Casinos in Houston? Texas lawmaker wants to legalize
Casinos in Houston? Texas lawmaker wants to legalize
Analysis: The odds for legal pot and casinos in Texas just
Analysis: The odds for legal pot and casinos in Texas just
Will Texas see casinos and marijuana in 2021? Media
Are Casinos And Legal Gambling In Texas Coming In 2021?
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will casinos ever be legal in texas
will casinos ever be legal in texas - win
A goodbye letter for the anti-President. Written by Michael D’Antonio.
I thoroughly appreciated reading this opinion piece. So much so that I’ve linked it and am pasting the article here as well. A goodbye letter for the anti-President Dear Donald, When we first met in 2014, I was a year into research for the biography I was writing about you. I knew about your stern father, your exile to military school at a tender age and your tendency to spin dramatic fantasies. I knew that you considered life a battle for survival and humans to be "vicious" by nature.* In your Trump Tower stronghold, you were attended by aides who looked like soap opera stars and surrounded by ego-boosting emblems: a wall of framed magazine covers, each featuring your face; a boxer's championship belt given to settle a debt; a stack of clippings delivered with a note that read, "Dad, FYI -- All great press. Ivanka." These totems of greatness, which I haven't seen in the quarters of other super-rich Americans, made me think of you as desperately, and perhaps dangerously, insecure.* In five interviews that lasted about 10 hours total, you would heighten my fear that despite a life spent in unending luxury and privilege, no amount of wealth and power would move you off the life-is-warfare view. Even worse, you told me that you might run for president because Twitter fans said you should (I wasn't surprised by your ambition and, given your celebrity, I thought you might win). Then, as we stood to inspect a framed letter you had received from the disgraced Richard Nixon, you said his only problem was that he had left office for the good of the country. In your view, he should have stayed and fought. *You ran for president and you won. And as you visited upon the country more pain than Nixon ever did, you fought on. Unrelenting in your aggression, lies and cruelty, you presided over four years of chaos and conflict provoked by your words and deeds. Though impeached, you escaped conviction and stayed in office to redouble your commitment to ego-driven chaos. As you refused to mount a serious federal response, the Covid-19 death toll surpassed 400,000. Defeated in your bid for reelection, you spun lies that created an alternative reality so powerful that hundreds of your followers formed a mob that carried out a bloody attack on the United States Capitol. Many there intended to overturn the election, which you had repeatedly claimed was invalid due to fraud that in fact had not occurred.* In the attack, which was televised by news networks and livestreamed on social media, five people -- including one Capitol police officer -- would die. A DC Metro Police officer, who had been Tasered several times, heard one of your followers say, "Kill him with his own gun." Although Congress reconvened after the mob was driven out, you stand disgraced as the only president in US history to be impeached twice, and all I can think is that you had finally made your narcissistic nightmare of a constant battle against vicious enemies come true for us all. Your dangerous narcissism was not widely noted when I interviewed you, but it seemed, to me, to be the hallmark of your personality. I consulted experts and learned that this grandiosity was likely a defense mechanism against a fear of shame and rejection. I came to believe this fear was installed by your father, who, when you were a child, demanded you be a "killer" and a "king." When you failed to meet his expectations and became a troublemaker, he exiled you to military school, at age 13. Talk about a scarring experience. The title of my book, "Never Enough," pointed to your endless drive to prove your superiority, which, ironically, led to bankruptcies, divorces and legal defeats. It's likely these failures provoked the same sense of shame and humiliation that you must have felt as a rejected child. You once told me you hated to reflect on the past, but in refusing to do this, you were bound to repeat your mistakes. No matter how much you achieved, it was never enough. And so, you went too far. (For more on this see what your psychologist niece, Mary Trump, wrote in her 2020 book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.") As President, your weaknesses posed terrible threats to the country. Your many failures at running businesses such as casinos or the airline Trump Shuttle showed that you were not a nimble thinker capable of leading complex operations. The Covid-19 pandemic has only made this glaring incompetence crystal clear -- and despite your efforts to deflect the blame, the country's death toll speaks for itself. More than 400,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States -- more than any other country in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. Having seen your inability to recognize others as human beings, I have not been shocked by your indifference to the deaths of your fellow citizens. Nor have I been surprised by your encouragement of violence. Violence was what I always expected from your presidency. I just didn't know what form it would take. The power of your methods was obvious during your 2016 campaign, when you lied in a way that separated your most ardent followers from reality itself. You promoted many of your old conspiracy theories about 9/11 and climate change and added new ones on the fly. (When an attendee asked -- after first stating as fact that Obama was Muslim and not American -- about the wildly untrue idea that Muslims were running secret training camps in the United States to kill people, you refused to shoot down his claims, promising instead to "look at that." You also whipped people into a frenzy of hatred by describing opponents, critics and the free press as enemies. I recalled reading how your first wife, Ivana, had said you kept a book of Hitler's speeches near your bed. You once corrected a reporter, telling her it was "Mein Kampf" instead (though Marty Davis, who gave Trump the book, told Vanity Fair it was a book of speeches). For four years in office, you functioned as a kind of anti-President, inflaming rather than calming passions and attacking rather than negotiating, all while demanding adoration from your Cabinet and constant attention from the media. Having ordered aides to think of each day as an episode in a TV show before you even took office, you tried to gin up as much drama as possible. As President, you used the authority of your office to spread baseless claims about voter fraud, former President Barack Obama and even of a friendship between former President Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sexual predator who was your Palm Beach neighbor and friend, to name a few. Many of your followers abandoned reason and dove headfirst into the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, which reveres you as a savior and regards the government and much of the news media as evil. Many of those who attacked the Capitol brandished Q symbols along with Trump flags, Jesus banners and the Confederate stars and bars -- a mix of powerful symbols that shows the breadth of your influence. Before the attack, you were among many who called for a big crowd of protesters to stop the Congress from affirming your election defeat. After your lawyer Rudy Giuliani, your namesake son ginned up the crowd, and they heard you call for them to march on the Capitol. "You have to show strength," you said, "and you have to be strong." You promised to go with them but chose instead to view the destruction on TV. I wondered if you understood that the violence that unfolded was real, and not something made for television. Did you order Cokes as you watched? Did you eat popcorn? I can imagine you snacking because you have played with violence, both real and imagined, for so long that you must be inured you to it. It all started back in the 1970s when you began employing armed guards-chauffeurs, for no apparent reason. I think it was because you enjoyed the sense of menace they added to your presence. During your 2016 campaign one of your security guards roughed-up a picketer outside Trump Tower in New York, while another physically forced reporter Jorge Ramos out of a news conference in 2015. At one rally you told followers, "If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them." When a loud protester disrupted one of your other campaign rallies, you said, "I'd like to punch him in the face." Your tough guy image was embraced by followers who traded memes in which you were drawn to look like a superhero or shown brandishing weapons Rambo-style. Your avatar punched out a figure labeled with the CNN logo. Add this to the bigotry you expressed in words and images, which you shared with millions of people on Twitter, and a combustible mix was created. (Remember posting an image of Hillary Clinton, along with a Star of David set against dollar bills, brandishing her the "most corrupt candidate ever?"). The atmosphere of bigotry you helped create exploded in Charlottesville in 2017 as men chanted "Jews will not replace us" before a White supremacist murdered a counterprotester by running her down with his car. Heather Heyer was one of the first civilians to die in this charged political context during your presidency. It did not change your behavior. Instead, you declared there were "very fine people on both sides." By delaying your condemnation of her attackers and resisting efforts to remove monuments to those who fought against the United States to preserve slavery, you sent clear signals about your views on race and violence. With Charlottesville, questions about your bigotry grew louder. You made your stance clear when you reportedly said Haitian immigrants "all have AIDS" (though the White House denied it), and that people were entering the US from "shithole" countries. Add your vicious comments about Black athletes calling out police brutality, your penchant for slamming individual Black women, and your fearmongering about low-income housing, and everyone understood your perspective. Three years into your presidency, 65% of Black Americans said it's "a bad time to be a Black person" in the United States, according to a Washington Post/Ipsos poll. It would have been bad enough if your bigotry had been confined to words, but you enshrined it in policy by restricting refugees from entering this country. This led to a sharp decline, from about 85,000 refugees admitted to the United States in 2016 to about 12,000 in 2020. If the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" didn't get the message, then they could consider the way you cozied up to strongmen, the likes of which many of them were fleeing. From Kim Jong Un of North Korea to Russian President Vladimir Putin, you showed a consistent admiration for dictators who jail and kill their critics. Along our border with Mexico, you began separating children from parents who arrived seeking asylum. By May 2019, six children had died in federal custody. In June of that year, Americans were shocked by the photo of a father and child who had drowned attempting to cross the Rio Grande. In December, a surveillance video obtained by ProPublica showed a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy was left alone in his Border Patrol cell in Texas for hours before he died on the floor, of complications from the flu. How many minors died in Border Patrol custody during the four years prior to your administration? Zero, per FactCheck.org. The deaths were just one measure of the suffering your harsh policies inflicted on asylum-seeking families. New data from June 2019 reveals there were around 5,500 known cases of children, from infants to teens, being separated from their parents and placed in facilities ranging from foster family homes to cells made out of chain link fencing. Amid all this pain, it seemed you still weren't satisfied. You asked about building anti-immigrant moats to be stocked with alligators. You wondered whether soldiers could shoot immigrants who threw rocks. Those ideas were nixed, but the crisis continues. Because of inept recording-keeping, your administration has not been able locate the parents of at least 545 children, according to court documents from last October. Refugee families, stuck in limbo while waiting for asylum in the United States, are still filling squalid camps on the Mexican side of the border, many of them fearing for their lives -- particularly in the midst of a global pandemic. You got away with cruelty in part because you conditioned many Americans to believe that brown-skinned, undocumented immigrants constituted a criminal horde that required a draconian response. You promised to build a "beautiful" concrete border wall along 1,000 miles of the frontier and force Mexico to pay for it. Only about 452 miles of tall steel fence has been completed as of January 5, 2021, according to a Customs and Border Patrol Report, and instead of the $8 billion you estimated for 1,000 miles, $18 billion dollars have already been devoted to the work because -- surprise! -- Mexico is not paying for it. Hyping the wall was just one example of the exaggerations, false claims and lies that came out of your mouth in such a torrent it was nearly impossible for anyone to react properly. You combined this strategy with denigrating the media as "enemies of the people" and purveyors of "fake news" with such consistency that facts seemed to lose their power. You added an Orwellian flourish when you said, "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening." What has been the effect on journalists? Threats became a part of our daily lives and the lives of our family members. (One of your followers