Renaissancemen.org

I’ve been writing about some things the last few months/years that I need to bring to your attention.  Not to say “I told you so”, but to point out that I’m not a fortune teller.  I spend 180 minutes a day in the car every day on my way to work, and with this, I listen to a lot of news, reports, and internet sleuths.

My conclusion is that mainstream media is way behind reputable sources on the internet.  Here’s how this works:

1. Internet finds reports from reputable sources and breaks news.  This news can be detrimental to very large corporations.
2. Mainstream media scoffs at reports.  Ridicules.  The usual sources get deployed to the news sources and talk shows to then mock these things.
3. Evidence becomes overwhelming that early reports are accurate. More and more smaller news sources adopt.
4. Most people are then parroting what they heard in step 2 weeks ago in the news.  Facebook becomes a war zone of those with factual information versus those parroting talking heads from weeks earlier that simply mocked said conclusions.
5. Eventually, mainstream media adopts the early reports.  Items are now “self evident”.  Many people are still mocking those with factual information as “fringe” and “conspiracy theorists”.

Here are some major items I’ve scooped from the mainstream media.  Two are still not fully adopted, but the other 3 are now self evident.

1. Keto – I’ve been low carb for 2.25 years.  When I adopted it, it was due to overwhelming medical evidence.  The mainstream media scoffed and those with massive corporate interests like Weight Watchers (and Oprah) tried to deploy messaging about things like “keto crotch”.  A year after that, I’ve had a total of 30 people or so I’ve mentored on low carb.  Any single person who has stuck to it for 3+ months has lost ridiculous weight.  I also advocate months or maybe even a year of certain diets prior to keto due to how much of a change it is for people.  It is now almost self evident that: “if you eliminate carbs, you will lose weight”, and “if you eliminate carbs, you can reverse type 2 diabetes”.  Most media reports now admit that you can lose weight with keto, but most still get it wrong and think I’m eating 2 pounds of bacon a day, where an overwhelming majority of my diet is salads, healthy grass fed meats, and greens.  I went from 372 pounds down to 197 with a HR of 49, BP of 103/65, and triathlete.  But for some reason, people insist that you need carbs when biologically, that’s the only macro group you do NOT need to live.
2. Intermittent fasting and fasting – they won a goddamn nobel prize on this. Fasting and intermittent fasting can help you because people were not meant to eat 15 times a day.  All of this food we are constantly putting into our talk hole does not allow our body to naturally rid itself of things.  The malformed cells we have thus grow into cancer of sorts.  Using intermittent fasting and fasting strategies, your body cleaves old/dead/malformed cells and reuses those proteins.
3. Financial worries – as early as November I was writing about trends I’m not liking. Amonth ago, I sent out the SOS.  I moved most of my holdings to metals well in advance of the stock market taking a nose dive.  I look like goddamn Warren Buffet now but the truth is, all of these reports have been out there for months, but the mainstream media are giant corporations with stocks.  Their advertisers are the same.  If the news actually reported the real negative shit going on, everyone’s stock would be in the shitter.
4. Prepping – Due to what I was seeing with the upcoming financial issues and plague, I asked people on facebook and here to please add more to your grocery cart.  I was…mocked.  Now, go ahead and try to find hand sanitizer anywhere.  They have security guards deployed to toilet paper isles.  Shelves are bare with bleach isles.  And this is with 150 reported cases in this country.  Time is running out to get your preps.
5. Coronavirus – word just came out that we have only tested 2,000 people in this country.  Medical establishments are all over the place with policies.  Misinformation.  Denial.  Peak Prosperity on YouTube has been on this since mid January and most mainstream media still has their heads up their asses.  I’ve been writing about this now for over 5 weeks.

So why care?  I’m going to go over some highlights of WHY there’s a concern.

