Jurgis

These people are officially tested and diagnosed or just suspecting that they have CoVid but not tested? Best well wishes to all of them.

Honestly, a company that trades at a massive discount to NAV, with assets that trade at massive discounts to IV, with a long-term track record of excellent capital allocation, is about to have a liquidity event of $9 billion to put to work in this chaos as they see fit. It's hard for me to come up with something that would be a better buy at this time. IF they have a liquidity event. Also WHEN. It could be cancelled or delayed, so they don't get 9B to spend "in this chaos".

Vitamin D deficiency has also long been theorized as one of the factors causing influenza seasonality. See, for example, this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870528/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/02/study-confirms-vitamin-d-protects-against-cold-and-flu/ On the other hand, some studies have suggested that Vitamin D supplementation doesn't do much to present viral respiratory tract infections: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28719693 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26951286 As you note, Vitamin D is very cheap. You can also google to find recent evidence regarding the levels of supplementation that might lead to toxicity (tl;dr -- there appears to be plenty of room to supplement without causing any significant problems). Based on this research, I've been supplementing with Vitamin D since last fall with good results re common cold symptoms (which are an issue with two small children in the house). Of course, n=1 doesn't provide much evidence of anything. Just FYI, there is some evidence that very high doses of Vitamin D can cause/contribute to kidney stones: http://www.vitamindsupplement.com/vitamin-d-and-kidney-stones/ So, don't overdo it, don't mega dose thinking it can't have negative effects. (Anecdotally, I've had kidney stone symptoms that seemed to be correlated with high Vitamin D doses. YMMV.) What was the "high dose" that you were taking? I've read that natural exposure to the sun during summer can often give you an equivalent dose to 15-20k UIs, the body seems pretty good at dealing with higher doses (better than lower doses). It certainly depends where you live, but here in Canada, for someone who's inside the house most of the day, I'm probably getting little naturally so supplementation makes a lot of sense. I've been doing mostly 5k uis during summer and 8-10k uis during winter, probably for about 15 years. It clearly depends on a person. I was taking 5K IUs close to daily. Now I am taking 5K IUs twice a week with no kidney stone symptoms.

Vitamin D deficiency has also long been theorized as one of the factors causing influenza seasonality. See, for example, this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870528/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/02/study-confirms-vitamin-d-protects-against-cold-and-flu/ On the other hand, some studies have suggested that Vitamin D supplementation doesn't do much to present viral respiratory tract infections: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28719693 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26951286 As you note, Vitamin D is very cheap. You can also google to find recent evidence regarding the levels of supplementation that might lead to toxicity (tl;dr -- there appears to be plenty of room to supplement without causing any significant problems). Based on this research, I've been supplementing with Vitamin D since last fall with good results re common cold symptoms (which are an issue with two small children in the house). Of course, n=1 doesn't provide much evidence of anything. Just FYI, there is some evidence that very high doses of Vitamin D can cause/contribute to kidney stones: http://www.vitamindsupplement.com/vitamin-d-and-kidney-stones/ So, don't overdo it, don't mega dose thinking it can't have negative effects. (Anecdotally, I've had kidney stone symptoms that seemed to be correlated with high Vitamin D doses. YMMV.)

His advice against taking acetaminophen/tylenol is somewhat controversial. I've heard this theory (i.e. don't reduce fever, your body fights disease better when in fever) before. It is not what most doctors suggest although it is possible that anti-fever medications are overprescribed and overused. Do more research or follow what your doctor says. Also: https://www.thejournal.ie/ibuprofen-cuh-coronavirus-whatsapp-5047311-Mar2020/

"It's just a better version of flu" people are still alive... praise the lord!

They should do infra. But they can't really do infra or anything economy boosting until the pandemic has passed. OK, they can actually throw money on producing tests and building ICU units in 2 days like China did... They could throw money at delivering meals to people who are out of work because of shutdown and quarantine (assuming there's a way to do it safely). Possibly would cost less and deliver more than just cutting the rates. BWDIK.

This.

