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My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio
- lbj 7y agoOnly 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
- n4r9 7y agoAgreed. 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.
- vsareto 7y ago>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.
- lbj 7y agoIf you rely on the information they publish? Then no
- Leary 7y ago"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.
- gruez 7y ago>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.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lbj 7y agoCorona'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.
- throw_56432 7y ago> 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.
- Apocryphon 7y ago> 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?
- js8 7y ago> 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.)
- duaoebg 7y agoThe 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.
- pengaru 7y ago> 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.”
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- gist 7y ago> 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.
- MikeHolman 7y agoAlso, 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.
- ptah 7y agogood point, everything is too optimised and there's no slack anymore
- djohnston 7y agoI 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.
- eloisius 7y ago> will be Sounds like you have your conclusion without needing to wait for the results.
- pengaru 7y agoMaking 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.
- Apocryphon 7y agoSupposedly the climate may impede the virus’ ability to spread. https://www.click2houston.com/weather/2020/02/26/will-houstons-hot-and-humid-weather-protect-against-coronavirus/ https://www.click2houston.com/weather/2020/02/26/will-housto...
- jcadam 7y agoPart 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.
- myself248 7y agoI 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.
- yodsanklai 7y agoIt'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.
- dougmwne 7y agoIt 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.
- yodsanklai 7y agoMortality 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 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.
- crystaldev 7y agoCoronavirus 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."
- elicash 7y agoVigilant 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.
- crystaldev 7y agoWe'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.
- elicash 7y agoI 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.
- bob33212 7y agoIf 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
- tomerico 7y agoLooking 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/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ (Sort by new cases) [2] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
- rmolin88 7y agoVery 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
- tomerico 7y agoThis is obviously a possibility. The longer term is harder to predict.
- creaghpatr 7y agoMore time to prepare and possibly ship a vaccine for a second wave.
- koheripbal 7y agoThis time, though, we will see it in advance as it tears through the Southern Hemisphere.
- downerending 7y agoWhen I see a log plot bending up, my default assumption is stunning growth for a considerable period. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/#case-tot-outchina https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/...
- rayshan 7y agoGood 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-recession/ https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from-the-2008-great-recess...
- thedudeabides5 7y ago" 2) a population that follows orders" maybe
- ptah 7y ago> 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
- ptah 7y agoside note: all of the comments on linkedin are basically high fiving him. possibly as negative comments on linkedin could be career limiting
- chippy 7y agoso if the way to make money in a gold rush is to sell shovels, what should we do during a pandemic?
- mighty_plant 7y agoI guess invest in anything that "treats" social distancing like medication, video games, VR, collaboration technology, etc.