found my wife's business phone number and called to say that he had located our address and to suggest we be careful.) A "press freedom tracker" run by the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation has counted 421 attacks on journalists during your time in office. Far worse than the impact on journalists is your effect on Americans' ability to agree upon an established set of facts as they consider critical issues. You are not solely to blame for this problem. However, you have both contributed to it and exploited it. You have made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims, according to The Washington Post, which have landed with the authority that comes with the presidential seal. The easy way out for someone mired in disinformation is to pick a person to believe and go all in. Many of those who doubled down on their support for you found a sense of belonging amid the slogans, regalia and fervent rallies. They felt they were right. Those who disagreed were not fellow citizens but enemies who, some concluded, should be defeated by violent means. The loyalty of your followers meant that ordinary politicians feared provoking the ire of your base. When it came to light that you were trying to coerce Ukraine's President into helping your reelection effort, you were impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. But this fear helped keep the Republican-controlled Senate in line, and you were acquitted. Afterward, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine defended her vote to acquit you, saying you had learned "a big lesson." What you learned, it seemed, was that you could get away with anything. Even before you were elected, you claimed you could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody," and not lose voters. Shortly after the impeachment trial wrapped up, you proceeded to mislead the American people about the novel coronavirus. You downplayed the dangers of the virus so that the vibrant economy, the main bragging point of your presidency, would continue to hum. In late February, at a White House coronavirus task force briefing, you said "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for." But you told journalist Bob Woodward weeks before that the coronavirus was "more deadly than your -- you know, your, even your strenuous flus." Nevertheless, you declined to organize a true national response and undermined public health officials who urged everyone to wear face masks. You also held mass rallies where people were infected. On May 8, when the death toll was more than 77,000, you continued this charade, insisting, "This is going to go away without a vaccine." To say that people died as a result of your posture is not mere speculation. Families have told stories of those who followed your lead, got sick and died. Harvard epidemiologists estimate that thousands have died as a result of your example. Today the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage the country. The death toll is now roughly equivalent to a 9/11 each day -- but many of your acolytes, even in Congress, still refuse to protect themselves and others with facemasks. Meanwhile, millions are turning to food banks. Mass evictions loom. When I consider the hungry, the infected, the traumatized and the deceased and hold in my mind the images of the deadly mob at the Capitol, I hear your voice summoning the worst in my fellow citizens. With those words you truly established yourself as the anti-President, a distinction that cancels any claim you might make to the respect normally accorded the office. When we met you told me to call you "Don," as if we were friends. You also invited me to examine your hair. I didn't do either because I sensed that you wanted to establish a bond that you would eventually try to corrupt. This was confirmed when you hinted that my book could make me rich if I abandoned my professional duty and wrote it to your liking. Thankfully, enough Americans recognized your immorality and incompetence and lack of human feeling so profound that the suffering and death so much a part of your presidency didn't appear to affect you at all. They chose Joe Biden in November, making you truly accountable for perhaps the first time in your life. After four years of your chaos, what's left is a wounded country grieving for its dead and for its innocence. But we will recover, and you now face criminal and legal threats in state courts, along with the harsh judgment of history. As you desperately summon the remains of your following for comfort and fundraising, your disgrace is growing with the mounting evidence that your words motivated the mob that attacked the United States Capitol. This incitement may be the single worst thing a president has ever done, and it will define you for centuries to come.
Small rant about the UCP, Covid restrictions and the general attitude of Albertan redditors.
So i'll start with this disclaimer to avoid being called a Kenney worshipper or whatever other clever names people might concoct. I absolutely hate the UCP. As it stands I will never vote for them ever again unless drastic changes are made. I think Jason Kenney is spineless, and has actively worked to defy and contradict his campaign promises. His push to privatise heath care, and cut medical funding is unforgivable. As a student at the University of Calgary, the UCP's policies regarding education enrage me. Also, contact tracing? Don't even get me started. That being said, the protocals implemented by the UCP today are nowhere near as bad as many people are making them out to be, and at the very least are a step in the right direction. It makes zero sense in my mind to have religious institutions remain open when their services could be broadcasted online. It's ridiculous to have casino's remain open. Lastly, the fact that shopping malls will remain open blows my mind. However, my dad works in the food industry and his business could not afford another shut down like the one that occurred earlier this year. To be blunt him and his coworkers would all be out of a job. These new restrictions allow for their business to remain open while drastically reducing occupancy and limit attendance to single household units. It's not perfect but, it's a far cry from the worst possible course of action, one that I'd argue is actually pretty good. Regarding schools, Albertans need to work and having all the K-6 students stay home is just not feasible to allow that to happen. They need adult guidance to effectively learn, and are too young to care for themselves. However, older students from 7-12 are legally permitted to be home unattended and are responsible enough to effectively complete their studies. What I hear a lot of lately is how Alberta is the 'Texas' of Canada, and unfortunately regarding politics we might as well be part of the US. In the States, it doesn't matter who is in charge of the Republicans or Democrats, those with opposing views will find a way to hate them and denounce anything their party tries to implement. It's not about progressing the country, it simply comes down to whether or not the party you were raised to love is in power. Here in Alberta not much is different. Today in live discussions and posts people were already commenting about how much they hate Kenney before he uttered a single word, and were fully prepared to hate on whatever was going to come out. After the protocols, all I saw were extreme criticisms on absolutely every single thing that's been implemented. In contrast, those that love the UCP could do nothing but embrace and hang on to every word he said. My question is where is the objectivity? Today a lot of good and bad was said, so why is it that the two most common opinions reflect one or the other with little middle ground. Today progress was made, and it's important to recognize progress when it occurs, yet criticism is also essential to keep the government in check. There's a lot wrong in the province right now, and it terrifies me. This is the home that I was born and raised in, and I want it to succeed but if people can't get past their personal political feelings it's hard to achieve or change anything. I hate the UCP and want them gone as sson as possible, but I've got to admit that not everything implemented today was terrible. For once we have protocals that at least have a degree of weight and substance, and I wish others were more willing to atleast sit and think about it before coming to a conclusion prior to anything being said. Rant over, thank you, and feel free to disagree with me or share your thoughts.
If You See Graffiti Reading "FOR A GOOD TIME CALL:", follow this "Rule of the Road"...
The following contains a transcript from a short radio broadcast that has been picked up by various listeners across the continental United States. Many have been perplexed by its sudden appearance and how it seems to preempt whatever song or radio program they are listening to at the time. It has even been known to appear on streaming programs such as podcasts or Spotify. Listeners have described hearing different episodes and there have been many situations and incidents. A 23 year old college student named Yuvisela contacted me with her account of hearing the broadcast. She and her boyfriend had encountered the broadcast while driving one sultry summer afternoon from Austin, TX. So I have this thing with waterfalls. I’m a little obsessed with them. In my free time and when I’m not paying attention in lecture, I like to look on the internet at pictures of them and daydream that I’m there: the roar of the splashing water, the white foamy spray, my bare toes dipped into the icy spring. I’ve got a Pinterest page with hundreds of falls that I would like to visit one day. Niagara, Havasu, Victoria Falls, Gullfoss, Iguazu; they’re all on there. I keep them all catalogued for my bucket list. Yet, how many people go to the grave with their bucket list hardly finished? I bet a lot. My boyfriend, Gabriel, likes to mess with me about my obsession. He’ll come up behind me while I’m on my computer or look over my shoulder at my phone and see that I’m looking at waterfalls. “Don’t go chasing waterfalls, stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to,” he’ll sing when he catches me. It’s this old song he knows, TLC or something. He’s about six years older than me. I’ll joke with him to leave me alone and quit singing that old music, ask him if he used to listen to that on an 8-track or something. “No, my older sister listened to it on CD. You know CD’s? Those little plastic things with the holes in them? That little slot in your car’s stereo, a CD goes in there. They don’t make ‘em in the new cars anymore.” We’ve had a variation of this same conversation a bunch of times. It’s kind of a running joke between the two of us—him poking fun at my waterfall obsession and me making fun of how old he is—and while he thinks the waterfall thing is a cute little quirk of mine, he also has been supportive of my passion. That’s why he surprised me with the trip that summer. He knew that I was yearning to see some of these places. He knew that he wanted to make me happy. He knew that my resources were limited. He knew that we weren’t getting any younger; I was 23 and still had a semester to go. But he also knew that we weren’t getting any richer, either. At least not anytime soon. I know I’m a little bit older for a college student, but it’s taken me a bit longer on account of having to work and stuff. I can’t take a full load every semester. Money’s always tight. I work full time and barely stay ahead, even sending some of my money to help my mom out. Gabriel offered to help me out some and we’d even talked about moving in together, but we had only been together a year at that point and I wasn’t quite ready. Before my dad had passed, I’d promised him that I was going to get my college degree and I wanted to do it all on my own. While I loved Gabriel and could see myself marrying him, I didn’t want to deal with a transition like that so close to the finish line. Besides, we were getting along so well as it was. Why mess with a good thing? And it was a good thing that kept better. Just when I thought that I couldn’t love Gabriel more, on my birthday he surprised me with the best present I’ve ever gotten. It was a little black notebook with this kind of leathery cover. While the notebook itself was nice, it was what was inside that was the true present. At some point, he had gone onto my Pinterest page and written down page after page of waterfalls, organizing them by country and state. He had put little squares beside them, boxes to check off. The last two pages were Texas and Oklahoma. He had written a note there. It read:
“Let’s start now...” -Gabriel
