My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio
linkedin.comGood insides on what companies can and cannot withstand a once-in-a-lifetime event. My look into the 2008 Great Recession was very helpful with my pattern matching. 98 out of 100 stocks lost money during that recession, but most of them did super well during the longest recovery period in U.S. history. Even AIG made people a bunch of money.
Here's the full dataset of 1363 mid cap + stocks that traded during the 2008 recession, and their performances: https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from-the-2008-great-recess...
That is super interesting. You should probably submit it as a separate submission!
Thank you! I did a while back, will see if HN lets me do it again. Feel free to AMA!
> this is one of those once in 100 years catastrophic events that annihilates those who provide insurance against it and those who don’t take insurance to protect themselves against it because they treat it as the exposed bet that they can take because it virtually never happens.
They said 2008 was a once in a lifetime event, too. So what’s the next black swan that will unsettle the market in 2032? The Big One finally hits California? Mount Rainier erupts? The Yellowstone Caldera?
> The markets are being, and will continue to be, affected by these sorts of market players getting squeezed and forced to make market moves because of cash-flow issues rather than because of thoughtful fundamental analysis.
So it sounds like we didn’t learn much from 2008. Will we learn from 2020?
I think this is a terrific example of normalcy bias, a "tendency for people to believe that things will always function the way they normally have functioned and therefore to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects"[0].
China has provided roughly a month's advance warning on how this virus plays out in terms of infectivity and severity (~20% of cases are serious / require medical attention, ~5% are critical, and ~2% are fatal).
People prefer to believe that media coverage of the effects in China are fearmongering or even a political "hoax"[1], that it will peter out with warmer weather (it's spread quite quickly in Singapore which is hot and humid at the moment), and that because it's possible to misuse masks and because they don't provide complete protection by themselves they're useless and should be left for healthcare workers[2].
The kind of critical thinking that helps you prepare for things like this seems to be in short supply. Last week people thought I was silly for stocking up on dried goods and essentials, this week every store around me is sold out of hand sanitizer, clorox wipes, and isopropanol.
[0]: Wikipedia, right now
[1]: The US president, at a rally a couple of days ago
[2]: The US surgeon general's twitter page, a couple of days ago
In Italy at the moment the data is far worse.
We have a total of 2263 currently infected people of which 1000 with few symptoms, 1034 hospitalized and another 229 under emergency treatments [0]
If the number of infected keeps growing (+400 today) and the percentage of hospitalized remains the same, hospitals will have serious problems very soon
[0] https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cronaca/2020/03/03/coronavi...
The virus is certainly quite concerning, but those numbers are misleading. Italy almost certainly has far more than 2263 infected cases of covid-19. 2263 is just the number of individuals that sought medical attention, were given the test, and tested positive.
The big unknown is how many of those that are infected do not even seek medical attention (or were not administered the test). For instance, children appear to show either mild or no symptoms when infected.
Additionaly, speaking for myself, if I came down with something, with mild flu like symptoms, I wouldn't really be going to the hospital. I'd just take some over the counter medicine and power through. I would only seek medical attention if symptoms became severe. It stands to reason that this is how most people would be expected to behave. Therefore, people with severe symptoms would be much more likely to get medical attention, and therefore be tested, and to be hospitalized, or require emergency treatments.. making the stats look a lot worse than they are.
>2263 is just the number of individuals that sought medical attention, were given the test, and tested positive.
My understanding was until recently Italy was testing people that were asymptomatic but since that got them in trouble by making their situation look worse than other countries they have brought their behavior in line with these other countries.
Don't they test close contacts of cases? So even if not all of the cases are severe, the severe cases will discover a lot of the more mild cases by proxy.
But I guess the incubation period is so long that those more mild cases may resolve before they can be tested.
Italy has been running a lot of tests. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/
I think that includes many tests on people who were simply exposed to it somehow, in order to try and stop the spread.
I really don't get the seeming dismissal of masks as a tool to contain spread. I understand that there's a shortage and healthcare workers are the priority (as they should be), but it seems to me that in theory the absolute fastest way to contain this would be to get everyone on the planet wearing masks for a month or two.
