ERICOPOLY

Once 60%-70% of 40 yr olds get COVID-19, those that will die will die, and then for several years thereafter the life expectancy of the survivors will increase.

Totally! It's like a 40 yr old should panic about the odds of reaching age 42.

I hope someday what happened to racism and sexism happens to ageism. People are people, with inherent worth and dignity, they are not worth less because their bodies are sick and frail and they have had many birthdays. Now I know you said "economically", but the tone still got to me. Maybe you didn't mean it to come across this callous with the lives of people who often already have tough lives. No, I had intended to use a clinical tone to deal with that age cohort. I have several family and friends who are in that cohort and I fully expect to lose more than a few from Covid. When that happens, it will be sad for me and those around me. But, when dealing with the aggregate question, you need to remain distant, clinical, and ideally, objective. SJ The 80+ yr old people that it is killing in that age group (the weakest) had a higher risk of dying this year (and the next year, and the next) than the actuarial table tells. I believe we are talking about less than 2 years of life expectancy being lost for people 80+ who contract COVID-19.

Here are mortality rates for any given age: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html Before accounting for COVID-19, an octogenarian was facing anywhere from a 4.2% - 11.6% chance of dying in any given year. All I'm saying is I was already fearful for my father as it was. The Chinese CDC is saying that COVID-19 is killing 14.8% of 80+ yr olds (and this number may be high). I am looking at this as basically knocking two years off of their life expectancy, and that might be exaggerated due to its propensity to kill the weakest.

I'm not leaning towards selling it. This isn't the Spanish flu which primarily targeted people in their 20s,30s,40s and largely left the children and elderly alone. The level of panic will subside once the general public comes to understand this. I am fearful for my parents who are in their 70s and 80s (my father has had pneumonia in the past 6 months) and I have two close social contacts with stage 4 cancer undergoing chemotherapy. However, I don't fear for myself, my wife or my kids . (I remarried in January).

Her argument appears to be that Boeing is in trouble because (she argues) the AA bond yield is dropping. My question to her is, how much larger is the bond portfolio after accounting for the attendant capital gains that come hand in hand with dropping yields?

Funny, ERICOPOLY, as you were a big influence to me the past few weeks. When you made a bag back in the day spending $30k on options or whatever it was, you saw that the world was not what it seemed. Italy is totally locked down. Iran is in chaos. China was on full lockdown and still largely is. South Korea is doing well and testing, and will still have a brutal time. Oil fell 25% in a day, and treasury buyers are flocking to safety. The US is so clearly following the path of the worst hit places, that by the time we get around to quarantines our problems will be enormous. Italy had 3 confirmed cases a few weeks ago! Look what happened to Asian tourist locations after SARS. This is 10x as big and still growing extremely fast. We are just getting started. I actually can't believe the market LACK of reaction the past few weeks. I am in the camp that every single one of us will get this virus in the coming years if we live full lives. I have had the flu several times and most of us have. We will call it cold, flu, and coronavirus season and many people will still ignore the free annual vaccine program. I just don't see how all of that translates to WFC and BAC at tangible book. Why? Get a grip Mr. Market.

Today was a tremendous buying opportunity. This thing is worse than flu, but not by all that much. In many ways it's not as scary as flu because children are not dying. I thought today of searching for a largish population where everyone was tested for the virus and where healthcare access was poor. Here it is: "Of the 705 passengers who tested positive for the virus on the Diamond Princess, six died -- which is a death rate of less than 1%. All of the patients who died onboard were more than 70 years old." https://abcnews.go.com/Health/early-mortality-rates-covid-19-misleading-experts/story?id=69477312

I'm not impressed by GM: 400 mile of range with a 200 kWh battery and the car isn't even in production. Compare that to the 390 miles of range that Tesla currently gets on production Model S with a 100 kWh battery, a battery of only 1/2 the size of GM's. Tesla's upcoming Roadster has a range of 620 miles, and the largest Cybertruck configuration will be 500 miles.

I was at Costco today and it seemed like most people were wiping their carts down. I bet the number of deaths from the common flu will decline, and those lives saved won't go reported as an offsetting headline.

To be clear, I whine only about the particular criticism of Trump/Pence. I don't believe governments are capable of responding much better, no matter the leadership. I believe it is poor planning to rely on governments, no matter how enlightened, to protect us. Leadership: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-rallies/index.html "These were set up a long time ago," the President said in the Oval Office when asked if it was a good idea to proceed with his planned rally on Monday evening in North Carolina.

Priceline has $36 per night for a Carnival 5 night cruise to the Bahamas.

Trump has a conflict of interest. You know the hotel cancellations are hurting his family financially.

The volatility premium in the 2022 LEAPS really isn't all that high. You can leverage a common stock WFC position by anywhere up to 2x using at-the-money LEAPS and then reasonably anticipate the dividend from the common stock to pay off the margin used to buy the LEAPS by the time they expire. Then once expiry hits, two years have passed and the stock is quite likely considerably higher and you can most likely replace the $40 put super-cheap, due to skewness, when the shares are significantly higher than today (relative to today's cost) if you wished to continue the leverage. And no, I'm not a professional, this is not financial advice, and I consider it to be speculative and you can lose 100% of your investment.