* * * So far, the trip had been a blast. We had started out in Abilene where we both lived and where I attended college. From there, we went to a place called Gorman Falls at this state park. It was one of the tallest waterfalls in the state and all of the foliage and moss around it was lush and green and for a while, if I crossed my eyes just right it was like I wasn’t even in Texas. We couldn’t hit all the sites in a day. It was a road trip with multiple nights in hotels. After Gorman Falls and staying at a hotel, we headed towards Austin and stopped off at Hamilton Pool Preserve. The waterfall wasn’t as tall as Gorman, but I have to say I liked it better. The water formed a curtain as it poured off of a rocky shelf and into this sunken grotto of blue green water. We stayed at this magical place for hours, swimming in the water and soaking up the sun. I could’ve stayed longer, but it was starting to get crowded, so we headed to Austin for a night on the town on 6th Street. The next day we slept in and got a late start on the road. Lunch was at a Whataburger outside Waco. We sat and ate our food and looked at our phones. I browsed Instagram and my eyes skimmed over a gorgeous site. Yep, another waterfall. I slid my phone over to Gabriel. “Look!” I said. “Am I supposed to be looking at the butt or the waterfall?” he asked. An Instagram model was standing with her back to the camera, looking up at the water in awe. “The waterfall, silly.” “Seriously, that skinny white girl ain’t got nothing on you. Better let me take a look, just to be sure.” I stood and twirled around quickly, teasing him. “Ok, so back to the waterfall. Did you look at it?” “Yeah, it’s beautiful babe. Where was this one?” “Iceland,” I sighed. “Oh, right.” “It’s not looking good for the time being. Maybe in a few years, yeah?” “Just gotta see how the election goes. I ain’t holding my breath.” See, neither of us were U.S. citizens. We were what you call DACA recipients. Both of us had wound up in America via illegal means on behalf of our parents, back when we were kids. This was when we were too young to have any say in the matter. I can hardly remember my life before, my life back in Mexico. I grew up here, went to school here. Texas and America is the only home I’ve ever known. Gabriel, he was originally from Guatemala. His situation is more or less the same. If we were to leave the country, then we might risk not being able to get back in. You could apply for eligibility to travel if you had special circumstances, but they didn’t allow travel for leisure. We didn’t even have passports. Until then, our dreams of traveling—something we both wanted to do—were just that: dreams. There was a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Obama and that DREAM act, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. You know, the dreamers or whatever? That’s what they call us. I guess they call it that because it’s just a freaking fantasy that disappears at the slightest thing—the sunrise, your phone alarm—out of your grasp as soon as you start your day. Anyways, I applied for the DREAM act, but it hasn’t been a guarantee. We’re all stuck in a sort of limbo, waiting for the people in Washington to figure out what the hell to do with us, using us as a bargaining chip. Not Gabriel though, he didn’t apply for the act. Part of it was that he was bad about procrastinating. The other part was that he was paranoid about signing up. I told him that he was an idiot and if he blew his chance to become a legal permanent resident, then I wouldn’t follow him to Guatemala if he got deported. He told me that he didn’t trust the program, that once they had you in the system they could track you easier, keep tabs on you. Said he knew a guy that got deported this way. I told him that the guy must’ve gotten into some legal trouble, a DUI or something, to have been deported. “We’re all just one slip up from some legal trouble. Hell, some people consider us illegal right now,” he had said. It was hard to argue against that, I guess. At least he knew where he stood, didn’t have that false hope. Sometimes I think it’s the hope that gets you, makes things worse. Gabriel frowned and handed the phone back to me, looked out the window and took a sip of his Coke. I suddenly felt bad and ungrateful. Here was this amazing man that had planned out an awesome road trip just for me and I was busy looking at other far off adventures, not appreciating what I had right in front of me, the moment I was living in right now. I leaned forward and kissed him. "I don't care where I'm at as long as you're with me," I said and he smiled. What I told him just then, it was true. That didn’t mean I was going to grow complacent and quit dreaming. They did call us dreamers after all. It was one of those giant truck stops, the kind that was a little smaller than a Wal-Mart or Target, but just barely. We filled up and paced around inside and looked at the aisles and aisles of candy, the funny toys and souvenirs, and the tacky t-shirts. “Hey Yuvi, whaddaya say? It’s your size.” Gabriel asked, holding up a black t-shirt with glittery letters. “PROUD TRUCKER WIFE” it read. “Only if you get that one,” I said, pointing at a T-shirt with a semi-truck on it that read “I JUST DROPPED A LOAD”. “Eww,” Gabriel said, laughing. We both wandered around on our own. They had a huge candy section and I was looking to see if they had any vero elotes candy. I had just found a bag on a bottom shelf when Gabriel came skipping up. “We are so getting this,” he said, holding up a plastic CD case. “What is it?” “Best of the ‘90s. It’s got your song on there, see? ‘Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls.’ Can we get it? It’s only 3.99.” “Ha, ok. But only if you buy me this,” I said, handing him the candy. There was traffic from hell just south of Denton on account of construction and a car wreck or two. We were stop-and-go for what seemed like an hour. I was passenger side and Gabriel idled along. “Ok. I think now’s the time to break out this bad boy,” Gabriel said as he started tearing at the plastic wrap around the CD case. “I think this is the first time I’ve even used the CD player in this car.” “Aw hell yeah,” Gabriel said as the first song started playing. “Gettin’ Jiggy With It.” “Getting what, now?” “It’s your boy, Will Smith. Y’know the Fresh Prince? Betcha didn’t know he had a little music career.” “That guy from I Am Legend and Aladdin?” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “I guess. His older work is much better.” “Well I don’t know. You act like you're this old and wise millennial. You’re not that much older than me, y’know.” “I’m telling ya, my Gen-X sister raised me on all of this stuff. I think she was Gen-X. I don’t know the damn cutoffs. Anyways, she babysat me a lot growing up while Mama was working and stuff. She cultured my little ass. Ooh, here it is!” A new song started playing. I couldn’t help but laugh at how it started. “It sounds like porn music!” “Nah, shhhh. Shhh.” Gabriel bobbed his head along to the beat. The chorus started to worm it’s way into my head. The song was ok, I guess. I still can’t really listen to it to this day. “You gotta listen to this dope rap coming up,” Gabriel said. There was the sound of hissing and popping, wet logs burning in a fire. Whispers intermingled with the sound effects. One of the voices rose above the others and said “Listen!” harshly in Spanish, you know, “Escuchen! Escuchen!”, several times. We both looked at each other with wide eyes. The traffic crept forward slowly and Gabriel kept his hands on the wheel and I kept mine in my lap and that’s when he started to talk. It was this happy sounding older guy, talking right there on my car’s speakers. Gooood afternoon folks, Buck Hensley here with a special rush hour edition of “The Rules of the Road”. Hope ya’ll are doing alright out there while you’re idling on the clogged arteries of America’s highways and byways, breathing in those delicious exhaust fumes. I know that good ol’ Mother Earth likes to take a big fat rip of that stuff from time to time, although as of late she seems to be getting quite a contact high from that delicious Co2 and starting to feel the effects just a little too much. And yet you all keep puff-puffing and passing, never slowing down. What with your jet planes and your driving and your travel and your neverending consumption and your cow farts and whatnot. All I’m saying is that you folks might wanna slow down a bit on that stuff, because I’ve seen the end results and all I can say is that they are hilarious. But I understand if you wanna keep on keeping on and having a good time. All I can say is smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Speaking of good times, that reminds me of today’s special “Rule of the Road”. You’re gonna want to listen to this one as it’s all about good times. Why that was Carla’s favorite sitcom for a spell there, “Good Times”. She’d watch reruns on into the night, the TV casting a pale glow that was kinda comforting across the bed, and I’d wake up to live studio laughter and her snoring softly beside me, the serene look of slumber on her face and the years I’d wasted. Gabriel and I both looked at eachother. He shrugged and reached for the stereo. I shooed his hand away. I wanted to listen to it. The voice continued. But I digress...well now, on to today’s “Rule of the Road”. If at any point during your journey you stop off for a pitstop or a potty break and you enter a public restroom to do your business, take note of the writing on the stalls. You might notice some graffiti that reads, “For a Good Time, Call” and then a phone number listed after it. If you do notice this, then take the number down for later use. Whenever you are in dire need of a good time, then give that number a call. Now before you go off with a bee in your bonnet and tell me how you ain’t gonna call no sketchy phone number taken off a lady’s or men’s room wall, let me just tell you that this will be worth it. You can trust me. When has old Bucky ever let ya down? I know what you’re gonna say next though, you’re gonna say, “Buck, I don’t ever call no numbers on my phone. I’m deathly afraid of voices on the other line. If I can’t text and send little emojis and the like, then forget it. If I can’t use an app to order Thai food or a pizza, then I go hungry that night. I haven’t even made an appointment to a doctor since I’ve lived with my parents. What if since we can’t see each other’s faces we start talking at the same time and we talk over each other and then say, ‘oops sorry, no you go ahead’ and then we both say it again at the same time and then we both start trying to talk again and then get stuck in some sort of infinite loop?” And to that I say, “fair enough.” Don’t use the phone. The consequences of not following this rule are a little less dire than previous rules you may have heard. If you don’t follow this rule then you will simply miss out on a good time. That’s it. But you wouldn’t want to miss out on anything, would ya? Welp. That’s all I’ve got on this fine late afternoon. May the wind be always at your back, your picnic basket full of snacks, and your cheese ever be pepper jack. Ya’ll stay sane out there. Stay symbiotic. Stay lonely. I'm Buck Hensley and these are "The Rules of the Road". The voice instantly stopped and the song returned playing. Gabriel had a dumbfounded look on his face. "What the hell?" he said and tried to rewind the CD. "Umm, was that part of the song? Maybe a different version?" "No way," he said and kept rewinding and playing the song over. The little skit that we heard never returned. “Weird,” I said. “Beats the heck out of me.” “Maybe the CD is haunted. That was pretty spooky, y’know? That voice telling us to listen.” “Maybe it was like a hidden track or something. They used to put those on CD’s back in the day. And this CD was pretty cheap and has all these songs on it. Could’ve been like a pirated deal.” We weren’t really scared by the broadcast or whatever it was, just more confused. It was only looking back that we saw the importance of what we had heard and how from there our path seemed to be led a certain way.. At the time it was just this weird little thing, a funny little mystery that was forgettable for the time being. We crept along for a while without incident, the traffic slowly gaining momentum. The music on the CD played on as usual and we heard no extra voices. The songs played like they were supposed to. Everything was fine. Of course, outside of Gainesville, it hit me. I had been trying to ignore it and power through until we stopped for the night, but I had the sudden urge to pee. All that slow traffic and iced tea and a bottle of water must’ve caught up with me. This was intense. Usually I could hold it pretty good, but I had to get Gabriel to stop at the first exit we saw. It was this gas station kind of off by itself and it was all dingy and old and faded and didn’t look the cleanest. Gabriel parked and my lower stomach and bladder ached as soon as I stood up and got out of the car. I burst into the place and made a beeline towards the restroom, over in the corner past the ATM and the glass fridges down a hall with burnt out fluorescent lights. They were singles that you could lock, one for men and one for women. The floor was sticky and paper towels piled out of a trash can and a strip of toilet paper floated in a pool of standing water. A condom dispensing machine was on the wall opposite the toilet. It wasn’t the worst public restroom I’d ever used and I didn’t have many options; I was literally about to piss myself. I would have to do the hover move over the toilet seat. No seat covers in a joint like this and I didn’t have time to prep it with toilet paper anything. So I was doing my business, my thighs burning from the squat, and kind of laughing to myself at the condom dispenser machine with its brands like the “FRENCH TICKLER” and that’s when I saw it, the graffiti written in Sharpie, right there on the vending machine. It said, “For A Good Time, Call 9xx-XXX-XXXX [Redacted]”. After I finished and had washed my hands, I snapped a pic of the graffiti. I figured Gabriel would get a kick out of it. “You’re supposed to call it. That’s the rule,” Gabriel said when I showed him. “I’m too nervous. You call. You heard it, too.” “Chicken.” “Yep.” “How many of those things do you even see? I’ve seen them all the time. I bet it’s just dudes pranking each other or fucking with their ex-girlfriends.” “Well I found it in the ladies room, so hopefully it wasn’t dudes.” “Okay, you enter it in your phone and I’ll dial. I’ll try to do a caller ID block or something. Let’s just see what happens.” “Are you sure?” “Eh come on. Maybe it’s fate.” The Texas travel center appeared on the southbound side of the interstate and we were soon crossing the Red River on into Oklahoma as I transcribed the numbers from the picture to the keypad on my dialer. A large casino came into view. It was ginormous with this sort of facade of all these famous buildings on its outside. I could see Big Ben and that Roman coliseum and all these other world architecture things. The casino just stretched on and on. “Aw, not again,” Gabriel said. I had just finished transposing the number into the phone. The crazy casino had distracted me. “What is it, babe?” “Another jam.” The traffic was veering into the right hand lane, but it was