The Coronavirus thread - Page 4

Also I kind of agree with Fisheye that there is some use for different thread types for Corona virus.

i.e

-Day-to-day stuff - are you guys canceling gym memberships or are you going to continue to go to the gym? are you going to help your parents with grocery shopping? (my parents are at an at-risk age so I am probably going to do their grocery shopping).
-investment related - what position is your portfolio at? are you buying the dip? what are you buying?
-general Corona virus stuff - kind of like this thread.

At the same time maybe in practice it could get kind of hectic if there are multiple threads tho.

On March 14 2020 19:13 FiSheYe wrote: Btw. 1 week ago I told people to stay cool and that the flu kills many more people each year and that SARS and MERS weren't that dangerous and the media is just blowing it out of proportion... Until a friend who is super rational told me to be careful and stay safe and that things will get really ugly, who is doing all the research and pretty much a free thinker. I looked closer into it and saw who is alarming the population. People like Nassim Taleb (Black Swan, Anti-fragility) and very rational investor types that are usually calling Bullshit on these things. THEY are the ones in full panic mode, the ones that are staying cool is your average Joe who wants to go to his bar and have a few beers. That is the worrying part, the majority is still in business as usual mode because we are a few weeks behind China and Italy/Iran. When you realize it you might already have spread it to your parents and grand parents. I hope they are understanding when you tell them it is just a flu and they have severe symptoms.

Everybody who follows Nassim is worried (and correcty so) since day 1 of the Coronavirus.

Most people don't truly comprehend the cuadratic function, so our fear to these events come from a visceral disgust-based one which is shunned by most of society, so the ones who do understand these dangers are bunched along with the bunker-builder germaphobe crazies.

On March 14 2020 20:11 Jelle wrote: Yeah taking this lightly is definitely worse than overreacting I agree with that for sure. I'm sure that's what the who and politicians are doing sending out messages like that. And you make a lot of good points btw, but I think you're being very creative at finding all the negatives and not considering any positives I think for society a lot of good can come from this - we might suddenly be wiling to spend more resources preparing for a stronger viral outbreak in the future - maybe companies will find out that working remote can really work. That would be a huge boon to society imo - people's hygiene may improve - it might be a chance for AI tech to shine as it really is useful in a research setting like looking for a vaccine - Same with VR as it can enable remote work or having large gatherings without the risks. - a lot of airfare is just people in suits going to another country to basically watch the company video. By the numbers it's "terrible for the economy" when we do less ritualistic stuff like that but in the long run I think we're better off just doing stuff that makes some sense - maybe some people will actually take the opportunity to study inside while they can't get plastered in a bar - There are also a lot of countries where nothing significant is going wrong. You keep seeing the same graph online with like 6-7 countries listed, all of which were early victims so they had less data to be prepared. the main reason why I think media and politicians are overblowing (not underrepping as you think) is because that's what happened with literally every disaster before this. Sensationalism is a real thing in the media and it's hard for me to take them all that seriously when they say that the world is about to end every single time we face any real adversity. Just google for newspaper headlines of previous disasters (whether they were viruses or something else) and you find a ton of really funny stuff. In the who video you linked, a lot fo the stuff the who statistician says is actually really reasonable. He uses a lot of words like "could" and "in the worst case" and "if we don't act". There are also a lot of positive elements to his message, like how dramatic the improvements are when you take some simple countermeasures. But then some newspaper is gonna take that and make the headlines "EXPONENTIAL GRAPH = 100 MILLION DEATHS" and I feel many people don't look past that I can get on board with the human drama of this (even one person dying is always a drama) but especially when you start talking about finance, please don't throw your wonderful stocks away because the tv is saying 24/7 that the world is on fire. They always say that society is about to collapse every time and so far they have been correct 0% of the time. I definitely think this is a good time to buy equities although I wouldn't be too aggressive either because you might get even better discounts later. Society is not going to break down and great businesses are not going to collapse. You might have to wait for years but stocks will reach all time highs like always. I'm not a big fan of bitcoin but if you believe in it you shouldn't change your mind because of coronavirus.

Dude, have you actually looked at the research and analysis that has been done about this? The WHO and most politicians have been comically under-reacting for most of the past 2+ months. Is your entire position based on this meta-analysis of the news and presumption that they always blow these things out of proportion? No offense, but this is exactly the kind of lazy and uneducated take that leads to the situation the world is in now. The image you posted is case in point. Ebola makes for much better tabloid fodder (extremely high death rate), yet it didn't get nearly the kind of reaction from scientists and governments as CV.

