5/4/2020

Happy May,

As a few Star Wars fans would probably say today: May the Fourth be with you. So, hope everyone has that going for them at least. Kind of hard to believe it is already the fifth month of the year. It is also still hard to believe that LeBron dragged a horrendous Cavs team to the NBA Finals in 2007. His second best player on that team was Drew Gooden. LeBron should win a half title for that. He at least made all four games competitive as the Cavs were swept by the Spurs who had 3 Hall of Famers, a slew of stud role players, and one of the best coaches ever. It would be cool if the NBA could rewind and add Dwyane Wade to LeBron's teams in those days to see what would happen. MJ had Pippen during his prime. LBJ teamed up with Wade later but had to leave a terrible Cavs franchise to do it. Eh, I guess LBJ still just went 2-2 in the Finals with Wade so the results were better but not fantastic. LBJ lost to an on-fire Dirk and then the Spurs again. He should have lost to OKC if not for Scotty Brooks playing Perkins as much as he did and probably should have lost to the Spurs twice if Ray Allen doesn't hit one of the clutchest shots of all-time. Whatevs. He went 2-2 with a real team in Miami. Then 1-2 in his second Cavs stint while having to play super teams in the Finals every year but he was absolutely otherworldly in every one of those series. Plus he had to deal with a half-interested Kevin Love and a flat earther in Kyrie Irving. Dude just can't really catch a break on having good, solid, competitive players by his side. Him and the 'Brow this year were pretty amazing. Hopefully we will get to see how this season ends at some point. We need answers. Something else that needs quicker answers are COVID-19 tests, and there probably just needs to be more tests overall. Plus, crude production is declining, Eric Gagne makes an appearance, there is a real life Avengers group in America, and the University of texas has some questions that need answering in this week's edition of the #bucketsblog.

May 4, 2020

TESTING - Coming to a state near you, kind of

• Take a second to find the closest person to you and give them a high five if you have heard of anyone talking about "testing" during this pandemic. Then immediately after tell them that they should probably go get tested after irresponsibly making hand-to-hand contact in a time of social distancing. Also tell them they have to hurry because only 2% of each state's population will be receiving a test. That is according to the Trump administration anyways. One of his senior officials said last Monday (27th) that all 50 states will be receiving enough testing kits for COVID-19 from the federal government to cover at least 2% of their residents. The fed gov plans to rapidly distribute the supply of tests as various states are beginning their re-opening processes. To go along with this, a few businesses in the private sector have vowed to ramp up testing as well. CVS plans to offer self-swab tests at around 1,000 of its locations by the end of May with a goal of processing 1.5mm tests per month. Walgreens, rival of CVS, plans to do something similar. Wal-Mart currently has 20 self-swab stations in 12 states and plans to have over 100 by the end of May. Sam Walton's store has ~4,800 stores nationwide so it will be focusing its testing efforts on hot spots and underserved communities. Fun fact about Sam Walton, my hometown of Kingfisher, OK claims to be the place of his birth. I bet if he were still alive that he would have no idea what a Kingfisher, OK was though. America's current status, according to the COVID-19 Tracking Project, reveals that 5.4mm Americans have been tested (as of April 27th) which is about 1.6% of the population and one million tests per week are being processed in labs across the States. The repeatability of testing will be needed until there is some type of medicine available to help tame the virus or a vaccine is ready. Hopefully mass manufacturing, distribution, and shorter test result times will continue to improve. If I were a betting man, then I'd bet on America improving in each facet at a rapid pace and for a medicine or vaccine to be developed sooner than expected. Necessity is the mother of innovation and America is the king of innovation. Go find a picture of George Washington with his hand out and high five that. Although I bet if George was still alive then he could high five anyone and never contract the virus because he's George freaking Washington. #science

US economy shrinks more than snake did in the 2016 WCF

• To be fair to snake, why would he want to beat a team and then go join them? Wouldn't it look better if he lost to them by blowing a 3-1 lead and then go join them? NOPE. But he did it anyways. Watching The Last Dance and seeing how MJ hit up the gym all summer and made his teammates join him so they could finally get past the Bad Boy Pistons versus seeing how snake waited until July 4, 2016 to announce he is a modern day benedict arnold while ruining America's day is the exact definition of being a polar opposite. Everyone knew that snake and RUSS probably never got along that well but they formed the most dynamic duo in the league when they were both on and could have, and should have, won a title or few together if not for ill-timed injuries and snake forgetting how to hoop in 2016. He was terrible that entire playoff run except for one spectacular second half against the vaunted Spurs in the second round. RUSS and the other "cats" were sublime for the most part and carried snake through the playoffs. Then snake had the gall to say that he "can't win a championship with those cats" which prompted RUSS to where a shirt that said "adopt a cat" the day after snake said that. RUSS is the greatest. I forgot what this post was about. Something US economy related and it being in a bad place. Ah, right. The US GDP experienced its largest quarterly decline in a decade as it fell 4.8% in the first quarter of 2020. This marked the first shrink in US GDP since 2014's first quarter, according to the Commerce Department's report from last Wednesday (29th).