still moving at a decent clip, like 45 mph or something. After a mile of this, I could see a couple of highway patrol cars parked across the interstate, blocking both lanes of traffic. A state trooper stood out in the middle, waving a flashlight thing and directing traffic to take the exit. There was still about an hour of daylight left and you couldn’t even see the light. He was just using it as a baton. Somewhere off in the distance there was a thick wall of smoke filling the evening sky with this surreal haze. “Wonder what’s going on?” I asked. “Who knows? Grassfire, maybe.” We followed the other cars and trucks down the exit ramp. Some turned right, some turned left. “Right or left? Right or left?” Gabriel asked. There seemed to be more cars turning left. Maybe they knew something we didn’t. But then, we would be stuck behind them and it was getting dark and we were already behind schedule. I wanted to get the hell out of the car. “Um, right! Right,” I said, trying to pull up the GPS on my phone. It was lagging and my service had kicked over to 3G. “Freaking Verizon,” I muttered. We drove down a highway past empty fields fenced off by barbed wire. There were houses and barns and oilfield pump jacks every so often, but not much else. No gas stations or a sign of a town or much else, really. After driving into all this nothingness for a while, my phone completely lost all signal. The cars around us thinned out and there was only a black SUV in front of us. “Hey babe, I have no service and can’t pull up the GPS. Wanna turn back around?” “Nah, let’s just keep going. We’ve come this far, yeah? We’ll hit a main road eventually, get some service.” I sighed in response as he kept driving, let him know I didn’t approve. “We’ll turn north soon, ok? All roads lead to Turner Falls.” I checked my phone every fifteen seconds, looking for a signal. “C’mon Gabe, we’re gonna get lost out here. Let’s just go back, follow the other cars or see if they’ve opened up the interstate again.” “Look, this looks like a good road. We’ll cut north here and drive aways and then cut back west towards the interstate. It’s literally impossible to get lost out here. Just trying not to lose any more time.” But it wasn’t so simple and the nervous feeling in my stomach was validated when the road we drove north on turned to gravel. The sun was long gone and our headlights cut a tunnel through the night as barbed wire whizzed by, separating us from pastures that were elevated above the road on grassy rises. I started to fear the worst, thinking of every horror movie I’d ever seen that had started out this way: the headstrong man refusing to admit that he was lost and didn’t know where he was going and the increasingly pissed off and worried girl that was with him. “Babe, please just turn around,” I pleaded. “Ok, ok. Still no signal, eh?” I looked down at my phone. Finally, there was one bar of service. “Yes! Hang on.” “Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Gabriel said, his voice growing louder. My stomach dropped as what appeared in the rear view mirror was just as scary as any sort of Freddy or Jason or Leatherface from the big screen. Part 2
Wealth Formula Episode 237: Is Angel Investing Right for You?
Catch the full episode: https://www.wealthformula.com/podcast/237-is-angel-investing-right-for-you/ Buck: Welcome back to the show everyone today my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast is Tom Wallace. Tom is a 40 year veteran of technology startups both as a founder and an investor and, after multiple successful exits most recently selling vector learning for 268 million dollars, he's now the managing partner at Florida Funders which is a hybrid: a venture capital fund and angel investor network focused on finding funding and building the next generation of breakout technology companies in Florida. Tom welcome to Wealth Formula Podcast. Tom: Buck thanks for having me on your show. I really appreciate it. It's an honor to be here and thanks for hosting. Buck: Yeah of course. And you know why don't we start out you know this is a sort of a different area for us but why don't you just start out a little bit by talking about your background I know we mentioned that you've been a tech guy, for the most part, your professional life. Talk a little bit about that and you know how you ended up I guess from being on the front lines as maybe an actual startup guide ultimately on the angel investor side. Tom: Yeah sure so I come from a blue-collar family. Neither of my parents graduated from high school. And so when I got out of college it was 1980 and if you think about that time it was kind of the dawning of the microcomputer or personal computer revolution and I worked for a couple of years for a Fortune 500 company Alcoa my father said it's the only real job I ever had and then at the age of 23 my best friend and I started our first company and we started a company in the personal computer space and had no idea what we were doing we were young we were green. Back then buck it wasn't like today where there's all these incubators and accelerators and all these mentors and so many people you can get help starting you know an entrepreneurship is such a you know a cool thing and such a hip thing back then it was something that not a lot of people were doing and I was like most of the kids I went to college with were looking to go work for IBM or some Fortune 500 company but it was really a special time and we got bit when you got bit by the entrepreneurial bug and if you think back every so often game-changing technology comes along and certainly the late 70s early 80s that was the case with a personal computer if you think about up until that time the only had access to computers were universities large corporations or pretty good sized companies and they were big computers they were expensive and they took a team of geeks to program them yeah that all changed in the late 70s with Apple and IBM introduced their first personal computer in 1981 and compact computer and all that and it really now every person every small business could have a computer and the software that came along with it from people like Bill Gates and Mitch Kapoor of Lotus123 that came along with it you didn't any longer have to be a programmer or geek to figure out how to use this. So we start our business and that was our first company. We exited that about eight years later got about 20 million in sales and then kind of been doing it ever since and an entrepreneur and on the field as is I kind of look at I've been the core I was the quarterback for many years and you know living the daily grind and fight of being an entrepreneur. And I like being on the sidelines at this point Buck: Got it. So you know we talked a little bit offline about my audience and where you know I tend to be for the most part you know alternative asset investors who are looking for different things generally you know heavily in real estate and that sort of thing. So you know a lot of the nomenclature maybe for this area is going to be a little bit foreign maybe just from an educational standpoint maybe kind of if you would you know you hear a lot of different types of things, words thrown around like angel investing and venture capital and private equity within technology, can you talk a little bit about that and maybe you know kind of where you're focused. Tom: Yeah sure so I kind of look at it in stages so early, early stage you know say Buck you were going to start a company a technology company tomorrow and you needed to raise a few hundred thousand dollars to get it going. The first thing you would probably do is go out to your family and friends and get them to invest so that's kind of very very early stage probably pre you probably don't have any revenue no customers it's just an idea. The next stage is angel investing and that's when you typically get a little bit past that family and friends maybe you've got some customers now you've got a real product you go out to that group and these are kind of and that and angels have changed over the years but you know many of us do it professionally so these are more sophisticated investors they do a lot of deals they see a lot of deals and we'll talk more about that later. Then if you're successful if your success continues you continue growing you get bigger now you're looking to in that angel round is typically maybe 500 000 to a million maybe a little more maybe a little less, now you're ready for you know a more institutional round or series a these rounds tend to be more like two to three million to 10 million amount amount that you're raising that's venture capital still early but you've got customers you've got some traction and then you know and that really from venture capital private equity is even later stage and the difference in and I spent the last kind of 10 years my career running private equity companies working a lot with private equity guys that's tend to be that tends to be later stage companies they're profitable they put a lot of leverage on them so the private equity companies typically put a lot of debt on these companies so there has to be that cash flow in ebitda to make that happen and so property equity guys are looking for two three four x returns on their companies maybe greater than when we exited vector solutions my last company. I take our last private equity round we provide our investors about eight or nine times their money back venture capital is different game they know they're gonna invest in and by the way private equity guys nothing's going to zero, they're not investing in companies that are going to zero. I mean once a while it happens but it's a rarity where venture capital is a little different game you know and it depends on where you're playing it because if you're playing in New York or Silicon Valley it's a different game than you're playing in Florida but typically we're banking on a certain percentage of our companies going to zero that they're just not going to be successful and you know some we're going to get our money back and we're going to make all our money on kind of the top third that's how we look at Florida Funders the third or third or third but you know the you know the folks out in the valley probably look at it more like you're investing in 10 companies nine are going to zero one's gonna be unicorn and they're gonna make all the returns on the one company. So you know it varies a little differently with you know where you're playing geographically and what you're doing but that kind of is how we look at that paradigm of you know stages of investing in venture capital versus private equity. Buck: Obviously and you're talking about you you sort of alluded to it a little bit but you know if the tech private equity folks are looking to return you know I think what did you say you know maybe for up to eight three or four three times over a period of how long like a decade or something like that. Tom: I mean the returns typically they invest in money over a period about three or four years and then the returns start coming in shortly after that and they're out by usually like 10 years right. Buck: And then with angel, so what's the compelling element that you like and maybe investors should know about your space which is you know the angel investing which is really the earliest I mean after friends and family right so it's certainly the highest risk but yeah so what do you just like the asymmetric nature of that? Tom: Well it's risk reward so yeah I will admit I personally am a little bit of a deal junkie but you don't have to be. If you look at some of the research, I would never suggest anybody that is you know as they look at their asset allocation across their investments that angel investing should be a large portion of it. It is for me because it's what I do for a living so maybe a chair 20 of my net worth but 10 whatever but typically it's a small sliver two three percent for an investor but if you do it right angel investing can and has historically outperformed every other asset class including venture capital and private equity that is research coming out of the Angel Capital Association Of America. So the problem is most people don't do angel investing correctly. We call this the 5 Ds of angel investing, so diversity, deal flow, due diligence, domain expertise and discipline. So the first mistake most angel investors make I use my brother as an example my brother's a very successful software CEO, he sold his last company for 1.6 billion dollars and I said to him one day Tim you know what about angel investing he said I've done that two or three times I went to zero that doesn't work. Well you really can't do it two to three times because the odds are against you you might as well go to the casino you really need to be up to build a portfolio a diversified portfolio like you have to in most investing, we say 10 to 15 companies you should invest in to really you know have enough diversity. Secondly is deal flow. How many deals do you look at to invest in each one again look at my brother I'm like Tim well how many deals did you look at to do these two or three deals he's like well he just looked at those two or three like you know it Florida Funders and vendor we'll look at 50 deals to do one. So we're highly selective and we're you know we like believe we're getting the best of the best. And then due diligence is how much research and digging in did you do in your process and a lot of research on this 20 plus hours is you know really what you should do to maximize your potential returns if Florida Funders every company we do we have more like 80 to 100 hours of due diligence and this is everything from digging into the the founders and their background their experience to talking to those early customers asking about the product, why they buy it, how important it is, is it nice to have, does it have to have we really get into in their technology, what's your technology stack look like, what's their IP, so that's a big part of it. And then domain expertise and this