1. It's trivial to see from the R0 and mortality rates that Ebola, SARS, and MERS were never in the same league as CV is in terms of potential damage. It's not the Spanish Flu, but it's closer to that than it is to anything we've had since the Spanish Flu.

2. If you insist on not doing any research and meta-consuming news headlines, please consider the following:

-The short, headline-catching facts of CV are set up perfectly for people to under-react to it. "Just a bad flu", 0.2% death rate if you're not old, overall death rate also not a shockingly high number at first glance, "X0,000 people die each year from the flu, bro".

-People, as you have shown, are maximally numb right now to anything they perceive as sensationalist headlines because of the way the news cycle has evolved over the past few years. It's extraordinarily difficult to try and sell Joe Blow on the idea that he should cancel non-urgent travel plans and self-isolate for a month or more because of something that has a 1 in 500 chance of killing him if he even catches it, and (assuming he's not from China/Italy/Iran/Spain) has killed less than 100 people in his country. And yet that is what the WHO and governments are (finally) advising - or in some cases mandating.

-It is extraordinarily difficult to convince sports leagues, event promoters, etc. that they need to lose out on billions of dollars of revenue for...well, any reason. And yet major games, events, etc. are being canceled.

3. There is still a very wide range of possible outcomes, depending on what levels governments go to isolate people and how people comply, what extent warm and humid weather has on the spread (I think the data is still unclear about this), and how well countries are able to ramp up their health care capacity so that they aren't overwhelmed when the disease reaches its peak. I suppose there is some irony in that if countries take very aggressive and effective preventative measures, the resulting death toll numbers will look a bit like this was never that big of a deal in the first place. But if governments prepare for for the bottom 20 percentile worst case scenario, we are completely fucked if the bottom 2 percentile scenario happens (to be fair I think you implicitly acknowledged this).

4. From a probability standpoint the majority of the mega-bad outcomes from this are in the long tail of the probability distribution. 8-figure worldwide deaths may not be a likely outcome at this point, but such figures are also not a figment of the imagination of over-reactive journalists who are over-extrapolating data as you seem to imply.

So what's your shopping strategy boys

On March 14 2020 21:10 hiems wrote: Show nested quote + On March 14 2020 02:31 Baalim wrote:   On March 14 2020 01:09 hiems wrote: Anyome know general time line of how long it takes from being symptomatic -->> death for an average patient who does end up dying? It probably varies widely since the hospitalizatio and ICU required times are very long (talking mainly about USA) I have been assuming that the number of cases in the US is much higher than reported because of the lack of availability for testing and the difficulty in being approved for the test. However, what I dont understand is that the number of reported DEATHS from coronavirus are still in proportion to the number of cases and still very low. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ For example according to this stat, confirmed cases = 2,499. I don't think it's a stretch to think actual cases are much higher than that (say~20,000), but number of reported deaths =55 is very much in line with the cases number. I don't think you can really sneak "deaths" behind people. I.e I don't think there are cases where X person fails to receive coronavirus test, DIES, and therefore is not classified as a coronavirus death because he/she has not been diagnosed via testing. The only reasonable explanation is what then? Is this being caused by the lag time between catching the virus//being symptomatic to being sick enough to die? What else can it be? Am I just wrong to think that the actual number of cases is much higher than 2500? I really don't get it. Any ideas?

Yes. Actual number of cases are much higher than reported, and death totals lag behind because people dying today are people who became infected weeks ago (death rate should be calculated as people dead today/people infected X weeks ago). For people doing back-of-the-envelope calculations, these things roughly cancel each other out when considering the mortality rate, so the actual death rate given now is presumed to be roughly accurate. Although this varies by country of course.

