Castanza

I work in healthcare. The only advances that we have come up with in that time that are effective against this are 1) hand washing, 2) contact isolation, 3) mechanical ventilation (but by this point it is already way too late). Also, we severely lack # of ICU beds and resources which will become apparent soon. It is already apparent we lack resources if you look at how testing for this has rolled out. Lack of testing (thus giving visibility) and means of spread prevention are two different things in my opinion. They work together on some level for sure. But for something as infectious as this, if you miss a single person who is infected anywhere it is already too late. In fact the incubation period alone (14 days) is enough to come to the conclusion that stopping spread is pretty much impossible. Even if the US and other countries started preparing for COVID-19 the minute the heard about it, the time frame for vaccine development would still likely be 1 year. If test kits were developed in masses on the first day it still would be too late because individuals are walking around for potentially 14 days with no symptoms. Eventually would most likely show "mild" symptoms that they probably wouldn't seek testing for to begin with. This is wrong though. Basic epidemiology and how R nought works. Each person you contain prevents about 2-3 other infections. You can only contain what you can see. If you're not showing symptoms, you're not getting tested. It's compounding regardless and as you said above there are no hospitals with enough beds. I guess the question is, would testing with quarantine of individuals who test positive slow the compound rate enough to reduce the impact on hospitals? Probably not. And I'm not saying they shouldn't test. I'm just saying everyone's focus on it seems bit overcooked. For example: my wife works in the most advanced level 4 NICU east of the Mississippi. They have a whopping total of 62 beds...

I work in healthcare. The only advances that we have come up with in that time that are effective against this are 1) hand washing, 2) contact isolation, 3) mechanical ventilation (but by this point it is already way too late). Also, we severely lack # of ICU beds and resources which will become apparent soon. It is already apparent we lack resources if you look at how testing for this has rolled out. Lack of testing (thus giving visibility) and means of spread prevention are two different things in my opinion. They work together on some level for sure. But for something as infectious as this, if you miss a single person who is infected anywhere it is already too late. In fact the incubation period alone (14 days) is enough to come to the conclusion that stopping spread is pretty much impossible. Even if the US and other countries started preparing for COVID-19 the minute the heard about it, the time frame for vaccine development would still likely be 1 year. If test kits were developed in masses on the first day it still would be too late because individuals are walking around for potentially 14 days with no symptoms. Eventually would most likely show "mild" symptoms that they probably wouldn't seek testing for to begin with. People are putting way too much emphasis on testing (as if testing is going to stop it). My wife (a healthcare professional) agrees. The best thing is to take spread prevention precautions such as limiting contact with others, washing you hands, drinking lots of water, and staying away from high risk individuals who already have acute or chronic illnesses. Anyone who is at high risk of dying from COVID-19 is going to be treated the say exact way they are treated for the flu. If you have a 80 year old grandmother who spent her life smoking and she developed a severe cough what would you do? You would take them to the doctor and they would be treated with standard protocol. But you would do this both before and after COVID-19 existed. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/256521#covid-19 Shutting down schools, daycare and any type of senior care facilities is probably the best course of action.

Lmao that’s pretty good! ;D

Added to GRBK at 10.50

LOL that's almost worth the risk...imagine getting a whole cruise ship to yourself

I believe the CDC said 2500 kits will be available this week which is 1.5m tests. Not sure about official results though.

Doesn’t the cost moat disappear over time. JBLU for example is struggling to keep its cost advantage , although they have shown recently success with cost cutting. DAL has a huge advantage with hubs they basically control (Atlanta) and their credit card business. They also did a good job keeping older planes flying, their lower fuel efficiency doesn’t matter as much with low kerosene prices. The relative cost advantage seems to have actually grown over time, but returns have obviously come down hard since legacy Airlines have responded to the ULCC and offer basic economy fares, and nothing indicates that's gonna change, so that's a bummer and probably why it trades where it does. But there should be a long runway for growth at acceptable returns even though it's unlikely that returns return to their former glory. If one looks past coronavirus (which nobody does at the moment, probably with good reason) it seems like they were on path to improve returns through less growth from new markets and focusing more on established and more mature routes. Either way 4-5xPE for a 16-17 pct. ROE business without excessive leverage and double digit growth isn't too shabby, but it's obviously a terrible industry in that you have massive fixed as well as financial leverage. Think Delta is a safer bet with the credit card and MRO biz plus less execution risk due to more mature markets and high capital returns, but it's obviously all about risk/reward. So far I doubled down on the wrong horse! Sentiment and the looming threat of flight groundings is the key driver at this point. Rkbabang has the right play although I dont have the balls to play that far OTM. ATM options (not cheap) still offer good upside imo. I will probably follow this down with Jan 2022 calls.