is investing in what you know. You're a doctor right you're a surgeon so if you were looking to invest in a medical device company you would know a lot more about that than me. So with us at 1000 Florida Funders we invest in software companies software as a service we invest in cyber security fintech edtech digital health areas that all of me and my partners have backgrounds in. So we're investing in what we know. And then the last thing is discipline to be a good investor I would argue real estate I don't know what you're guessing you gotta come up with your your thesis and you gotta stick to it. And the biggest thing we see in angel investing or I see an angel investigators mistake people make is fomo. They invest because all their friends are investing and they don't want to miss out on this deal that is not a good reason to invest and what we found is if you're disciplined and you follow those other four d's and that process and do that over and over again that you're going to be successful and that this can be a very not only successful asset class from a return on investment standpoint but also fun. I mean think about it we'd like to say we get to go to work every day with these young talented smart people who are trying to change the world we're gonna be more fun than that? Buck: Yeah let's you know exploring some of those d's for a moment one of them I'm thinking about here is you mentioned deal flow and I now you're in Florida. If I'm you know a software developer and I've got something I'm excited about, am I gonna go to Silicon Valley or I mean so how does that factor into this in terms of affecting your deal flow? Do you see some advantages in being you know on the other coast or what's that been like in your experience? Tom: Yeah we we do see some advantages in Florida is a very unique state we're the third most populous state in the country growing rapidly we have great tax laws we're a very pro state very unlike California in a lot of ways now again they play a different game it's really not California Silicon Valley In San Francisco right I mean by the way all the venture capital invests in the united states goes into 60 of it goes into four little micro markets. Twenty percent goes in Silicon Valley twenty percent san francisco ten percent boston ten percent in new york so forty percent goes to the rest of the world. We have in Florida over the last decade really great success stories and technology companies like Chewy.com, Jetsmart, Fanatics, Knowbe4, Connect-wise, these are all unicorn companies built here in Florida where the people the entrepreneurs didn't leave here to go to Silicon Valley they could have but they didn't and we're seeing more and more of that in fact we're seeing the opposite happen where we're getting calls from from founders are saying we're getting out of the valley we're getting out of San Francisco it's too expensive to the talent google and facebook are sucking up all the talent they pay them they we can't compete with them and we're looking for a pro business state to come to and in the past you know when that happened it was more it was mostly Austin Texas had benefited from that in colorado places like Boulder and Denver but now we're seeing it in Florida and it's exciting and you know we have a lot to offer these founders, we have 45 incubators and accelerators across the state, we have a lot of support systems for entrepreneurs and we're a very pro pro business state. So it's exciting. And then the other thing that's exciting from an investor standpoint is the valuations. You know companies in in Silicon Valley and San Francisco you know they're they don't have any revenues they have an idea and they're worth 10 million dollars you know in Florida most of the companies we invest in already have revenues already have customers somewhere you know the revenues might be 50 000 in annual recurring revenue up to maybe 500 000, but we can invest in them at a valuation of you know free market valuation maybe 5 million 3 million 7 million. So we don't need them to be a unicorn for us to have a very successful exit for us and for our fellow investors and we can get you know 10x 20x 30x returns with a company that's exiting at 100 million dollars which is in the tech world is not a huge exit today. Buck: Tell me how it works in terms of a typical I mean my you know my listeners are used to you know the types of real estate private equity particularly our accredited investor groups and things like that but how does a fund like this work? Is it you know a typical 2 and 20 type type structure you know and if you could kind of talk about that and you know maybe also some historical in terms of what you're seeing you know obviously not promising anything future wise but what what kinds of results have you guys had? Tom: Yeah so yes we're two and twenty our fund is a two and twenty fund so it's very typical. Buck: So two percent annual basically under management and then twenty percent profit right and then right got it so that's pretty standard and then and then in terms of in Florida Funders what kind of you know structures are you looking at are are you doing? Are these regulation D exemption type things or I mean are they 506 c's or are they crowd funding or you know right crowdfunding or how are you structuring these? Tom: Yeah so the way we work if we're a little different animal. We'd like to think we have a pretty unique model is once a company makes it through our vetting process and we say okay we're gonna invest in you. Our fund will put in the first, say we're gonna raise a million dollars for this company, our fund will put in 500 000 and then we take the 500 000 we go out to our crowd curated accredited investors we only deal with accredited so we're 506 C and then the crowd will fill in the rest, sometimes it's a little light maybe the fun will make up the distance many times it's over subscribed it will raise more for the founder or we'll just shut it off. So you know again we're a little a little bit different. Buck: Sorry to interrupt but you're saying that each opportunity you're doing separately, you're not doing it as a portfolio like a fund, you're doing each business separately? Tom: So we have two things we have a fund of our own that many of our just invest in the fund and we invest the money for them, but then we have this curated crowd of accredited investors who invest alongside our fund. So like myself personally I'm an investor in our fund I invest in almost every deal we do as well and I'll vary what I put in the deals based on what I think what I like you know that's that sort of thing. Now we have some many investors that are just in our fund they love what we're doing they're really excited about they're like you know hey we don't know technology, I don't know technology, I don't have time to look at even though you guys do all the due diligence and put it off on the portal and I don't really have to do a lot of work you kind of take the heavy lifting out of angel investing for me, I don't have the time to do it or I don't know tech so why don't I just give you the money and you guys invest it for me. And so we're on our second fund to go back to your question about our returns we're just stamming our first exits from our first fund which is about four years old. We had we'll have we've had two in the last week and one was 1.8 x times your money back and one was a little over two so those are moderate returns in our world yeah and we're playing you know we're we we expect to have some of those but we also expect to have 10x 20x 30x deals and then we expect to have zeros too. Buck: Right got it. In terms of right now in this day and age specifically talking about a recessionary environment, a pandemic environment, how is this all affecting your business and you know your business is that you invest in you know capital all of these things. Tom: Yeah it's been interesting because you know if you look back at 2009 2010 the great recession, the one area of investing that really never slowed and took was was early stage tech investing in an angel investing. It didn't really have much of an effect on it. We're kind of seeing that we're still doing deals we're very active or you know lots of deal flow you know some of our portfolio companies were severely affected by cobit but with the PPP loans and we work with our companies we don't just invest in them and leave them alone we take a board seat we get involved we coach them we provide introductions to them we help them in any way we can be successful. Many of them got ppp loans that are going to be forgiven or you know that really helped them a lot some of them pivoted and most of them have really bounced. We lost one there was a restaurant tech company which you know obviously that's not the space you want to be in this downturn in overdays but they weren't doing so great anyway. But a lot you know some you know some of our companies are k-12 education companies most of them have really bounced back now I mean they took a hit but they bounced back. We have companies in the healthcare space that you know they're involved a lot with elective surgery, they obviously took a hit but now they've bounced back. So it's been interesting it's been on you know we we hunkered down there with our companies for a while and said hey our message to them was cut your burn preserve cash you don't know when you're gonna be able to raise money again extend your runway and make sure you can live the fight your way through this and most of them have done that very successfully. Buck: Where does for for your typical investor and I think you kind of had mentioned a little bit in terms of allocation, but you know if you look at a portfolio of you know 100 of your investable assets, what sort of a rule of thumb people I'm maybe not you know Tom Wallaces the world where you're in the middle of this but if you're looking to get exposure what what do you tell people what is sort of the rule of thumb on these types of things whether it be you know direct technology investments or angel investments or how do you look at or how do you suggest people look at it? Tom: You know I think it's five percent or less you know whatever you're comfortable with but you know. There's something that's happened out there if you think about technology the days of buying amazon and apple and a couple hundred million dollar valuation rounding that to a trillion dollars or over. Facebook went public the valuation was what 70 billion. Uber went public valuation 40 50 billion. These companies because there's so much venture capital money out there these companies are waiting so long to go public to really get phenomenal returns angel investing is how you're going to do it because you know again companies are waiting so long to go public and so we you know again if you do the five Ds and you diversify you know there there's an opportunity for for great returns here and you know we're only seeing that trend more and more and it's becoming more exciting with all the changes to crowdfunding and all the rules that came out in you know when crowdfunding was first made legal back within six or seven years now so yeah it's an exciting space and it can be one again that you can have a lot of fun with and you can really see some exciting companies and meet some crazy founders great founders a tad crazy yeah and but yeah I'd say five percent or less I mean that's typically what our number would be. Buck: So before we go maybe just sort of in general like for Florida Funders that's what it's called and what's the website Tom: Floridafunders.com Buck: So if you kind of gave us you know your you know your elevator pitch so to speak on on Florida Funders and why to look into it more and how you're different from the other angel groups what would you say to that? Tom: Our secret sauce has a couple things. One is deal flow we've been named by cb insights and pitch book both those organizations says the most active EC in the southeast the most active venture capitalist in Florida. So we are out and about in the tech community down here, we're very well known. Every month 50 to 100 companies just go to our website and apply for funding. So we're looking at way more deals and as a result we think we're getting access to the best deals. The second part of our secret sauce is the extensive extensive due diligence we do, even more we invest alongside some Silicon Valley venture capitalists some New York venture capitalists and we often have co-investors in our deal and I would argue that almost nobody does the level of due diligence we do and that's everything from really getting to know the founders a lot of this is betting on the jockey to you know those early customers and interviewing them to plugging in a subject matter expert and we tap into our network of 1500 investors and you know we're looking at a health tech digital play you know we're pulling people that have extensive domain expertise who can really work in that space who have years of experience and they really help us evaluate these deals and once we invest they help these companies advise them and mentor them and coach them. So that's kind of what makes us different here at Florida Funders and if you think about you know where the future is for so many states, and obviously you know we're focused on Florida. We like to say we're we're looking to change Florida from a state we want Florida to be as known if not no more for technology and innovation than we are today for the mouse and tourism and strawberries. Buck: Sure got it. Well listen Tom it's been great and very helpful and educational for my audience here. Again it's Florida Funders like fun having funders dot com Floridafunders.com and Tom I wanna thank you again for being on the show and maybe have you on again sometime and let us know how your next fund does. Tom: Will do Buck it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much. All the best to you and your listeners and I've really enjoyed spending this time with you. Buck: We'll be right back.