On March 14 2020 23:02 LemOn[5thF] wrote: So what's your shopping strategy boys

I'm in China, so things are just getting back to normal =s

On March 14 2020 21:10 hiems wrote: Show nested quote + On March 14 2020 02:31 Baalim wrote:   On March 14 2020 01:09 hiems wrote: Anyome know general time line of how long it takes from being symptomatic -->> death for an average patient who does end up dying? It probably varies widely since the hospitalizatio and ICU required times are very long (talking mainly about USA) I have been assuming that the number of cases in the US is much higher than reported because of the lack of availability for testing and the difficulty in being approved for the test. However, what I dont understand is that the number of reported DEATHS from coronavirus are still in proportion to the number of cases and still very low. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ For example according to this stat, confirmed cases = 2,499. I don't think it's a stretch to think actual cases are much higher than that (say~20,000), but number of reported deaths =55 is very much in line with the cases number. I don't think you can really sneak "deaths" behind people. I.e I don't think there are cases where X person fails to receive coronavirus test, DIES, and therefore is not classified as a coronavirus death because he/she has not been diagnosed via testing. The only reasonable explanation is what then? Is this being caused by the lag time between catching the virus//being symptomatic to being sick enough to die? What else can it be? Am I just wrong to think that the actual number of cases is much higher than 2500? I really don't get it. Any ideas?

Mortality rates are much lower if respirators are available to all infected people in need of them, a large number of infected only get fairly insignificant symptoms. Also fairly certain there's some lag.

I'm fairly certain you are correct in assuming that the number of cases is much higher than 2500, and in Italy where the current death toll is 1441, I'm fairly certain the number of infected is wayy higher than the 21k reported.

Can we start a discord or something along those lines? I think it would be important to have first hand anecdotes of people living in each country about what is really going on. I can help with Germany, others Italy, Norway etc. we have Mexico, USA. This seems a lot more valid than going through the media

China and Iran seem very unstable with their information policy and if this is much darker than we anticipate, it could be life saving to get good information from people we know or trust more than some random news site.

On March 14 2020 21:10 hiems wrote: Show nested quote + On March 14 2020 02:31 Baalim wrote:   On March 14 2020 01:09 hiems wrote: Anyome know general time line of how long it takes from being symptomatic -->> death for an average patient who does end up dying? It probably varies widely since the hospitalizatio and ICU required times are very long (talking mainly about USA) I have been assuming that the number of cases in the US is much higher than reported because of the lack of availability for testing and the difficulty in being approved for the test. However, what I dont understand is that the number of reported DEATHS from coronavirus are still in proportion to the number of cases and still very low. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ For example according to this stat, confirmed cases = 2,499. I don't think it's a stretch to think actual cases are much higher than that (say~20,000), but number of reported deaths =55 is very much in line with the cases number. I don't think you can really sneak "deaths" behind people. I.e I don't think there are cases where X person fails to receive coronavirus test, DIES, and therefore is not classified as a coronavirus death because he/she has not been diagnosed via testing. The only reasonable explanation is what then? Is this being caused by the lag time between catching the virus//being symptomatic to being sick enough to die? What else can it be? Am I just wrong to think that the actual number of cases is much higher than 2500? I really don't get it. Any ideas?

I think the numbers are way higher everywhere. Basically the more you test people, the more people have corona. However we know so little about it, there is a chance it already mutated in Italy and has become much more deadly. It could also be that South Korea has excellent hospitals and italy doesn't. Things surely don't add up right now. My best guess is USA will have a lot more deaths soon as we should not overvalue what "healed" or "still serious condition" means.
I also suspect that the fatality rate is not 6.8 like in Italy or 3.4 but rather 0.7-1.0, but it is way too early to say and also depends a lot on the average age of the society and other factors. I assume because Italians are way more touchy and life happens in groups and on the streets, they are the worst breeding ground for a virus, because it affects so many people quickly. But that is why I want to talk more about it, to get more reasonable thoughts and either you guys help me to understand or I help you.