You are probably right. Definitely a short term hit. But man, how low can this go? Down another 7% today.

Robinhood App was down all day yesterday and just had another outage today that could cause another missed day of trading. I hope this is the actual reason.

COVID-19 is likely going to be a seasonal virus like influenza. Wash your hands, avoid crowded areas, drink lots of water, eat your fruit and veggies. A vaccine is what, 1-2 years out? And likely will only be 50% effective for healthy individuals. It sucks for sure, and will have a definitive impact on the elderly and those suffering with other illnesses. That's where we should be focusing out attention. Cut off all contact to elderly and chronically ill. This whole things can be summed up with a meme... I will happily eat crow if I'm wrong and the world governments find a way to contain and eradicate COVID-19 from the planet.

Atrocious. I'm not sure that I quite understand the fixation on having "correct" and up to date statistics. What would governments in the US do differently if they had "good" statistics resulting from more prevalent testing? So, suppose that there was more testing being done of people who sought medical attention for respiratory disorders and it came back that there were 1,000 positive Covid-19 cases. If that were true, how many cases would there be that had not sought medical attention because the symptoms were not so severe? Perhaps it would be 1,000 more that wouldn't show up in the official statistics? And then what would the US government do with those numbers? Look, either this virus can be controlled and we can put the genie back in the bottle, or it cannot be controlled and the genie is on the loose. If you are in the camp that this thing has already spread so much that the world has lost control of it, then "good" statistics don't strike me as too useful. If you are not going to impose mandatory quarantines and if you are not going to suspend international travel, what are the remaining levers that governments can pull and how are better statistics actually useful? I guess that I'm in the camp that the genie is out of the bottle and that it's time to focus on managing a situation which is no longer preventable. But, maybe I'm alone in that camp? SJ It makes a huge difference. Investors are supposed to understand exponential growth, right? This means that time matters a lot and early interventions in the right places, in the right ways, giving correct info to population so they can act in the right way, etc, can have a tremendous impact on the rate at which things unfold. Since healthcare system capability isn't built for huge peaks, these delays can help it absorb increases much better and will result in saved lives. Also, vaccines and other drugs are being tested and developed, and delays help get more people across that line. In short, bungling the public health response will cost lives, could be your grand-parents or some friend who has a weaker immune system because they survived cancer or have asthma or whatever. Ironically doesn’t seem like too many people understand significance of exponential growth on a value investing site. So the greatest country on earth with the *greatest healthcare system* had a huge headstart on tackling this and bungled it up, far worse management than Canada or Europe and people on here asking “so what”. Lol. The only good thing this admin did was cutting off travel with China early which helped us have a delay in cases. Everything else was botched. What is "everything else"? Testing? That's not doing anything but delaying the exponential growth by maybe a month or two. If you have 1 individual who test positive and you quarantine 100 individuals believed to have come in contact with that person. You still have another 1000 (probably more) individuals who may have been exposed by the 100 during the 14 day incubation period. It's futile...If you miss a single infected individual it's already too late. The ONLY thing testing is good for at this point is alerting individuals that COVID-19 is in their immediate area. And by then you're likely 14 days too late... By your standards the best thing that could have possibly been done was on day 1 of COVID-19 being discovered is go into full nationwide quarantine. And that would likely be ineffective as well due to the long incubation period.

@Dalal Which country should we be looking at on how to handle this issue? Finland who has the lowest flu death rate of any country has 6 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 130 people recently in quarantine who were in contact with the original 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_Finland List of every country with COVID-19 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed-cases.html Fact is there is nothing any country can do. This is the flu on steroids and no modern country has been able to eradicated influenza. Even Finland suffered a flu epidemic in 2018. The fact is, this thing is going to run its course globally and there isn't a damn thing any government or healthcare system will be able to do about it.

Can anyone speak to the differences of how information is being spread now vs when SARS occurred? Social media certainly has changed the efficiency, amount, and lifecycle if news. But our (societies) appetite and demand for instant information has also changed and could be skewing (how much is or isn’t being withheld) this to an extent. Clearly information is being withheld, but how do we know info wasn’t being withheld in the past and it simply wasn’t made known that govt was doing this in the past? There is clearly pros and cons to both sides of the argument. As Greg said it’s a fine line to walk.

