Coronavirus

[Guest cherzeca]

Interesting perspective:

 

https://twitter.com/elonbachman/status/1234172256898732032?s=21

 

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. ???

 

One thing I have learned in financial markets is that you want to take advantage of people who panic. period.

[SharperDingaan]

Did you read/research anything here that convinced you to be a buyer on Monday?

Or did you think that you, and probably most others, are most likely just going to stay pat and see how this thing plays out?

Short-term, do nothing. Long-term, no idea

 

What do you think a homeless person, or a drug addict, is going to do, if/when they get the virus?

Is quarantine going to be effective - or is it more likely that they just wander around spreading the virus until they've either recovered, or died. The US is not a China, you can't quarantine millions on pain of force

 

With no one buying, and no reason to buy, why should the market not continue to fall?, and materially?  We all think the smart thing is to stay out. And if the smart thing is to stay out ... doesn't that also mean sell down our holdings, go to cash, and do it sooner versus later? Our shares contributing to the daily sell, and driving share prices still lower. And speculators not buying the underlying shares, but buying the options instead - both leveraging their short side gain, and materially reducing their risk? 

 

Welcome to 2020.

 

SD

 

 

[Guest cherzeca]

Did you read/research anything here that convinced you to be a buyer on Monday?

Or did you think that you, and probably most others, are most likely just going to stay pat and see how this thing plays out?

Short-term, do nothing. Long-term, no idea

 

What do you think a homeless person, or a drug addict, is going to do, if/when they get the virus?

Is quarantine going to be effective - or is it more likely that they just wander around spreading the virus until they've either recovered, or died. The US is not a China, you can't quarantine millions on pain of force

 

With no one buying, and no reason to buy, why should the market not continue to fal?, and materially?  We all think the smart thing is to stay out. And if the smart thing is to stay out ... doesn't that almost mean sell down our holdings, go to cash, and do it sooner versus later? Our shares contributing to the daily sell, and driving share prices still lower. And speculators not buying the underlying shares, but buying the options instead - both leveraging their short side gain, and materially reducing their risk? 

 

Welcome to 2020.

 

SD

 

is this directed to any "you" or person in particular, or just a generic homeless person or drug addict?

[John Hjorth]

Did you read/research anything here that convinced you to be a buyer on Monday?

Or did you think that you, and probably most others, are most likely just going to stay pat and see how this thing plays out?

Short-term, do nothing. Long-term, no idea

 

What do you think a homeless person, or a drug addict, is going to do, if/when they get the virus?

Is quarantine going to be effective - or is it more likely that they just wander around spreading the virus until they've either recovered, or died. The US is not a China, you can't quarantine millions on pain of force

 

With no one buying, and no reason to buy, why should the market not continue to fal?, and materially?  We all think the smart thing is to stay out. And if the smart thing is to stay out ... doesn't that almost mean sell down our holdings, go to cash, and do it sooner versus later? Our shares contributing to the daily sell, and driving share prices still lower. And speculators not buying the underlying shares, but buying the options instead - both leveraging their short side gain, and materially reducing their risk? 

 

Welcome to 2020.

 

SD

 

is this directed to any "you" or person in particular, or just a generic homeless person or drug addict?

 

If you have read the posts here on CoBF within the last 10 years from SharperDingaan [i have, - [u]everyone of them[/u]], you wouldn't ask.

[Guest cherzeca]

oh well, sorry, I dont need any welcomes to 2020 from any "you", including you

[John Hjorth]

Good for you.

[Gregmal]

Ventured out into the wild today. The wife and I took the kids to Prudential Center to see the Jurassic Kingdom Dinosaur Show. I literally would have bet 10-15% of my portfolio on seeing dozens of folks wearing masks. Or signs of something. Shockingly, there was absolutely nothing. Full house. Not one single mask, which is odd because around the NJ/NYC area, you always see the random couple folks with masks, even when theres nothing going on. If I die in a couple days I'll let you guys know. Definitely time to short then.

 

The idea that people are in Disney phase doesnt really seem to make sense to me. We live in an electronic world. Every single person has a cellphone/computer/tablet. Everyone is glued to their devices. Every place you turn this week, there is coverage, and an overwhelming amount. Does this mean this cant change? Of course not. It very easily could. But to act as if people just haven't gotten wind of it and when they do, the behaviors will change, at least to this point, isn't true, IMHO.

