caulfield12

Reading list from last couple months... Superforecasting Little Fires Everywhere The Three Body Problem (trilogy) The Cactus League Detour Fall of Shannara Fentanyl, Inc. Latticework (value investing) The Hot Zone The Coming Plague American Dirt Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan, Jr. latest Lost...James Patterson

Yes, we’ve been hearing this since January...yet no substantiated formal academic study.https://www.france24.com/en/20200328-can-the-coronavirus-infect-someone-twice https://eand.co/capitalism-is-literally-killing-america-4e05fee5ffa7 The White House backed out of a deal to manufacture ventilators because the price tag was too high. Go ahead and guess. Ready? It was…one billion dollars. Sound like a lot? Too much? For ventilators for…the entire country…in the middle of a pandemic…that’s already spiraling out of control? Then think about this. Jeff Bezos is worth $113 billion. Zuck, about $60 billion. Warren Buffett, about $70 billion. Are you seeing my point yet? Let me make it clearer. Either Bezos or Zuck or Buffett — or any number of penny-ante mega-billionaires — could pay for all the ventilators America needs right now, and not even blink. Not even think twice. Take Bezos, for example. That one billion dollars to supply the country with ventilators is less than one percent of his net worth.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-violence-erupts-in-china-as-people-try-to-leave-coronavirus-stricken/ Here’s another way to think of it, Greg. Imagine if the fear of people from Lawrence or KS going outside the state to Nebraska or Missouri or Oklahoma was so high THREE months into this that scenes like the above took place as you attempted to cross borders into those states. These are migrant workers with huge debts (no checks from government or any compensation) who were forced to remain inside with their families for ten weeks and are now so desperate to go back to work. They didn’t receive rent or credit card deferrals. Even then, despite the national govnt signing off on it, other provinces are fearful enough you have confrontations like the ones unfolding because everyone in China still fears anyone/anything to do with Hubei. Then, upon arriving to a factory...there’s nothing to manufacture because there’s no demand. The rest of the world is on fire and previous orders have been cancelled or delayed. Or the company that’s previously ordered as one of your most reliable customers is now bankrupt. Call it a double whammy, but this is reality for many here.

Greg, it’s not really a big deal. The last time I went outside the apartment ONCE was January 20th or 21st to play badminton. We lost our scheduled CNY holiday trip to Shanghai before it started, and, thankfully, didn’t end up quarantined two weeks indoors there by govnt officials or forcibly locked indoors with medieval metal devices like some...God knows how they even received food, through the windows I guess. I do it for my son and also it’s only possible because my wife goes out to shop for everyone, but that has been reduced to picking up deliveries at the front gate with goggles, mask and gloves. Sometimes everyone in our apartment complex receives donations of vegetable and fruits like oranges and apples. You have to read read read, watch movies and t.v. shows and do things like Legos or puzzles. Look at it as an opportunity to learn something new, like more about the stock market or investing. I think I’ve read 20-25 new books, something like that. Obviously following the news, but watch different channels like BBC, CCTV 13, Fox, CGTN, BBC, MSNBC. Lots of time with the ipad and playing with my son. Spent weeks eating only dumplings, noodles and fried rice (just rice and eggs.) Almost no beef, pork, shrimp or chicken until recently. Then teaching online and trying to deal with 70-100 students in a classroom that can’t hear well due to connectivity/overcapacity issues, that has been a big change but I quite like it...except it’s not easy to teach with limited direct feedback, especially as the weather gotten increasingly nicer outside.

Well, apparently we now have to save Florida from all those infected in the Northeast...not sure if this is due to the presence of a Republican governor, Mar A Lago or the upcoming November election. Probably all three. Reports on CNN of an infant under 1 year old in Illinois dying from Covid-19...not 100% confirmed.

