by John Walters
Starting Five
The Cruelest Month
April ends. If you visit cnbc.com, you’d know that it was Wall Street’s best month in more than 30 years. The S&P was up nearly 13% and the Dow was up more than 11%.
Of course, if you read anything else, you might also know that it was likely the deadliest month in the United States in your lifetime. At least 60,000 Americans—the attendance at a packed Notre Dame Stadium pre-1990s—died due to the coronavirus. When April began, only about 3,000 Americans had died due to the virus. A plethora of duplicitous Trump pressers and one Jared Kushner victory lap later, more than 63,000 have perished.
We imagine an extraordinary event hasn’t claimed that many American lives in one month since the Spanish Flu or, before that, the Civil War.
Swelter In Place
As the mercury hits the triple digits here in Devil’s Gulch and the rest of the country begins to get enthused about not thinking in terms of layers, a team of top epidemiologists (some of whom have even made multiple covers of Epidemiology Illustrated) released a report saying that we’ll be dealing with this pandemic at least until 2022.
“The length of the pandemic will likely be 18 to 24 months, as herd immunity gradually develops in the human population,” they wrote, adding, “The idea that this is going to be done soon defies microbiology.”
Soooooo, it may be time to get even more creative with your crock pot. And because your local Republican governor is about to begin easing restrictions on what can or cannot be open (and we can appreciate both sides of this argument), we’re going to rescind our prediction of fewer than 100,000 domestic deaths due to Covid-19 (it could top that number by Memorial Day, after all).
If the pandemic lasts as long as these germ studs say it may, needing to infect at least 60% of the population before it subsides, you could be looking at half a million deaths. If you were worried about your preferred Senior Living community having no vacancies, that likely won’t be a problem.
Amazon’s Wild Day
We imagine Susie B. having a Shirley Temple-level meltdown at the Amazon seesaw of the past 24 hours. First, yesterday, shares of the monolithic middleman delivery service hit an all-time high of $2,475 as it leaps more than $100 in one day before an after-hours earnings report.
Then comes the report, where Amazon (predictably) crushes it. Then, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos releases a statement in which he announces that Amazon will reinvest ALL of its Q1 profits into fighting the coronavirus. “Providing for customers and protecting employees as this crisis continues for more months is going to take skill, humility, invention, and money,” Bezos wrote. “If you’re a shareowner in Amazon, you may want to take a seat, because we’re not thinking small.”
And with that shares of the stock plummeted more than $175. Stay strong, Susie B.
Covers Week Concludes
The Japanese female trio Shonen Knife with their original and guitar-blazing cover of The Carpenters’ “Top Of The World,” which they put down for a 1993 tribute album by various artists called If I Were A Carpenter (clever).
Sports Year 1883
A year of firsts: the first luge competition is staged in Davos, Switzerland; the first professional side, Blackburn Olympic, wins the FA Cup; the first championship ice hockey tournament is held (McGill University of Montreal wins it); and the inaugural Home Nations rugby championship is staged and won by England.
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In the National League, the Chicago White Stockings score 18 runs versus the Detroit Wolverines in one inning on September 6. That record still stands today.
Also in September, Long John Reilly of the Cincinnati Red Stockings has quite a week, twice hitting for the cycle and in a third game hitting two inside-the-park home runs.
President Ulysses S. Grant is one of 15,000 fans in attendance for the inaugural National League game of the New York Gothams. MH is not sure if this is the first time a president attends a Major League Baseball game but it may be.
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William Renshaw against defeats twin brother Ernest in the Wimbledon singles final, and again in five sets. Excruciating.
🙂 🙁
However, with the world fighting to survive, it’s hardly “the best of times” nor “the worst of times”. But I have to admit, it was prettee exciting BEFORE 4pm & then a quick bucket of water in the face by around 4:05.
And I know you will roll your eyes, but remember last year when I said I was getting a little concerned that my four biggest stock holdings had grown so much that they were suddenly more than 30% of my total stock account? Well, AMZN alone is, er, now more than 30%! If I only owned 10 stocks, maybe it would be expected but I own more than 50! Tiny amounts in most but still. (Basically, my stock account is like a fairy tale come to life – one GIANT, some Princes (AAPL, NVDA, DIS & a few others) & the rest are a handful of beans. Let’s just hope at some of those beans are MAGIC! 🙂 )
I have no plans to sell AMZN any time soon & have to accept that when it drops, my entire account gets punched in the stomach & you FEEL the corresponding”ooowfh!”
Last week I was whining to myself “if ONLY I’d added to AMZN instead of buying CHK!” & while I realize that would have meant yesterday at 4:05 would have been more like a body slam than the gut punch, at least I would still be in the ring & not down for the count. (See how I’m using your boxing tidbits into my comment?) Because I kept adding to CHK over 9 years, I ended up “investing” more than DOUBLE what I put into AMZN. Excuse me while I reach for the Tums.
I meant to write this when I came here today but you took me down the, um, Amazon.
As I’ve mentioned twice before, the GOP-Nazis have decided that the deaths of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Americans is ACCEPTABLE so the “rest” of us can get haircuts,etc. And as I’ve been thinking about it, it reminds me of this TV show or episode I saw many years ago – various folks are approached & told they can have $1 million dollars right then. The only catch – a person “unknown to them” has to die. Most excitedly take up the offer, rationalizing “people I don’t know die every day, what’s one more?” What they don’t realize until too late is that there is not a “finite” number of winners – more people get approached about their windfall…people THEY DON’T KNOW.