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Wednesday 1 April 2020

Day 16 of self-isolation

I read an article that pointed out that the suppliers of electricity are also finding themselves short staffed; there is therefore, a possibility of power cuts.

So, thinking about this, we have a freezer containing quite a lot of food, and if power is out for 12 or 24 hours or more, we might have to choose between eating refrozen food (dangerous, and we don't want food poisoning at a time like this) or throwing away some hundreds of pounds worth of food.

So I did some checking. Freezers and fridges don't need a lot of watts; 100 watts at most. So I went onto eBay, and bought a small generator, capable of 700 watts, costing £70 plus £20 delivery. If we get cuts before then, I'll use one of the computer UPSes as a power source.

But how to get the power to the freezer (and fridge)? That's going to need a bit of delving around, but it should be possible. And if the power does go out, that's what I'll do. So the generator is an insurance.

They cancelled the Edinburgh festivals and Wimbledon. Quite right.

912 deaths in 24 hours in America. America is now seeing more fatalities than any other country, and it's going to get worse for the next couple of weeks, because they delayed their lock down. The UK is also getting worse, with 563 deaths in 24 hours.

By the way, these fatality numbers are an understatement; they are only hospital deaths. People dying in care homes and other places, aren't counted in this.

Here's what this looks like from the point of view of Covid-19.

We're organising another Waitrose shopping list, but delivery slots are like hen's teeth, so we're going to do a "click and collect" because that's got to be safer than walking round the supermarket and hoping that other shoppers respect the two meters rule.

I did an April Fool post to a Facebook political group, under the name of Donaid Trump and suggesting that they rename their group in my honour. I did a similar joke last year, and I was quite surprised to find that Facebook hasn't removed the account.


The economic fallout from this will be huge; governments are pouring money into the economy at a great rate. Where will this money come from? It's fiat money; they are just creating it. This will lead to huge inflation in the next few years. I'm not saying this is wrong, just that this is what will happen. I agree that this is an emergency, and we have to support the economy and workers in this way. But we will also have to pay for it, eventually.

In America, it will be worse. The don't have an NHS. Healthcare is paid for out of expensive health insurance. Some of that is included with people's jobs. A lot of people (airlines, hospitality industry, sports, retail)  are losing their jobs, and with that, either they will lose their healthcare insurance, or else they won't be able to continue to pay their premiums.

What will happen to those people? It doesn't bear thinking about.

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