• As you can see, the graph above tracks with America's respect level for snake's decision to join a 73-win team. The US is in a recession at the moment according to several economists. The official scorekeeper for this type of thing is called the National Bureau of Economic Research and it defines a recession as this:

• The second quarter drop off in GDP is expected to be much worse than Q1 as pretty much all of America was fully locked down in April and states are just now beginning to re-open in May. The gradual re-opening of states is intended to prevent the Great Cessation from becoming a full on Great Depression. The Federal Reserve has been doing its part to try and keep America afloat until economic activity can resume. They deserve a ton of credit for pulling out all of the stops by pumping liquidity into everything and having no fear of buying what it needs to in order to do its best to prop up the economy. I don't understand half of what they are doing but it sounds cool. Congress has came together, for the most part, and provided trillions of dollars in relief packages as well. All are ultimately short-term measures though as there will eventually come a point where the economy has to pick up on its own. Balancing that with the health and safety of the public is more complicated than RUSS's relationship with snake though. Many states are trying to re-open, but it will be interesting to see how the majority of people choose to act. There could be mass re-openings of all types of businesses, but if the public generally does not feel like it is safe to go out and about, then will the re-openings really even matter?

Some analyst guy goes Eric Gagne in his prime on oil

• The title of this blurb is a baseball reference from the early-2000s. Hopefully someone gets it. Gagne was the most dominate closer in the MLB for a few years. He even won the NL Cy Young Award for his dominance during the 2003 season. Ya that link is a Wikipedia one, judge me. His walk out music was Lil Flip's Game Over song and it was fantastic. It definitely set the tone for the 9th inning and most teams just ended up forfeiting when they saw Gagne running out from the bullpen with Game Over thumping. I guess that alternative fact isn't on his Wikipedia page yet. Give it time. It'll get there. Art Berman, of artberman.com, rolled out an article last week with a title that would make Gagne and Lil Flip proud, but then very confused: "Game Over for Oil, the Economy is Next." We will just start off with this banger of an excerpt from the article:

• Using the word "banger" reminds me of England and the English Premier League. I miss that league too. The season was just coming down the home stretch when the virus struck so it was getting to be at its best. Turibile. Oil demand has fallen off a cliff and there is far too much supply. Storage is filling up and shut-ins are happening everywhere. Mr. Berman believes that supply will fall much faster than anyone is anticipating because the rate at which storage is filling is quicker than most are tracking. Mr. Berman than goes on to talk about diesel and how that is the lifeblood for economies across the globe since it is so heavily relied on for shipping anything and everything in every way. Diesel cannot be produced without first producing a bit of regular gasoline. America is currently flush with gasoline and could see that inventory top out as well. If that tops out, then diesel will no longer be made which will lead to a diesel shortage. If a diesel shortage occurs, then shipping will stop or become ultra-expensive and global economies will suffer the wrath as a result. Supply chains will be as dead as that guy in the wheelbarrow in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who wasn't quite dead yet but was close enough to be thrown into the morning death cart. Also, creating diesel requires a heavier grade of crude oil that America mostly doesn't produce and has to rely on importing that type of crude. If policy makers decide to foolishly restrict imports of that type of oil then diesel production in America will actually be dead. Art "Danny Doomsday" Berman then provides this slick little graph on the trajectory of US shale oil. His middle name probably isn't Danny but I think it makes sense. Graph:

• On a normal production trajectory that follows rig declines, US shale production would drop from 7mmbpd in March 2020 to 3.5mmbpd by July 2021 which is good for a 50% drop. However, add in shut-ins and shale production drops from 7mmbpd in March 2020 to less than 3mmbpd by June 2020. Yes, you read that correctly. By June of this year US shale oil production could be decimated. Total US crude output would decline from 12mmbpd to 5.5mmbpd by July 2020, also according to Mr. Berman. Then Doomsday Danny ties what the loss in oil production means for America's GDP:

Gross domestic product (GDP) is proportional to oil consumption (Figure 4). That’s because oil is the economy. Every aspect of production and use of goods and services requires burning fossil energy. There are approximately 4.5 years of human labor in a barrel of oil (N. J. Hagens, personal communication and The Oil Drum). No other energy source comes close to that level of energy density.

• #STATS, but the not so good kind of stats. Pretty crazy about how much energy is in just one barrel of oil. Lesson learned, as oil production falls then America's entire GDP risks falling with it which could lead to a potential depression. Doomsday Danny (look at me, going full Trump on a guy by giving him a belittling nickname) seems like a bit of an alarmist but he has some interesting ideas in this article. He seems like a guy who is always going to declare that he was right in his predictions in some form or fashion though. He may be half right. Shale production is definitely falling off but America has proven itself to be resilient many times over. If America needs energy, then it'll figure it out.

