Coronavirus

[compoundinglife]

 

Sorry to hear. Hope things work out fine for you and your family.

 

Thanks. We are doing great and not losing any sleep. Just staying informed exercising reasonable caution.

+1

Yeah, I'd +1 that too.

 

I don't want to diminish what's going on. This thing is definitely a nasty bug. But the reaction to it is definitely weird.

 

I lived in Toronto during SARS (I actually worked on the subway during the crisis) and I lived in London during H1N1 (England was one of the harder hit places). But I don't remember anything like what is going on right now. There was a general level of concern (I started to cough in my elbow) but life pretty much went on as usual. I don't remember being any shortage of masks in the heath care sector. People definitely didn't stockpile masks. The markets certainly didn't care because we were all fucked at that point anyway.

 

I just don't get why things are so much different this time.

 

Yeah, I don't take any of the discussion here as diminishing whats going on. I think its a healthy discussion. I just figured it would be useful to provide context about what it is like to be here. I don't know what it is like elsewhere but it has been very interesting to observe locally and in my social media bubbles.

 

[compoundinglife]

 

Sorry to hear. Hope things work out fine for you and your family.

 

Thanks. We are doing great and not losing any sleep. Just staying informed exercising reasonable caution.

+1

Yeah, I'd +1 that too.

 

I don't want to diminish what's going on. This thing is definitely a nasty bug. But the reaction to it is definitely weird.

 

I lived in Toronto during SARS (I actually worked on the subway during the crisis) and I lived in London during H1N1 (England was one of the harder hit places). But I don't remember anything like what is going on right now. There was a general level of concern (I started to cough in my elbow) but life pretty much went on as usual. I don't remember being any shortage of masks in the heath care sector. People definitely didn't stockpile masks. The markets certainly didn't care because we were all fucked at that point anyway.

 

I just don't get why things are so much different this time.

 

Social media

 

This

 

Yes, if you frequent a site like reddit it is easy to see how social media has informed the response vs previous situations. There are tons of people asking if they should be worried about their fevers, coughs etc... And plenty of people responding saying "it sounds like you have it!", "you need to get tested!". Where as in the past you might just call your doctor and they would say, call us if it gets bad, your fine.

[rb]

 

Sorry to hear. Hope things work out fine for you and your family.

 

Thanks. We are doing great and not losing any sleep. Just staying informed exercising reasonable caution.

+1

Yeah, I'd +1 that too.

 

I don't want to diminish what's going on. This thing is definitely a nasty bug. But the reaction to it is definitely weird.

 

I lived in Toronto during SARS (I actually worked on the subway during the crisis) and I lived in London during H1N1 (England was one of the harder hit places). But I don't remember anything like what is going on right now. There was a general level of concern (I started to cough in my elbow) but life pretty much went on as usual. I don't remember being any shortage of masks in the heath care sector. People definitely didn't stockpile masks. The markets certainly didn't care because we were all fucked at that point anyway.

 

I just don't get why things are so much different this time.

 

Social media

 

This

So basically the world would be a better place if we burned facebook and twitter to the ground and erased all trace of their existence...

[DooDiligence]

 

Sorry to hear. Hope things work out fine for you and your family.

 

Thanks. We are doing great and not losing any sleep. Just staying informed exercising reasonable caution.

+1

Yeah, I'd +1 that too.

 

I don't want to diminish what's going on. This thing is definitely a nasty bug. But the reaction to it is definitely weird.

 

I lived in Toronto during SARS (I actually worked on the subway during the crisis) and I lived in London during H1N1 (England was one of the harder hit places). But I don't remember anything like what is going on right now. There was a general level of concern (I started to cough in my elbow) but life pretty much went on as usual. I don't remember being any shortage of masks in the heath care sector. People definitely didn't stockpile masks. The markets certainly didn't care because we were all fucked at that point anyway.

 

I just don't get why things are so much different this time.

 

Social media

 

This

So basically the world would be a better place if we burned facebook and twitter to the ground and erased all trace of their existence...

 

Include Fox news & you get a hard yes from me.

 

I stopped visiting Twitter more than a month ago with no ill effects.

