Gyroscopic Investing

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 2:41 pm

WiseOne wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 2:11 pm To follow up on Mountaineer's article, and also the posts I made earlier calculating projected COVID prevalence & mortality using the Diamond Princess cruise ship as the perfect test bed. I'd wondered if this was really going to be the apocalypse everyone is assuming, because the numbers weren't really adding up.

John Ioannidis, a Stanford professor whose career has been focused on effectively debunking clinical reports, published this article a few days ago questioning the appropriateness of the epidemic response. He did a similar (though more extensive) analysis of the Diamond Princess as I did, and concludes this:

If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds like a huge number, but it is buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from “influenza-like illness.” If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average. The media coverage would have been less than for an NBA game between the two most indifferent teams.
...
One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.

Which is about the testing we don't have, but there are epidemiological methods that could be brought to bear. I'm wondering why no one is doing that. And how there is so little voice given to reasoned opinions like this in the media. Naw, that wouldn't be sensational enough.

Ok, maybe the case fatality rate will be 0.3%.
Where does he get the "1% of the U.S. population gets infected" part?
My understanding is that this is EXTREMELY contagious.
What if it is 50% of the US population?

You have to read the article. I posted the link.

1) COVID-19 is not even close to being as contagious as flu or measles. 2) He makes a point in the article that numbers in general are lacking, but that the cruise ship provides the best available data for estimating what COVID-19 will do in a general population. That's where the numbers come from, and he provides a range in the article. Go back and read it?

Yes I did miss your post kriegspiel. I'm sure this is making people angry indeed, because the whole thing has become very politicized. But I suspect the economic and collateral damage from the shelter in place orders is going to eclipse that from the virus itself. I'm already reading articles about patients waiting for transplant surgeries being bumped by hospitals in their zeal to cancel elective procedures, who are going to die because of it.

Thanks to whoever posted these articles somewhere in the forum. I know they were one or other Topics (perhaps here) but I've read so many posts in so many Topics. Maybe they both came from this Topic.

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894

https://unherd.com/2020/03/covid-19-has ... ded4b883a5

Read both (lengthy) articles and they were both excellent. Have already sent them elsewhere long and far.

Reminds me of another personal story. When I was 20 I was diagnosed with "an undiagnosed spinal cord disorder". Went through many tests at various times from the ages of 20 to 25 but none of the tests ever came up with anything other than that diagnosis.

The main symptoms were I went from being 19 years old and being able to run freely to being 20 years old when all of a sudden and with no overt cause my right leg is now dragging when I ran, preventing me from running more than about 70 yards or so at a clip before my right leg started dragging. Also somewhat affects the control I have over both legs but primarily my right.

I've continued to play basketball and softball through all of that. Most people don't even notice anything going on with me.

Then, when I was 39 years old, I told myself, "They now have these things call MRIs. They did not have tools such as that the last time I'd been tested 14 years prior. Maybe an MRI will reveal something."

I started the whole process from scratch. Starting with my doctor who referred me to a neurologist who then referred me to a surgeon.

We are now at the point where I'm discussing with the surgeon the diagnosis and the options for fixing my spinal cord problem.

First thing he tells me is that I test out neurologically worse than people on full disability. I was shocked to hear that. My response was, "I just ignore it and go about my daily life as best I can."

Now we come to the proposed "cure". He says I present to him a really interesting case and he'd love to do the operation.

Which is..

My lungs are collapsed. I'm in a body cast for three months. No guarantees that it fixes anything.

My response? "Wow! The cure sounds worse than the problem!"

He smiles in agreement.

I then ask him, "What next?" thinking he's going to want to see me periodically to keep an eye on it, see if it gets any worse.

His response again surprises me. "Just live with it." And, that is what I have done 30 years after that day talking to him. And, have never had it looked at since.


The story was to say that I'm now moving towards a position that the treatment of this virus may be worse than the actual damage from the virus in that we may totally squash the virus but also squash our economy at the same time. It's a difficult balance but I know politicians to death of ever being accused of not doing enough so, out of their own fear, they will be over cautious to the nth degree. And, they they've proven that they have little regard to fiscal responsibilities and that real people and businesses actually do have to deal with financial realities. They cannot run their lives and businesses on deficits.


Vinny

yankees60 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 6:18 pm Thanks to whoever posted these articles somewhere in the forum. I know they were one or other Topics (perhaps here) but I've read so many posts in so many Topics. Maybe they both came from this Topic.