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If you’re new to Coronavirus research, start here…
Feb 19, 2020, updated periodically...Unfortunately there’s not just one link you can use to get an estimate of the real numbers of infected, or of the seriousness of this outbreak, and you will have to do some digging of your own. But here are a few points to consider and research for yourself:
The basics
Name. The names 2019-nCoV, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, and novel coronavirus all basically refer to the same thing, either the new virus or the disease it causes. (The WHO calls the virus SARS-COV-2, and the illness COVID-19.)
Family. It is a type of SARS but is much worse than SARs; experts have also called it "worse than Ebola" in terms of how fast it is spreading.
Re-infection. Getting sick with it more than once is a possibility; "recovered" patients may even be contagious or test positive for the virus after so-called "recovery." Link
Spreading without symptoms. People are able to be asymptomatic or presymptomatic, but still contagious, for weeks. Studies have shown that an infected person may be shedding virus for weeks after "recovery."
Ineffective quarantines. Quarantines are being done for 14 days in many countries, even though it has been documented that 38 days would be more effective. The word quarantine comes from the Italian quarantina giorni, a space of 40 days. We need to get smarter about how long people are quarantined.
When Did It Start? By Nov 2019, officials had briefed the US White House on a virus that was sweeping through Wuhan, China. Link
Fast-spreading. Between 2/19/20 and 5/1/20, cases grew from 1000 to over 3 million. Many countries do not have the capability to adequately test people. For instance it could become very widespread in parts of Africa without ever making the news.
Symptoms and Treatment. There is no cure; treatment focuses on the symptoms like the cough and fever. The symptom list is long and varies from patient to patient but the majority of them have cough and fever and the serious cases develop pneumonia, which is what kills them. Secondary infections are also common, and those patients get antibiotics, but, antibiotics don't do anything against a virus; they are used solely to treat additional complications. The symptom list seems to be ever-changing: a March 7 report showed that 22% of patients had diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and/or abdominal discomfort before respiratory symptoms (another report said it was about 50%). One first-person account said that a rash was her only symptom. CNN aired an interview with US nurses on the frontline who said that in some cases the only symptom prior to death was that the tissue around the eyes turned red (not the eyes, but the face area around the eyes).
No vaccine. Labs around the world are racing to develop a vaccine but that is, at best, months away; some say a vaccine may be impossible due to how the virus tricks the body into making more virus. And keep in mind there was a SARS outbreak nearly 20 years ago and we still don't have a vaccine for that.
Lives on surfaces. Many redditors have asked about whether it is safe to accept packages from China. Studies have shown that the virus can survive on surfaces for at least 9 days under certain conditions, and up to 27 days in other conditions.
"Do I have it?" Many redditors have posted questions saying they feel ill and want to know if they have it. If you think you have it, call a doctor or hospital; reddit is not the place for a diagnosis. The hospital will want you to wear a mask when you come in, and will want you to call ahead so they can isolate you from other patients.
"How do I avoid it?" Many redditors have asked what they can do to avoid catching or spreading the virus. Standard virus protocol applies: avoid close contact with people who are sick; stay home when you are sick; cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue then throw the tissue in the trash; frequently wash your hands (especially after going to the bathroom, before eating, and after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing) using soap and water as hot as you can stand it for at least 30 seconds (the scrubbing under running water is important; a 5-second fingertip wash is inadequate); carry hand sanitizer gel with you for times when you can't wash your hands; avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth especially in public; disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a household cleaning spray; etc. The US has recommended against all travel to China [update: against all international travel]. Some redditors started avoiding air travel, public transportation, and large crowds and gatherings at the end of January 2020.
Other reasons why we don't believe the official numbers
Information Warfare. In the earliest days of the revelations about the virus, a deliberate disinformation campaign was started, to get people to believe two major falsehoods: 1) “It’s not as bad as the flu,” and 2) “Everything is under control and will be back to normal soon.” You will see this repeated thousands of times around reddit, other social media, and in mainstream media in the US and elsewhere. Even US doctors are repeating this propaganda, almost verbatim, to any news reporter who asks. Read more about China's 10 million influence agents at Link
Naysayers. Historically unprecedented efforts have been made to downplay the virus - often by focusing on the supposedly low fatality rate, or the supposed recovery rate. It's far too early to know what "recovery" actually means. For instance, scientists from Nanjing Medical University and Suzhou Hospital have said males who "recover" may be infertile. There is also well-founded concern about permanent lung damage, and possible chronic joint/muscle pain which could be debilitating and lifelong.
Pre-determined case rate. In early Feb 2020, someone demonstrated that the rise in cases was very predictable from day to day; the data curve was "beautiful" in that it was flawless and perfect, unlike the real world. He was able to predict, a day in advance, with astonishing accuracy, how many new cases would be announced by China the following day. The implication was that the data only moved like that because it was pre-determined before it happened; in other words the real numbers were released in a slow trickle in order to manage the public's reaction.
Under-reporting. There are indications, including first-hand reports from doctors, that the "official" numbers of confirmed dead are grossly under-reported. Link
Estimates. In Jan. 2020, some people were thinking the infected number was over 150,000 (back when China was saying it was under 10,000). It's hard to get a reliable number, but there are clues pointing to a worrisome amount of cases. Researcher models have shown estimates of a multiplier for a realistic number that range from x4 to x35. In other words if China is announcing 75,000 cases today, some people are concerned that the real number (including those who are undiagnosed) is 528,000 up to an almost inconceivable 4.6 million. [Update: Less than 2 months later, the "official" number worldwide exceeds 3 million; if x35 holds true...I don't like that answer...]
Suspected vs. Confirmed. China also has a data set for "suspected cases," which may include people who have presented to the hospital (or to several hospitals, seeking care) with the symptoms but who were unable to get diagnosed because the hospitals were overwhelmed. Some observers consider "suspected" cases should be considered "confirmed" until there has been a negative diagnosis.
Crematorium Info. Investigative journalism in China has led to recordings of phone conversations with crematorium workers, who are desperately asking for help because they are going 24/7 and are still backed up in Hubei from the amount of dead to incinerate (imagine California and half of Texas not being able to keep up with the bodies). The employee states the number of bodies has been 4 to 5 times the usual, starting ever since Dec. 29.
Portable Crematoriums? Lu Media reported that 40 units officially described as "cabins for the disposal of garbage and animal carcasses" have aided Wuhan in the epidemic area; their capacity is 5 tons per day. Professor Ming Ju of National Taiwan University believes that these cabins are "mobile incinerators" used to process human corpses. (To expand on that: 5 tons is 10,000 pounds or 4,536 kilos. Using a rough average weight of 62 kg per adult, that's 73 adults per day, per machine, so 40 machines are capable of handling 2,920 adults per day. That's in addition to the numerous regular crematoriums which can process a dozen or more people simultaneously.) That is all speculation; it is also likely that a city on lockdown would have an enormous problem getting rid of household refuse and medical waste, in which case those mobile incinerators would come in handy for that, too.
Cell phone Subscriber Decreases. Jennifer Zeng reported a combined net loss of 15 million subscribers to three of the large cell phone companies in China, in Jan and Feb 2020 alone. Link
"Not as bad as the flu" nonsense. From Jan to March 2020, mainstream media (MSM) and social media were chock full of people conducting information warfare; their goal was to perpetuate the “official” myth that coronavirus is not as serious as the flu, and that everything will be back to normal soon. There are several other virus-related subs on reddit which are moderated by people who do not allow any dissenting views, and who only permit people to post things that have already been announced by a government. In March 2020, the US CDC Tweeted that the fatality rate of this virus is at least three times that of the flu.
CNY. Chinese New Year is a major travel holiday when people go home to spend time with their families; it is often the only time of year when migrant workers get to see their loved ones. Millions and millions of Chinese people were on the move when this outbreak began.
Ineffective City Quarantines. China announced each city lockdown up to a day or two in advance, which gave infected people plenty of time to try to flee. After Wuhan was locked down, it was announced that some 5 million people had left before it started. Many of the people trapped in Wuhan were just caught there during their New Year's travels.
Constant number manipulation. China has changed how they count cases, and has advised that if a person has tested positive for the virus but is asymptomatic (has no symptoms) then they should not be added to the list of confirmed cases.
Practically no testing in the US. In the US, the vast majority of citizens (99.99999+%) can't get tested. The CDC policy has changed several times but even now, unless you have symptoms severe enough to require hospitalization or have had close contact with a CDC-confirmed case, testing is not available for most Americans. [Update: As of 5/1/20, the US has tested approximately 2% of its population, and has over 1 million cases.]
"Self-quarantines." The US relies on self-quarantines. On 2/19/20, WSJ reported "Public health officials in the U.S. are striving to keep tabs on thousands of Americans who have quarantined themselves at home after returning from mainland China..."
States hiding data. Some states, notably Florida, were initially claiming that they couldn't legally disclose how many people have been tested. "According to the Tampa Bay Times, “state Surgeon General Scott Rivkees said the Florida Department of Health is not authorized to publish the number of people in the state being tested for the virus out of privacy concerns.” US health privacy laws contain an obvious and necessary exemption for cases that involve public health crises.