Never had a FB page & don't want one.

Echo chambers are bullshit.

 

edit: I like it here on CoBF because I hear civil discourse from bulls & bears on most of what I own. That's all that matters. Politics & religion? Bah.

[Dalal.Holdings]

The thing about once in a hundred year epidemics is they occur on avg once in a hundred years...

 

During such epidemics, it's easy to default to "this is like H1N1/SARS why is everyone freaking out". Look back on H1N1/SARS and you will understand why this one is different.

 

It must have been very hard in late 2007 and early 2008 to not dismiss rumors of housing market problems as overblown, and maybe buy Bear or Lehman because they've sold off so heavily and look cheap. Black swans are easy to dismiss in the early innings. Problem is, this virus is spreading globally much more rapidly and reality will soon catch up to those who think it's no big deal. Est mortality is 3.4% so will not be possible to ignore.

[Liberty]

 

[Dalal.Holdings]

 

 

Why fret? We’ve made America great again!

 

U.S. cases up to 230, more than 100% in 3 days. Almost like there is a lack of testing leading to falsely low counts...still under testing and more delays in test kit rollouts...

[Liberty]

 

 

Why fret? We’ve made America great again!

 

U.S. cases up to 230, more than 100% in 3 days. Almost like there is a lack of testing leading to falsely low counts...still under testing and more delays in test kit rollouts...

 

[Guest cherzeca]

"The CDC predicts that at least 12,000 Americans will die from the flu in any given year. As many as 61,000 people died in the 2017-2018 flu season, and 45 million were infected."

 

Why, exactly, are we all obsessing about covid19?

 

China? maybe a bioweapons lab? maybe a wet animal market?  who cares.  this covid19 seems to me to be very much a nonevent, except for the panic. 

 

Why the panic?

[Gregmal]

Dont stop Dalal from his world class reporting! We are still awaiting the cell phone pic of the parabolic chart showing 6k Korean cases...

 

This thread was quite useful and informative up until a few days ago but has basically evolved into veiled politics inspired whining. Which is cool of course, but not really useful for anything investment related.

 

Im curious(seriously) to see the evolution in Canada, particularly BC as well. Doesn't seem to be all that crazy yet. Same goes for Japan and a few other places.

 

Of course, for just about any place, you can find a scary news piece or Twitter feed(most often linked to people supporting similar political causes).

[beerbaron]

"The CDC predicts that at least 12,000 Americans will die from the flu in any given year. As many as 61,000 people died in the 2017-2018 flu season, and 45 million were infected."

 

Why, exactly, are we all obsessing about covid19?

 

China? maybe a bioweapons lab? maybe a wet animal market?  who cares.  this covid19 seems to me to be very much a nonevent, except for the panic.

 

Why the panic?

 

Partly because of this graph:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak#/media/File:Illustration_of_SARS-COV-2_Case_Fatality_Rate_200228_01-1.png

 

I'm 40 years old and I see my parent every day. If I catch this and my parent get it from me, there is 1 chance out of 6 one of them will die from it.

 

For flu there would be 1 out 60 chances my parent would die from it. One order of magnitude bigger.

 

BeerBaron

[Spekulatius]

"The CDC predicts that at least 12,000 Americans will die from the flu in any given year. As many as 61,000 people died in the 2017-2018 flu season, and 45 million were infected."

 

Why, exactly, are we all obsessing about covid19?

 

China? maybe a bioweapons lab? maybe a wet animal market?  who cares.  this covid19 seems to me to be very much a nonevent, except for the panic. 

 

Why the panic?

 

We are concerned because the a) mortality rate is 3.4% vs <0.1% for the flu, b) COVID-19 is more infectious than the flue, c) there is no vaccine.

 

So you have the potential to infect more than 35M people that got infected with the flu with a 34x higher mortality rate. I think you can run the numbers yourself Or you can just have a hunch and stick your head into the sand.

[StubbleJumper]

Dont stop Dalal from his world class reporting! We are still awaiting the cell phone pic of the parabolic chart showing 6k Korean cases...

 

This thread was quite useful and informative up until a few days ago but has basically evolved into veiled politics inspired whining. Which is cool of course, but not really useful for anything investment related.