The medium was supplied by Mountaineer, 2 pages previous.

dualstow wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 6:22 pm

yankees60 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 6:18 pm Thanks to whoever posted these articles somewhere in the forum. I know they were one or other Topics (perhaps here) but I've read so many posts in so many Topics. Maybe they both came from this Topic.

The medium was supplied by Mountaineer, 2 pages previous.

I then subscribed after reading it.

Vinny

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:53 pm

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:37 pm Looks like the rec centre and gym closure will be in place for a good while.

I'm heading to Walmart today or tomorrow to get some Coronavirus quarantine home workout gear.

I currently have a yoga mat and a jump rope. Legit nothing else.

If you were to spend, say, up to 100 bucks, what would you spend that money on to get the best home workout possible? Would you spend anything at all? I'm thinking of at least getting that ab wheel thing.

You can make a Tim Ferriss kettlebell for like $15 with parts from Lowe's, and then buy one of those ever-present EZ bar + thin-hole weight plates off Craigslist. Buy that Ironmind hipsquat belt I linked before and you can do a few things.

I almost forgot about gymnastic rings! I was thinking about what I could do here at home now that my gym is closed. I have had a set of gymnastic rings for a long time now. They're great for dips, ring pushups, pullups, and prone rows.

WiseOne wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 5:49 pm

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 2:41 pm

WiseOne wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 2:11 pm To follow up on Mountaineer's article, and also the posts I made earlier calculating projected COVID prevalence & mortality using the Diamond Princess cruise ship as the perfect test bed. I'd wondered if this was really going to be the apocalypse everyone is assuming, because the numbers weren't really adding up.

John Ioannidis, a Stanford professor whose career has been focused on effectively debunking clinical reports, published this article a few days ago questioning the appropriateness of the epidemic response. He did a similar (though more extensive) analysis of the Diamond Princess as I did, and concludes this:

If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds like a huge number, but it is buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from “influenza-like illness.” If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average. The media coverage would have been less than for an NBA game between the two most indifferent teams.
...
One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.

Which is about the testing we don't have, but there are epidemiological methods that could be brought to bear. I'm wondering why no one is doing that. And how there is so little voice given to reasoned opinions like this in the media. Naw, that wouldn't be sensational enough.

Ok, maybe the case fatality rate will be 0.3%.
Where does he get the "1% of the U.S. population gets infected" part?
My understanding is that this is EXTREMELY contagious.
What if it is 50% of the US population?

You have to read the article. I posted the link.

1) COVID-19 is not even close to being as contagious as flu or measles. 2) He makes a point in the article that numbers in general are lacking, but that the cruise ship provides the best available data for estimating what COVID-19 will do in a general population. That's where the numbers come from, and he provides a range in the article. Go back and read it?

Yes I did miss your post kriegspiel. I'm sure this is making people angry indeed, because the whole thing has become very politicized. But I suspect the economic and collateral damage from the shelter in place orders is going to eclipse that from the virus itself. I'm already reading articles about patients waiting for transplant surgeries being bumped by hospitals in their zeal to cancel elective procedures, who are going to die because of it.

Ok, I read the article. He claims that 1% is a likely proportion of the population to be infected, but provides no evidence for that percentage as far as I could tell. Did I miss something?

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:13 pm
Ok, I read the article. He claims that 1% is a likely proportion of the population to be infected, but provides no evidence for that percentage as far as I could tell. Did I miss something?

He doesn't claim that it is likely. It was an assumption in a scenario he was laying out:

"If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths."

His point being that if the Chinese had been successful in suppressing news out of Wuhan, we could think that this was simply a very bad year for the flu.

And actually, looking over his article again, he's saying something like what I was saying about worst-case scenarios being meaningless without knowing the odds that they'll happen.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:21 pm

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:13 pm
Ok, I read the article. He claims that 1% is a likely proportion of the population to be infected, but provides no evidence for that percentage as far as I could tell. Did I miss something?

He doesn't claim that it is likely. It was an assumption in a scenario he was laying out:

"If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths."

His point being that if the Chinese had been successful in suppressing news out of Wuhan, we could think that this was simply a very bad year for the flu.

I'm still confused how this correlates to the reports from Italy with close to 800 dying in 24 hours.

[Edit: Grammer / auto correct fail fixes]

Dieter wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:22 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:21 pm

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:13 pm
Ok, I read the article. He claims that 1% is a likely proportion of the population to be infected, but provides no evidence for that percentage as far as I could tell. Did I miss something?

He doesn't claim that it is likely. It was an assumption in a scenario he was laying out:

"If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths."

