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svelteParticipant[quote=sdduuuude]
And why isn’t anyone publishing percentage-based numbers. Yes, the US has the most cases, but its population is a little bigger than Italy and a little smaller that China so that doesn’t tell us anything. Yes, New York has the most cases in the US but it is also a huge city. SF may be much worse off on a percentage basis. Maybe not. I don’t know because the news is stupid.[/quote]
The news does give you the breakdown by state and state populations are widely known, so you have all the information you need to do the calculations on a statewide basis. In addition, the news gives us the cases & deaths for some large cities such as NYC and SF, and their populations are widely known. So if you don’t take the 5-10 mins to gather the stats and run the calcs, that’s on you dude.
Statewide are here:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/03/health/us-coronavirus-cases-state-by-state/index.htmlMajor cities are in various spots.
svelteParticipantHere we go.
Got a call an hour ago. Three people very close to us found out this afternoon they have it. Two in their 50s, one in their 30s. One of the 50s is in the hospital.
They live in another west coast city and we haven’t seen them in a year. But someone else close to all of us in that city has major health issues (MHI). That MHI person has been on lockdown because of the situation, but now is going into ultra lockdown. Luckily that MHI person hadn’t seen the infected in 3 weeks.
svelteParticipantI’ve been trying to look back in time and see why it wasn’t obvious too. From this vantage point, it is hard to believe that just two weeks ago we really didn’t know this was going to happen. I read the March 16th Bloomberg magazine again this morning and it wasn’t even hinting at something like this (granted it had probably been written a week earlier).
Things changed very very fast but as you say – how could we have not seen it coming with China and Italy doing a lockdown? It seems as obvious as the nose on our face!
But then I remember that if I yanked my money out every time I worried about a threat to the economy, I’d yank it out several times a year. And that’s no way to invest, as Rich so astutely points out.
Still my biggest regret is that someone came on Piggington just a week before the big Great Depression crash and told everyone to get out now. I didn’t listen. Boy was that guy right. I’ve never been able to find that post again, but I certainly remember it.
svelteParticipantI’m coming to the conclusion that it’s all going to be guesswork when this is over. Not everyone is going to be tested for COVID-19, so they are going to base the resulting statistics based on guesstimates.
We’ll never get a firm answer on what percentage of those with COVID-19 were hospitalized or died. It will just be “of those who were tested”.
svelteParticipant[quote=Coronita][quote=svelte][quote=The-Shoveler]
Or just decide it is not worth it like England.
[/quote]
With England choosing one route and most other countries chosing a shutdown, we should be able to tell whether the shutdown did any good.
If England doesn’t get hit any worse than other countries, then maybe we’ve all overreacted.[/quote]
There comes a time when public health matters more than the economy, even if it is an overreaction. I’m glad we are erring on the side of precaution. UK’s argument isn’t that they aren’t going to go into lockdown. It’s that they aren’t going to do it yet. Same thing with Mexico.[/quote]
UK implements a very stringent lockdown.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/uk/uk-coronavirus-lockdown-gbr-intl/index.html
svelteParticipant[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=svelte]The interesting part is the majority of the people getting sick and turning up in the ICU aren’t the older seniors. It’s mostly people younger than 60 and overwhelmingly men.[/quote]
I don’t feel our system is transparent at all. “Under 60” is useless information. If the government and media think that will incentivize young people to self isolate, they couldn’t be more wrong. 60 is way old for someone who’s 22.
Just be fully transparent and give us the age of the people infected and dying. Why hide the information?
There is a huge population of uninsured who don’t care. They are serving us at restaurants, hair salons, etc…[/quote]
You mis-attributed that quote. I didn’t say that, flu (coronita) did.
svelteParticipant[quote=Coronita]Endgame is when these charts look better
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/%5B/quote%5D
I stumbled across that link yesterday! I like it a lot.