 

Im curious(seriously) to see the evolution in Canada, particularly BC as well. Doesn't seem to be all that crazy yet. Same goes for Japan and a few other places.

 

Of course, for just about any place, you can find a scary news piece or Twitter feed(most often linked to people supporting similar political causes).

 

 

There are a number of people in this thread who are emotionally invested in this issue. Personally, in the past, when I have become emotionally invested in certain discussions, I have found it valuable to withdraw from discussions on the internet for 7 or 10 days as a cooling off exercise.  A little distance does a lot of good.

 

 

SJ

[Dalal.Holdings]

Dont stop Dalal from his world class reporting! We are still awaiting the cell phone pic of the parabolic chart showing 6k Korean cases...

 

This one is from my computer, not my cell. Sorry to disappoint.

[Dalal.Holdings]

Dont stop Dalal from his world class reporting! We are still awaiting the cell phone pic of the parabolic chart showing 6k Korean cases...

 

This thread was quite useful and informative up until a few days ago but has basically evolved into veiled politics inspired whining. Which is cool of course, but not really useful for anything investment related.

 

Im curious(seriously) to see the evolution in Canada, particularly BC as well. Doesn't seem to be all that crazy yet. Same goes for Japan and a few other places.

 

Of course, for just about any place, you can find a scary news piece or Twitter feed(most often linked to people supporting similar political causes).

 

 

There are a number of people in this thread who are emotionally invested in this issue. Personally, in the past, when I have become emotionally invested in certain discussions, I have found it valuable to withdraw from discussions on the internet for 7 or 10 days as a cooling off exercise.  A little distance does a lot of good.

 

 

SJ

 

Nah, it's my education & training as engineer + physician that has me concerned. But not a bad idea about stepping away for a while like I did in the TSLA thread. After all, if I am right, I can come back and LMAO again.

 

So yes, peace out and see you in 30 days.

[StubbleJumper]

Dont stop Dalal from his world class reporting! We are still awaiting the cell phone pic of the parabolic chart showing 6k Korean cases...

 

This thread was quite useful and informative up until a few days ago but has basically evolved into veiled politics inspired whining. Which is cool of course, but not really useful for anything investment related.

 

Im curious(seriously) to see the evolution in Canada, particularly BC as well. Doesn't seem to be all that crazy yet. Same goes for Japan and a few other places.

 

Of course, for just about any place, you can find a scary news piece or Twitter feed(most often linked to people supporting similar political causes).

 

 

There are a number of people in this thread who are emotionally invested in this issue. Personally, in the past, when I have become emotionally invested in certain discussions, I have found it valuable to withdraw from discussions on the internet for 7 or 10 days as a cooling off exercise.  A little distance does a lot of good.

 

 

SJ

 

Nah, it's my education & training as engineer + physician that has me concerned. But not a bad idea about stepping away for a while like I did in the TSLA thread. After all, if I am right, I can come back and LMAO again.

 

So yes, peace out and see you in 30 days.

 

 

Do not laugh your ass off, whether it turns out either way.  There are plenty of bright people who have different takes on this situation characterised by uncertainty.  Some people's assumptions will turn out to be wrong, ex post, but that does not make them bad analysts or bad people.

 

Peace.

 

 

SJ

 

[tng]

We've entered a world of social media induced panic. Pessimism sells and generates clicks and shares. People who don't react overly pessimistically will look like idiots if this ends up being pretty bad and they may face significant career risk (imagine being the guy who tells everybody to calm down and then a lot of people die next week). Everybody on the Internet will rail on you if you are wrong on the optimistic side. It's simply safer to be overly pessimistic. The WHO interpreted the data in the most pessimistic way possible with their 3.4% death rate estimate. They are assuming that the tested population (which heavily skews toward very old, sick people who show up at the hospitals) is representative of the general population. It's safer to be pessimistic. There is better job security to be pessimistic, and there is always that inherent bias in believing in the case that results in more funding/investing into your field or industry or the result that maximizes the importance of your field or industry.

