It's not about your health anymore.

From The Desk Of Oliver
September 5th, 2020

Dear friend, before I share my raw thoughts with you, let me tell you where I'm coming from.

You see, money wasn't the main reason why I decided to go all-in with entrepreneurship.

My main motivation? Location-independence.

So it was from sunny Mexico, last winter, that I first heard about the news that would upend our lives.

I'm not going to tell you the pandemic itself is bullshit.

In fact I'm comfortable telling you I was scared at first.

Now, I never thought my own life, or my wife's life, was at risk.

But my parents are in their 60s and 70s and both have relatively serious health conditions.

So I took it seriously when I first heard about it.

To the point where I spent a crazy day in February, running around Mexico City...

Buying up all the hand sanitizer, masks and cans of tuna I could find.

I was even able to buy various anti-viral and anti-malaria meds without a prescription.

Anyway...

My point is that I was initially very concerned.

Concerned enough to return to Canada 6 weeks ahead of schedule.

Before I start venting about the lockdowns...

I need to tell you the truth.

This year has been my best yet.

I've never made more money...

Had a stronger mindset or better personal relationships.

And this month, my wife, Maizy and I are moving into a new home and picking up a new Tesla.

But while I'm personally doing better than ever before...

I can't help but feel for those affected by the fear mongering that's been going on for 200 days...

Look, I never intended to become a political commentator.

But when I re-read a journal entry I wrote on April 16th...

I got angry.

Well, angrier...

Angry enough to tweet about what I perceive as a massive manipulation operation...

Manipulation and fear-mongering motivated by greed, power and control over our lives.

I want to be explicit and say these are my views.

They've been informed by ideas from a series of smart people that don't accept the narrative spoon-fed by the mainstream media.

You already know my expertise is sales and marketing.

I'm not a political scientist, an epidemiologist or a journalist.

This is not medical advice. This is not financial advice.

Do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

I'd also like to add that I'm not a member of any political parties nor do I support any candidate.

So without further ado, here's the the journal entry I wrote almost 5 months ago.

Here we go:
Key assumption: pre-virus, the world economy was in massive bubble.
Unsustainable 0ish% interest rates, with nowhere to go but to print more money.
A new virus appears in China. Regardless of its origin(s), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took its sweet time to alert the rest of the world.
Taiwan attempted to ring the alarm in late December, but was ignored by the World "Health" Organization
I believe the CCP didn't make a mistake. This was a calculated decision not to disclose what they knew about the virus.
Why? Because they understood that the only way for China not to fall behind was to bring the rest of the world to its knees along with it.
China, the WHO and their puppet Dr. Tedros (a career politician who never practiced as a medical doctor and has strong ties to communism) colluded to portray China as a helpful nation.
If you know anything about the CCP, you know you can't take anything they say at face value. They've been manipulating their currency and faking their GDP numbers for decades.
Yet, many in the media took their (low) numbers at face value.
Don't mistake manipulation and lies with incompetence. The CCP is incredibly smart. Their strategic planning is done with 100+ year outlook. And just as they have in prior situations, they controlled the narrative with this pandemic.
It's obvious that their numbers were fishy: why would they shut down their economy for so few cases and deaths?
A key question that was never answered (I'm adding this in September) is when did the virus actually reach the west? October? November?
What we know for a fact is this: Nassim Taleb urged leaders to use the precautionary principle as early as January.
"Leaders" ignored early warnings.. so the west was taken "by surprise", showing they were under prepared for this, or any pandemic
So what do they do after being asleep at the wheel for months? They over react with indiscriminate lockdowns.
Bias for "quick" action after scary headlines from Italy, France, etc.
There are three key problems with models using data from Italy specifically: 1) Italy is technically a European, "first-world" country right? Not really. It's a corrupt state with 3rd-world infrastructure... masquerading as a 1st world country 2) Italy also has a high rate of workers from Wuhan, China. Yes, that same Wuhan at the epicenter of the pandemic. 3) Italy has more multi-generational households than other western nations, which contributes to higher infection rates in their most vulnerable population (seniors).
So what's the problem with lockdowns? 1) "Everyone shelter in place" is test, trace and quarantine with a 99.99% false positive rate" - Kevin Laws 2) Stopping elective medical procedures killed MORE people that the pandemic the lockdowns were supposed to stop 3) They just don't work. They were an emotional decision taken in fear and by leaders who want to get re-elected and are afraid of being accused of "killing grandma".
More about why lockdowns don't work: “There is no significant risk of catching the disease when you go shopping. Severe outbreaks of the infection were always a result of people being closer together over a longer period of time"
Smart people argued, many silenced or censored, that the "curve is already flat", and that treating the population as one entity doesn't make sense.
The true case fatality rate is unknown due to lack of testing. Plus, we may be over counting deaths attributable to the pandemic... And significantly downplaying that the real issue is metabolic health (obesity, diabetes, etc.)
Addition from September 2020: We now know that 94% of deaths included at least one additional co-morbidity.
Here's a powerful question: if the exact same pandemic appeared in the 1970s, before the obesity epidemic (which was created by corrupt scientists funded by big food and big pharma)...
Would we even have noticed it as anything but a very strong flu season?
My view is that we have, simultaneously. 1) a crisis in those populations living and moving in tight spaces (shanty town, retirement homes, homeless shelters, perhaps mass transit) 2) and a MASSIVE overreaction for populations living a "normal" life, especially if they don't have co-morbidities (diabetes, obesity, etc.)
But now that everyone is good and scared (and under lockdown)... How do leaders re-open? No one wants to move first, especially in an election year in the US. Again: no one wants to be accused of killing grandma.
With unemployment higher than during the last great recession... It's the perfect time to print more money and "feed the people".
But in reality... only .02% of printed money went to working and middle class. Small businesses get big promises, but then the definition of small business gets "updated" to up to 10,000 employees.
Oligarchs get most of the freshly printed money... since there's little to no oversight.
@MarkYusko: Dictator playbook: cronies borrow at 0%, buy up assets and devalue the currency, ultimately destroying purchasing power of the little guy
Losses get socialized. Socialism for the poor, (crony) capitalism for the rich.
Why don't big employers make more noise? My guess is that they get a unique opportunity to trim their payroll. Think about it... not rehiring" 10-20-30% of staff (that may or may not have been productive) is hardly a headline VS. mass layoffs in normal times.
@APompliano: We reach an inflection point where temporary UBI is needed to avoid social unrest
Key question: can you introduce universal basic income (UBI) and then take it away, especially in an election year?
Another interesting phenomenon to watch is greater control of the state over spending and a reduction in the cash economy.
We're seeing an acceleration of a cashless society manifesting itself in China.
When most cash is digital, a mechanism can be introduced to "authenticate" physical cash, ie Keynesian dream of negative interest rates.
I was in China for a month in 2015 and this was already happening. Now I hear paper currency is all but dead in cities.
So how does one allocate his capital in the pandemic @MarkYusko: Seems to me the only play = uncorrelated assets. So that's gold, gold miners, and crypto. Some argue bonds because they will ultimately all be bought back by central banks when they inevitably print more money.
What happens to civil liberties post-virus? Western leaders are using fear mongering to engineer consent.
If central banks are socializing the losses, China's socializing state surveillance... and the west is learning from them. See China's social credit score for a scary reality check. And how they just killed freedom of speech in Hong Kong.
So the above bullets are what I wrote for myself in April. This is the first time I ever publish a journal entry. And it'll probably be the last.