Hacked Accounts Spread Reassuring Deception. Redditors are posting that they have been getting bizarre texts from close friends and family members in China saying "situation is under control" and "we're all fine" etc. Others posted screenshots of messages from several business contacts in China who all repeated an official message practically verbatim: "Impact limited to Wuhan...Everything is under control...will be back to normal soon...thank you for your concern."
Body bags. Rumors are circulating that China has ordered 1 million body bags, and shifted factories to body bag production; someone also posted an online industrial buyer order in which someone was looking to purchase 45 million virus masks.
Monitoring. China announced a few days ago that they are "monitoring" close to half a million people who have had "close contact" with infected people. Monitoring efforts involve self-reporting plus tracking of movements based on cell phone geolocation, A.I., facial recognition technology, and mandatory checkpoints.
What leaked videos and social media posts have shown us has happened in China
Dropping Dead. There are a handful of videos that show people seeming to suddenly collapse, notably a police officer walking down the street, in social media posts circulating on Feb 19, 2020. Videos show people dead and dying in hospital waiting rooms. Other videos show dead bodies laying on the sidewalk; a young woman collapsed in a vegetable market, etc. These spread in China in Jan.; in Feb. we saw similar vids from Iran. On 2/20/20, Harry Chen PhD posted a man laying face-down in a Hong Kong mall, the implication being that he collapsed from the virus or virus-related complications.
Unprecedented Censorship Efforts. Videos get deleted almost as fast as they get posted. One leaked video shows uniformed internet police pounding on someone's door, demanding that they delete their social media post, and also that they immediately must post a retraction to apologize for spreading "rumors" or otherwise they will face legal consequences for harming social order.
Voices from Inside Hospitals. Voicemails and texts from Chinese nurses and medical workers urging their loved ones, "Do not go outside" and saying that they are totally overwhelmed with infected patients. Numerous nurses collapsing into hysterics, unable to cope with the requirement to work 22 hours a day, and the inability to leave the hospital; some have been threatened with having their medical license revoked if they walk away.
Dirty masks. Used surgical masks being resold: an old man on the sidewalk selling used surgical masks of various colors from an open box. Another video recorded surreptitiously shows a team of people inside a shop with a big pile of used surgical masks, which are being sorted, flattened, and folded. The video ended with a view of a big stack of boxes; the implication was that used masks were being repackaged for sale as new. The brand name was not legible but it featured a woman's face on the cover, and Chinese writing on the box.
Quarantine Evasions. City quarantines don't work. Videos show people climbing over head-height barricades and fences built across roads and bridges, family members handing their children across the fence, and arguments in the street when someone is discovered to have Hubei province license plates or to be speaking with a Wuhan accent.
Doors welded shut. People are being welded into their apartments in Wuhan. Some apartment buildings have had their entrances sealed, once multiple people inside are believed to have the disease. Videos showed a middle-aged, non-athletic woman attempting to scale the outside of the building by going from balcony to balcony, and she fell to her death. A small town road labeled as the "Road to Lihua" which shows a street full of residential buildings, and every single building is barricaded from the outside, thus trapping the uninfected inside with the infected and the dead.
Mobs. So-called "recovered" patients being attacked and beat up for returning to their village after being released from quarantine.
Sprayers. Numerous videos show fleets of trucks rolling through streets in China, spraying what we suppose to be some sort of disinfectant, as though there was a need to clean the sidewalks or even the air itself. China has used water sprayers for at least five years to combat pollution, but speculation is that these trucks contain some sort of chemical rather than water.
Birds. A highway shot shows hundreds of crows perched on a concrete barrier; the subtitles claim that thousands of crows have been attracted to Wuhan by the stench of death.
Checkpoints. Villages and small towns enforcing quarantines with weapons, punches, slaps, etc. A car stops at a checkpoint, hesitates, then seems to intentionally plow into a medical tent.
Arrests. Patrols of white hazmat suit workers looking for people who went outside without a mask; they get arrested and carried away.
Packed hospitals. Hospital hallways jam-packed with people standing around waiting to get tested; shoulder-to-shoulder crowding conditions, which surely served to spread the virus faster.
Pets Killed. Village patrols beating dogs to death with a stick supposedly in order to "prevent the spread of the virus," and household pets thrown down from tall apartment buildings for the same reason.
Bodies. Multiple body bags in hospital ambulances, on the floors of hospitals, and in the hallway. (Similar videos surfaced from Iran and Brazil in March 2020.)
Transportation issues. That there were enough dead at a given time that no one could respond promptly to carry away the bodies.
Paid by the body. A citizen journalist secretly records an impromptu job interview at a local crematorium, where he is told he will not be paid unless he brings in bodies to cremate. They offer 500 RMB for one body, and 200 RMB for each additional body, up to 1100 RMB a load if he can bring in 4 bodies at a time.
Failures at life-saving efforts. A man's voicemail (identified by name as a doctor, if the accompanying image is to be believed) stating that for patients who are intubated (receiving oxygen via a tube shoved down their throats), extubation (removing the tube) is rarely successful - the patients die when taken off oxygen.
Panic buying. Fights over groceries, and rice flying off the cart before the grocery store can even put it on the shelves.
Refugees. Social media video posted Feb 19, 2020 claims to show hundreds of people with suitcases and baggage fleeing over the Chinese border from Guangxi province into Vietnam. Like most other videos claiming to be about this situation, there are many responses claiming this one is fake.
Fights. A child stabbing an elderly person and another child, during a fight over a small bottle of antiseptic.
Intentional Spreading. There are videos showing various suspects who are going around intentionally spitting on things, in an apparent effort to spread the virus. Tissue boxes are provided on elevators so that a person can use the tissue to press the button, and keep their fingers clean. Videos show a family riding the elevator, and a male takes a tissue and spits on it repeatedly, then smears all of the buttons with his spit. Another video shows an older woman alone in a different elevator; she repeatedly hacks and spits intentionally all over the buttons and the inner doors of the elevator, and then after a younger woman gets on and presses an elevator button, the older woman cackles to herself. Another video shows a young woman going down the street spitting on the door handles of cars. Another video shows a young woman sneaking around an apartment complex at night, spitting on doorknobs. Many Western viewers are unable to make sense of these videos, or conceive of a thought process that would make a person want to do this.
Attacks on medical workers. Patients in hospitals pulling down their virus masks and intentionally spitting into the faces of medical workers and receptionists - multiple incidents in multiple locations.
Arson? I have yet to actually see one of the alleged "arson" videos because they get deleted (for "inappropriate content") shortly after they are shared, but there are rumors of one or more videos showing buildings being intentionally set on fire in China, with people still alive inside the buildings. People are working hard to call these fakes, saying it emerged in early January and there is no proof that it is linked to the virus; however, since the videos immediately get flagged and deleted, discussion and debunking it for yourself is nearly impossible. On that note, if you see a video and believe it will be deleted, there are ways you can archive it (to a different website) so that others can see it later.
Failed donation efforts. Food trucks sent to Wuhan are not allowed past the city's barricades, and the food goes to waste.
Resistance. In Xiaogan, Hubei, the villagers did not want to be sealed up inside their homes, and they fought back. The police fired shots.
What else is happening in China
Pop-up Hospitals. In response to the outbreak, a pop-up hospital was built in China in about 10 days. It leaks.
Non-Hospitals. China has also opened “quarantine shelters” which do not provide medical care; observers are calling these deathatoriums, where people are supposed to just go and wait to die. However, if someone lives with a big family and has nowhere else to go, this may be a humane way to help the person have shelter without risking infecting their loved ones. Once a person goes in, they are not allowed to leave.
H2H and A2H. Human-to-animal-to-human transmission appears possible: It was reported by a UK tabloid on Feb 21, 2020 that hundreds of pets have dropped dead in China; although that source is questionable, the 2002 SARs outbreak led to research that household pets such as cats and ferrets could be infected by SARS-CoV which they caught from a human, and then could spread the disease to other humans (back in 2002).
Historic Firsts. Wartime policies are in place. China has locked down three entire provinces (Hubei, Liaoning, Jiangxi), all four centrally-administered municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing) and more than 80 other major cities. Some estimate that nearly 800 million Chinese (9.8% of the population of the entire planet) are under some type of quarantine, lockdown, and/or movement restrictions. A bit of logic often repeated on reddit is "You don't do that for the flu."
Cages. People are being dragged kicking and screaming off the street into truck cages, because a spot-check of their forehead temperature revealed they had a fever.
Press Censorship. Reporters are going silent and China revoked the press credentials of 3 WSJ reporters.
Robots. In Wuhan robots (think "gonk droid" not "C3PO") and drones are being used to enforce the quarantine, ordering people not to leave their homes, even for food.
Information Control. Chinese whistleblowers are reportedly disappearing or suddenly being diagnosed as infected, hours after posting revealing information.
Claims of People Being Burned Alive. Taiwan News - and no other sources as far as I can find - is reporting alleged first-hand accounts of people who claim they saw people being burned alive in Wuhan, the alive bound up with corpses and dragged off together.
Doctors Sickened. Chinese medical professionals (around 1800) are getting infected despite safety procedures, and some are dying from the infection (notably the director of a hospital in Wuhan). Usually doctors and nurses aren’t too worried about getting ill from their patients due to their safety measures, which indicates that covid-19 is much more infectious than the usual flu strains.
Irony. A high-level government health official emphatically stressed to reporters that the virus is preventable and controllable, a few days before he himself was diagnosed with the virus.
24/7 Lockdowns. People in Wuhan no longer being let out of their homes once every 7 days, and are on 24/7 lockdown.
Propaganda Videos. In the early days there were quite a few propaganda videos showing happy, smiling shoppers in grocery stores that were fully stocked. There were very light crowds - lighter than usual even - and no shortages of food in these videos, despite the leaked videos showing empty vegetable bins, huge meat bins with only one pack of meat left, and violent fights between shoppers trying to get their hands on a sack of rice.
Positivity Efforts. There have also been propaganda vids showing infected patients dancing and doing exercise; this is all part of the order from on high to keep the message "positive" and ensure that nothing but pure "positivity" covers all virus news.
"Moving Deeds" Efforts. Propaganda efforts have been directed toward promoting the effects of control measures and the “moving deeds” of volunteers, community workers, and the police. They have also posted some 400,000 comments online to counter negative public opinions.
Barring Investigators. China wouldn't let any WHO Americans into the country until recently, but they are still being prevented from going to Hubei and Beijing.