 

Maybe this will be really bad and the excessive pessimism is warranted. But I don't think people have fully thought through what it means if the pessimism is unwarranted. Some people are calling for mass quarantines and shutting down all public transit systems (and for all we know, it's way too late for that anyways). A lot of people will lose their jobs and many small businesses will go bankrupt. Spending habits are already being modified. How do we measure the human cost to this? Nobody can quantify the damage / side effects (depression, suicide, alcoholism, etc) that will happen to those in industries or fields that would be decimated by extreme actions. From the point of view of those people, it doesn't seem worth it, especially if this ends up being more mild than expected. It's very easy for someone like me who can work from home to scream for draconian quarantines that maybe increases my probability of survival by 0.01% while definitely destroying the jobs and businesses that can't operate remotely. I don't envy the people who have to make these decisions.

[Gregmal]

Dont stop Dalal from his world class reporting! We are still awaiting the cell phone pic of the parabolic chart showing 6k Korean cases...

 

This thread was quite useful and informative up until a few days ago but has basically evolved into veiled politics inspired whining. Which is cool of course, but not really useful for anything investment related.

 

Im curious(seriously) to see the evolution in Canada, particularly BC as well. Doesn't seem to be all that crazy yet. Same goes for Japan and a few other places.

 

Of course, for just about any place, you can find a scary news piece or Twitter feed(most often linked to people supporting similar political causes).

 

 

There are a number of people in this thread who are emotionally invested in this issue. Personally, in the past, when I have become emotionally invested in certain discussions, I have found it valuable to withdraw from discussions on the internet for 7 or 10 days as a cooling off exercise.  A little distance does a lot of good.

 

 

SJ

 

Nah, it's my education & training as engineer + physician that has me concerned. But not a bad idea about stepping away for a while like I did in the TSLA thread. After all, if I am right, I can come back and LMAO again.

 

So yes, peace out and see you in 30 days.

 

So, yea... what exactly will you "LMAO" again in regards too? Total US cases eclipsing China? Total deaths eclipsing China? Another 10-15% market drop? Biden leading in the polls?

 

Thats the thing, you're really just pandering to the apocalypse crowd without really saying anything useful. Then whining covertly about how much you dislike Trump and think he s incompetent. OK, cool.

 

Everyone can go find charts. Everyone can find news clips saying its a big deal, and its no big deal. Especially so on Twitter. Everyone can imagine the contagion effect. You arent really saying anything useful or of relevance really to anything. You went to cash? Why? If it s such a no brainer this will blow up, there are 100% surefire shorts out there. Or pair trades. Or is asking you to commit to something verifiable too much to ask? Other than of course, corona cases in the US will rise...

[Dalal.Holdings]

Dont stop Dalal from his world class reporting! We are still awaiting the cell phone pic of the parabolic chart showing 6k Korean cases...

 

This thread was quite useful and informative up until a few days ago but has basically evolved into veiled politics inspired whining. Which is cool of course, but not really useful for anything investment related.

 

Im curious(seriously) to see the evolution in Canada, particularly BC as well. Doesn't seem to be all that crazy yet. Same goes for Japan and a few other places.

 

Of course, for just about any place, you can find a scary news piece or Twitter feed(most often linked to people supporting similar political causes).

 

 

There are a number of people in this thread who are emotionally invested in this issue. Personally, in the past, when I have become emotionally invested in certain discussions, I have found it valuable to withdraw from discussions on the internet for 7 or 10 days as a cooling off exercise.  A little distance does a lot of good.

 

 

SJ

 

Nah, it's my education & training as engineer + physician that has me concerned. But not a bad idea about stepping away for a while like I did in the TSLA thread. After all, if I am right, I can come back and LMAO again.

 

So yes, peace out and see you in 30 days.

 

So, yea... what exactly will you "LMAO" again in regards too? Total US cases eclipsing China? Total deaths eclipsing China? Another 10-15% market drop? Biden leading in the polls?

 

Thats the thing, you're really just pandering to the apocalypse crowd without really saying anything useful. Then whining covertly about how much you dislike Trump and think he s incompetent. OK, cool.