I sort of feel like the warming of the weather might help some, but it is basically a matter of having enough people catch it that everybody’s been through it. The reason isolation helps is because this flu is particularly nasty and we need to space our those needing medical attention so they don’t flood hospitals all at once.
Looking at the 1918 Spanish Flu in San Diego, first case was Sept 26 and by Dec 31 it was almost gone…cold weather and all. Thinking it through my opinion is that all the people that were going to be exposed had been by that point and that’s why the numbers started to drop. I’m of the opinion that the same thing needs to happen this time.
As far as the economic damage, stocks were already in a freefall in 1918 due to WW1, so it is hard to separate out the effect of the Spanish Flu. Stocks did make a recovery once both were over (they both ended within a month or two of each other) but another recession hit in 1920. Any lessons for us here from that? It is really hard to tell.
March 22, 2020 at 6:24 PM in reply to: What did you do with your remain-at-home corona virus day? #815908svelteParticipantMade a quick in-n-out trip to Home Depot Saturday to get supplies for my projects. parking lot was totally packed, but amazingly people found a way to keep distance at the store…it was almost like we had invisible shields around us.
Been working on those projects all weekend…they came together very nicely. I bet my backyard will look the best its ever looked this summer.
I’m trying to get everything I need now cuz I’m not going to want to be anywhere near a store for the next few weeks.
We tried remote ordering groceries from Ralphs. The shopper was very nice…we ordered about 60 items (a normal trip for us) and she kept calling via cell to tell me what was there and what wasn’t so we could substitute. What I didn’t know at the time was it was all tied in through Instacart and they put up roadblocks between the shopper and me for texting…that’s why she had to call.
In the end, I’m not sure it reduced my exposure much because she was touching everything I would have touched and brought them to us in reusable bags that we had to return to her. It cost me $10 delivery plus tip and the only exposure it probably saved me was the airborne exposure of the others in the store…if CV was on any of the items I was just as exposed as if would have went myself.
svelteParticipantyes most of us will eventually get infected…the goal now is to flatten and widen the curve.
at this point that’s all we can do…that ensures those who need hospitalization get a fair chance at getting it, instead of having hospital staff pick and choose who they take in.
svelteParticipantI like going back to Buffett’s favorite measurement, total market cap to US gross national product.
By that measure, the market has been overvalued since about June 2013 and, even now after the large fall this past month, it is still overvalued at 106% with 100% being optimal.
svelteParticipant[quote=Rich Toscano]
Anyway back to the OP: when you buy stocks, you are buying a VERY long-term stream of earnings. Like, decades. [/quote]Certainly true and how I’ve behaved over the long term.
However, I have less than a decade to go to retirement, so decisions I make now have a shorter amount of time to equalize than decisions I’ve made over the last several decades. Therefore, when I jump in with any more money is more important than it was before.
I don’t really even have to put more money in, but if I know the market is down due to overreaction, why not ride it back up? These opportunities don’t come along all that often. Perhaps once a decade it appears.
svelteParticipantYou two!
Go to your corner!
And don’t come out until you can talk nicely to each other!
svelteParticipant[quote=Coronita]
Trump and Biden both saying stock buyback prohibited from 2020 Chinese Flu relief effort. Good.
.[/quote]I think the govt should buy the stocks that the company bought back instead of giving them loans…then the company can buy them back from the govt when they recover!
svelteParticipant[quote=zk]
The stock market seems to have settled for this brief time at around 30% down.
Who thinks it’ll go up or down from here and why?
Will there be a recession? If there is, will it be severe?[/quote]
I’ve been thinking about this. All total, I had about 30% of my money on the sideline. When is the right time to move some of it in?
I’m not sure if what the govt is doing will influence it much. I think what will have more of an effect is (1) if groceries remain available, (2) the number of deaths, (3) the rate of death escalation, and (4) whether Italy deaths peak and start receding.
If any one of those goes terribly wrong, watch out!
There will be a recession…it could be quick and brief, or it could kill the rest of the year. I don’t think it will be clear which one until about May.
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