 

Next up, on the subject of news flow and continued positive tests. Sure, I get it. But at the same time, how much of this is baked in? Do we(although I joke about it) really believe that the market just shed 12% because we have 70 cases here in the US and that the next 100 or 1000 incrementally take off a similar or greater amount? Or has this precipitous decline factored in some of the things folks like Viking have mentioned here about futures waves of further cases? How much? Where is the equilibrium point and where is the pendulum now?

 

Also, I do think, after reviewing a lot of stuff this weekend, the stuff similar to what Liberty has posted is indeed, on a FACT BASED perspective, the most relevant and rational.

 

Further, if it is true China knew about this in December and canned it so as not to disrupt the New Year and festivals, dont we have to look at the timelines? Mass exposure occurred first week of January. Chinese cases erupted 2-3 weeks later. The big whammy was all the folks who travelled through there and went back home. Maybe they left weeks 2-3 and now spread first/second week of February. If this is reasonable, the arent we kind of at the turning point of when these things should go ballistic? Massive surges? Except these massive surges are hundred and in a few cases, thousands of folks... "Oh but they arent testing everywhere" is at first sound. But eventually people and symptoms get to see the light of day in most countries. Surely, if there are thousands, or tens of thousands, we'd be starting to hear about them soon? Or, maybe the evidence Liberty linked is possibly a little more accurate than all the fear driven news feeds.

 

Brings me to my next point. Both good and bad, there is SOOOO much misinformation going around its absurd. People arent drinking Corona beer. People are buying masks. People are supposedly afraid of catching it yet at the same time running to Costcos which are busier than during Thanksgiving week!

 

Million dollar question to me, if this, on a results basis, is less than or equal to the regular or flu, is this warranted? What are the odds it gets there. Given this broke out in December and you literally had a government make the decision to let tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of folks congregate and celebrate and gather, for the entire week! incubate the fuck out of this thing, and then go on their way, AND THEN take action, with the resulting fall out in the central location being 75k illnesses and 3k deaths? Do we really see any other nation approaching these numbers, with a multi week head start in terms of knowledge, and all this time to prepare? Again, I dont think so.

 

Now joking...havent companies like Boeing already determined the cost of a life is like $200K? So right now we should be at like $600M but instead we've lost 6 trillion or whatever and tomorrow stacking up for another 1,000 points down because like two dozen people died over the weekend and the US added 6 cases....please. Fear, panic, chaos. Thats what this is. Is it warranted. Eventually we'll find out. To me, 2018 was significantly scarier because there was no real reason for the crash. I spoke to my brother who is a doctor. He basically said, use common sense. Wash your hands, use sanitizer, avoid close contact with strangers and especially sick people. From an internal perspective, the approach is basically similar to the flu. Funny also, a friend who does a lot of work in genetics basically said the same thing that was said earlier in the thread; no one with a promising career in biotech wants to work on antibiotics or vaccines...the financial incentives just dont make sense. But eventually someone will hang a big enough carrot whenever a large enough problem arises, and wouldn't you know, they figure stuff out.

[Viking]

Greg, well laid out post. My experience is most Americans will only pay attention when it hits the US and in large numbers. Will they change behaviour with what is happening in China, South Korea, Italy or Iran? No.

 

Perhaps my spidey senses are wrong on this virus and the US escapes with few cases and little impact. If this is the case then investors are getting a fat pitch right now.

—————————-

 

I read the thread from page 1 (as i actually ignored it for most of the first 20 pages of posts). Crazy the speed at which everything has developed and the scale of the tragedy to those closely impacted. Hat tip to Muscleman for nailing the outbreak; hope the rest of your family is ok :-) I was in living in Toronto when SARS hit. Crazy what rational people start to think when in the eye of the storm.

[nspo]

Ventured out into the wild today. The wife and I took the kids to Prudential Center to see the Jurassic Kingdom Dinosaur Show. I literally would have bet 10-15% of my portfolio on seeing dozens of folks wearing masks. Or signs of something. Shockingly, there was absolutely nothing. Full house. Not one single mask, which is odd because around the NJ/NYC area, you always see the random couple folks with masks, even when theres nothing going on. If I die in a couple days I'll let you guys know. Definitely time to short then.