 

Everyone can go find charts. Everyone can find news clips saying its a big deal, and its no big deal. Especially so on Twitter. Everyone can imagine the contagion effect. You arent really saying anything useful or of relevance really to anything. You went to cash? Why? If it s such a no brainer this will blow up, there are 100% surefire shorts out there. Or pair trades. Or is asking you to commit to something verifiable too much to ask? Other than of course, corona cases in the US will rise...

 

Lol. Yes my posts are just charts and I do not say anything useful. Growth in cases is all the same. Exponential, multiplicative growth is not a useful concept to understand. This admin/CDC has handled this marvelously and there is no point anyway to taking precautionary steps. We will surely have a vaccine thru all clinical trials and safe and effective and mass produced (just like our testing kits) very soon. The U.S. has a fabulous healthcare system with great bang for your buck that needs no reformation. See? A whole lot of nothing unlike your posts with valuable insights.

 

My puts in RCL and NCLH from a week ago are doing ok, and I plan on holding for 30d so you can track that to see if I am full of it. Not that you have any reason to believe me because I did not disclose it at the time. Oh well.

 

See you in 30d.

 

Edit: I don’t like shorting companies because they have real employees, but the puts are a bet on what happens w this outbreak. Unlike TSLAQ, I will not engage in trashing those companies. It has nothing to do with their individual businesses (other than what I saw on their balance sheet/cash flows stmnt), but their industry as a whole. Would feel bad to see the co’s fail, but it’s a real possibility. Hope I am wrong about the virus and all of this, but it is looking less and less likely...

[Viking]

Here is an update from earlier today from Washington State which is the hardest hit state. Here is what the Governor had to say during the Q&A part (starting about 26:30 min). Just the facts...

 

-

- We need to accept medical reality. This disease, this virus is going to spread across county lines. We’re gonna do everything humanly possible to slow that. All of us have some role in that. But as this virus spreads we have to recognize that is a reality and should not cause us run panicking in the streets.  It should cause us to re-double our efforts to slow the transmission of this virus.

 

- Question: “are you ready to order large gatherings to be cancelled”

- Answer: Not at this moment. It is within our authority to do so and we will make that decision when we decide that the benefits to the state of reducing that social contact merit the dislocation and economic dislocation and personal freedom of people. We have not made that decision to date. One of the things we’ve learned is that before one makes a legally binding decision like that it is better to depend on voluntary decisions so people buy into this community decision. We are at this stage of this challenge where we’re encouraging people to be internally thinking about the right decision. … But there could come a time where we make a decision that makes that legally blind and that is an authority that is granted to the governors office. … If we make that decision it will be based on a very thorough evaluation of the science and epidemiology. I’ve been involved personally in this review for days now looking at the medical literature from around the world. …We’re really looking at a deep dive into what we think would be most effective in reducing the transmission rates that has the minimum impact of peoples lives. 

- For those who think that delaying or pausing some of this activity is premature or an undo thing to think about we just need to look at Wuhan and what it eventually meant for their society where they had to come to full stop.

- So acting even before we see mass casualties may be the most effective thing to do and we can all be leaders in that regard. So we’re asking people to look ahead a few weeks and not want to be in the position of Wuhan China.

 

- Question: Can China be used as an example and are quarantines an option? (my paraphrase)

- The world health organization commission the study of what was done in China and I’ve read the summary of that study. I hope to be talking to the person who actually wrote that summary… so yes we are looking at what effectively worked in China and other places as well. Now why this is a difficult decision, if I just share my burden with you, …the science can’t inform you that if you do “X” you’ll get a “Y” percentage in the rate of transmission.  There really isn’t the science that is that acute. What we know is that when you reduce social interactions within 6 feet you reduce the risk in any social interaction of the transition of the disease. That we do know. 

- So things that reduce those numbers of interactions do reduce the rate of transmission. That we know. But the difficult thing is to decide which part of our society or our economy it makes sense to put on pause.  we don’t have algorithm to tell us that. So we had to make the best judgement we can and that’s were doing.

 

[LC]

We are concerned because the a) mortality rate is 3.4% vs <0.1% for the flu, b) COVID-19 is more infectious than the flue, c) there is no vaccine.

 

Quoting this because it is exactly the point.

