Liberty

Thread on serum antibody tests:

Reddit comment:

I don't get your point. Probably because you don't have one. The criticism was never that Trump should've seen the future in January and done everything with perfect foresight, and so if the democratic candidates didn't get it perfectly back then either, then Trump can't be blamed. That's a total strawman that you made up, as is your habit. It's also insane to claim that candidates have all the info that a sitting president has. When you're the president, there's someone in charge of a certain area (terrorism, public health, cybersecurity, whatever) that comes to you and briefs you, they don't go to candidates or journalists. The idea is that stuff with the federal response started going wrong in January with the data they had at the time, kept going wrong in February with the data they had at the time, and kept going wrong in March, and is still going wrong today, and the US infection curve is clearly one of the worst in the world and the president has mostly been improvising/bullshitting through this whole thing, mostly caring about the impact on his reelection.

Good news everyone, the recession is over, Ivanka created 15 million jobs!

Tracker updated daily on COVID19 research: https://covid19primer.com/ Also: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/07/coronavirus-relief-trump-removes-inspector-general-overseeing-2-trillion-package.html

What a word thinker you are. Conversely, if they had talked about it, you still wouldn't be happy, because you don't care about what you're saying here, just about trying to score points. Meanwhile, Trump was praising China and Xi: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1220818115354923009?s=20 The president runs the CDC/FDA/DHS/HHS/NSA/CIA/CENTCOM/etc, he gets briefed on everything that's going on, he's the one in charge, the one governing. He picks his advisors and secretaries, and if they're incompetent and don't bring stuff up to him or manage it well, it's also his fault. Candidates in a party's primary don't. Governors either. Saying that others' didn't do the president's job is pointless. They're not the president. They have a different job. But I'm pretty sure that if any rando off the street was currently president, his son-in-law wouldn't be running a pandemic response, though. They probably would've also studied up enough on the situation to not make the most dumbass comments about the virus at every press conference.

Ideologues plugging their talking point at any chance. To the hammer, everything looks like a nail. Am I advocating for more government? Where? How about effective government for the things where you need it? If you need a military, would you rather an incompetent, corrupt one or a well-run one? How about the same for pandemic response? Hard to argue that pandemic situations (which is all about rapid collective response/coordination) would be better without government, or with a much smaller government, when even the republicans are falling over themselves to spend 2.2 trillion (so far) to keep the country from falling into the deepest depression since the 1930s.. asking for 250bn more today. Glad about the CDC. Still, funding's not everything, you also have to be smart enough to understand what your experts are telling you (can you imagine Trump reading a report before making his mind? He just goes by what his handlers tell him, or what he sees on cable TV), or at least surround yourself with people smarter than you are and listen to them, and act rationally on it, rather than be surrounded by sycophants who tell you what you want to hear because you get angry at anyone who doesn't, and then spend weeks on wishful thinking (it's air-tight, it's just the flu, it'll go away soon, it's a few cases, etc) and blaming others. I mean, they also have NASA and NOAA telling them about global warming, but they don't listen to that either.

2020 AGM video (posted April 7, recorded feb 25):

Yeah, it's the federal government that is in charge of the CDC, HHS, DHS, FDA, the national stockpile, army corps of engineers, etc.. They're the ones who are supposed to protect the country from what's happening right now as a first line of defense, and then coordinate resources and do clear national messaging/planning during the crisis, as well as coordinate with international allies and suppliers. Why are taxpayers paying for all that if not for times like these? The failure of the federal government is what is leading to individual governors having to pick up the slack as best as they can, but they don't have the federal bodies dedicated to this, and 50 of them can't help but work at cross-purposes and cause even more problems when they all try to bid on the same supplies at the same time. It's the whole point of being a federation. Meanwhile, the president's failed-developer son-in-law is running point on a pandemic, because when you're highly corrupt, you always put loyalty above competence, because someone who's competent but not entirely loyal will turn on you and expose you, so you can't have that...

Did you just have an aneurysm?

Nah, he's not doing this one for money, he's just gambling that if it turns out to work, he can say he knew and pretend to be the savior, and if it doesn't, he'll quickly move on and gaslight us about that too. Nothing to lose for him, only for people dealing with the pandemic.

Background on Hydroxychloroquine: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/hydroxychloroquine-trump-coronavirus-drug

I know we're kind of giving them a pass for the extraordinary situation we find ourselves in, but when I'm told as a Prime member that it will take 1 month to deliver an in-stock item because they are prioritizing other shipments, it's not helpful at all. If they dropped it in the mail I could have it in a week. I've actually shifted my online purchasing away from Amazon in the past 2 weeks. I agree - although they seem to be doing underpromise/overdeliver on this. I ordered a replacement light switch (we have prime) that was in stock, normally would be either 1 or 2 day delivery. They said a month because of prioritizing other items. Not in a rush and their price was good so still bought it. Had it in 2 days. Not surprised, but they might want to adjust their wording, I've ended up ordering elsewhere. They have a banner at the top with a FAQ about COVID shipping: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=GDFU3JS5AL6SYHRD&_encoding=UTF8&ref_=covid19_UPNAV_Gateway

I certainly hope that we're starting to peak in more places. A lot of places have been taking stronger measures for about 3 weeks, so this is about the right time to be seeing the impact. From the start, every epidemiologist has been saying: If it ends up looking like we over-reacted, it means measures worked, not that we over-reacted. It's not too hard to run a scenario in your head where there's no shutdown and you get a couple more weeks of very high daily exponential growth and instead of what we're seeing now, you have a few more million cases and things are quite a bit worse. But we're far from out of the woods. I know everyone is starved for good news so when we get some it feels really different, but things are far from over. Let's not botch this phase of things and really get this thing under control.

Thread, that’s a press conference in the middle of a historic crisis:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-s-use-medical-stockpile-veers-past-administrations-leaving-state-n1177786

https://corporate.charter.com/newsroom/charter-statement-regarding-plans-to-permanently-raise-minimum-wage-to-20-dollars-per-hour-over-next-two-years

Yes, I remember it being very explicit, close to those words in one, if not many, of their letters.

"UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in intensive care after coronavirus condition ‘worsened’" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52192604?at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_custom4=2444197A-783B-11EA-8FE0-C319FDA12A29

I've enjoyed this piece by Mauboussin, some good insights about how underrated the impact of noise on decision making generally is: https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/articles/bin-there-done-that_us.pdf

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-live-updates-ontario-reporting-309-new-cases-including-13-additional-deaths

Two people's experience of the "mild" case of the virus, still pretty brutal:

Houston:https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/houston-hasn-t-reported-surge-coronavirus-cases-its-hospitals-tell-n1175291 That's one thing we're likely to see with the uneven testing around the country... Some places may stay under the radar for a bit and then seem to come out of nowhere because suddenly they start testing more.

Reminds me a little of Leucadia, with the big positioning for inflation and commodities, before the JEF exit..