A bunch of Tony Stark wannabes are trying to save the planet

• Move over Avengers, there is a new group of superheros in town that are actually trying to save the real life world. A 33-year-old venture capitalist is wearing an Iron Man suit around Boston saying that only he can lead the charge against COVID-19. This man's name is Tom Cahill. He is a former scientist but decided he would be better off investing in scientists and their work rather than doing the actual research himself. He is now a successful venture capitalist in the field of science. His success has propelled him to lead an intriguing group of America's top scientists, a handful of billionaires, and a few industry titans with the sole mission of solving the COVID-19 pandemic. Their work is now being called the modern-era version of the Manhattan Project. They gave themselves an Avengers like nickname too: Scientists to Stop Covid-19. It appears as though their specialty is not in coming up with cool names for things. It is a pretty impressive group of smart people with all types of backgrounds that includes a few chemical biologists, an immunobiologist, a neurobiologist, a chronobiologist, an oncologist, a gastroenterologist, an epidemiologist and a nuclear scientist. There is even a dude who won a 2017 Nobel Prize in biology, named Michael Rosbash, who believes he is the least qualified in the group. His words: “There’s no question that I’m the least qualified.” Pretty wild for a dude with that type of distinguished honor to say that type of thing. This group has some fire power. Each real life Avenger reviews up to 20 scientific papers a day which is 10 times greater than their normal daily pace, according to WSJ. These papers are from around the world and all discuss how the crisis is unfolding in different parts of the globe and provide various ideas about how to solve the riddle. The group then debates via videoconference to see if anything is worthy enough to look into further. If anything sticks out, then Mr. Cahill calls upon his powerful group of billionaires and industry titans to get things moving at the federal level with the group having direct ties to the White House. According to the WSJ article, when someone from this group calls, then things move asap. Pretty solid work they are doing here. Hopefully the mission of the group remains pure and the research behind it thorough. This is the type of group that shines the light on American ingenuity and they really are like a real life super hero group, but with lab coats instead of expensive body armor.

University of texas is known for producing snakes, and now for partnering with a Wuhan Lab

• It's not like the majority of America needed another reason to dislike UT. They already had snake as an alum (which is where he probably learned how to do snake things) and a smelly Matthew McConaughey. The university decided to double down on hatred by partnering with a Chinese laboratory. Not just any Chinese lab either. They partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and its head researcher Shi Zhengli. Uh oh. That sound you hear are alarm bells going off everywhere. This lab and Ms. Zhengli were at the center of fascinating Washington Post (WaPo) article two weeks ago that sent some red flags up about how the unleashing of COVID-19 might be from a lab accident that occurred at WIV under the leadership of Ms. Zhengli. This past week, the WSJ published an article that linked UT directly to WIV. American universities are required to disclose all gifts and contracts from a foreign source that is worth more than $250k in one calendar year. This rule has been around for a while but has recently started to be rigorously enforced by the Education Department. One of the main reasons why the rule is being enforced at a higher level is so the public can better see where schools are receiving their funding. Since the beginning of 2019, approximately $6.5B in funds that were previously undisclosed have been discovered. The effort is also intended to find out which schools are accepting funding from countries that are hostile towards the US. The WSJ revealed a letter that was sent to UT on April 24th that requested the university to report all of its dealings with WIV. In the letter, it cites an article in Science magazine from November 2018 that was cosigned by officials from WIV and Galveston:

• WIV asked the wrong university about playing defense. If WIV would have performed an ounce of research, then they clearly would have teamed up with Alabama or LSU in order to learn how to contain things. Nope. WIV went with UT and now their leaky defense that they learned from longhorns might have started a pandemic. UT is already in a bit of trouble as it recently reported foreign funding in the amount of $13mm for partnership work that occurred with Huawei - which is the Chinese based tech company that the Trump administration dislikes to a very large degree. In the end, who knows if any of these relationships or gifts with Chinese labs and tech companies end up actually turning into anything shady or illegal. When there is a chance to take a shot at UT though, then you have to take it. US Intelligence Agencies are investigating the possiblity of the virus orginating from a lab accident but so far, the evidence points to and is supported by the majority of scientists that the virus transmission from animals to humans likely occurred naturally. However, the exact origin is not known and it is unlikely to ever actually be found, according to Glenn Gerstell - former general counsel of the National Security agency.

Thought of the week:

• The sports world should pick one year from the past decade and delete all evidence of every season. For example, the 2015-16 NBA and NHL seasons, and the 2016 NFL and MLB seasons should all be deleted. Every record from everywhere except for game footage from every single game in that sports year should be deleted. The game film will be locked inside Ft. Knox. The gold can go somewhere else. Then TV networks should broadcast every game in a short-time frame that will last until sports can actually return. Sure, fans would remember some or maybe most of their favorite team's results, but are they going to know the score to a mid-season Thunder vs Blazers game? No way, and it would still be entertaining to watch for most. We are all grasping at straws here trying to get by until sports return. If not for The Last Dance, then there is a decent chance I would have already forgotten what a person is supposed to do with a basketball.