Mercifully we live in a first-world country. So this business of stocking up on toilet paper in case one is quarantined for two weeks is beyond the pale. We are able to go online and order whatever supplies we need, toilet paper included. Orders are simply dropped off at your doorstep with no one making any contact with you. Buy some supplies but keep calm people.
As for entire countries quarantining their population, we don’t live there and should not judge what they are doing. Italy is small in terms of land-size and packed in terms of people. It appears they do a lot of business with China, which means traveling there often, which would attest to its being the country with the second most cases of COVID-19. Can we talk here?
Perhaps this is not the place to voice this, but hey, you’re reading Blanche. People’s insane desire for cheap everything has led to mass manufacturing in China, which in turn decimated the entire manufacturing industry in North America as well as Italy, which used to produce the world’s most beautiful fabrics.
Cleanliness is China is pathetic at best. As well, one of the side bars of doing business in China, especially small towns, is that one has to closely monitor what they do there, as it’s not only bathing and eating habits that are, for lack of a better word, inadequate. Add to that, their laxness in following instructions, leading many Italians to China to follow what was being manufactured there, which has now led to a lock-down of their entire country. But we digress.
As for Israel forcing anyone coming into the country to be quarantined for two weeks, suck it up world. Israel does what’s good for them. They have an army that cannot be downed by a virus and the only way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to take matters into their own hands and do what they must. So if you insist or you must go to Israel, be prepared to hole up in your five star hotel room for two weeks before you go anywhere else. If you’re not happy with that, please stay home.
Mercifully, we may not have to listen to that angry, ever-sullen, growling Bernie Sanders much more after tonight’s mini Super Tuesday. It looks like Biden will gather many more delegates, making his bid for the presidential nomination almost a certainty.
Bernie’s latest idiotic explosion was that he would not have shut down travel from China to US because, ready for this one – it’s racist.
We thought that after Bernie ends his run for the presidential nomination, someone should buy him a one-way ticket to Cuba. We have now changed our minds. He needs a one-way ticket to Wuhan where he can calm the Chinese who are farklempt because of US racism.
Our knitting drama queen Mayor Sue Montgomery is back in the news again. This woman needs a vacation. Oh wait. She’s can’t go anywhere. In her latest fiasco, her political attache quit saying that the negative work climate made it impossible to do her job properly. As well, she suspended the borough director for 17 days.
We feel sorry for those who live in her borough as there is no way she is able to do anything positive or take care of her citizens with one crisis after another swirling around and in her head.
Let’s just say the Stock market had a very bad day yesterday. Markets dropped so low that one index, the S&P 500, triggered a “circuit breaker” – a 15-min trading pause to let investors figure out vos titz ach – what is happening and what to do next. The Dow Jones Industrial Average still dropped over 2,000 points – its worst day since the 2008 recession.
One could conceivably blame the coronavirus exclusively on this as the number of cases have surged and the economy has slowed down. But there’s more to this than just the virus.
Earlier this week, oil prices had their largest single-day drop since 1991 during the Gulf War. In this case, Saudi Arabia and Russia were in a standoff about what to do with their oil supply since the coronavirus was leading to a drop in demand.
Saudi Arabia said ‘let’s slow down what we’re putting out.’ Russia said ‘nah.’ So over the weekend, Saudi Arabia slashed its own oil prices – ultimately launching a price war between two of the world’s biggest oil producers.
So what’s the bottom line here?
The coronavirus was already hitting the economy hard and the oil market drama isn’t helping. Why? Because one ingredient that helps the economy run like a well-oiled machine is, quel surprise – oil.
So you’ll pay less at the pump and if you’re investing for the long-term, you can probably afford to wait it out. Some say these signs could lead to a recession – something nobody wants. Time will tell on this one.
The coronavirus is doing a number on many industries in the world, the travel industry seemingly taking the biggest hit. Cruising is now going to mean driving along a highway rather than getting on a ship with 6,000 people. Hotels, airlines, taxi drivers, restaurants, theatres, museums, stadium games are just a few of the other industries that are going to take a huge hit because people are staying home.
Apple stores are running out of iPhones because the Chinese can’t get to work. There is no end to the list of what-ifs.
To survive this time in our lives, we must remember who really runs the world…G-d. Blanche, take a deep breath, don’t touch your face, wash your hands a million times a day and carry on. This is out of our control.
We’ll talk…
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