Viscoelastic or viscoplastic theory (VGT #83): A study of influences on consumer price index resulted from consumer psychological reactions and consumption behavior change during the COVID-19 pandemic 9-quarters period from Y2020Q1 to Y2022Q1 based on GH-method: math-physical medicine, especially the VGT energy tool (No. 673)

Abstract

The author is a mathematician and engineer who has conducted medical research work over the past 13 years. Thus far, he has written 670 medical research papers. Beginning with paper No. 578 dated 1/8/2022, he wrote a total of 80 medical research articles using the viscoelasticity and viscoplasticity theories (VGT) from physics and engineering disciplines on 80 different medical problems with their associated data. These papers aim to explore some hidden biophysical behaviors and provide a quantitative understanding of the inter-relationships of a selected medical output (symptom) versus singular input or multiple inputs (root causes, risk factors, or influential inputs). The hidden biophysical behaviors and possible inter-relationships exist among lifestyle details, medical conditions, chronic diseases, and certain severe medical complications, such as heart attacks, stroke, cancers, dementia, and even longevity concerns. The chosen medical subjects with their associated data, multiple symptoms, and influential factors are “time-dependent” which means that all of the biomedical variables are changing from time to time because body living cells are dynamically changing. This is what Professor Norman Jones, the author’s adviser at MIT, suggested to him in December 2021 and why he utilizes the VGT tools from physics and engineering to conduct his medical research work since then. From 1980 to 1981, the author attended a college in California for his MBA degree, emphasizing finance and marketing. In addition, he spent many years managing a successful high-tech semiconductor business in Silicon Valley, where it involved many key factors of economics and finance, such as gross domestic product (GDP), inflation rate, consumer price index (CPI), NASDAQ stock performance, price-earnings ratio (P/E ratio), various investment decisions, return on investments (ROI), etc. As a result, money subjects associated with finance and economics are not unfamiliar subjects to him. In addition, during the 9 years from 2002 to 2010, he self-studied psychology and established 4 psychotherapy centers to take care of 200+ abused women and abandoned children. Therefore, he has accumulated a considerable amount of knowledge on psychological behaviors, especially from the field of clinical psychology of abused victims. During his recent medical research work using the tool of viscoelastic or viscoplastic behavior theory, he suddenly realized that there is a strong similarity between medicine and economics. The behaviors and patterns of economic variables (inputs and outputs) he observed are comparable to the behaviors and patterns of medical variables he studied and researched (causes and symptoms), in terms of their curve shape & waveforms, fluctuation patterns, moving trends, physical behaviors, etc. For example, he has applied the candlestick chart or K-line diagram from Wall Street as an effective glucose representation tool in medicine. Most importantly, variables in both medicine and economics possessed the common “time-dependent” characteristics. The recent COVID-19 pandemic is a severe and unique experience to worldwide people that is comparable to the Spanish Flu that happened over a century ago. He wondered what type of economic impact or inter-relationship from this pandemic had on some of the current economic indices. Therefore, in this article, he selects the CPI of US cities as the output variable along with the COVID-19 death and infection cases in the USA as two input variables to conduct his combined study of both economics and medicine.