 

China fatality rates in the 2.3% range, Italy in the 3.4% range. Regardless of which you select the COVID-19 is much deadlier than the flu.

 

I am not sure why some very intelligent people are not acknowledging this difference.

 

- So acting even before we see mass casualties may be the most effective thing to do and we can all be leaders in that regard. So we’re asking people to look ahead a few weeks and not want to be in the position of Wuhan China.

This goes to the general point on poor leadership coming from the White House.

 

Some people are whining that all this criticism of our government's response is "making this political". If you can't criticize a government's response to a viral pandemic, what can you criticize? The color of their (bio)suit jacket? Please, put your big boy pants on today.

 

By any judgment, the federal government's efforts have already failed (in the previous few weeks where almost nothing was done) and are currently failing for reasons previously mentioned related to quarantines, communications, and testing.

 

CDC needs to determine federal procedures under the assumption that we are 2-3 weeks in the future and Trump's administration needs to put those procedures in place yesterday. Testing kits need to be distributed on a much larger scale. Twitter rants cannot be the primary method of communication and Mike Pence needs to be replaced as the point-of-contact with someone who has medical knowledge.

[Gregmal]

Dont stop Dalal from his world class reporting! We are still awaiting the cell phone pic of the parabolic chart showing 6k Korean cases...

 

This thread was quite useful and informative up until a few days ago but has basically evolved into veiled politics inspired whining. Which is cool of course, but not really useful for anything investment related.

 

Im curious(seriously) to see the evolution in Canada, particularly BC as well. Doesn't seem to be all that crazy yet. Same goes for Japan and a few other places.

 

Of course, for just about any place, you can find a scary news piece or Twitter feed(most often linked to people supporting similar political causes).

 

 

There are a number of people in this thread who are emotionally invested in this issue. Personally, in the past, when I have become emotionally invested in certain discussions, I have found it valuable to withdraw from discussions on the internet for 7 or 10 days as a cooling off exercise.  A little distance does a lot of good.

 

 

SJ

 

Nah, it's my education & training as engineer + physician that has me concerned. But not a bad idea about stepping away for a while like I did in the TSLA thread. After all, if I am right, I can come back and LMAO again.

 

So yes, peace out and see you in 30 days.

 

So, yea... what exactly will you "LMAO" again in regards too? Total US cases eclipsing China? Total deaths eclipsing China? Another 10-15% market drop? Biden leading in the polls?

 

Thats the thing, you're really just pandering to the apocalypse crowd without really saying anything useful. Then whining covertly about how much you dislike Trump and think he s incompetent. OK, cool.

 

Everyone can go find charts. Everyone can find news clips saying its a big deal, and its no big deal. Especially so on Twitter. Everyone can imagine the contagion effect. You arent really saying anything useful or of relevance really to anything. You went to cash? Why? If it s such a no brainer this will blow up, there are 100% surefire shorts out there. Or pair trades. Or is asking you to commit to something verifiable too much to ask? Other than of course, corona cases in the US will rise...

 

Lol. Yes my posts are just charts and I do not say anything useful. Growth in cases is all the same. Exponential, multiplicative growth is not a useful concept to understand. This admin/CDC has handled this marvelously and there is no point anyway to taking precautionary steps. We will surely have a vaccine thru all clinical trials and safe and effective and mass produced (just like our testing kits) very soon. The U.S. has a fabulous healthcare system with great bang for your buck that needs no reformation. See? A whole lot of nothing unlike your posts with valuable insights.

 

My puts in RCL and NCLH from a week ago are doing ok, and I plan on holding for 30d so you can track that to see if I am full of it. Not that you have any reason to believe me because I did not disclose it at the time. Oh well.

 

See you in 30d.

 

Edit: I don’t like shorting companies because they have real employees, but the puts are a bet on what happens w this outbreak. Unlike TSLAQ, I will not engage in trashing those companies. It has nothing to do with their individual businesses (other than what I saw on their balance sheet/cash flows stmnt), but their industry as a whole. Would feel bad to see the co’s fail, but it’s a real possibility. Hope I am wrong about the virus and all of this, but it is looking less and less likely...

