Liberty

For those who think only those who die are a problem, here's what this kind of hospitalization can be like even for those who survive: Also: Fauci: "you've got to understand that you don't make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline. So you've got to respond, in what you see happen. And if you keep seeing this acceleration, it doesn't matter what you say. One week, two weeks, three weeks -- you've got to go with what the situation on the ground is." https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/politics/anthony-fauci-coronavirus-timeline-cnntv/index.html

Based on his way of operation so far (everything good is because of him, everything bad is someone else's fault who he then hardly even knew), here's what I think his plan is: He says he wants to reopen. When he can't because governors and cities and companies stay shut, he blames them for the bad economy, says it's not his fault, says they just do it to hurt him, so it shouldn't be held against him in election. Runs election as underdog who's being attacked by all, and all his great plans for the country would happen if not for all the obstruction. If the measures taken work and we beat this thing, he says "see, I was right, it wasn't a big deal, we went through this for nothing, if you had listened to me, everything would've been fine." (like those saying Y2K was no big deal without realizing it was exactly because of all the mitigation efforts... it's anti-vaxxer logic -- "who needs vaccines, there are so few infectious diseases these days?"). If we're lucky (heavy seasonality? great therapeutics?) and can actually reopen quickly after a peak, he also takes credit for having known it (even though it was a pure gamble with the lives of others). If things get really bad, he says he always knew it and it's all the fault of governors/mayors/deep state/democrats/etc who are incompetent/evil, as he's already been doing ("I always knew it was going to be a pandemic" "Cuomo could've bought more ventilators years ago" (everybody could've bought more of everything, that's not even wrong.. but he's not exactly bragging about his administration shutting down epidemic units, right, if he had so much foresight..?)). He sets things up so that the has something to say whatever happens, even if he's actually not trying to figure out what's best to do to beat this thing as quickly and painlessly as possible, because that may be inconvenient to his election and businesses and he doesn't have the intellectual tools to understand complex problems -- his skills as a salesman/BS artist don't help with pandemics.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-live-updates-china-cases-spains-death-count-surpasses-china.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/25/coronavirus-white-house-health-advisor-fauci-says-us-needs-to-be-prepared-for-second-cycle.html

Well, not totally--some businesses won't survive. But if we literally get everyone infected in 2 months and all those infections resolved in 3 months, then there really isn't anything to worry about (economically speaking) after that. I think the faster this happens, the smaller the economic second-order effects, and the more businesses will survive. Even if bad stuff remains economically, it's much easier to, say, do bridge financing after it's clear the pandemic has run its course and customers have returned to the business. I'm putting aside the millions of deaths as not mattering that much to the economy, and not having that many second-order effects. (Also, I'm not suggesting this is what should happen. I'm saying, "if I were a psycho trying to do nothing but maximize economic outcomes and taking nothing else into account, that's what I'd do.") If you're looking for the least economically damaging, it's the non-stupid one, which is what south-korea and singapore and taiwan has done: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

Total US casualties in WWII were 1,076,245 according to Wikipedia. Guy thinks this is just some band aid that needs to be ripped off and the economy would be fine.. Second order effects would destroy it. Healthcare system would be destroyed, mortality for the young would be way high because they couldn't get care, etc. And even if you don't die, if you end up in the hospital and ICU and have permanent damage, that's economic too.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/25/coronavirus-update-new-york-hospitals-battle-outbreak.html

More likely. The optimal outcome for the economy is to get everyone sick over the next 2-3 months, let all the old people die (they don't contribute much to the economy anyway), and then have life revert to normal when everyone has herd immunity. Life revert to normal after that? lol

There's a global pandemic going on, people are dying, suffering, but it's still all about him: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242905328209080331?s=20 Decisions never explained from data or logic, just whatever his wishful thinking of the moment is and what’s best for him. And in what should be a unifying moment where we all pull together, he’s somehow managed to make it super political and divisive. He's more likely to end it now, since his hotels need customers even more. Unintended consequences.

Defending one thing that one person did doesn’t mean defending everything they ever did. seems pretty obvious to me, but I guess it needs to be said. Shorting something and then telling people why it’s bad is just the exact reverse of going long some thing and then telling people why it’s good. It’s then up to the listener to make up their minds if your analysis makes sense and you have credibility. There are a good longs, and there are bad longs, and there are good shorts, and there are bad shorts. Lumping everybody together by category doesn’t make sense. In any case, he wasn’t even short, he was just hedged, which is what hedge funds are supposed to do. Losses elsewhere and his portfolio compensated for the gain.

https://pershingsquareholdings.com/pershing-square-capital-management-l-p-releases-letter-to-investors/

3-min Ackman interview from March 23: "At the time I made my remarks, none of the states were in a shelter-in-place mode.."