I keep seeing statements to the effect of "a mask only helps if you're already sick", but we don't know who's sick and who isn't! The only way to ensure all the sick people are wearing masks is to get everyone wearing masks. But perhaps it isn't possible to ramp up production fast enough to make this realistic?
You can't ramp production that fast, especially since so many factories moved to China. So given a limited resource, you have to discourage people from buying out all the supply so you can preserve your healthcare capability of the medical staff. I would guess it's a judgement call that ensuring medical personnel have masks is a greater epidemic fighting effect relative to the epidemic reduction in casual people wearing masks.
You can always publicise an alternate policy when the mask supply does increase later..
> get everyone on the planet wearing masks for a month or two.
There aren't enough to go around, and they need to be changed after something like 2 hours - or is it 4?
It's easier to just keep people isolated, I guess.
Masks are dangerous if worn improperly. They can create a warm moist environment on your face that promotes microbial growth. Also, the mask itself can get infected. Disposable masks aren't built to he reused and cleaned, so you can end up transferring the infection around on your mask if you reuse a disposable. Finally, the idea that masks reduce touching your face might be false, it's possible something itchy and irritating like a mask caused people to touch their faces more.
The great thing about badly fitting masks is people wearing them tend to touch their face a lot more.
Afaik the primary method of transmission is believed to be saliva droplets in the air, expelled via talking, sneezing, or coughing. I think even a badly fitting mask would cut this drastically?
Washing hands, avoiding touching your face, and other measures like these mainly help with what seems to be a far less common vector of transmission via surfaces and physical contact, where the virus only remains active for a very short time.
You have it backwards. Droplets on surfaces are the primary transmission mechanism. The virus can survive on surfaces for hours. People then touch surfaces with their hands then touch their faces.
Droplets in the air are a transmission mechanism but only for short range (3-6 feet) and only a danger from people who cough or sneeze on you. Respirators are effective at stopping that transmission but they are most useful for people treating the sick. But they aren't effective if worn improperly. For most people, avoiding the sick is enough.
Surgical masks are useful for the sick to keep cough and sneeze droplets from spreading. They are also useful to keep people from touching their face.
Just for completion.
The current understanding is that the transmission mechanisms for Covid-19 are:
1. Contact 2. Droplets (particles > 20 microns), AND 3. Aerosol (particles < 5/10 microns)
The last one - Aerosol transmission - really adds to why this virus is so infectious.
Unlike balistic droplets, an aerosol plume can stay in a room for a very long time after someone coughs or sneezes. An aerosol plume can stay in the air long after someone flushes fecal matter down a toilet.
As a comparison aerosol transmission is what makes tuberculosis and measle so challenging in terms of containment and infection rate.
Thanks for this perspective, but this conflicts with other info I'm seeing. It's hard to know what to believe--do you have any good sources supporting this?
For example, a quick google of "how does coronavirus spread" brings up this article as the top result: https://www.livescience.com/how-coronavirus-spreads.html
It says:
"The new coronavirus spreads mostly through person-to-person contact within about a 6-foot (1.8 meters) radius, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). People with COVID-19, which is the disease caused by the coronavirus, spread viral particles through coughing and sneezing. The particles can land in the mouths or noses of those nearby.
It might also be possible to catch SARS-CoV-2 by touching a surface where the virus has recently landed and then touching one's mouth, nose or eyes, but CDC officials believe this method of transmission is less common."
Even a non-surgical or home-made mask is better than no mask at all.
> The kind of critical thinking that helps you prepare for things like this seems to be in short supply. Last week people thought I was silly for stocking up on dried goods and essentials, this week every store around me is sold out of hand sanitizer, clorox wipes, and isopropanol.
It is still silly to stock up things you will most probably not need, and if you do, can still get if people like you would not unnecessarily stock up on them.
Trump did not call COVID-19 a hoax.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-re...
He did not.
However his rhetorical style is to put emotionally laden words in close conjunction and then repeat them over and over again. People therefore walk away with an emotional message that does not necessarily logically follow from any facts that they were given.
At an emotional level, he is associating COVID-19, Democrats and hoax. With the message that everything that Democrats say is a hoax, including what they say about COVID-19.