On March 14 2020 22:59 bigredhoss wrote: Dude, have you actually looked at the research and analysis that has been done about this? The WHO and most politicians have been comically under-reacting for most of the past 2+ months. Is your entire position based on this meta-analysis of the news and presumption that they always blow these things out of proportion? No offense, but this is exactly the kind of lazy and uneducated take that leads to the situation the world is in now. The image you posted is case in point. Ebola makes for much better tabloid fodder (extremely high death rate), yet it didn't get nearly the kind of reaction from scientists and governments as CV. 1. It's trivial to see from the R0 and mortality rates that Ebola, SARS, and MERS were never in the same league as CV is in terms of potential damage. It's not the Spanish Flu, but it's closer to that than it is to anything we've had since the Spanish Flu. 2. If you insist on not doing any research and meta-consuming news headlines, please consider the following: -The short, headline-catching facts of CV are set up perfectly for people to under-react to it. "Just a bad flu", 0.2% death rate if you're not old, overall death rate also not a shockingly high number at first glance, "X0,000 people die each year from the flu, bro". -People, as you have shown, are maximally numb right now to anything they perceive as sensationalist headlines because of the way the news cycle has evolved over the past few years. It's extraordinarily difficult to try and sell Joe Blow on the idea that he should cancel non-urgent travel plans and self-isolate for a month or more because of something that has a 1 in 500 chance of killing him if he even catches it, and (assuming he's not from China/Italy/Iran/Spain) has killed less than 100 people in his country. And yet that is what the WHO and governments are (finally) advising - or in some cases mandating. -It is extraordinarily difficult to convince sports leagues, event promoters, etc. that they need to lose out on billions of dollars of revenue for...well, any reason. And yet major games, events, etc. are being canceled. 3. There is still a very wide range of possible outcomes, depending on what levels governments go to isolate people and how people comply, what extent warm and humid weather has on the spread (I think the data is still unclear about this), and how well countries are able to ramp up their health care capacity so that they aren't overwhelmed when the disease reaches its peak. I suppose there is some irony in that if countries take very aggressive and effective preventative measures, the resulting death toll numbers will look a bit like this was never that big of a deal in the first place. But if governments prepare for for the bottom 20 percentile worst case scenario, we are completely fucked if the bottom 2 percentile scenario happens (to be fair I think you implicitly acknowledged this). 4. From a probability standpoint the majority of the mega-bad outcomes from this are in the long tail of the probability distribution. 8-figure worldwide deaths may not be a likely outcome at this point, but such figures are also not a figment of the imagination of over-reactive journalists who are over-extrapolating data as you seem to imply.

Thank you for your post mate. I started a discord server or will do so tomorrow to gather people to share these ideas / information. Preferably from different countries so we can have first hand anecdotes of what is happening and don't need to rely on news media as much. I am also not sure which scenario we are actually in but as you pointed out and as I feel myself, the way things are moving I suspect either a mutation or that the countries recently got more sensitive towards the real dangers of this. Either way, we should be more worried than less lately to make sure

On March 14 2020 23:44 bigredhoss wrote: Show nested quote + On March 14 2020 23:02 LemOn[5thF] wrote: So what's your shopping strategy boys I'm in China, so things are just getting back to normal =s

Are they? I heard conflicting information on that, that it is nowhere near back to normal and that China could also face re-infections / 2nd wave outbreaks. Where in China are you? Great to have your information. I trust people here actually a lot more than official news about whats going on at the ground

To say the media is blowing this thing up simply isn't true. This virus has been out for months now and the media has only started 24 hour coverage over really the past week. They could have been pushing a world-ending pandemic narrative since January if they wanted to scare people into higher ratings. Instead the coverage has come after things have gotten worse and not before. Listen to what the doctors in Italy are saying about people in the west that are complacent and think this is being overblown. Of course it doesn't seem bad early on but if this is allowed to spread then healthcare systems will be overrun.

People don't really appreciate the amount of time and resources this is going to use up in hospitals. I work in an emergency room on the west coast that has received corona positive patients. Here's our protocol now for cleaning a room that has a corona rule out patient. We have 2 negative pressure rooms and for other rooms we have portable HEPA filters that plug into the wall. For the rooms with the HEPA filters we leave them running for 2 hours after the patient has left and for the 2 negative pressure rooms we leave the rooms empty for 1 hour after the patient has left then for either room we get housekeeping to do a special clean. Normally it could take a tech 5 minutes to wipe down a room and get it ready for the next patient. There's a huge difference between flipping a room in 5 minutes vs 2-3 hours. Our wait times have gone from 2 hours to up to 8 hours. We've had 10+ staff furloughed for being exposed to positive patients without proper PPE. If this is just beginning then everyone is fucked.