I really think Greg mostly enjoys playing Devil’s advocate or contrarian...to an extreme sometimes, because it’s one way to spark a discussion or be acknowledged online. If you say perfectly sane/reasonable/logical things all the time, nobody notices, right? Just look at the debate over Dr. Fauci, nationwide. He or Gov. Cuomo get called out as Dr. Doom or dark clouds for attempting to prepare for the absolute worst case scenario while hoping that doesn’t actually transpire. It’s the essence of the current national debate. If Trump can’t even get flyover states like KS, the Dakotas, Wyoming or Montana to go back to work sooner rather than later...well, there’s going to be quite the epic confrontation in the coming weeks. Perhaps Texas becomes the first real test in the reopening after Easter (April 12) as one of the biggest, most important economies in the middle (and a GOP governor). Alabama, too. Without Congress or the Fed to intervene...we’re looking at daily falls in the stock market back down to 16-18,000 range, but hopefully I’m wrong. That will be instantly noticed by Trump/Mnuchin, and cause desperation to ramp the economy back up before Q4/Q1 2021 to set the tone of the daily press briefing. It’s confusing enough with Trump trying to order even more restrictive shelter in place orders in NY, NJ and CT without informing the governors beforehand. How to enforce? With many police officers already out sick, around 10%, and now Rhode Island and Florida trying to track every NYC resident and quarantine them by going door to door....martial law? National Guard and US military including re-enlisted vets occupying every major city? If we can’t open the economy, then the natural direction is to overreact by transforming into an authoritarian strongman (“only I can solve these problems”) to project an image of being in control. Scott Gottlieb, MD✔@ScottGottliebMD I’m worried about emerging situations in New Orleans, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, among others. In China no province outside Hubei ever had more than 1,500 cases. In U.S. 11 states already hit that total. Our epidemic is likely to be national in scope.

Greg, KS Gov just issued new orders. https://www.kansascity.com/news/coronavirus/article241587466.html KS and MO hospitals issuing warning about lack of PPE’s/testing/beds and potentially being overwhelmed. Money (actual bills and coins) even becomes a problem, because there was a fear here that it could carry the virus. Almost everything went to electronic transactions...and it was already nearly there in the first place. Paranoia about touching ATM or elevator buttons reigned supreme. As far as I know, all physical money was taken back by Beijing and burned out of an abundance of caution.

Italy had 969 deaths on Friday -- the biggest single-day jump since the crisis began. The country's health system has been pushed to the brink by the outbreak, especially in the north, which has seen the highest concentration of cases.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-should-the-government-spend-to-save-a-life/

Teach for America or similar programs, we had one in Kansas City, the KC Teaching Fellows...where you get your Master's degree/certification (I had a previous one when I started, but Sports Admin) at night while you are working (it takes two summers and one full school year of night classes, 2 nights a week and some weekends.) The positive is that those programs can often pay for the full or at least half the cost of schooling, That said, it's less logical to do something like that, already having a PhD. Unusual circumstances. I guess with emergency needs or certs, there's a way to avoid this. It gets pretty overwhelming when you have to do 3-4 different plans, substitute when there are staffing needs, then I was coaching volleyball/soccer/basketball after school and taking classes for MA. Then passing Praxis (one for Social Studies, one for History). With prior experience and PhD, there's gotta be a simpler way. That said, the one disadvantage is going to be starting at a higher point at the salary scale (especially if they credit the university teaching program as steps up on the salary ladder) and the fact that most districts might think he's a good candidate to jump back to university at the earliest available opportunity when economic conditions improve. But some might value the education level/experience and think it's worth the risk for 1-2, maybe 3 years. Just depends on staffing needs and retirements at the high school level.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/sorry-conspiracy-theorists-study-concludes-covid-19-not-090026698--abc-news-topstories.html Virus wasn't created in Wuhan Virology Lab artificially...nor did it actually originate at the wet market here in Wuhan, but likely transported in from another area of China where pangolins breed.

What's likely to have happened is that the Chinese press interpreted information coming out of the country...in this way. Not that it was yet an official policy. My wife came into the room just now and asked "How could they be allowing all those older people in Spain to just die without trying to save them?" I'm trying to find something online to corroborate, but it seems these individual situations are not (yet) following official hospital or country-wide policy but more up to discretion of doctors and health care workers. That said, they might need to create a policy pretty quickly in NY because we might be in a similar scenario 7-10 days from now. It might already have happened in one hospital where 13 died, and there was another where the available respirators into last night were in the single digits. No idea how long it will take to convert existing equipment where TWO patients can use the same ventilator...is that something that can be done on-site, or has to be done in the factory before they're shipped out? Whatever the result, that James Dyson is a genius, all that I can say.