Did you read the article you linked? He inferred that the media coverage is fearmongering and an attempt to hurt him. He specifically used the word hoax. He didn't call the virus a hoax, he called the coverage and criticism of the US's handling and response to the outbreak a hoax.
From the page you linked: "During a Feb. 28, 2020, campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying "this is their new hoax." During the speech he also seemed to downplay the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu."
A transcript of his exact words at the rally: "Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax."
> He didn't call the virus a hoax, he called the coverage and criticism of the US's handling and response to the outbreak a hoax.
How does this differ from the person you responded to who said, "Trump did not call COVID-19 a hoax"?
I never said he called the virus itself a hoax. He calls _reporting on COVID-19 and criticism of the US response_ a hoax intended to discredit him, and that is backed up by the quotes from the snopes article the other commenter linked.
Yeah, agreed, the parent phrasing definitely confused me. First 3 sentences make it seem like he is trying to head-on rebut the comment he is replying to, and then the last sentences of the 1st paragraph just reiterate and expand on what the grandparent comment said and agree with it. While what the parent said makes sense, reading it definitely threw me off a bit.
But katmannthree didn't say "Trump called COVID-19 a hoax". So airstrike is arguing a strawman and katmannthree is simply reiterating what he originally said with quotes from the primary sources.
If he doesn't want people misinterpreting his statements and spreading fake news, he should stop spreading fake news himself first.
> So it sounds like we didn’t learn much from 2008. Will we learn from 2020?
We learned a lot from 2008.
This is a different ball game. There is plenty of credit today. This is a supply shock. There are not applicable lessons from a credit crunch to a panic/virus induced supply shortage.
It’s possibly about to be a demand shortage soon as well.
Aren’t there at least applicable lessons for dealing with an economic crisis regardless of the direct causes? Or preventative measures to take during a boom time? Because it sounds like once again irrational exuberance has caught up with us and we’re about to reap the whirlwind of lack of protection.
There are none, because “economic crisis” is too large of a category to have a one-size-fits-all universal solution for dealing with it. Every type of “economic crisis” has its own cure, like a virus in a way. And the kind birthed by 2008 is as far as possible from what we are dealing with right now.
I think this is different than irrational exuberance. Maybe one could look to the 1970's oil embargo for clues on how this will play out. I really do not know. But I do know 2008 is not a good comparison because the circumstances are just so different.
We will not learn from this. The Fed knows they HAVE to keep the market going for 3 reasons: 1) big institutions pressure them to 2) They must keep pensions from tanking, or we have severe issues with retirement rate 3) Most importantly, it is easier to print money forever than to actually create jobs and real growth
Edit: on #2, it is 'cheaper' to print money to prop pensions up than to have millions of retirees eating dog food
I work in finance. We learned a ton from 2008. The amount of new regulation and oversight that came as a result is insane.
We will learn from 2020 too.
I'm in finance as well. The regulation is overwhelming. i always feel like i'm working on something for external auditors instead of driving value and savings for the company. It is tiresome.
Does the added regulation, oversight help prevent the problems that led to the 08 crisis? Also curious to know what/how these learnings manifest themselves outside of goverment imposed regulations.
Yes, that is kind of a point. Outside of regulation the learnings manifest themselves in models that better capture tail, correlation, and liquidity risks.
> So it sounds like we didn’t learn much from 2008. Will we learn from 2020?
I am busy, right now I am trying to learn that humans will never learn from history. I vaguely remember somebody mentioning that to me in the past, but I dismissed it as a nonsense.
(But I am not really that pessimistic. Somebody mentioned that the Spanish flu was a big impulse for providing national health care services. I think it can have a similar effect, somewhere.)
They have learned: privatize gains, socialize losses. The government is so fearful of meaningful corrections they will do whatever is necessary to make the people at the top whole instead of letting them suffer catastrophic losses. So party on.
There are ways to go about this and wipe out investors without causing complete economic collapse (e.g. nationalization and orderly dismantling) but "we've" already decided not to go that route.
> right now I am trying to learn that humans will never learn from history. I vaguely remember somebody mentioning that to me in the past, but I dismissed it as a nonsense.