Movement Restrictions. Drones carry QR codes at the entrances to cities; drivers must use their cell phone to scan the QR code, and then the system will analyze the phone's recent movements, then decide whether to allow the person into the city.
Medical situation propaganda. While leaked videos show overwhelmed, crying medical staff in packed hospitals, there are also some propaganda videos showing empty hospital corridors and calm, smiling, laughing, relaxed doctors; one claim being circulated is that some of those were filmed with actors hired to portray doctors.
New medical crime laws. On Feb 8, 2020 China’s National Health Commission announced seven types of "medical-related" crimes, stating that prosecution will be swift and they will not rule out the death penalty for these crimes, which, in plain English, are basically: 1) Don't injure medical workers, 2) Let medical workers go wherever they say they need to go, 3) Don't pull down your mask and spit in the face of medical workers, 4) Cooperate with mandatory health checks and quarantines and don't disrupt anyone trying to burn bodies, 5) Don't stay in a hospital if you've been told to leave, and funerals are banned, 6) Don't carry weapons into a hospital, and 7) Anything else they decide is illegal is also illegal.
Swift cremations. Funerals in Hubei are banned; the deceased are immediately cremated and the family is notified afterwards. If the deceased did not have a coronavirus diagnosis before death, the body will never be tested and the case will never be added to the official numbers.
The Unknowns
Longterm Health Implications. The US government has just announced that "recovered" COVID-19 survivors are permanently disqualified from military service. This speaks volumes about what the government knows about what this virus is and what it does. Link
Death Rate. The fatality rate is still an unknown; many people blindly repeat “2%” although we have not had enough cases outside of China, for long enough, to know the real number. Professor Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College of London has published a paper estimating Hubei province will see an 18% fatality rate. That’s one of five people out of 11 million; which means this professor is projecting roughly 2 million deaths in Hubei province alone. The same professor says that it is not absurd to anticipate we’ll have 400,000 infected in the UK. Early numbers from Italy are over 30% but of course it's still way early to know.
False Negatives. We don't know how many people have it and were tested negative, because there have been experiments where current test kits have failed to detect the virus until the 5th or 6th time tested.
Airborne? Reports from inside China have repeatedly referred to the virus as "airborne." This gets shouted down on social media as soon as it is repeated, with anonymous "experts" trying to convince you and everyone else reading that you simply don't know what "airborne" means, and trying to switch the focus to droplet contamination by sneezes and coughs. People in China, and certain parts of South Korea, Vietnam, and Italy have been warned specifically not to go outside.
Source of virus. The "official" source, which somehow was known and announced since the very early days, was a so-called "wet market" or "seafood market." In reality these markets are infamous for butchering and selling the meat of snakes, bats, rats, cats, dogs, badgers, civets, raccoon dogs, and other exotic mammals for human consumption. CNN reports from years ago documented dogs and cats in cages, waiting for butchering. The propaganda description is that the markets just sell seafood and birds. Sanitary practices in such markets consist of rinsing off surfaces with plain water periodically, and using the same knife to cut multiple species of animals, and the same knife to cut meat and then intestines and then meat again. The possibilities for illness and infection from such meat sources is obvious, and the official story is that this virus somehow jumped from bats (or some say from pangolins) to humans.
Virus Lab. The original source of the virus has been the subject of great debate. It has been reported as starting in Wuhan, which happens to have Asia's only Level 4 Biosafety Laboratory. Some Chinese researchers were indicted for taking virus samples from Canada to China, and, the head of a Canadian virus lab was also indicted for being on the payroll of China and accepting $50,000 a month payment from them. Draw your own conclusions.
HIV Proteins. Some research indicates that the virus shares four proteins with HIV, and bears certain genetic markers only found on genetically modified organisms. Those scientists were quickly silenced with criticism; most seem to believe the criticism. Regardless, numerous articles have claimed it somehow acts like HIV.
What's happening outside of China
Lockdowns. The entire countries of Italy, Spain, and India's entire 1.3 billion people are locked down. The US and UK are on some sort of half-ass "voluntary" thing, told to "stay home if you can" while many people ignore it.
Cruise Ship. The Diamond Princess cruise ship (quarantined near Japan) which some observers on reddit said would be a good test case for a real world model outside of China, has shown an alarming increase in the numbers of infected.
Suppression of Info. Google is believed to be suppressing virus news. Try the search engine that doesn't track you, https://duckduckgo.com
Macau. Macau closed its casinos. This would be like Las Vegas deciding to hang up a "Sorry, we're closed" sign for a few weeks.
Ukraine. Ukraine - civil unrest, riots, road blockades to protest quarantining and transportation of patients into the area.
South Korea. South Korea reported a surge of new cases on Feb 19, 2020, linked to an infected person attending a church service; 31 new cases were diagnosed. The growth in South Korea, in a matter of days, has been mind-blowing (In 13 days, the case count in South Korea has grown from 82 to over 5,300 cases). South Korea may have been a good predictor for what growth in the US will look like, except so far, South Korea is testing 2,000 out of every million of its citizens, while the US is only testing 1 out of a million.
Self-isolation. South Korea, Vietnam, and Iran are asking millions of people to stay at home, to contain the spread. In one city in South Korea the mayor has asked people to wear their viral masks even indoors at home.
Iran. While Iran is officially reporting 3 deaths as of Feb 21, 2020, a social media post says it's 20; that the virus can live on surfaces for 2 weeks, can transfer from animals, can reinfect after initial infection, and testing is 30%-50% accurate, with many false negatives and asymptomatic transmission, plus mutations of the virus. Other "leak" sources say there are 300 positive diagnoses in Iran. Just like we saw happen in China, a government official who urged the public not to overact about coronavirus has now tested positive for the illness himself. Within a couple of weeks of Iran's first case, multiple senior politicians had died (Mar 3, 2020). On Mar 12, satellite imagery revealed mass burial pits in Iran.
Dirty masks. Leaked video shows several women in head coverings who are sitting on the floor sorting through what appears to be thousands of used surgical masks - the implication being that these will be resold; the narration does not sound Chinese; the videographer holds up an example mask very close to the phone, to show that it is definitely used and soiled.
Travel to/from China. The US had up to 200,000 citizens in China at the time of the outbreak. As of mid-March, the US unbelievably still has daily flights from China. Canada still has unrestricted air transportation with China. Meanwhile, other countries have closed their borders to Chinese citizens and to anyone who has been to China recently.
Evacuations. The US has arranged multiple evacuation flights to bring Americans home from China. Some on reddit are concerned that this will only spread the infection faster, and would have preferred that anyone in China be left there. The US has spread these evacuees around at least three states, and enforces a “voluntary” quarantine of 14 days.
Quarantine Stations. For years the US CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has had 19 quarantine stations on military bases ready for just such an outbreak. American evacuees are currently being held at some of those.
Emergency Declarations. The US city of San Diego, California declared a "public health emergency" on Feb 14, 2020. As of March 7 these states have also declared a state of emergency: NY, FL, KY, PN, MD, UT, IN, CA, & WA. On Mar 14, Pres. Trump declared a national emergency and public schools in 12 states announced closures ranging from a few days up to 30 days.
Weak control measures in the US. In the US, hundreds of people are being "monitored" (sent home and told to call if they get a fever or cough) but are not being tested. These people may be contagious. Link
National Guard Mobilization in Tallahassee, Florida, US? A social media post claims to show a small fleet of what appears to be military vehicles, police officers, and ordinary trucks hauling large white trailers; the captions claim the vehicles are Chemical, Biological, and Radiological response units. Two large earth-moving/digging vehicles are in the fleet.
Spitting. US social media indicates Seattle patients are spitting on the clinic walls and floor.
People dropping dead. Social media posts from Iran (Feb 25, 2020) are showing us the same things we saw on social media in Hong Kong and on the leaked videos from China: various, random people just suddenly collapsed / dropped dead in the street. One theory being circulated is that the virus may cause heart failure, particularly during the patient's re-infection (or second time with the virus).
Supply Chain and Economic Impacts
Mask shortages. Chinese buyers are scouring the world to locate companies that can sell them viral masks in bulk. Many redditors have posted that they ordered masks online, but then got notified that their order was canceled or on back-order. In the US, as of mid-February most cities still have masks on the shelves at local stores; though many stores have imposed quantity restrictions such as 10 per customer. In states where the CDC has announced confirmed cases, people are having trouble finding masks anywhere.
Panic buying. Singapore has imposed limits on how much groceries and supplies a person can buy. Hong Kong has had panic-buying of household goods and groceries, with many rumors that ordinary things (such as toilet paper, which Hong Kong gets from mainland China) could go out of stock and stay out of stock for an unknown period of time. In the US we get our toilet paper from US companies; there is no reason to hoard toilet paper in the US! As of Feb 29 and Mar 1, panic buying appears to be happening in Hawaii, Oregon, California, and multiple locations in the US. As of Mar 13, panic buying has spread to many areas of the US. At this point if you failed to prepare, you should consider looking carefully at your own pantry and fridge, rather than going out and risking being in a panic buying crowd.
Global Crash. Economic damage in China and around the world is difficult to contemplate. Billions have already been lost. China produces about 17% of global GDP.
Cars and car parts. Some car makers have shut down plants temporarily and some may have to find alternative sources for components (such as plastics and wires etc.) before they can resume operations, unless this virus magically disappears by the end of February.
International Shipping. Some cargo ships are leaving Asia at 5% capacity (95% empty) and will not be able to continue to operate like that.
"Made in China." Experts are projecting shortages and disruptions in the global supply chain in general, affecting countless products either "made in China" or made with ingredients or parts sourced in China, including but certainly not limited to computers, electronics, auto parts, chemicals, medical equipment, machinery, telecom hardware, apparel and footwear, home goods, batteries, smartphones, and notably, pharmaceuticals (over-the-counter and prescription drugs), just to name a few examples. Even if a product is advertised as being made in your country, there's a good chance it contains Chinese components or ingredients or is at the very least being sold in a plastic container that was made in China. Industries are looking at options for finding other countries to become suppliers, so we can diversify the supply chain and avoid keeping all our eggs in one basket, though such measures could prove to be too little, much too late at this point.
There’s much more that can be posted here, but that's enough topics to get you started on your own research. I really doubt this is going to be disappearing in a month or two. If any readers have a source or video link etc., or additional points they you'd like me to add, just reply to this message, or send me a private message if you prefer. Thanks for reading!
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