In the emergency room at one of Madrid’s biggest hospitals, Daniel Bernabeu signed the death certificate for one patient and immediately turned to help another who was choking. People are dying in waiting rooms before they can even be admitted as the coronavirus pandemic overpowers medical staff. With some funeral services halted in the Spanish capital and no space left in the morgues, corpses are being stored at the main ice rink. Intensive-care wards overflowing and new rules dictate that older patients miss out to younger people with a better shot at surviving, Bernabeu said by telephone. “That grandpa, in any other situation, would have had a chance,” he said. “But there’s so many of them, all dying at the same time.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/spanish-doctors-forced-to-choose-who-to-let-die-from-coronavirus The Chinese press tonight is reporting they're close to making a decision that those already over age 60 or 65 are likely going to die when it comes down to these triage decisions of who to save....HOPE that's not accurate.

Three players over there just tested positive...so they might be set back more than one week or have to postpone, because Japanese virus situation is changing by the hour now as well.

Okay, Larry Kudlow. Just kidding. Well, I haven’t sold anything (except last summer at DJIA 27k) for twenty years...can you tell us which day and we can just pretend it’s $100,000 or $1,000,000 for argument’s sake for easy analysis??? Fwiw, those who tried to short the market on unemployment numbers got massacred yesterday. China has ordered no short selling, period. Even with active control, we might be facing around 81,000 deaths by July according to a new detailed analysis from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle. ..... Our for-profit health care system rakes in money on disease, not on health. Instead, we have a system that works for the rich, instead of a public health system for all Americans that readily anticipates and controls new pathogens through testing, contact tracing, and quarantine. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/opinions/us-most-confirmed-cases-sachs/index.html Publication date: March 26, 2020 Assuming Strong Social Distancing, This Wave of the Pandemic Could End in the US in June SEATTLE – In a forecast based on new data analyses, researchers find demand for ventilators and beds in US hospital intensive care units (ICUs) will far exceed capacity for COVID-19 patients as early as the second week of April. Deaths related to the current wave of COVID-19 in the US are likely to persist into July, even assuming people protect themselves and their communities by strongly adhering to social distancing measures and by taking other precautions advised by public health officials. “Our estimated trajectory of COVID-19 deaths assumes continued and uninterrupted vigilance by the general public, hospital and health workers, and government agencies,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. “The trajectory of the pandemic will change – and dramatically for the worse – if people ease up on social distancing or relax with other precautions. We encourage everyone to adhere to those precautions to help save lives.” IHME’s analysis, based on observed death rates, estimates that over the next four months in the US, approximately 81,000 people will die from the virus. Estimates range between 38,000 and 162,000 US deaths. http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/new-covid-19-forecasts-us-hospitals-could-be-overwhelmed-second-week-april-demand-icu

https://eand.co/did-you-really-think-capitalism-was-going-to-save-you-from-a-pandemic-41b6ac1d9a41 The point is this: Americans don’t need to work during a pandemic. There is literally no reason for them to. They don’t need to be made to “work” for basics like homes, medicine, money, and food — society has a massive surplus of all these things already. They don’t need to “work” during a pandemic for a similar reason. America is easily rich enough to simply support the whole economy for a few months during the pandemic — which is the wise and right and fair and moral thing to do. Nobody needs to work. Not just because America is a rich society — but because the only “work” that really needs to be done during a pandemic is tending to the ill, feeding the indigent, making sure the disease’s spread is slowed, and so forth. The “work” that Americans are to be made to do has literally nothing to do with any of that very real labour. (Does anyone really need a new home built right about now? How about a trip to the dentist? Or a pair of new designer jeans? Maybe you see what I mean.) You know and I know the real reason Americans are being made to work during a pandemic: money. So that profits rise, so that stock markets rise, so that the rich get richer. So that, in other words, the system doesn’t collapse in on itself. A cynic might have an even darker interpretation: so that Americans know their place. So that they’re so beaten, weary, terrified, and anxious, they never really have the time or energy to question the insanity of all the above.

Why sector SPY compared to a combination of Vanguard 500, vivax, vtsax, small/midcap/Russell, international or emerging markets and REITs? For someone in their 30’s and 40’s, aren’t bond returns going to be so negligible the next 3-5 years...that it might be better to put that 20-25% in a CD at around 4%? In the situation described above, the cost basis resets from original number to the date when it’s inherited, yes?