On March 15 2020 01:11 blackjacki2 wrote: To say the media is blowing this thing up simply isn't true. This virus has been out for months now and the media has only started 24 hour coverage over really the past week. They could have been pushing a world-ending pandemic narrative since January if they wanted to scare people into higher ratings. Instead the coverage has come after things have gotten worse and not before. Listen to what the doctors in Italy are saying about people in the west that are complacent and think this is being overblown. Of course it doesn't seem bad early on but if this is allowed to spread then healthcare systems will be overrun. People don't really appreciate the amount of time and resources this is going to use up in hospitals. I work in an emergency room on the west coast that has received corona positive patients. Here's our protocol now for cleaning a room that has a corona rule out patient. We have 2 negative pressure rooms and for other rooms we have portable HEPA filters that plug into the wall. For the rooms with the HEPA filters we leave them running for 2 hours after the patient has left and for the 2 negative pressure rooms we leave the rooms empty for 1 hour after the patient has left then for either room we get housekeeping to do a special clean. Normally it could take a tech 5 minutes to wipe down a room and get it ready for the next patient. There's a huge difference between flipping a room in 5 minutes vs 2-3 hours. Our wait times have gone from 2 hours to up to 8 hours. We've had 10+ staff furloughed for being exposed to positive patients without proper PPE. If this is just beginning then everyone is fucked.

Thank you for your work man. I hope if anything this crisis gives us more appreciation for all those smaller and bigger angels out there doing good work so that people like me can survive in cases of emergency like this. I always thought there is not enough appreciation for you guys. My aunt is a retired doctor as well and she had two burn outs because she cared so much for the people and couldn't leave work early. Also got infected with hepatitis back in the day when she worked in emergency but fortunately was healed due to newer methods.
Jeah the US might be very interesting, just talked longer with Eri and it seems that the big difference to observe is how the US can handle this crisis. South Korea seems so well equipped to handle it, with their history, traditional mask hygiene and government obedience... whereas Italians with their touchiness and being a lot on the streets and outside / not as much testing etc. and a higher % of old people seem like the polar opposite case. Still it puzzles me that these factors make a difference between Korea (0.7% fatality or so) and Italy (6.8% ???). The 2 Numbers seems also obv. due to testing but it will be important for other countries to understand the huge disparity and learn from it. Hopefully this can avoid a scenario of such a wide spread infection in the population.

Does anybody know if Korea also suspects 40-70% of population being infected in the next 1-2 years like say Germany / Norway and so forth assume ? My hope is that Korea can do a better job and keep the infection very low / mortality rate below 1%. That would mean we could see a future with less than a Million deaths globally (very unlikely but possible at this point).

You say Germany expects 40% but are you speaking for Germany or just for that one source that scared you

Actually Germany was supposed to be 60-70% within 1-2 years according to our own government experts.
Somehow nobody is questioning that number, as it came from the authorities but my hope is that for example South Korea could end up with a lot less infection in the population and a death rate far below 1%. So it is still very early to know, but there are big differences between how certain countries are handling this and it is reflected in deaths.

I started following this website: https://corona.help/

It keeps track of the updates about CV and compiles it into one.

On the right side, it lists: Total infections; Total deaths; and Total recovered.

On the bottom of the page, it lists: Coronavirus infections by country; Coronavirus deaths by country; and Coronavirus Activity.

Well there were some shenanigans here
Basically we have a prime minister guy that's pretty much the Czech Bloomberg.
And universal healthcare

And when it started officially just hospitals could do tests, that cost 5000czk (250USD), paid by universal healthcare insurance companies
And some private laboratories dared to test people individually for around $60

And the Czech Bloomberg, former secret police collaborator didn't like that and moved against the undercutting laboratories, slowing down testing especially initially and people are turned down


Now there's testing spots in tents infront of hospitals, and slow at home tests where medical staff goes there directly that has delays, Elky is waiting for that one


Biggest issues is lack of face masks
- Pharmacy workers and large chain supermarket staff are at risk as nobody has face masks and there are shortages, so you can't do a mandatory blanket face mask bill like China

I'm not sure how productive what you're doing is at all Fisheye by the way, in a crisis like this people should focus on what they can change individually in their communities right now

You can e.g. make home made disinfectant and distribute it
Make sure your social circle does what they can and influence them

Do you really think spending this much time studying global trends and long term projections is a good use of your time?

On March 14 2020 23:44 bigredhoss wrote: Show nested quote + On March 14 2020 23:02 LemOn[5thF] wrote: So what's your shopping strategy boys I'm in China, so things are just getting back to normal =s

Well we have no temperature checks and literally nobodys wearing a face mask ( simply because country doesn't have them)

I'm trying to figure out when's the best time to go to avoid people and hit the shop when panic buyers didn't buy out that days' stock
And I assume walking is GTO instead of public transport

Walking outside with 3+metres between people should be reasonably safe I assume

I don't think going on walks and hikes is increasing the risk much when you avoid people?