1. Case fatality rate is 20-40 times higher than the flu.  All of those reports in early February from the idiot talking heads and mainstream media were “the flu kills 30,000 per year, so this isn’t a big deal.  It’s the flu people”.  Right now, the WHO finally came out and said this week that the CFR is now 3.4%, or about 34 times higher than the flu.  Yet we now saw the assistant health secretary come out and say “we think it’s between .1 and 1%.  To which, most commentators were like “see…it’s the flu morons”.  No.  It’s not.
2. In China, of the 90,000 or so cases, 20,000 of them wound up in critical condition with many of them having lifelong scarring in their lungs.  It is strongly suspected that these numbers are 10 times higher.  In late January, the Chinese built FOUR large hospitals in Wuhan in 10 days.  This is not what you do for the flu.  They were rounding up people for quarantine and welding doors shut.  My guess is many people who were sick stayed home and didn’t want to get tested or observed.
3. For most people, this won’t be a big deal.  However, this is a “novel” virus, meaning no one has antibodies to this.  It is suspected that this will hit 40-70% of the world’s population.  The world’s population is about 7.7 billion now.  This means, it could hit 3.08-5.39 billion people.  For argument’s sake, let’s use the low end of .1%.  That’s still 3.08-5.39 million people.  If it’s even 1%, that is now 30-54 million people.  IF it is 3.4 percent, as the WHO states, it is 102-183 million people.  I’d like everyone to really understand that IF this is at 3.4%, then we could potentially lose 100-200 million souls.
4. This is not like the movies, this will take some time to spread.  The incubation period is thought to be up to 24-27 days, which means the 14 day quarantines have been useless.  Meaning, it took time for the explosive numbers in China to be hit.  You are now seeing the exponential growth in South Korea, Iran, Italy.  The big problem here is….NO ONE WAS TESTED.  One of my college friends who was in Seattle last month felt he may have had it, they treated him for pneumonia and he was out of commission for like a month.  They wouldn’t test him.  We now know Coronavirus has been running wild in Washington for 6 weeks, and no one has been tested.  So it’s not that it hasn’t hit us, it’s that we haven’t had data to present.  I would imagine next week and the week after, we will be in the thousands easily.
5. Like the flu, those older and who have serious medical conditions already are the most likely to suffer the worst effects of this.  However, again, look at the numbers.  This may have a “culling” effect of elderly and infirm.
6. A VAST majority of you who get this, will have the flu – in theory.  The big problems are who you are spreading it to.  That co-worker with diabetes or who just recovered from cancer.  Your elderly parents or grandparents.  Your small children.
7. This is due to present serious economic issues to all of you.  I advocate people to have 6 months worth of bills saved up in some way, shape, or form of liquidity to pay bills if things get tough.  I was commenting on the stupid shit I was seeing at Best Buy – and the gross consumerism on credit. People need to put money in the bank to prepare for lean times.  Forego that $5 coffee.  You don’t need those $300 headphones.  You need to put food on your table if you lose your job.  If you have 6 months worth of bills in the bank and want to buy your $18 latte, go for it.  But you need to build your base.  Buy second hand.  Buy deals.  Buy bulk.   Denying this exists in the hope that sales remain good isn’t reality.  The fact is a lot of people will get sick from this creating a lot of productivity lost – creating all kinds of supply issues as well as demand issues when people don’t want to go out to dinner.

So – is the sky falling?  Am I chicken little?

The sky is not falling, but everyone needs to have an understanding of the POSSIBLE scope of this.  There are measures below that can be done to help this out, but we’re not there.  One thing people presume is that if you bring concern about this topic, you are in panic mode.  I’m not.  I prepared for this exact situation over the last few months, and I advised my friends here and on facebook to do the same.

What to expect?

1. Lots of people will be out sick.  Lots.  It may build over the next 2 months. Some may be out for over a week.
2. There will be contraction in the economy.  First quarter sales reports are going to blow.  Stock market is going further down.  Hold on to your 401k because you’re getting buried now, but this is a 40 year investment with compounding interest and those prices will recover over the next few years.
3. There may be a pause, of sorts.  With the weather breaking here in the northeast – it may pause during the summer and then come fall hit back with a vengeance.  The Spanish Flu of 1918 actually lasted about 2 years with the last cases of that strain seen in 1953.  This could be around for a few years and those numbers of 3-200 million people that could die are a wide margin, but could be seen over 2-3 years, not 3 months.
4. Jobs will be lost, and quickly.  Why?  People will stop going out in public, at least for awhile.  This has implications on small business and perhaps many retail stores.  Many businesses don’t have the liquidity to deal with plummeting sales for months on end, and this can lead to a lot of business failures.  I believe strongly that world governments will respond with even lower interest rates, bail out, and “helicopter cash” to prevent total collapse.  This will create inflation, and it will drive up the prices of metals further.

On a side note, I wrote about silver here before.  I’m going to take a pause here and discuss this one step further.

Almost all silver is produced as a byproduct of mining other metals, like copper and lead.  Silver over the last 4 years has been consuming about 100 million more ounces than produced.  There is known to be about 2.5 billion ounces above ground in reserves, with JP Morgan having a massive hoard of about 40% of the known silver.  They have been investigated over the last few years and arrests have been made because they’ve been manipulating the market.

That being said, with a global slowdown of production over the next 1-3 years (after a TEN YEAR bull market), this means there’s less of a demand for industrial metals.  This means that most of silver production can drop off.  Now, silver is unique in that it is a precious metal as well as an industrial metal.  The industrial uses are for things like antibacterial items in medical uses and stretchy pants, solar panels, and electric cars.  It is expected that over the next 10 years, there will be 125-150 million EVs sold, and a significant increase in photovoltaic cells in solar panels.