 

The idea that people are in Disney phase doesnt really seem to make sense to me. We live in an electronic world. Every single person has a cellphone/computer/tablet. Everyone is glued to their devices. Every place you turn this week, there is coverage, and an overwhelming amount. Does this mean this cant change? Of course not. It very easily could. But to act as if people just haven't gotten wind of it and when they do, the behaviors will change, at least to this point, isn't true, IMHO.

 

Next up, on the subject of news flow and continued positive tests. Sure, I get it. But at the same time, how much of this is baked in? Do we(although I joke about it) really believe that the market just shed 12% because we have 70 cases here in the US and that the next 100 or 1000 incrementally take off a similar or greater amount? Or has this precipitous decline factored in some of the things folks like Viking have mentioned here about futures waves of further cases? How much? Where is the equilibrium point and where is the pendulum now?

 

Also, I do think, after reviewing a lot of stuff this weekend, the stuff similar to what Liberty has posted is indeed, on a FACT BASED perspective, the most relevant and rational.

 

Further, if it is true China knew about this in December and canned it so as not to disrupt the New Year and festivals, dont we have to look at the timelines? Mass exposure occurred first week of January. Chinese cases erupted 2-3 weeks later. The big whammy was all the folks who travelled through there and went back home. Maybe they left weeks 2-3 and now spread first/second week of February. If this is reasonable, the arent we kind of at the turning point of when these things should go ballistic? Massive surges? Except these massive surges are hundred and in a few cases, thousands of folks... "Oh but they arent testing everywhere" is at first sound. But eventually people and symptoms get to see the light of day in most countries. Surely, if there are thousands, or tens of thousands, we'd be starting to hear about them soon? Or, maybe the evidence Liberty linked is possibly a little more accurate than all the fear driven news feeds.

 

Brings me to my next point. Both good and bad, there is SOOOO much misinformation going around its absurd. People arent drinking Corona beer. People are buying masks. People are supposedly afraid of catching it yet at the same time running to Costcos which are busier than during Thanksgiving week!

 

Million dollar question to me, if this, on a results basis, is less than or equal to the regular or flu, is this warranted? What are the odds it gets there. Given this broke out in December and you literally had a government make the decision to let tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of folks congregate and celebrate and gather, for the entire week! incubate the fuck out of this thing, and then go on their way, AND THEN take action, with the resulting fall out in the central location being 75k illnesses and 3k deaths? Do we really see any other nation approaching these numbers, with a multi week head start in terms of knowledge, and all this time to prepare? Again, I dont think so.

 

Now joking...havent companies like Boeing already determined the cost of a life is like $200K? So right now we should be at like $600M but instead we've lost 6 trillion or whatever and tomorrow stacking up for another 1,000 points down because like two dozen people died over the weekend and the US added 6 cases....please. Fear, panic, chaos. Thats what this is. Is it warranted. Eventually we'll find out. To me, 2018 was significantly scarier because there was no real reason for the crash. I spoke to my brother who is a doctor. He basically said, use common sense. Wash your hands, use sanitizer, avoid close contact with strangers and especially sick people. From an internal perspective, the approach is basically similar to the flu. Funny also, a friend who does a lot of work in genetics basically said the same thing that was said earlier in the thread; no one with a promising career in biotech wants to work on antibiotics or vaccines...the financial incentives just dont make sense. But eventually someone will hang a big enough carrot whenever a large enough problem arises, and wouldn't you know, they figure stuff out.

 

YES

[Spekulatius]

If one dead is only worth 200k, the 3000 killed in 9/11 would be worth a mere 600M. out in the value the asbestos contaminated WTC ($500M) and the goal cost would not have been more than $1.1B. Yet we spent more than 1000x that much to wage a war against terrorists and protect us against a second one.

 

I think you are forgetting about 2 things and both are related.

1) reflexivity - it does matter what actually happens, it matter what people think what may happen

2) tail risk - with a new thing like this, nobody knows exactly what it going to happen. So preparing for the worst and hoping for the best actually makes a lot of sense.

 

We know already that there is going to be an economic slowdown which probably kills profit growth this year if not worse. Otherwise we might have seen a 5% if not higher profit growth, so a 5% hit is entirely rational. If you assume a worse scenario, the current 10%+ correction from the top,  bringing us merely back to last October’s Levels not irrational. So while there is some irrationality about the selloff, there was quite some irrationality about the rise before that, so it’s not clear to me that the market  is overly pessimistic or too optimistic.