I think it's much higher than 2%. The reality is many people are sick and not dying of pneumonia - I would assume a portion of posters on this very thread are experiencing symptoms as well as the rest of the population, or had experienced symptoms in Jan/Feb and recovered. The first reported US case was January 21. This is an incredibly fast transmitting virus. The odds are, cases existed prior to Jan 21. And further, the odds are that the spread of this virus across the US was much faster than official reports claim. This is due to lack of testing i.e. lack of timely, accurate information. But ultimately, I agree w/ the principle of: better safe than sorry. For the obvious reason, and for the secondary reason as it provides a "trial-run" on a global basis for future pandemics. I am about 20% cash btw. If I didn't suffer from biases like anchoring and all that stuff I would think about 1/3 cash is the ideal amount right now. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191 Question for you guys as I havent seem to be making any friends swimming against the tide! Above is the NEJM article on first case of corona virus. This is what I don't understand. First US case was January 20st, with 4 days of symptoms and as I have read this is a very fast transmitting virus. Some have said this is very fast, some fast, symptoms take a while to show up, agree. Please reconcile this for me. It has been exactly 2 months since this gentleman returned to the US from wuhan China. Is it out of the way to assume that there was community spread with this gentleman? 4 days of cough, fever, flew on a plane? Lets just work on that premise. Now I have become lost with all of the projections, graphs, charts, etc. Pick whatever model you want. My question is this: Its been 2 months since that virus was officially detected in a known area. I'm not aware of this so please help. Is there overload in the area where this gentleman was? Are there people dying? What does it look like? Are they running out of ICU beds? How is california? They were not far behind and have a HUGE population! I know there can be a delay in symptoms but isnt 2 months long enough for this virus to really get going, especially with lockdown, social distancing just happening now? 55 days from Jan 20 to March 15. Assuming doubling every 4 days, you have a bit less than 2^14 = 16K cases in US right now. But then you told us that you knew how to do math...

Not afraid of Covid-19. Protected by Smith & Wesson.

This one is very comprehensive. Unlike the others it also shows number of deaths plot, which is unfortunately also exponential so far.

Fact.

Governments are always too slow to act. Travel ban from Europe to America could have had great public health benefits. It should have been enacted in 1492.

Our supermarket was emptied today. No toilet paper. (As another indication of our idiosyncratic tastes, almost everything we needed to buy was available.) Walked by neighborhood restaurant in the evening. It was still pretty full. I don't think we have a serious panic (yet).

Unbelievable. No, it's totally British approach to things. ::)

On Fridays the 13th only too. Why bother with other days.

He also left MSFT board, so it's not BRK specific. But I don't like it anyway. IMO Gates >> Chenault.

Nah. These people are Americans. They will throw out all they bought into garbage. Not toilet paper, but perishables (pasta, beans) pretty sure. Apologies to people who do not throw away tons of stuff.

Not true. In Lithuania you can get priority care if you bribe medical personnel. Including critical care cases. I'm pretty sure that's true for quite a few countries.

or you will miss the gorilla, What gorilla?

You think BRK will outperform SP500 from here? Or from 10% down from here? @OP: There's gonna be a ball before Fairfax annual meeting. Unless Sanjeev cancels it and tells you that value investors don't have balls. ::) Don't worry about beating the S&P or BRK-A. Just focus on your own internal score card. My own internal score card is beating S&P. And cruashing value investors balls.

Why? Anyone who has been indexing and continues to DCA and index will do quite well. Possibly better than high percentage of people from CoBF (as we have seen with past polls).

You think BRK will outperform SP500 from here? Or from 10% down from here? @OP: There's gonna be a ball before Fairfax annual meeting. Unless Sanjeev cancels it and tells you that value investors don't have balls. ::)

I agree with you in spirit, but take a look at my post above and tell me if I'm missing something. I think we're just a bunch of blindfolded analysts feeling around an Elephant. Orthopa may have just been too busy hanging around down there by tail to get around and explore the other parts. I don't think your post (which is good IMO) contradicts what Schwab711 is saying. The problem is that we cannot prove the "more testing does not help" people wrong, since we don't have two parallel universes where US tested in one but not tested in another and results are clear. (Even if we had, they'd say "it's a different universe! Testing won't help in ours!") We can point to S. Korea, but the answer from no-testing-benefit camp is "but that's not US... and they all gonna die/recover anyway".

Hmm, is NetJets a success currently? I remember it was not doing great at some point. I think it's too small to be mentioned anymore, so probably we can't know how it is doing.