But with regular demand of industrial metals decreasing, that means there’s an upcoming crunch on silver – because the demand of these products are going up.  It is estimated that silver could go back up to $26 per ounce by the end of this year and if any form of institutional investments hit the silver market, it could take it back up to $50-$150 per ounce.  It has been these prices before in history.

Check out AG on your etrade app.  They are Majestic Silver and one of the few silver mining companies in the world.  Silver mining has byproducts like gold and the like.  Silver only comes out of the earth at 9 times that of gold, so it is fairly rare.  With silver mining, it’s hard to make a profit at $17 per ounce, so most producers have shut down over the years.  AG has an “all in sustaining costs” at $13 per ounce due to a HIG mill with grinds the pay down to tiny particles to allow for 96% recovery.  So, they get a LOT more pay with a lot less costs and less material needed to be run.  They mine about 125 million ounces a year of silver ounce equivalent, so they say essentially that for every dollar silver goes up that their company can have another $125 million in profit.  I have to double check those numbers, but the point is, they now make serious bank with silver at $17 per ounce.  What happens with silver at $26?  $75?  That’s a stock worth watching.  They put a lot of capital costs into the HIG mill over the last year so their last year numbers are slightly deceiving – this year they reap the rewards of that investment.

So – while the sky may be falling for savvy tech stocks, there’s opportunity to put capital into items which can show profit, despite hard times ahead.

Resuming…

What can you do?  So you now know about the seriousness of this.

1. The idea is to drive the R0 to less than 1.  Right now, it’s estimated between 4 and 6, with some “super spreaders” going out when sick and infecting large clusters of people.  Over the course of months, I think we’re going to not see lots of large gatherings of people.  This is how you slow it down.  You won’t really STOP this, soon, but slowing it down is the best chance of getting most people the best quality of care.
2. Stock up.  Maybe your work tells people to telework for a month.  Maybe your kid’s school dismisses for a month and you have to stay home with them.  Why go out to the store?  Why go out to eat?  The safest way of not getting this is by not exposing yourselves to others.  One of my friends was like, “yeah, but what about the guy in line behind you that sneezes on you”.  Well, you minimize this by not fucking being in line in the first place because you bought all your shit weeks earlier.  THIS is why you are now seeing shelves going bare.  The idea is to minimize your exposure.  If you can hide out mostly until the weather breaks, you have a good shot of not getting this until the fall.  This could help economies recover until another wave hits.
3. Minimize exposure.  This means don’t go to crowded places.  You know there’s always that one guy who is sick and gets everyone else sick.  This shit spreads pretty decently.  Some tell you facemasks don’t work and can make it worse.  Peak Prosperity sort of debunked that and showed a 45 second video of how to properly wear and take off a facemask – they also showed that the CDC has proven facemasks reduce risk of catching this.
4. Wash your hands.  When I built out my bomb shelter, I accidentally got a big thing of hand soap rather than sanitizer.  My bad.  I went on Amazon yesterday and well, that’s a bad idea.  Either they are out or there’s ridiculous price gouging going on.  When you leave the restroom, take a paper towel with you to use on the handles.  Don’t touch your face, but specifically, keep your hands out of your eyes and ensure you wash your hands prior to meals.  Apparently, there’s spread of this through fecal matter too, so the bathrooms at work can possibly spread this pretty badly.
5. Don’t panic, but be practical and use caution.  This apparently can also be spread without symptoms.  Maybe you don’t visit an elderly grandparent for a little while, but call them.  Use social distancing to have a better distance between you and others in public and at work.  Don’t shake hands, but if you do, perhaps sanitize your hand.  Studies  have shown (check out peak prosperity on youtube) that a person isolated with this, prior to them sanitizing his room, had spread the virus to just about everything in the room.  Door handles, light switches, faucets, etc.  Think about when you are going grocery shopping – the first thing you do is get a cart.  Sanitize your hands, they now have that there.  I would recommend washing your hands a LOT during the day these days.  This may not eliminate the threat, but if enough people do this, it could help reduce the R0 to much lower.
6. Watch peak prosperity daily on youtube.  He breaks down all of the numbers and brings you all the facts.  He’s been doing this for 6-7 weeks when the MSM has been spewing terrible advice.
7. Realize everything will be back to normal in a few months, but we may have to take a few months to dial back on group meetings.  Take a few days off of work if you are feeling run down so you don’t spread it to others.  Telework when possible.  Realize there may be some negative economic consequences in a few months – and don’t panic, but be smarter how you spend your money and focus on savings and necessities rather than needless shit.  Understand WANT vs NEED.  Once you get at least 3 months worth of bills saved, then go back to your $5 latte.