Introduction: Lockdown Blues
I have been meaning to write up a post on my thoughts and experiences through the Sydney 2021 lockdowns. I can only describe it a period of lockdown blues
It has taken me time to get into gear - first, as I am unvaccinated, restrictions applied a lot longer. Second, one does not feel free until there are no mandates in place, so my mind is not free. March 1 was the day mask mandates were dropped in shopping centres - March 2 was the first time I have been to the shops without wearing a mask.
Key Dates: 2021 Lockdown
A few dates to start. I started writing this on March 2. Now a month later on April 1, I might finish this
We were in our Hunter Valley home when the Greater Sydney lockdown was announced on June 25. We were not really equipped to stay up there - not enough clothes, no washing machine and limited internet connectivity as we rely on mobile coverage which is mediocre for internet connections. So we drove home on June 26. Initial restrictions were limited to travel for exercise and essential activity within local government area (LGA) or 10 kms from home. That was reduced to 5 kms plus the LGA on August 14. Restrictions were relaxed for vaccinated people when vaccination rates in NSW reached 75% on October 15. The unvaccinated restrictions were only lifted on December 15 - so I had 10 days short of 6 months of restrictions.
So we start lockdown - it is mid winter, my wife has no job, my internet marketing business is stumbling along and I am not feeling very motivated. My investing coach always used to say keep doing the things that work and stop doing the things that do not work. I slid into a depressed state because I could not ride my bicycle very far and I had no bicycle tour as an incentive to train and my internet marketing stuff was not working very well. And every Facebook memory talks about places I have been over the 12 years since I started a Facebook account
Now I have been here before. There are a few things that work. They might work on the lockdown blues
- Exercise
- Small Wins
- Talking to People (not allowed to do that under the rules)
- Outdoors and Sunshine.
I focused in on a few places - ride and walk the local tracks; potter around in the garden; cook a good meal every day; make sure the investing stuff was working.
Internet Marketing on the Back Burner
Something has to give - Internet Marketing went on the back burner. I kept the monthly solo ads run going to generate some new leads. I did a few promotions for vendors I trust and for friends - not a lot but just enough to add some small wins. I wrote 6 product reviews for Matt Bacak, Kevin Fahey, Matt Garrett and Kam Jennings - did make a few sales for each.
Traffic Data
This is what not being active is all about. I sent out to my main lists 242,674 broadcast newsletters with an open rate pf 1.35%,
71,904 RSS newsletters (which are a weekly complication of my daily blogs) with open rate a little higher at 1.6%
47,848 autoresponder messages with a disappointingly low open rate
That is a bunch of traffic but open rates range from 0.45% to 1.35% to 1.60% - all are pretty bad.
Open Rate Problems
The disturbing part was the open rates on autoresponders. I have to dig into that to find the root cause as each month there are 100 to 150 new people arriving - that normally drags up open rates. I did dig into that - it seems that a few of my domains got blacklisted. There is a story there to do with where one big list came from - it was a bad list. I did take action to fix that - new domain, two new autoresponder services, lots of work on email deliverability, that is the subject for another blog post.
The results show in the tracking sheets - yes I did add 1,242 new leads and generated 10,897 clicks and made a princely sum of $335 in sales for a net loss of $2014 - this does not include costs of domains, hosting and autoresponders. I had to focus on investing to pay for that.
There is a reason I have shared all this data. I use data to drive change AND this has to change or I have to stop doing this.
An Orchid A Day Challenge
Something I have done ever since I got my Fitbit was I started writing daily Actifit posts on the Hive blogging platform. I kept that going by pushing myself out of the front door by foot or by bicycle to make sure I got over 5,000 steps in every day. I like looking for native orchids in the bush and we can access a lot of bush tracks within the LGA or within 5 or 10 kms from home. I set out to find an orchid a day - either a new plant or a new flower opening or an orchid on a new track. My walking rule was that I would walk until I found an orchid - longest one was two and a half hours - found them on the way back - with half an hour and a bike ride to get home. The first orchid was found on the local Lovers Jump Creek track on June 29. Over the period to December 15, I found 51 different types of orchids. I walked a lot of new tracks - almost every one that is inside the LGA. If I went by car, the car was always parked inside the LGA - but there was no guarantee that I was inside the limits.