Perhaps it was in reference to the famous Aldous Huxley quote:
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
Propagandists and similar types learn the lessons of history excellently. They work to prevent others from learning anything, but their work is not hard: People not only adopt the characteristic customs and conventions of whatever communit(ies) they identify with, they actively seek groups to identify with.
I think the analogous effect this time is to revisit the healthcare supply chain
The cynic in me believes this was ensure there was a ready supply of healthy men for war fighting.
Now that wars are mechanized and we have nuclear weapons this is less of an impetus.
There might be a different effect here as preditary health care in the US is unpalatable in the best of times.
Argument by "they said" should really only be used when it is the same "they" speaking now and then. Otherwise, especially when no reference is given, the "they" can be no one, a general sense the writer remembers, a low-quality they (talking points for manipulation purposes), etc.
Funnily enough, I asked about this two years ago:
Mainly, "they" are of no significance, no matter what "they" say. The information is what matters, not the "they". If information cannot be extracted from their statements (source references / description of logical statement / premise / etc) , there is no data to analyze.
He used to say that 2008 was the end of the big long term debt cycle. Now he's saying it hasn't happened yet.
Looking at countries with wide community spread[1] the spread is very clearly tied to cold weather (Europe, Korea, and Iran). This pattern is similar to other air transmitted viruses such as the Flu. Warmer countries seem to be resilient despite some having higher density and lower hygiene standards (e.g. India).
Given that the default assumption should be the COVID-19 will follow the flu pattern of diminishing rapidly in March up to barely any case in April [2]. This by no means try to diminish actions to be cautious, or the risk it imposes. However, if you are asked to put money on a certain direction, betting on warming up weather reducing the R value of the virus enough to stop it is what I would do.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ (Sort by new cases) [2] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
While i think you are right about that the coronavirus will most likely decline as the weather heats up, I think a better comparison to look at would be the Sars epidemic in 2003 rather than the flu.
In that case, rather than diminishing rapidly in March, it diminished in May. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
In either case, any step at delaying the spread of the virus will have a dramatic effect on the ultimate death toll.
...and that's not surprising given the vulnerability data we have on SARS: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3265313/
COVID19 is likely very similar.
Very true! But the second wave, when winter returns in October, hit even harder [0]
See Deadly second wave section in the Spanish Flu [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
This time, though, we will see it in advance as it tears through the Southern Hemisphere.
This is obviously a possibility. The longer term is harder to predict.
More time to prepare and possibly ship a vaccine for a second wave.
When I see a log plot bending up, my default assumption is stunning growth for a considerable period.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/...
Or it could be an indication that in some countries, the current weather enables exponential growth. This could rapidly change as it did in China.
Or it could be that the rest of the world is not flying back-and-forth between China or Italy
That’s not what we are seeing though. Australia and Singapore are good example of many cases from foreign origins but little to none community spread
I wonder if this is also the reason it's been mostly concentrated on the United States' west coast so far, seemingly to the north end
Only thing interesting about this virus is 1) It fully stopped all the PR coverage of the Hong Kong protests, and 2) We learned how poorly we are prepared for a pandemic
Agreed. However, was with some Hongkongers a week ago and it seems very likely that the protests will start straight back up once the virus has died down.
>We learned how poorly we are prepared for a pandemic
I've heard mixed things about China's reporting on it. It's more difficult to trust authoritarian regimes by default, but even good preparation can falter if there isn't honest information. Everything sort of followed China's information in the initial stages.
Everyday citizen preparation could be affected by social media manipulation (political manipulation tactics repurposed), but democratic government agencies wouldn't likely trust those sources, although they have to make sure their voice is the authority for citizens and not social media.
So can you effectively prepare for an outbreak when communication is deceptive/less effective/manipulated? I think it's very difficult.
"So can you effectively prepare for an outbreak when communication is deceptive/less effective/manipulated? I think it's very difficult. "
By getting enough testing kits ready so you are not in a situation where hundreds/thousands of possible infections have occurred in Washington state while you've only diagnosed ~100 people.
