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Showing posts from March, 2020

How we will beat the virus

I am not a virologist nor do I have a medical education so the analysis underneath should be taken as an idea or a suggestion. I am a hobby-historian, follow news actively and I can take credit for the fact that I bought face-mask already in January. Then they were freely available, cost 0,1eur a piece and everybody thought that I have a paranoia when I bought them. So how we will beat the virus. It is actually quite straightforward. States, cities and families have always beat diseases in principally the same way: by raising the level of hygiene. Typhus and cholera was beaten by cleaning the water and building proper sewage systems. Washing hands, washing teeth, wearing underwear, vaccination, following strict rules in food production - all these measures have served us by eliminating the risk of getting one or more diseases. Mind you, some countries have not implemented these measures and thus bare the consequences: cholera in Haiti, hepatitis in India etc. With Covid-19 the situ

How the coronavirus related quarantine will influence the economy

We have now been working from home for a little more than a week due to the coronavirus quarantine. Based on this first experience it is possible to make some predictions on how the situation will influence the economy in the near future. The results might look a bit scary, but the logic is quite straightforward. Very important thing to understand about how the economy works is the concept that "Your spending is someones income". Meaning that in the big picture money is not something physical, but an abstract concept - it is more like a measurement unit that measures value or work. Therefore saving money is different from saving something physical. If you save for example sugar then you will later have more sugar that you can then spend. If you save money then this is away from the overall process of economics and if you don't pay the others, then the others will not pay your salary. Now when we have the first real experience on remote working and living, we can look