Vaccines don’t work as well in old people. Some will still die despite protection from vaccines.

It is now looking like vaccines are less effective in people 50 or older, who make up almost all coronavirus deaths.  Vaccine effectiveness against death is more like 79% than 100%.  That aspect of vaccines will not live up to its hype.  Dying from COVID-19 will remain a problem.

I don’t know how this will impact the economy and how people will behave.  The coronavirus has been heavily politicized so it is hard to predict how the political winds will shift.  A safer prediction is to bet on COVID treatments doing well.  It looks like (A) most of humanity will get the virus and (B) old people are still at risk of dying.  This is the right environment for a massive COVID treatment market.

The Fraud Industry part 3: Money laundering

While money laundering is illegal, it often leaves behind a paper trail behind that investors can uncover.

Also, it has led to interesting scenes from the movie The Wolf of Wall Street.

The Fraud Industry part 2: Reverse mergers are scams + shady transfer agents

The SEC has a bunch of rules that make it more annoying to run a pump and dump.  This has spawned a mini-industry of professionals who help pump and dumpers exploit the loopholes in those rules targeting reverse mergers, which is the most common vehicle for pump and dumps to be listed.

The sketchy transfer agents will publish guides on their website about what they are and aren’t willing to do when it comes to their clients getting around regulations such as Rule 144.

The Fraud Industry part 1: It takes a village to raise a fraud

Pump and dump is its own industry with industry conferences and specialists who provide helper services like shady legal advice, illegal transfer agent services, stock promotion, etc.  This industry operates a lot like other industries, except some effort is made to conceal their activities.

In this series of blog posts, I will go over how the industry works and how you can figure out the interconnections between industry players.  Industry insiders consistently use the same service providers: lawyers, accountants, investment banks, brokers, stock promoters, investor relations firms, and transfer agents.  All of that leaves behind a footprint that you can use to sleuth out connections behind the industry’s output.

This series will go over:

• How to quickly spot a pump and dump.
• How you can bet against these stocks and why you shouldn’t do it.

Most of humanity will catch the coronavirus + surgical masks won’t help

Many people have developed preferred positions on the coronavirus and will stick to those positions regardless of evidence.  I accept that I will probably alienate those people.  However, we don’t need to hurt ourselves with crazy views on the coronavirus.  We don’t have to become overly obsessed with partisan politics, worshipping science as a religion, or trying to look smart by saying that we oppose fear porn.  It’s important that we talk about the coronavirus and start getting to the truth.

• Surgical masks have very little or no effect on becoming infected.  A lot of people will not want to hear it but that is what the evidence is saying.
• Health authorities know very little about what works because very little research is being performed (unless that research involves vaccines or therapeutics).
• mRNA vaccines will not end the pandemic.
• We have effective tools against the coronavirus.  However, for political reasons, many countries will not adopt all of those tools.
• We are probably going to have to live with the coronavirus.

I think that the future will be… different… rather than bleak.  Vaccines and advances in early treatment might allow society to operate with fewer (or even zero) social restrictions.  However, the virus will be a part of our lives and change how we behave.  Work-from-home, online shopping instead of in-person shopping, not travelling internationally, etc. will likely stick around at lower levels.