 

So your investments/wagers, again, using today as the judgment point, are puts on cruise ship operators. RCL for instance you're paying $9 for an April at the money put. I suppose we shall see.

 

Even if bearish, as I detailed earlier, there's probably better ways to play it. $PRTY, $CBL, $CHK are donuts corona or not. Much faster if this picks up. But at least we're getting somewhere and discussing ways to make money.

 

Good luck. As with Tesla, I have no problem giving credit when I'm wrong. Thats the beauty of the market.

[Libs]

Good site for up-to-date coronavirus statistics:

 

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/#case-growth-outchina

[SnarkyPuppy]

We are concerned because the a) mortality rate is 3.4% vs <0.1% for the flu, b) COVID-19 is more infectious than the flue, c) there is no vaccine.

 

Quoting this because it is exactly the point.

 

China fatality rates in the 2.3% range, Italy in the 3.4% range. Regardless of which you select the COVID-19 is much deadlier than the flu.

 

I am not sure why some very intelligent people are not acknowledging this difference.

 

- So acting even before we see mass casualties may be the most effective thing to do and we can all be leaders in that regard. So we’re asking people to look ahead a few weeks and not want to be in the position of Wuhan China.

This goes to the general point on poor leadership coming from the White House.

 

Some people are whining that all this criticism of our government's response is "making this political". If you can't criticize a government's response to a viral pandemic, what can you criticize? The color of their (bio)suit jacket? Please, put your big boy pants on today.

 

By any judgment, the federal government's efforts have already failed (in the previous few weeks where almost nothing was done) and are currently failing for reasons previously mentioned related to quarantines, communications, and testing.

 

CDC needs to determine federal procedures under the assumption that we are 2-3 weeks in the future and Trump's administration needs to put those procedures in place yesterday. Testing kits need to be distributed on a much larger scale. Twitter rants cannot be the primary method of communication and Mike Pence needs to be replaced as the point-of-contact with someone who has medical knowledge.

 

Well said

[pterhx]

We are concerned because the a) mortality rate is 3.4% vs <0.1% for the flu, b) COVID-19 is more infectious than the flue, c) there is no vaccine.

 

So you have the potential to infect more than 35M people that got infected with the flu with a 34x higher mortality rate. I think you can run the numbers yourself Or you can just have a hunch and stick your head into the sand.

 

And it's not just us, but epidemiologists seem concerned as well.

 

I've been following Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist from Harvard, on Twitter to try to cut through to the experts' opinions.

 

To piggyback off of your post with some more numbers:

 

1. COVID-19 is more infectious than the flu, but there's still a lot of uncertainty on how far it'll spread. Lipsitch estimates 20-60% of the adult population will be infected. The range is wide because of uncertainty around the R0. He specifies adults because at the time of his writing, there weren't many cases involving kids.

 

 

2. You can't just multiply the above estimate by 2-3% because that's the estimate for the Case Fatality Rate (CFR). The Infected Fatality Rate (IFR) is certainly lower because of all the mild infections that go unreported.

 

 

3. There's a great deal of uncertainty over the CFR. The 3.4% estimate comes from WHO, but experts are also looking at South Korea's 0.6% CFR as a more accurate measure. The reason is South Korea is testing the crap out of everyone with 140,000 people tested and 6k cases found. And the more thorough the testing, the more accurate the true CFR is (as opposed to only testing severe cases).

 

I'm dumb when it comes to this stuff, but it seems to me that 0.6% is very much a lower bound. They get this by dividing 40 deaths by 6000 current cases. But when a) cases grow exponentially, and b) deaths lag by say a week, you're going to underestimate the CFR by quite a bit due to exponential denominator growth while the numerator bakes.

 

 

4. There's worry that this will overwhelm the healthcare system. The flu infects 10-50m people each year in the US. Lipsitch's estimates puts COVID-19 infecting 40-125m in the US. Are we ready for the load?

 

My dumb opinion is that Korea's 0.6% might also be low also because cases haven't saturated the system like in Wuhan. And that maybe we can slow down COVID-19 by social distancing so that never happens.

 

 

All in all, COVID-19 might infect 2-4x more people than the flu and kill at a rate 6-30x higher.