There’s a new virus that apparently has just been discovered. The scary thing is that it has been circulating for some time now. Actually, it’s believed this new virus has been circulating for as long as COVID-19 or may have started just after it.
And it seems to be directly linked to COVID-19.
This new virus, because it’s directly linked, carries the scientific name ‘COZEN-20’.
I suggest you look it up. It’s pretty scary and the long-lasting damage could actually be far worse than it looks like COVID-19 will bring.
COZEN-20 will do further damage to the economy, to the living standards of millions, to the livelihoods of families, and it may very well end up killing multitudes more people than COVID-19 has or will over time.
What also amplifies the impact of COZEN-20 is the other virus that’s been spreading around much longer than COVID-19 or COZEN-20. And that’s the social media virus.
But more on that shortly. First, what exactly is COZEN-20 and why has it become so dangerous?
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What is ‘COZEN-20’?
I saw a video yesterday. It was an advertisement from 1943. It was an anti-racism ad. The broader message is that we’re all different, but we’re all human. And we should treat each other as such.
A powerful 76-year-old message that apparently hasn’t changed the views of many in that time. Nonetheless there was a segment of audio that was extremely powerful.
It said, ‘We are not born with prejudices. They are made for us, made for us by those who want something.’
That struck a chord with me because it’s so true. Prejudice is impressed on you by your environment, by those who have responsibility to teach you the ways of the world, by the media, and by what you see and experience around you.
The problem and the scary thing about the world of tomorrow is that media, from all angles, is more of a virus and more harmful than often the world that it purports to represent. You can’t trust the ‘news’ to present the facts and you certainly can’t trust anything on social media.
Yet these have a dangerous influence on how generations of people will access information and make decisions. When the information they access is breathtakingly wrong, it leads to generations built on the wrong information, and that’s potentially life-threatening.
This misinformation is why you get nutjobs taking a shotgun into a pizza restaurant because they think a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton is operating in the basement.
This is why you get nutjobs burning down 5G towers because they think Bill Gates is spreading the coronavirus in some mass conspiracy to sterilise the world.
This is why you get viruses like ‘COZEN-20’ spreading amongst the population driving fear into the very existence of people today, and the generations of tomorrow, when there’s a perfectly accessible cure to all of it.
You see, COZEN-20 isn’t quite what you might think. And that’s because like the theories about Bill Gates and the theories about the Clinton pizza house sex ring — it’s deception at its finest.
Here’s what ‘cozen’ really means as per the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
‘Definition of cozen
‘1: to deceive, win over, or induce to do something by artful coaxing and wheedling or shrewd trickery
‘2: to gain by cozening someone’
You see, ‘COZEN-20’ isn’t a virus at all. I made it up.
But it’s plausible enough. While not a virus in the truest sense, the misinformation and government rhetoric are as damaging as a virus and may prove to ultimately kill more people than COVID-19.
What the government messaging spits at us is the definition of cozen. They’re cozening us.
We’ve been cozened.
There has been widespread condemnation of two of the most relied upon COVID-19 models from Imperial College and IHME. This includes this damning report on the, ‘Statistical Accuracy of COVID-19 Daily Death Count Predictions’.
Researchers found:
‘The initial model underestimates the uncertainty surrounding the number of daily deaths. Specifically, the true number of next day deaths fell outside the IHME prediction intervals as much as 76% of the time, in comparison to the expected value of 5%.’
Further still, we know that COVID-19 discriminates and is a radically high risk to people over 80, a high risk to people over 60, and near zero risk for children. Yet, the fear perpetuated around the world is that sending kids back to school is going to kill multitudes more people.
That’s just not going to happen. These are just some of the misguided ‘truths’ government wants us to believe that research is proving to be wrong.
Stay away from the COZEN-20 stocks
It’s this cycle of fear and the messaging from governments that is now so damaging. If you’re not staying away from people, if you’re leaving home when you shouldn’t, if you’re not following their rules, you’re killing people. This is cozening at its finest.
The messaging from governments means that there is now more risk to people from other mortality risks than there is from COVID-19. Wired reports that:
‘[In the UK] Data now emerging suggests that, within the past two months, two-week urgent referrals for cancer tests and diagnoses have fallen by an average of 76 per cent in some places.’
People are fearful they will catch COVID-19 by just going to the doctor. I even know of someone in their mid-30s that required treatment, that was told to stay away from the local GP.
Further still, I’ve also spoken with others whose GP had refused maternal care. This was a perfectly healthy person in the early stages of pregnancy being refused a doctor’s appointment.
This is how bad it has got. And it’s all based on information from the government they know is not accurate and in fact is misleading.
But they can’t, won’t now go and say, ‘we got it wrong’, will they? When was the last time you heard them say, ‘we were wrong,’ on a small issue, let alone one that’s driven the country into the most cataclysmic economic conditions since the Great Depression?
What the data emerging now suggests is that the fatality rates, the infection rates, all the key information that’s needed shows COVID-19 is not the threat that it was initially believed to have been. And that no lockdown is actually likely to have saved more lives than if there had been no lockdown at all.
Come the end of the year, when the real data has been fully analysed, we will look back on this period with bemusement at the actions put in place, the cost of government decisions, and the real death tolls that will far exceed that of COVID-19 long term.
With this fear-induced state, the public has been pushed into believing that the only saviour is a vaccine, there have been a number of what I call ‘COZEN-20’ stocks that have shot the lights out and boomed. Much of it off the back of potential vaccines or therapies or protection measures to kill off COVID-19.
The mere mention of COVID-19 in an announcement has been able to see stock values skyrocket and shareholders reap the rewards. The reality though, is that as we work through the real data and understand more about the reality of this virus, many of these COZEN-20 juiced-up stocks are likely to fall back to Earth.
Here’s just a small sample size of some global and domestic stocks that have shot the lights out on potential COVID-19 developments:
- Mesoblast Ltd [ASX:MSB] — YTD up 88%
- Avacta Group Plc [LSE:AVCT] — YTD up 656%
- Moderna Inc [NASDAQ:MRNA] — YTD up 205%
- Zoono Group Ltd [ASX:ZNO] — YTD up 255%
Now I’m not saying these are bad stocks. And there’s plenty about each company that makes them valuable in their own right. What I’m saying is that many have jumped on this COVID-19 crisis, when in all reality it’s fast emerging as a ‘COZEN-20’ crisis — an artful coaxing by governments for us to buy into their rhetoric so they aren’t widely criticised for making wrong decisions.
I see these stocks a bit like all those ‘Ebola Stocks’ that boomed out of the 2014 Ebola outbreak. They fast sailed back down when it all settled down.
As this continues to emerge, I’m saying that if you’ve made profit in these stocks, then you should seriously be thinking about taking some of those profits off the table.
And if you’re looking to invest in these stocks, you would want to be bloody sure there’s more to their long-term prospects than just a COVID-19 opportunity.
My view right now is if you’re looking to invest into any COVID-19 therapy, vaccine, or treatment stocks, I’d say steer well clear.
Regards,
Sam Volkering,
Editor, Money Morning
PS: Our publication Money Morning is a fantastic place to start on your investment journey. We talk about the big trends driving the most innovative stocks on the ASX. Learn all about it here.
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