Tim Cook:

So when Tepper does an interview and talks about being "balls to the walls", or "Druck" talks about what he's buying or about going short, or Buffett writes an op-ed about buying stocks or Malone talks about "how good a business X or Y is", is that manipulation trickery mode? Ackman just did what every guest on these shows do. His interview happened to be particularly dramatic because it was a particularly dramatic time, right as a pandemic is exploding but right before it seemed most governments were really taking it seriously and shutting things down. If I had been given a microphone at that time, I'd probably have said pretty similar things, to be honest. That's what the data was showing, and I was worried about my parents and in laws and uncles and aunts and friends with health troubles and friends working in healthcare... I know there's strong social conventions about never going out on a limb and never appearing to overreact and all that, but those conventions hinder good decision-making in times like these, because we're all looking around and waiting for others to tell us it's time to do something, instead of thinking for ourselves, and lose precious time, so voices that actually tell you how bad it is and how bad it'll be if we don't act are very valuable.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-mortality-risk

People talk their book all the time. I don't see the issue with it. Now if you made listening to it illegal it would go all away pretty quickly. ;D Yeah, people are only mad when people they don't like make money. At least he always said what he was doing, and nothing he said was incorrect, the best way to fight pandemics is a short but tight shutdown, followed by aggressive containment once you know that the shutdown has worked, rather than do a half-assed shutdown that leaves the disease growing exponentially on a daily basis for months and overwhelms and destroys a country's healthcare sector making mortality much worse. His thesis was that the country had to take things seriously and do shutdowns, so when he saw the signs that this was happening, it didn't make sense to stay hedged, no? The things he had CDSes on were probably already down like 80-90% by the time he got on TV, you think he's going to pretend to be worried in the hope of a few percents more? Or maybe Occam's razor is that he's really worried about his father and mass-scale avoidable suffering and about politicians not acting quickly enough in a situation where every day matters. People act as if Ackman's caused the 30% drop while in fact his impact was probably barely noticeable for a couple hours on one day. Those who want to be angry at lack of transparency should look at Eric Trump telling people to go all-in on the stock market in early March (he has since deleted that Tweet), or at Trump's businesses and debts and assets that we still don't know much about, no tax records or transparency there, no idea what he and his family and his friends are buying or selling based on prior knowledge of policies and tweets and such. If someone's going to talk their book, I like to be able to look at that book, at least.

https://time.com/5805368/will-coronavirus-go-away-world-health-organization/

Taleb: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/uk-coronavirus-policy-scientific-dominic-cummings?CMP=share_btn_tw

Leadership in time of historical crisis: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242777450662244352?s=20

Ackman; https://pershingsquareholdings.com/pershing-square-capital-management-l-p-releases-letter-to-investors/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-second-wave-surge-hong-kong-china-uk-cases-a9420876.html

The opposition party can certainly be blamed for doing nothing for 3 years - nothing - not governing but destroying the government. Are the states with the largest CV problem (NY, CA, IL, WA) to be blamed because they are run by Democrats? Of course not - it's Trump's fault! You understand that epidemics thrive on population density and international travel and that in the US the densest places that are the most diverse tend to vote for one party over another? Trump shuts down pandemic protection agencies, Trump calls the virus a hoax and no big deal for weeks (WEEKS in a daily exponential problem), Trump waits a long time to use the federal resources (corps of engineers, using private companies to build materials, etc), his supporters, clearly taking their cues from him, purposefully shake hands and attend rallies to "show there's no virus", yet here you are, trying to blame the party that's out of power.. Man, you sound totally delusional.

For as much as Trump hates the NYTimes, this is basically what he was advocating yesterday. One thing they mentioned during yesterday's press conference was gradually bringing people back to work by age category. First the under 40s, then the under 60s, and all the while protecting the over 70s. People seem to misunderstand that even if you don't die from this virus, it can get quite bad, and even healthy young adults (not that Americans are that healthy on average) that won't die can end up in the hospital taking space from people that would otherwise be saved, or have permanent damage from the virus (lungs, heart), or they can unknowingly infect people in their social circles/family units that are more at risk of death, or even just that they in turn end up taking even more medical resources when there's few to spare, etc. This is still exponential. We need the R0 to be under 1, ideally way under. Not keep it above 1 until hundreds of thousands are dying and millions have been extremely sick and a large unknown number has died from OTHER preventable/curable causes because the healthcare system was destroyed, and how long to rebuild a destroyed healthcare system? You re-open for containment AFTER you have majorly suppressed it, like in SK or China. You don't put an arbitrary deadline on it one week into it without any data on whether the current half-assed measures worked or what the hospital situation will be then. That's BONKERS. I'll keep reposting it because more people need to read it, but this is the way to do it with the least pain, the least economic damage: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

Aaand I'm out. Finally.

“ Dr. Fauci now up and emphasizing again that anyone whose been in New York (last 14 days?) must self-isolate. Says "We understand that people want to get out of New York right now" but... they should self-isolate.”