If you rely on the information they publish? Then no
>1) It fully stopped all the PR coverage of the Hong Kong protests
Did they stop protesting? Going into protest (crowded spaces, close contact with others) seems like a bad idea during a pandemic.
Corona's deathrate only exceeds 1% if you're older than 50 year sold IIRC. Dont know what the deathrate is for being a Hong Kong Protestor, but I doubt its much better.
> 1) It fully stopped all the PR coverage of the Hong Kong protests,
Coverage of that was already dwindling as the months went by and there was no major action by the PRC. In addition, the more extreme protestor actions, like destroying the subway and other infrastructure, made it harder to write about.
I think once some of the protesters became violent, such as setting a bystander on fire, and killing that janitor by throwing a brick at him, coverage decreased significantly.
One thing interesting about the coverage of the Hong Kong protests is it overshadowed the protests in other regions, like Kashmir, Iraq, Venezuela, Indonesia, France, and a bunch of other places.
> The fact of the matter is that history has shown that even big death tolls have been much bigger emotional affairs than sustained economic and market affairs. My look into the Spanish flu case, which I’m treating as our worst-case scenario, conveys this view; so do the other cases.
The world was a vastly different place when the Spanish Flu happened. Think of all the things we have today that we depend on to operate flawlessly that didn't exist back in 1918.
I guess the comparison I would make might be an airplane that is largely analog and manual back then vs. now stuffed with electronics. Take away those electronics and it can't fly manually. So much of our life depends on people to keep the electronics working that any impact to those and their functions (say the electric grid) would cause an immense amount of interconnected havoc.
good point, everything is too optimised and there's no slack anymore
Also, I don't know all the market pressures of 1918, but it seems reasonable that the market was helped by the US winning the biggest war in the history of the world.
It's very hard to have an informed opinion on the virus. Different actors have different incentives. Medias try to sell ads, politicians want to be elected (or not held responsible), institutions like WHO are political (I don't really trust them after seeing their treatment of Taiwan) and have their own agendd, even experts have their own biases and are selected by medias. And we are all deeply biased, and tend to look up exactly what we want to hear.
After reading a lot of information, my bet is that the virus itself is in the same league as a bad seasonal flu (I heard that from at least two experts, and from my MD), and we'll suffer more from our bad handling of the situation, rather than from the virus itself. We should deal with this virus exactly how we deal with seasonal flu. Stay home and wear a surgical mask when we're sick, go to see our MD (wearing a mask) if we have mild symptoms, and go to hospital if we have severe symptoms. Generally, avoid close contacts, don't shake hands and so on.
That being said, better be safe than sorry. I personally will work remotely and avoid public transportations for the following month until we have more information.
It would be great if you could share your reasoning and information as to why you think this is just a bad flu. I have been seeing information from China that says the death rate is 20-30 times higher than the flu and that the hospitalization rate could be up to 20%. Other than China, most countries haven't been infected long enough to do studies on the final fatality or hospitalization rate.
Mortality rate in China is overestimated because they tested primarily the most severe cases. From [1]:
"This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively."
[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387
Also there were 3000 death in China, and new cases are declining. In France alone (20 times less people), it's common to have 10000 death annually from the flu. Of course, China enforced strict containment measures and we don't know the exact numbers, but overall the death toll seem rather small. Why should we expect much worse in the West? And finally, it's not sure, but some experts expect the virus to decline with warmer temperatures. So overall, I'd say there's room for optimism.
The reason we should expect worse in the West is because China put hundreds of millions of people under some level of quarantine control. If we don't enact those kinds of measures, we can expect higher numbers of infections and deaths.
I do hope that the death and hospitalization rate ends up being lower and am awaiting studies based on places like the towns in the Italian red zone where they tested every resident and the Diamond Princess. If the rates end up anywhere near the initial estimates, the hospital capacity situation could become very serious unless we enact quarantines.
Just to be clear people, don’t just go to the doctor if you think you might have coronavirus — call first and seek their professional recommendation. They may want to come to you to do a swab, rather than have people randomly walking in and possibly infecting others.
> if you think you might have coronavirus
Actually, very few people have reasons to think they have the coronavirus now. Of course, if you come back from an infected area, you should be extra careful and follow standard procedures defined by your local government. Right now most people with flu symptoms simply have a cold or the flu, and not the wuhan virus.