That walking all added up to 2 million steps - at least double normal. At 80 kms a week I could have got to Melbourne on week 9 and we had 24 weeks - enough to reach Adelaide after that
A sampler of orchids found during the Great Cycle Challenge in October
Once a Week Shopping and Daily Cooking
We were allowed to shop for essential items once a day. We could not go shopping together. I did all the weekly shopping. I went out once a week and did all the shopping so that my wife, who has a compromised immune system did not have to get out and about. In the early days of the outbreak that made sense for her though it did keep her in the house more than she would have liked. When the government allowed a single buddy system, she volunteered to be buddy of an older friend of hers. The two ladies would meet for coffee and walks - that kept her going. I chose to shop in the quieter shopping centres away from where the people like to hang out. I had to change that up too when they introduced a 5 km limit outside the LGA.
The next routine thing I did was to make sure I cooked a good meal every single day. I do most of the cooking anyway and I find it a very powerful therapeutic force - gets the mind away from the day and focused on getting things right. That was not really a change - it just became a little more important to my psychology and well being.
In time, my wife extended her single buddy activity to shopping for some special meals each week that I would prepare once a week for the three of us - not exactly within the rules as visitors were not allowed at all and then changed to prohibit visitors to a house with unvaccinated occupant (me). But we did it anyway and we had a lot of fun doing it.
A Close Contact Story: A Jaundiced View
A big driver of the depression was the close contact story. I was deemed a close contact from a 19 minute shopping exposure to the local Woolworths on July 19 - apparently there were two back room staff that tested positive for covid - presumption then was all the front room staff could be contagious and thus all the customers. The worst part of the experience is the SMS came in around 1:30 in the morning days later. I was awake because I had been doing trade stuff when US markets opened. Well that smashed that night's sleep. The protocol was to self-isolate and all house members go for a test. I did that - test results were delivered inside 24 hours but they also arrived after midnight - not good. At least then my wife could move around again and I stayed in self isolation for two weeks. I got the bicycle trainer out and did a session or two on that - that is so dull. I just decided I had to be out and walking - we live right next to the bush.
I snuck around the corner and disappeared into the bush every day to find orchids and to stay sane. 95.98 kms is a lot of steps between the back room and the back fence. Two more negative tests and I was allowed out of self-isolation.
No visitors allowed - so the last time I saw my son was around my birthday the week before lockdown began. I have not seen my daughter for way longer as she is locked down in Melbourne, Victoria. And I have not seen my other son since the football season was curtailed - I get to watch him at football matches most weeks. Then the season ended and that was the end of that opportunity. New season opens soon.
Cycle Touring Blocked
Each year I aim to do one big bicycle tour. In the last two years I have timed this to coincide with Kids Cancer Ride in October - and that was the broad idea for 2021 - ride Melbourne to Sydney as I could not ride that in 2020 because of Victoria border closures. What that does is give me an incentive to get out on the bike to do the requisite training. As the lockdown was extended week by week and when the NSW Premier put a vaccination target out, I could see there was going to be no 2021 cycle tour - I scaled back the target for the October ride from 1250 kms to 600 kms. Quite hard to do 600 kms in a month let alone 1250 kms when the furthest one can go is just under 8 kms from home.
I did ride every day in October bar one - that was a cooking day on a Sunday. With a target of 600 kms, I rode 750 kms rounded out with the first ride over 100 kms for the year on the last day of the month. I climbed 11,000 metres which is more than the height of Mt Everest and I was on the bike for a day and a half. And I raised $3,515 for Kids Cancer Research - one of my highest totals.
The map shows that I was not always inside my zone (the overlapped yellow LGA and 5 kms from home red circle) especially on the last day when I spent a very short time in the circle (the big red route)
Donations for the 2022 edition are open. Donate for Kids Cancer Ride
Focus on Investing
I focused on my investing activity. In my Pension portfolio I wrote 536 income trades (not quite 90 a month). Across my other two portfolios I would have done the same. I generated net capital gains of 7.3% of capital value in that portfolio. That was enough to cover nearly two years of pension payments. Half of those capital gains came from income trades. Now the markets were not as friendly as that - with the pension portfolio dropping 1.1% in value to mid October and a bit more after that in the December selloff. In one of my other portfolios, capital gains were 7.9% also with a big slug coming from income trades. I kept writing the weekly investing blogs that records wins and losses and hopefully lessons learned. It has been a challenging time keeping focused enough to stay on top of a global portfolio being challenged by covid restrictions and the aftermath of lockdowns.