 

The only thing I am sure about is they the volatility is going to go down. If I had to guess, there are going to be nasty surprises in I’d individual stocks that miss their forecast by a mile in the next round of earning releases, which makes it hard to handicap what to buy in affected sectors or those that are economically sensitive.

[Gregmal]

Spek, that is kind of where I think the truth lies here. Most of us, and pretty much every media outlet, are chasing the wrong story and mistakenly equating the sell off to the virus. I think its mixed. I agree that perhaps "coronavirus" masked "warranted 5-10% pullback". Now because of the coronavirus=market selloff conflation, we've got a little extra juice behind the selling which is exacerbated by fear. Which simply leads us back to where everything begins and ends when investing, buy good quality companies at reasonable valuations.

 

On a separate note, I just touched base with a lifelong friend. Lives in Pittsburgh and married a FOB Chinese girl who's entire family lives in Luoyang China. His direct words "her family and basically their entire community was on mandatory lockdown for a couple weeks. Everything was fine and they just got the go ahead to get back to work a couple weeks ago. Business as usual now". More anecdotal stuff, take it as you wish.

[jobyts]

A message I got from a friend of mine, in our local bay area whatsapp group.

 

"Friends, looks like people are in a panic shopping. Milk, egg, bread, water etc are out of stock in several Costcos.

 

If u r low in inventory, please restock it"

[Guest cherzeca]

"Everything was fine and they just got the go ahead to get back to work a couple weeks ago. Business as usual now". More anecdotal stuff, take it as you wish."

 

Shanghai market up 3% today

[A Dhandho Investor]

Here in Belgium, with only 2 confirmed cases, most companies seem to take action since the one week school vacation is over. In our company, people that return from high risk areas like Northern Italy are asked not to return to the office and work from home, even if they don't show symptoms. Also, a financial institution where I have a meeting scheduled next Friday already informed me that the meeting cannot take place at their premises because they want to prevent a lock-down of their activities due to the virus.

 

Edit: 8 confirmed cases it is.

[Liberty]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYTQI2DvAfo

 

Prof. Marcel Salathé (GHI, SV) on Coronavirus

[Spekulatius]

Spek, that is kind of where I think the truth lies here. Most of us, and pretty much every media outlet, are chasing the wrong story and mistakenly equating the sell off to the virus. I think its mixed. I agree that perhaps "coronavirus" masked "warranted 5-10% pullback". Now because of the coronavirus=market selloff conflation, we've got a little extra juice behind the selling which is exacerbated by fear. Which simply leads us back to where everything begins and ends when investing, buy good quality companies at reasonable valuations.

 

On a separate note, I just touched base with a lifelong friend. Lives in Pittsburgh and married a FOB Chinese girl who's entire family lives in Luoyang China. His direct words "her family and basically their entire community was on mandatory lockdown for a couple weeks. Everything was fine and they just got the go ahead to get back to work a couple weeks ago. Business as usual now". More anecdotal stuff, take it as you wish.

 

Do you think a lockdown in the US is priced in? I don’t think so.  A couple weeks of lockdown would do considerable damage to the economy, considering how large a percentage of US lives paycheck to paycheck. US is most likely underreported  because so few people have been tested. The hospitals my wife works (nurse in dialysis) in here still don’t have any protocol for this or tests done on as far as she is aware of.

 

Europe is getting worse though and markets continue to drop. Italy may be past containment with so many new cases and most likely this is going to jump to other countries in the same area.

[Viking]

If you do not test for the virus you will not find any cases. If you do very few tests you will find very few cases. I think the math is pretty easy to understand. The US is not yet testing for this virus (in any meaningful way). The article below says the US has done a total of 459 tests (the article is dated Feb 28). Now that might be the right number for the US. Perhaps there was no need to test many people in the US during the month of February.

 

I think in the month of March we will see much more testing buy my guess is it will take a few weeks to ramp up (the testing). As more testing is done we will better understand what the virus is doing in the US but it will likely be a couple of weeks before we have an accurate picture.

 

The United States badly bungled coronavirus testing—but things may soon improve

By Jon Cohen Feb 28, 2020

- https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/united-states-badly-bungled-coronavirus-testing-things-may-soon-improve

 

“Speed is critical in the response to COVID-19. So why has the United States been so slow in its attempt to develop reliable diagnostic tests and use them widely?”