I've just listened to an interview of a French doctor and what is happening now is that hospitals are getting overwhelmed with regular people who want to be tested for the coronavirus.
The coronavirus isn't that different from a regular flu virus in terms of care. Mostly, you just need to stay home waiting for it to pass (and of course avoid infecting others). Only people with severe symptoms should go to the hospital.
> my bet is that the virus itself is in the same league as a bad seasonal flu
The CDC has said the exact opposite of this. The WHO estimated an initial mortality rate of 3.4%, whereas the flu is well below 1%.
Your GP and some unnamed internet "expert" sources are wrong.
I am inclined to agree that it's difficult to form a good opinion here: the information available is horridly imperfect and even conflicting. I saw a news article a couple of days ago that said masks don't help prevent you from getting the virus, yet that very article included a WHO infographic encouraging the public to buy and wear masks. Alas...
The correct particle filter masks will obviously protect. The risk is that by providing that guideline you risk disruption in the supply chain.
There isn't enough world production and stock for the average joe to panic stockpile N95 masks.
The likely reason for this walking back in the recommendation is that 1) most people don't know mask sizes and how to fit a mask 2) if we have a limited stock then priority should be given to health workers who have to handle infected patients on a daily basis.
I am interested in seeing how much more effective China's current system will be at addressing the outbreak vs highly developed western democracies.
If there's one thing a technologically advanced dictatorship like the CCP should excel at, it's this.
Based on the data the ongoing cases have been decreasing for the past two weeks: http://covid.410go.net
In another two weeks they might have less cases than other regions!
Making such a comparison is non-trivial; does any highly developed western democracy share China's population size and density?
I'm more curious about how this will affect India, where the population situation is more similar to China's. I haven't seen any mention of the virus there in the news, yet.
Supposedly the climate may impede the virus’ ability to spread.
https://www.click2houston.com/weather/2020/02/26/will-housto...
Part of the reason I had been hoping this virus wouldn't hit Florida (where I live) until summertime. It's miserably hot and humid down here from about June to September.
Also, school would be out.
I tellya what, Florida real estate just went from bad to worse.
As if sea level rise swamping much of the coastal land wasn't enough, there's the so-called "silver tsunami" -- a large wave of Baby Boomers dying, and their homes being backfilled by a much smaller cohort of new retirees over the coming years.
If the virus becomes widespread in retiree-heavy areas, it's gonna compress a decade-plus of mortality into an incredibly short span. All sorts of places will be affected, but Florida is in for the worst of it.
Only until the winter returns.
During the Spanish Flu, it was the 2nd wave the following winter that killed the most people.
> will be
Sounds like you have your conclusion without needing to wait for the results.
I think this is one of the more interesting questions we get the chance to observe as things play out.
China's government is more technocratic, more pragmatic, and also more authoritarian than the US. All of those are very useful characteristics when dealing with a pandemic.
So I would expect the Western approach to result in exponentially faster infection rates, and significantly more resource shortages hindering the "on the ground" response.
I would expect that baseline levels of wellness, demographics, and tangentially related factors like climate will have a larger impact on the outcome than governance, so the US might get lucky in one or more of these areas.
I heard a podcast of the "University of Flanders" which says that dictatorships are not actually effective in this way. Reasons given (i.e. these points are all his words, not mine):
- They're often very corrupt
- It's commonly believed that Nazi Germany relieved the crisis of the 1930s, but that is propaganda and Hitler probably made it worse.
- The propaganda also paints a picture of a strictly organized state, but nothing is further from the truth. Nazi Germany consisted of cogs that didn't work together so much as against each other (the army against the party, the SS against the SA, etc.). Coordinated chaos.
- One man can impossibly oversee everything, he can't enforce his vision in all these different places, resulting in a lot of different "clans" that have power in the name of Hitler.
- Our democracy is a lot of talk and little action, lots of checks and balances, where the public can check what the government does and can remove them from power. That sounds inefficient, but the decisions are carried by the population and let's keep it like that.