It was just rumors and community-wide fear, IMO. I've seen videos where families were rejecting their fathers or grandparents, for example...being sent back home by authorities after recovery. Shouting at authorities, saying they didn't believe they were actually healthy and were endangering the entire family to create more empty beds in the hospital for new patients. People put all their pets out in the beginning, as a rumor spread that dogs and cats could transmit the virus. In fact, there are a couple of supposed Covid-19 "pet deaths" in Asian countries. The government did take the step here in China of sending many of the recovered to quarantine recuperation centers (like Javits in NYC) that were essentially hotels and sports centers (badminton) quickly converted with cubicles and beds...instead of sending them home directly. There was a concern with those people mixing together with other cases not yet serious enough to be hospitalized or reporting positive tests that the spread would continue, but that didn't happen (apparently.) At the moment, seems Illinois, Detroit/MI, New Orleans/LA, and maybe Atlanta or FLA are trending to be the next huge outbreak zones.

But that's okay since none of the benefits are going to the Trump Organization, right?

The CDC (not Google) was supposed to be working on this. Hospital by hospital across the country...all the patients testing positive, critical/severe, ICU admissions, equipment needs, etc. Not all information would be made available for public consumption (and you can be sure the withheld information will be fought for by the press via lawsuits over FOIA.)

Germany and Switzerland have been very successful. There are a number of factors. Biggest of these is the early surveillance/contact tracing of EVERY single case in Germany, as well as the much higher ratio of nurses to patients compared to Italy and Spain. Then you can look at other factors, such as average age of population, men vs. women, co-morbidities, smoking or vaping, etc.

A couple of things. One of the Grand Princess "survivors" at the best infectious treatment center in the US, Omaha, kept getting positive tests 28 days on. Do we have enough kits at this point to keep testing people (including swabs and reagents) 20-30 times per person? There were cases here in Wuhan where patients "recovered," were sent home, and developed symptoms again. While they seem fairly rare, and there hasn't been a published paper academically...it's definitely a possibility, especially if we're going with the 2-3 different strains of the virus circulating theory (which also hasn't been proven, more a theory.) They were using blood/plasma/platelets from the ones who recovered to come up with a way to treat those who were ill, but it wasn't conclusive how much more effective those treatments were than say, Traditional Chinese Medicine or Redemsivir or the antivirals or whatever they threw at it. Thailand was claiming success at the same time, but that story sort of faded away, like INOVIO being on the way to a cure or vaccine.

Yes, the government "disappeared" 2-3 citizen reporters who were reporting directly from and outside the hospitals in late January. Yes, we know all about Dr. Li Wenliang, the whistleblower. He's from my neighborhood, and went to Wuhan University with my wife (well, he went to medical school, but same age and school.) Yes, a number of cases (hundreds probably) in the beginning where people died weren't yet diagnosed as COVID-19, but natural causes or pneumonia. Of course, the same thing has been happening in the US (see Kirkland Life Care Center)...and we'll never know unless they autopsy everyone who's died in the US since late December or early January. Yes, there were rumors about sulphur dioxide clouds being captured from the crematoriums, in lieu of the normal pollution from factories. In the end, people are already back to work this week, if they have their own cars. The airport and subway are back online Saturday. On the subway or Metro, there's three yellow tape lines for what used to be a longer 5-7 person metal seat, social distancing. She will go back to work on Monday. Schools (KG-middle or junior school) are still looking at a May start, after draconian measures from January 23rd until that time. High schools (at least seniors) are supposedly going back a bit earlier, sometime between April 15th and the end of the month because every senior in the country has to take the Gao Kao examination on June 7th/8th (same test, same exact time for every student in whole country) and it's not fair to kids in our province if they aren't provided as much time as possible to study with their teachers in-school when most of the rest of China has reopened at least 4-6 weeks earlier.

Hickenlooper....so called unity ticket.

The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before! Let's consider the biggest problem here. Forget about the media assaults on a daily basis, sometimes at individual reporters. It's the idea of ONLY "real people" wanting to go back to work...and get everyone sick there and even kill someone they know, I guess. So we are "pussies" or "wussies" if we stay at home and take care of our families? And yet, throughout the last 30 years of American history, we've had Clinton, GW Bush and now Trump who went out of their way to avoid military service...Trump, after having spent his teenage years at a military academy. I just feel sorry for EVERY REAL person who's on the front lines, doctors and nurses and psychologists all fighting to get the country through this crisis to the best of their ability. They are selfless real people who go into an endless shift and spend the rest of their time recuperating at home, some not even being able to sleep because they're concerned about giving their patients the corona virus (because they're reusing masks and gowns due to shortages, or haven't been tested yet.) Or simply the pressure of too many other doctors and nurses already being out (or dying, in many cases now in NYC), so they feel they have no choice but to keep reporting to work day after day until the peak has passed.