Michter's US*1 Kentucky Straight Rye Picked up a bottle this weekend. Worth a try if you like Rye.

By far the most level headed logical approach to this situation. Castanza, "Level headed" ? - Please look at the "/6" and read it again. Basically all countermeasures to contain this thing are now enabled. It's BS. Level headed as in not inducing panic. The facts we have are the facts we have. Speculation to the extreme doesn’t solve anything. I’m not saying this guy is 100% correct in his analysis. One thing I have learned in financial markets is that you want to panic before everyone else does. ??? Lol fair enough. But I would say being prepared is different than panicking.

By far the most level headed logical approach to this situation. Castanza, "Level headed" ? - Please look at the "/6" and read it again. Basically all countermeasures to contain this thing are now enabled. It's BS. Level headed as in not inducing panic. The facts we have are the facts we have. Speculation to the extreme doesn’t solve anything. I’m not saying this guy is 100% correct in his analysis.

By far the most level headed logical approach to this situation.

Dalal.Holdings, My point is merely, that every health care system in situations like this will eventually fail, if it's not saturated [by setup & design] by personal integrity, professionalism [professional independence [ <- ? ]] & intellectual honesty. I agree I doubt there are any healthcare systems designed to handle pandemic type events. I’d imagine if you go to Canada and US hospitals you will see layouts and bed capacities designed for average capacity. There are zero hospitals out there with 6k empty beds... Also, what country was prepared for this? You can certainly make the argument that the CDC should have had more funding etc. But the fact is countries are dealing with the unknown. Even if we look at flu vaccines, they are predominantly synthesized from the previous strain. That’s partly why they are only 50% effective for healthy individuals (according to the CDC). A covid-19 vaccine is unlikely to produce better results. Many experts have already said that this is impossible to contain on a GLOBAL scale. So to Dala’s point I think it’s ignorant to blame any individual healthcare system. On the US system I think the biggest issue is from HMB 1973 when insurance was tied to employers and only employers could claim tax deductions for costs. Add in the lawsuit aspects and your looking at massive cost inflation. Over testing as a result of lawsuit threats is an issue as well. My wife just gave me an example of a a baby she has been working with. It is being kept alive purely by machines. The vowels are completely dead and it has many other developmental issues. It’s been hospitalized for almost 200 days and probably won’t make it much longer. The parents are almost completely absent yet request the best treatment. The baby happens to be blind as well. So the hospital, wanting to avoid lawsuits had to provide corrective surgery to attempt to reverse the blindness. It was probably extremely expensive but if they didn’t, the parents would likely be able to sue on the grounds that they didn’t provide care to the furthest extent. Healthcare in the US is riddled with this kind of stuff. Anyways that’s far enough off topic.

What exactly is the draw to this particular nursing school (both from an investment and education perspective). What do they do that is so special? Nursing schools seem to be a dime a dozen. There are multiple schools in almost every metropolitan area. If you go to the local hospitals you will find the nursing staff is often highly comprised of local graduates who have done their precept there.

That’s a pretty interesting perspective. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-72000-covid-19-patients-finds-23-death-rate “Less deadly than SARS but more transmissible.” “Most cases are mild” For the most part, the only individuals dying from this are ones who are already critically ill or have some type of a respiratory or possibly cardiovascular issues.

I don’t get why people like Lagavulin. I had one bottle. My friend said it tastes like old socks. Lol You either enjoy the grass or it tastes like ass. I’m sure the premium you pay adds to the flavor profile :P

Nice, I have a few 1875s I’ve been aging for a year.

I’ve yet to try that. My friend’s (lives in Louisville) wife is doing some type of design work at Heaven Hill Distillery. Hoping to score a bottle off him, but I’m doubtful to say the least haha

Toured their Grand Rapids Brewpub a few years back...would love to make it over to Holland eventually.

I feel that every good forum needs a thread focused on your vice of choice. What better time to start a thread than during a potential crisis? COVID-19 turns out to be the beginning of the apocalypse. You are packing the family car to head for the hills and your wife tells you there isn't enough room for the whole liquor cabinet you were trying to stash under the rear seat. You have enough room for 1 bottle.... What are you drinking (smoking works too for the cigar aficionados)? Me: Lagavulin 16