Writing to you now in September, let me add a few more recent thoughts:

We now know that this pandemic is not that scary after all. For ages from 50-64, a “1 in 852,000 chance of being hospitalized or a 1 in 19.1 million chance of dying.”
I think the main reason reason why you don't see a lot of influential people publicly change their mind is simple. It's human nature, really.
Once an "expert" makes a claim, it's difficult to walk it back. if you change your mind, even as new evidence emerges, you'll lose face.
This is part of why politics is so toxic. The last thing we should be doing is shaming people of flip-flopping.
The only people that don't change their mind are... not very smart.
We've achieved so many things our ancestors thought were impossible... or couldn't even imagine trying to attempt.
Progress is made possible by new discoveries and breakthroughs. That means we have to be willing to be wrong, willing to change our minds and admit our mistakes.
I see a lot of parallels between the pandemic and the food pyramid.
In both cases, "experts" made mistakes. Perhaps it was malice, perhaps it was incompetence. Or perhaps they were "playing it safe".
Just like any serious person now knows that meat is a health food...
And that meat and animal fat avoidance is what caused the obesity epidemic...
Any serious person using their brain and not motivated by greed, power and control knows that lockdowns, however partial, have gone too far for too long.
The people that want to keep America and the world under a permanent crisis are profiting from fear, buying up distressed assets and lining their pockets with newly-printed money.
Let's assume that everyone had good intentions in March.
And let's assume that anyone still preaching about health and safety is, at minimum, operating from ego... meaning afraid of looking dumb for being wrong earlier this year...
This also needs to be said: some are corrupt and profiting from the pandemic.
As I tweeted earlier:

There's only 3 reasons to hold on to the same March talking points 6 months later
You're profiting You're genuinely scared You're afraid to admit you were wrong
The founding fathers would be ashamed of the fear-mongering pushed by politicians, the media and the elites.

Just like in 2008 and in prior crisis, it's good, hard-working people that are paying the heaviest price.

My business partner PD Mangan said it best on Twitter:
Suicides up Drug and alcohol abuse up Divorces up Massive unemployment Businesses shut down Civil liberties smashed Currency debased faster than ever
Was it worth it?

He left the question open-ended.

But I won't.

Knowing what we know now, the lockdowns were not worth it.

Now, I don't blame leaders for what happened in March and April.

But they now need to lead, now.

And stop the insanity, now.

5X more lives were lost because of the lockdowns.

You read that right: the lockdowns caused more direct deaths than they saved.

Plus, they've destroyed the economy.

Many small businesses and jobs are never coming back.

We don't need to wait it out. We don't need more data. We need to end this nonsense. NOW.

As Elon said: FREE AMERICA NOW.

Let's not worry about pointing fingers right now.

I for one hope people like Dr. Tedros will be held accountable.

But many honest mistakes happened. And that's inevitable, pandemic or not.

It's not easy to make game-time decisions.

I don't think everyone is dumb and/or corrupt. I'm sure many had and still have good intentions.

But at this point, anyone with half a brain...

Meaning those who understand the second and third order consequences...

Can see that we need to reopen the world, protect the most vulnerable people and get back to our lives.

(Provided they're not corrupt, of course.)

My biggest concern, above all, is the dangerous precedent this is setting.

Because there will be other pandemics.

And we can't possibly think this one was handled well.

If we learn anything, it's that we can never shut down the world and destroy the economy like this. Ever.

Let's end with a quote from my favorite historical figure: