips to your visitors. In most cases they are presented as text, but you may have more or less success in other formats. If you’re feeling venturous try posting them as a small audio clip. You won’t know how your prospects will respond until you try an idea. It could work or it could fail.

    Don’t go overboard the MLM success stories…

    As stated beforehand, don’t go overboard with the MLM success stories. Be a bit conservative and use them in the right spots to maximize your potential. Don’t forget you can use them as separate entities and share them in a promotional campaign as well. This works very well during authority building campaigns or at the launch of a new social campaign. Sprinkle the stories throughout the campaign for maximum flavor. On this tactical stage, you can add them to photos, graphics, or in other formats to help build your traffic to your site. Don’t keep sharing the same one, let it rest for a bit and use another as you promote your business. All stories should be factual and not misleading. Wishing you best of success!

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    Source by David L. Feinstein

    Views: 1

  • Alternative Medicine Treatment of Plantar Fasciitis

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    Plantar fasciitis (PF) affects approximately two-million people in the US, of both athletic and non-athletic populations. This condition can be debilitating and significantly affect one’s quality of life in a very negative way. There are few high quality studies on this condition and the most successful treatments. Treatments range from chiropractic care, physical therapy, injections and surgeries. Fortunately this condition can typically be resolved with conservative treatment and lifestyle modifications that can prevent going under the knife. Simply put, plantar fasciitis is a strain with subsequent inflammation of the thick tissue (plantar fascia) and muscles on the bottom of the foot causing heel pain. Plantar fasciitis (PF) is characterized by biting heel/mid arch pain when first bearing weight in the morning, or after long periods of rest. The pain typically subsides within 5 minutes of walking or running, then worsens with long term activity or weight bearing. It is also associated with tired, achy feet at the end of the day and foot cramps. PF is seen in both active and inactive people, and is rarely the result of an acute injury. PF can be the result of several different factors: repetitive overuse injuries, poor fitting footwear, overtraining, structural abnormalities of the foot and improper gait mechanics. PF often becomes a chronic and/or recurring problem if not given the appropriate treatment and follow up care.

    Some contributing factors to the development of plantar fasciitis:

    Structural abnormalities: Plantar fasciitis is very commonly seen with pes planus (pictured left), or flat footed individuals. As you can see, this individual’s medial arch is almost flush with the ground. This can create strain on the plantar fascia. Severe injuries resulting in the need for surgical fusion of the foot can also create strain on the plantar fascia. In these cases of severe structural abnormalities, orthotics are typically indicated. Rehabilitation including foot strengthening exercises, chiropractic manipulation and soft tissue techniques can relieve pain and help to alleviate strain on the tissues and resolve flair ups. We use custom orthotics from Foot Levelers in our office. Using a 3-D scanner, we can have custom orthotics made to support the full structure of your foot.

    Poorly fitting footwear: Wearing improper footwear over time can lead to PF. If a shoe doesn’t fit your foot properly, your gait is altered during any weight bearing activity. This has an effect on the entire kinetic chain and can ultimately cause strain on the plantar fascia. The strength and flexibility of your foot will determine your best type of footwear.

    Overtraining: Can be a huge contributor to PF. What many athletes, weekend warriors and the like tend to overlook is the importance of recovery in their training regimens. If your tissues don’t have optimal nutrition, rest and repair time they start DEgenerate rather than REgenerate. Especially when it comes to long distance running, or quick sprints, the feet have a lot of demand.

    Nerve Impingement: Plantar fasciitis can be a symptom of sciatic nerve impingement. The sciatic nerve is the thickest nerve in your body. It originates from your lumbosacral plexus of nerves typically L4-S1/S2 with some individual anatomical variation. Although this nerve is commonly blamed for all radiating leg pain, it is only responsible for pain along its trajectory down the posterior aspect of the leg and foot. In some impingement cases, the pain can skip the back of the leg altogether and go straight to the foot. Impingement along any portion of the nerve can result in pain, but it doesn’t have to be in the leg. If there is enough impingement along this nerve, any added pressure, say forced dorsiflexion of the foot when standing or walking, can be just the right tension to create exquisite foot pain. Our bodies are always trying to protect our nervous system; reflexively the muscles surrounding the nerve will tighten in an attempt to avoid any further stretch or tension of the nerve. Ultimately, this leads to inflammation of the plantar fascia and the surrounding muscles.

    Other Factors:

    Systemic Inflammation: Though general systemic inflammation is typically not the cause of plantar fasciitis, it will increase your symptoms. For this reason we strongly encourage our patients to eat an anti-inflammatory diet specific to their needs. We also understand no one is perfect or eats perfect all the time, which is why we encourage an 80/20 approach; eat clean 80% of the time and use the other 20% to indulge. Curcuminoids, like those found in turmeric are great to help blot down inflammation in acute cases of plantar fasciitis.

    Alternatives to conservative care:

    Cortisone or steroid injections are very commonly given for Plantar fasciitis. In some really tough cases this can absolutely be necessary to “put out the fire” that is the inflammatory cascade, to get you out of pain initially. We never recommend looking at this option as a cure. Cortisone is a very powerful anti-inflammatory that alleviates pain without correcting the underlying issue, potentiating further injury and recurrent episodes. Another option is surgical intervention. In some cases, surgery is the best option for a particular case. We prefer to exhaust conservative treatment options before travelling down this avenue. A study on an overweight and obese population (43 total) suffering with plantar fasciitis for an average of 34.8 months, were given decompressive surgery to the nerve to the abductor digiti minimi with partial plantar fascia release and tracked over a 4-year period. It was found that 75.6% of patients were in deed pain-free or had only mild pain post-surgery (pain decreased from an 8.5/10 to a 2.5/10). However patient satisfaction post-surgery was only 48%.

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    Source by Ann Barter

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  • Cougar Dating: New Trend in the Dating World

    Cougar Dating: New Trend in the Dating World

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    Today, we are all standing in the modern world where most people are trying their best to shed off the conservative mindset. Earlier men did not have the thought to approach elderly women. Neither the women agreed ever to such open-ended relationships. Now, the society has become liberated. Elder women with younger men as couples are becoming a common sight.

    Why do we get to see this change?

    As we have already discussed, the society is getting liberated. No more are the family ties or what people are going today, bothering them. They are feeling free to express their thoughts as and when they want and to whomsoever they like. Most of them have claimed that they are fed up with the long-term relations and do not want the unnecessary dramas that bring with it. Most of the cougar ladies do not want to remarry. They want to enjoy being free.

    Where can these couples meet?

    For people in love, the whole world is a meeting point. Who can stop them from meeting each other? Still if one claims that one has not yet met his or her partner one can seek into the cougar dating websites. There are several such dating sites where one can find their love interest.

    Any recent developments in the matter

    Well, there has been quite observations on this matter and some say that there is a new angle in the cougar dating. Most women dating their younger partners are now looking into the aspect of marriage. Some have even taken the major step. They claimed that they are happy in their marriage. These women have also said that they no longer want to date men of their age or older.

    How should a man prepare for a cougar dating?

    Well, men who are interested in dating elderly women have to be very careful doing so. The cougar world is full of women who have a high self-esteem and are successful in their careers. The men in order to approach them should have to put on their best manners and have a sense of dressing smartly. The cougar ladies have an eye for good look manners. They do not like men who are too much fast. In fact, they like to pursue the men themselves.

    Another thing that the men should avoid doing is treating the ladies in a negative manner. They should be treated with respect, love and care. They should never feel that they have been used.

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    Source by Achal Mehrotra

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