There are other ways to expand the country’s testing capacity. Beyond the CDC and state labs, hospitals are also able to develop their own tests for diseases like COVID-19 and internally validate their effectiveness, with some oversight from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But because the CDC declared the virus a public health emergency, it triggered a set of federal rules that raises the bar for all tests, including those devised by local hospitals. So now, hospitals must validate their tests with the FDA — even if they copied the CDC protocol exactly. Hospital lab directors say the FDA validation process is onerous and is wasting precious time when they could be testing in their local communities. https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc-coronavirus-covid-19-test

It took 11 days to diagnose her with COVID-19 after she checked herself into the Vacaville hospital (later transferred to UC Davis). That's a lot of hospital personnel exposed to her for 11 days without a quarantine. And what about the contact she had with the community before checking herself in? Doctors at the University of California, Davis Medical Center, where the patient is being treated, said testing was delayed for nearly a week because the patient didn’t fit restrictive federal criteria, which limits tests only to symptomatic patients who recently traveled to China. “Upon admission, our team asked public health officials if this case could be COVID-19,” UC Davis said in a statement. UC Davis officials said because neither the California Department of Public Health nor Sacramento County could test for the virus, they asked the CDC to do so. But, the officials said, “since the patient did not fit the existing CDC criteria for COVID-19, a test was not immediately administered.” https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc-coronavirus-covid-19-test

Over the past week, there were only 200 test kits issued for all of California. For a population of 40 million people. New York has the same problem. If you don't look, you don't find cases, it's just that simple.

The coronavirus is just a 'hoax': the "new hoax" from the Democrats. I wonder if you can guess who said that today.

I drove 45 miles today, returning to my starting point having expended 12.2 kWh. That's a 313 mile range, based on a new 85 kWh battery. The car is rated for 265 miles of range when new. I recently read that regenerative braking captures only about 60% of the energy, so I tried to drive without using any braking at all where possible. It made a big difference. I had the climate control disabled, and the sunroof open. It was close to 80 today.

Trump says that the flu has a higher mortality rate than the coronavirus. The market should rally now.

5% dividend yield now. This week, WFC is outperforming USB, JPM, BAC, C. But not SPY.

Honestly I think you guys are overreacting. There isn’t a President past, present, nor future who wouldn’t have some type of media control. Out of fairness I agree that Pence (and Trump) probably are not the best to handle this situation. But who is? You’re dealing with the unknown and I trust Pence to punt to individuals who know what they’re doing. Donny isn’t going to take this back under his wing (until it’s almost solved and he’s looking for credit) :P Also you’re being a bit dishonest with what Pence said regarding tobacco. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mike-pence-smoking/ Back to the corona virus....I think the key metric everyone wants to know is mortality rate...my guess is that’s driving the majority of the fear. Especially when you hear and see videos of “people being burned alive.” The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Worse than what China reported, but I’m personally doubtful of the bubonic plague hysteria. If it turns out to be as bad as some say, well I’ll be at the family cabin The Snopes article says this: Although Pence did state that “smoking doesn’t kill,” he buttressed his argument by saying that only a third of smokers died of smoking-related illnesses Similarly, using the same reasoning, it could be said that Coronavirus doesn't kill because most people survive it. And handguns don't kill because 80% of people shot by handguns survive. Anyways, Pence was appointed seemingly at the same time as Trump was contradicting the CDC on coronavirus. So it's a bad omen IMO that an official filter has been put into place (The White House). It appears to be a direct response to what the CDC said. https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/trump-gives-incoherent-briefing-on-coronavirus-contradicts-cdc-79522373801

Health officials, scientists must get statements vetted by White House: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/report-white-house-locking-down-messaging-from-federal-government-on-coronavirus-79563845972 Doesn't the Chinese government also do this? So Pence becomes the filter through which information must flow, and Pence is the guy who penned an article stating that tobacco doesn't really kill people as claimed by the left wing media.

I give credit to Trump for this: Trump dismantling of Obama era disease response leaves US exposed https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-dismantling-of-obama-era-disease-response-leaves-us-exposed-79447621625

Postscript: During a panic-stricken breakdown over the Ebola threat in 2014, Trump lashed out at then-President Barack Obama for appointing Ron Klain to oversee the federal response. The Republican argued at the time via Twitter, "Obama just appointed an Ebola Czar with zero experience in the medical area and zero experience in infectious disease control. A TOTAL JOKE!" Five-and-a-half years later, we know two things. First, Klain was the right person for the job and he handled the emergency perfectly. Second, Trump just appointed a coronavirus czar who has "zero experience in the medical area and zero experience in infectious disease control." https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-pence-unfortunate-choice-oversee-coronavirus-response-n1144021