My Contribution to the Economy
So what was my aftermath on economic activity. I shopped only once a week. I did not do any non-essential shopping even online. I did not go to buy coffee at a coffee shop at all (my wife did a bit). I did not buy take out food once and there were no restaurant visits. In fact there have been none of these in 9 whole months. Normally, we would go to a pub for a drink once a week and eat out maybe every two weeks - none, nada, money saved. Small local businesses lose. No personal services visits either - my wife's buddy cut my hair. Even after restrictions ended my hairdresser refused to serve unvaccinated customers. They are now on the boycotted business list. My dentist landed on that list too - no dental services purchased either.
I made one trip to my Hunter Valley property to mow lawns once I was allowed to go without a permit - so that local community got no income from me. Since then we have been to visit four times - 5 times in 9 months. Through the cooler months (say July to November) we go every two weeks - that is a fair bit of spending the local community missed out on. I do know that not doing that did cost mental health - we use the quiet of the countryside to regenerate. This was especially noticeable for my wife who is not really able to do the walking that I do and to use the local bush for her therapy - she needs quiet and a change of scenery and people = lockdown was really bad especially while she did not have a job. She did get a new contract from September and spent the first 5 months working from home with people she had never met - how amazing and weird is that? She did get to the office for 1 or 2 days a week from March 16
Get Vaccinated for Your Community
I have chosen not to be vaccinated. I have long been a sceptic of modern medicine. I have used alternative health approaches since I was 14 or 15 when my hearing was saved. Doctors are fine for diagnosis as they can point me to the alternative therapy routes to explore - homeopathy, Chinese herbs, osteopathy, supplements, exercise, acupuncture, meditation, deep breathing have all worked for me.
I am also a person of numbers. There are 3 important numbers for covid
- What is the chance of being infected? I live life as a recluse mostly at home and out in the open air. Yes, my wife could bring it home from work.
- What is the survival rate for a healthy and fit 65 year old. The average mortality rate is 0.59% for 60-69. Now we all know that there is a skew in these numbers as they do disguise potential co-morbidities. I am going to guess my survival rate is higher.
- What is the adverse reaction mortality rate? The CDC stated in November 2021 that it was 0.6% (though there are sample size problems with this data). The release of the February 2022 Pfizer safety documents show the fatality rate is appreciably higher. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer/reactogenicity.html
Now the mathematician in me knows that you need to multiply two probabilities together to get to the real probability. Under 1 above, I live life in the way that I have a very small probability of getting infected multiped by my smaller probability of dying from covid = a probability that is much smaller than 0.6%. And my read of the Covid Revealed series I followed was that the adverse effects are gong to be way worse than 0.6% - these are under reported, vested interests will lie to cover stuff up.
What is becoming very clear to me from the data. The vaccine is not a vaccine at all. It does not stop one becoming infected. In fact it looks like it may increase the chances of succumbing to the infection. It does not stop one transmitting the infection. And the adverse effects are unpredictable and some quite serious. I did spend a lot of lockdown time going through the research data. That is how I roll. There is one other factor to add. I am not afraid of dying. When my time comes I will be ready and I will not use an unproven gene therapy when I am not ill.
Looking Forward
As we stare at the first days of April where does that leave me. Maybe the lockdown blues are past. There are still places I cannot go - I can certainly not fly and I am not allowed to leave the country. Good thing it is a big country.
- I am strongly focused on investing stuff. I started a new options training program in February to be able to profit better and take less risk when markets are going down. The war in Ukraine has become the next risk factor driving increased market volatility.
- I continue to get out every day to walk or cycle and to look for orchids. That is where my mental health lies. A La Nina summer is making that very hard - I go out with umbrella and boots and raincoat and check for leeches every 100 metres.
- We have got into the mode of travelling a little more - the reality is the small town businesses cannot afford to discriminate against the unvaccinated. We take delivery of a new home on the South Coast of New South Wales in a few weeks. That brings pressure to sort out my Hunter Valley home so I can sell it. There is quite a lot of work to be done - painting, new deck, new balcony, gutters and rainwater system for garage.
- My main internet marketing partnership has been refurbished (so to speak) which gives a good basis for getting back on top of that. OR switch it all off.
The big challenge is finding time in the day to do it - hard to believe it is already April.
Posted from my blog with Exxp : https://markcarrington.com/overcoming-lockdown-blues/