Source (in Dutch) with a timestamp where he gets more on-topic (before that is more background info): https://youtu.be/_866RrJJy6A?t=600
I don't say I find it super convincing by the way, certainly points like "one man can't oversee it all" doesn't rule out the option of a group of supposedly smart people that oversee it all (much like today) and make the rules for everyone. No argument is made for democracy, the main argument is against dictatorships with weasel words like "often very corrupt" and against Hitler's dictatorship specifically (when there are more current, seemingly better-functioning and longer-lasting examples like, indeed, in China).
Of course, that I don't find the arguments made very convincing also doesn't mean that I'm in favor of a group of smart people ruling over everyone or against democracy or something.
I just don't know, but this is a datapoint where someone claims that this thought "a dictator should excel at this" may not be right. The podcast typically invites researchers in the field that are often very knowledgeable and give much more convincing presentations; this person is a historian so presumably also knows a thing or two about the topic, even if I still have some questions.
Not sure why you are getting downvotes, your post feels largely non-partisan, and the question is interesting.
And yet when the warning signs sprung up on their dictatorship monitored messaging apps they threatened to jail the medical professionals.
> containing the economic damage requires coordinated monetary and fiscal policy targeted more at specific cases of debt/liquidity-constrained entities rather than more blanket cuts in rates and broad increases in liquidity.
more bailouts? how about letting them take the consequences of their actions? they would have taken the upside so should accept the downside too instead of shifting it to taxpayers. how else will markets stay healthy if evolution is thwarted
side note: all of the comments on linkedin are basically high fiving him. possibly as negative comments on linkedin could be career limiting
so if the way to make money in a gold rush is to sell shovels, what should we do during a pandemic?
I guess invest in anything that "treats" social distancing like medication, video games, VR, collaboration technology, etc.
" 2) a population that follows orders"
maybe
Coronavirus has been circulating for months now. Many of us have already beaten it. That's why spread is linear and not gripping the world like it should be at this point: The "spread" is a measurement of panic and vigilant diagnosis. This is most carefully observed cold of all time.
I was stocking up on dry goods and such like everybody else. After the past few days I feel like a panicked fool. Almost every single death report: "Had underlying health conditions."
Vigilant diagnosis? Isn't the biggest issue for the U.S. right now that we're not able to test nearly enough people?
As far as stocking up, my understanding was that the reason for picking up an extra couple items each time you go to the store was in case eventually certain areas are rec'd to work from home and such. Maybe that won't happen, but it's not like that stuff would go to waste.
We're testing people who would ordinarily not be tested already. That doesn't mean the diagnosis is wrong, or that COVID-19 isn't widespread.
I know it's widespread. The extent to which that's the case, unfortunately, we have no idea because there hasn't been enough testing.
Not sure what you mean by "ordinarily" tested. This pandemic is quite a unique situation.
If the death rate was 10% across the board we would know how far it has spread. But this cold may have a 0.001% hospitalization or death rate for people in great health. There could already be 100,000 people infected in the states.
We may be close to the point of saying "fuck it. False alarm this is just a cold. Carry on". Hard to know for sure though until a couple weeks go by
From another comment, in Italy the numbers are worse than previously reported rather than better.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22476675
I did not check their source. Just saying that "we may be close to saying `false alarm`" seems almost certainly ill-informed.
Based on confirmed cases. There are likely far more cases that haven't been tested.
How can you be "almost certain" of the future based on numbers from 1 article you didn't even read?
and based on that nobody else (like WHO, local authorities near me or my parents, or even journalists) says that.
You know, some of us have family with underlying health conditions.
ok? Then do everything you normally would to avoid the flu.
There is no difference.
At this point the amount of evidence showing this is different than the flu is so overwhelming that you're either grossly misinformed (likely) or being disingenuous (less likely).
Do nothing different despite the risk of death being 100x higher? Does that really sound logical to you?
where are you getting that preposterous number from?
From the WHO and the CDC. The WHO released the figure 3.4% yesterday, and the CDC lists the flu this season as causing 18000 deaths in the US from 32 million infections = 0.05%.
This is not factual. Do the math. Starting with a couple cases, it takes 10 generations (two months) for the numbers to be large enough to be noticeable.