 

“The rollout of a CDC-designed test kit to state and local labs has become a fiasco because it contained a faulty reagent. Labs around the country eager to test more suspected cases—and test them faster—have been unable to do so. No commercial or state labs have the approval to use their own tests.”

 

“In what is already an infamous snafu, CDC initially refused a request to test a patient in Northern California who turned out to be the first probable COVID19 case without known links to an infected person.”

 

“The problems have led many to doubt that the official tally of 60 confirmed cases (as of Feb 28) in the United States is accurate. “There have been blunders, and there could be an underlying catastrophe that we don’t know about,” says epidemiologist Michael Mina, who helps run a microbiology testing lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “It’s been very complicated and confusing for everyone with almost no clarity being provided by the CDC.”

[jfan]

Having connections within the healthcare industry in Ontario, hospitals will be moving to test all travelers that return outside of Canada with fever or respiratory symptoms for COVID-19 within the upcoming week.

 

The mortality rate rises after the age of 50 years old with increasing rates with age.

 

The recommendation is for self isolation for 2 weeks at home in a separate room from other family members.

 

Its spread is primarily through droplet and a safe distance is about 10 feet.

 

The acute stress will be primarily at the hospital levels to accommodate the potential influx of people that get sick and require hospitalization for support and figuring out how to test the sheer number of people in an efficient manner.

 

There certainly will be a huge impact on work productivity especially if the number of people get sick and require isolation. There is some rumor to suggest that the virus is heat labile which will hopeful limit the effect with seasonal change.

[perulv]

Just som anecdotal facts/numbers from my country, Norway: There are currently 25 confirmed cases, 7 of them in second largest city (where I live. Around 250k citizens or so.  71 persons tested). The first one was a week or so ago. None critical il or dead. Today in a press conference they said both that they know how the virus transferred to these 7 persons, and that "this is probably the start of an epidemic, and it is unlikely that we will be able to stop it".

 

My personal experience/impression is that people talk about this, it is on top of the news all the time, but most people are not very concerned or "panicky". Schools are open as usual, but the kids are told to be extra careful with hand hygiene, touching their face, etc. Which imho makes sense, as the virus seem to have very little effect on children. Many companies seem to have a "if you feel slightly ill, work from home!" policy.

 

I tried to buy hand-sanitizer today, but they were sold out everywhere. At the biggest hospital in the country a doctor was confirmed with corona _after_ having been at work a couple of days after returning from Italy and feeling ill. This is of course a complete fck-up. I addition to all the patiens that might have been exposed to this, a lot of employees in the hospital is now in home-isolation (this is the default thing here. If you are not very ill, you stay at home to avoid spreading it). For most of us, (healthy people below 60 or something like that), this might be the biggest consequence: Not that you get seriously ill by the virus itself, but that so many of societies functions (doctors, bus-driver, person-that-drives-the-food-to-the-store, person-that-fixes-that-power-line-when-a-storm-makes-a-tree-fall-over-it, person-that-fixes-that-atm, and so on) might be severely disrupted by people being in isolation due to the virus.

 

My feeling, and one should probably not make investment decisions based on feelings, are that this must have devastating consequences for the economy. Who would go on holiday to another country right now, when quarantines and virus-threats can "pop up" at any time? And how many things are disrupted in some way or another, either by the factory in Asia being shut down, or someone in the supply chain, store, or the customer themself being stuck at home? Either because they have the virus, or simply to avoid crowds. As I said, this is just my current thinking, probably not rational. But on the other side, if a city with 250k people, no subway and plenty of space (but closer to Italy though) has 7 infections, how many are really in the US?

[Liberty]

 

"What Actually Happens If You Get Coronavirus?" by AsapScience

 

Found via @tobi

[Liberty]

[LC]

 

Atrocious.

[Gregmal]

Well, for one, thats just one of the minuscule differences between America and China. Chinese say, "sit your ass down, for the good of the country, we are handling this, how we see fit, if you dont like it, tough". In America, we over analysis the fuck out of every single little data point and demand things like total number of tests administered just to further perpetuate headlines and conspiracy theories. As we already saw, is it really in anyone but the medias interest to peddle fear and chaos? As we just saw last week, way too many folks watching too much Walking Dead.