His point being that if the Chinese had been successful in suppressing news out of Wuhan, we could think that this was simply a very bad year for the flu.

I'm still confused how this messages with the reports from Italy with close to 800 dying in 24 hours.

If you assume a higher infection rate, the assumed deaths would go up too.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:12 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:53 pm

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:37 pm Looks like the rec centre and gym closure will be in place for a good while.

I'm heading to Walmart today or tomorrow to get some Coronavirus quarantine home workout gear.

I currently have a yoga mat and a jump rope. Legit nothing else.

If you were to spend, say, up to 100 bucks, what would you spend that money on to get the best home workout possible? Would you spend anything at all? I'm thinking of at least getting that ab wheel thing.

You can make a Tim Ferriss kettlebell for like $15 with parts from Lowe's, and then buy one of those ever-present EZ bar + thin-hole weight plates off Craigslist. Buy that Ironmind hipsquat belt I linked before and you can do a few things.

I almost forgot about gymnastic rings! I was thinking about what I could do here at home now that my gym is closed. I have had a set of gymnastic rings for a long time now. They're great for dips, ring pushups, pullups, and prone rows.

A gym in our area (mile from my office) has decided to remain open:

Area gyms close; King’s remains open for now

https://www.recorder.com/Gyms-and-protocol-33428218

Vinny

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:21 pm

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:13 pm
Ok, I read the article. He claims that 1% is a likely proportion of the population to be infected, but provides no evidence for that percentage as far as I could tell. Did I miss something?

He doesn't claim that it is likely. It was an assumption in a scenario he was laying out:

"If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths."

His point being that if the Chinese had been successful in suppressing news out of Wuhan, we could think that this was simply a very bad year for the flu.

And actually, looking over his article again, he's saying something like what I was saying about worst-case scenarios being meaningless without knowing the odds that they'll happen.

And if I assume that no one gets it starting right now, then it's no problem.
But what does that have to do with reality?

I would unfortunately have to think we follow closer to Italy’s results vs. any other place, maybe even worse because it seems we still aren’t doing a lot of testing.

But, I will say if the shelter in place and social distancing do work, being out on the roads tonight and at Walmart made it pretty clear to me people are limiting going out. A bit scary with so few people out. Like some post apocalypse novel.

WiseOne, I did get the Doomsday Book, I may have a lot of time to read it.

Melbourne's most popular webcam - no, it's not a photo.

Anyone else have links of where they live?

https://fedsquare.com/fed-cam

Social distancing be damned: Miami sandbar jampacked despite coronavirus orders

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/corona ... 04096.html


Vinny

One of the emergency hospitals Wuhan is panic-building is looking close to completion. Watch a live feed of the construction here.

https://www.businessinsider.com/video-e ... ion-2020-1

yankees60 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 12:21 am One of the emergency hospitals Wuhan is panic-building is looking close to completion. Watch a live feed of the construction here.

https://www.businessinsider.com/video-e ... ion-2020-1

That story was from Jan 31.

A couple days of these prison-style workouts... I have to say I underestimated how much I could do from home.

It's not as good as the gym, but it should be enough to tide me over for now and stave off muscular atrophy.

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 12:46 am

Code: Select all

Screenshot from 2020-03-21 22-45-35.png

picnic in the park!

perfect

A kettlebell, pullup bar, resistance bands and a yoga mat, and you can do just about anything. My kettlebell is an Amazon basics. It's great. Also, check out the "body weight fitness" page on Reddit. They have several different routines depending on your fitness goals.

p.s. the yoga mat doubles as a cat toy!

WiseOne wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 10:48 am A kettlebell, pullup bar, resistance bands and a yoga mat, and you can do just about anything. My kettlebell is an Amazon basics. It's great. Also, check out the "body weight fitness" page on Reddit. They have several different routines depending on your fitness goals.

p.s. the yoga mat doubles as a cat toy!

Yes, and thanks to my cat I am in need of a new yoga mat, haha.

U.S. officials has 27,207 cases. Up from what, 1,000 a week ago? https://www.bing.com/covid?ref=share

pmward wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 11:30 am U.S. officials has 27,207 cases. Up from what, 1,000 a week ago? https://www.bing.com/covid?ref=share

Well it’s up 20% today. https://ncov2019.live/
EDIT: couple hours later- make that +37% just today. Somebody found some test kits.
EDIT2: and it has backtracked to 34%. weird.

Rand Paul tested positive. No symptoms but staying home.

Vinny