[Kaegi2011]

Just som anecdotal facts/numbers from my country, Norway: There are currently 25 confirmed cases, 7 of them in second largest city (where I live. Around 250k citizens or so.  71 persons tested). The first one was a week or so ago. None critical il or dead. Today in a press conference they said both that they know how the virus transferred to these 7 persons, and that "this is probably the start of an epidemic, and it is unlikely that we will be able to stop it".

 

My personal experience/impression is that people talk about this, it is on top of the news all the time, but most people are not very concerned or "panicky". Schools are open as usual, but the kids are told to be extra careful with hand hygiene, touching their face, etc. Which imho makes sense, as the virus seem to have very little effect on children. Many companies seem to have a "if you feel slightly ill, work from home!" policy.

 

I tried to buy hand-sanitizer today, but they were sold out everywhere. At the biggest hospital in the country a doctor was confirmed with corona _after_ having been at work a couple of days after returning from Italy and feeling ill. This is of course a complete fck-up. I addition to all the patiens that might have been exposed to this, a lot of employees in the hospital is now in home-isolation (this is the default thing here. If you are not very ill, you stay at home to avoid spreading it). For most of us, (healthy people below 60 or something like that), this might be the biggest consequence: Not that you get seriously ill by the virus itself, but that so many of societies functions (doctors, bus-driver, person-that-drives-the-food-to-the-store, person-that-fixes-that-power-line-when-a-storm-makes-a-tree-fall-over-it, person-that-fixes-that-atm, and so on) might be severely disrupted by people being in isolation due to the virus.

 

My feeling, and one should probably not make investment decisions based on feelings, are that this must have devastating consequences for the economy. Who would go on holiday to another country right now, when quarantines and virus-threats can "pop up" at any time? And how many things are disrupted in some way or another, either by the factory in Asia being shut down, or someone in the supply chain, store, or the customer themself being stuck at home? Either because they have the virus, or simply to avoid crowds. As I said, this is just my current thinking, probably not rational. But on the other side, if a city with 250k people, no subway and plenty of space (but closer to Italy though) has 7 infections, how many are really in the US?

 

Thank you for this.  Even if it's anecdotal, it seems like there is a lot of helpful information that's being gathered and shared in your city.

 

I'm beginning to wonder whether it makes sense to play a bit of a barbell options strategy on this.  It seems that there are two likely scenarios from here:

 

1) It'll have a major impact on the global economy.  If so, the cascading impact won't be seen/felt for a bit (months?) to come, and downside is potentially quite a bit lower.

2) It's a nothing burger.  World mostly goes on with a few stumbles, but nothing really long lasting nor severe.  However, the central banks aren't going to pull the support all that quickly given that they want to protect downside risk.  So now we have a situation where not much has changed since the beginning of the year, except the 10Y treasuries are like 60bps lower... I'd have to imagine stocks go up a decent amount if for no other reason to close the yield gap...

 

Assuming an approximation of yield drop similar in earnings yield, that's ~3.5-4x PE expansion, so ~20% upside potential.  ON the downside, we could have earnings and multiple contraction, which I think will be a lot more than 10%...

 

Looking at SPY Sept 18 options, the 280 puts are ~11.60 mid, and the 340 calls are ~3.50 mid.  Since the puts are super expensive, I can also sell the same expiry puts at 250 strike to recoup ~5.75.  SO if I go long the 280 puts, long 340 calls, and short the 250 puts, that's ~ $9.35 all in cost for the trade.  Breakeven on upside of ~$350 and downside at ~$270, but downside capped at $30 bucks gain. 

 

Thoughts?  Anyone else think this will be more binary at the tails than in the middle in terms of market outcome? 

 

 

[Kaegi2011]

Well, for one, thats just one of the minuscule differences between America and China. Chinese say, "sit your ass down, for the good of the country, we are handling this, how we see fit, if you dont like it, tough". In America, we over analysis the fuck out of every single little data point and demand things like total number of tests administered just to further perpetuate headlines and conspiracy theories. As we already saw, is it really in anyone but the medias interest to peddle fear and chaos? As we just saw last week, way too many folks watching too much Walking Dead.

 

Um...  I for one would like to know how the virus is spreading (or not), for my own and my family's health, if for no other reason.  How is this controversial?