Gyroscopic Investing

yankees60 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 12:09 am President Trump 'called Alex Rodriguez for feedback on his administration's coronavirus response' as US soars past 100,000 cases



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ailymailus

Trump said this is fake news.

So what is we do with all the Covid graphs and info? Ditto the Trump bashing during the middle of a crisis? Any particular specific actions other than feeding gasoline on our internal fires that try to burn up our realization that it is not we who are in control?

"Four counties – Blaine County, Idaho; Summit County, Utah; and Eagle County and Gunnison County, Colorado – lead the nation in per capita rates of confirmed cases outside New York and Louisiana, according to a USA Today analysis.

Though rural, the areas are all affluent, mountain-ringed ski and hiking hamlets that see millions of visitors each year."

It's the new Affluenza. In the Rio favelas they have armed patrols seeking to keep out the "rich people's disease"

yankees60 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 28, 2020 11:53 pm "1920: Alcohol is prohibited

2020: Liquor stores are an essential business during a national health crisis"

That's funny, here they're "closed until further notice." I went for a stroll today; walking by a liquor store, I saw a guy stand there and look at that sign for maybe 15 seconds. Poor fella just wants to relax into a nice black out.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 12:29 pm

yankees60 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 28, 2020 11:53 pm "1920: Alcohol is prohibited

2020: Liquor stores are an essential business during a national health crisis"

That's funny, here they're "closed until further notice." I went for a stroll today; walking by a liquor store, I saw a guy stand there and look at that sign for maybe 15 seconds. Poor fella just wants to relax into a nice black out.

As I posted a few days ago (with attendant newspaper article)....here they are open and their business is booming.

Vinny

I'm extremely fortunate in that I stocked up on tons of booze a couple weeks before everything got shut down. I think it's inhumane to expect people to go through this madness without being at least a little tipsy. People are home all day with their children, for god's sake! People can only be pushed so far when they're sober.

Mountaineer wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 7:05 am So what is we do with all the Covid graphs and info? Ditto the Trump bashing during the middle of a crisis? Any particular specific actions other than feeding gasoline on our internal fires that try to burn up our realization that it is not we who are in control?

The takeaway for me on a concrete, personal level is that if any politician, at any level, of any party, says it's say to go out in the near future and resume normal life in the USA they are out-and-out lying. They are lying to save their career, reputation, power, whatever it is that these malignant narcissists who run our world crave (and there are many, not only Trump). Save yourself, save your family, save your neighbors, stay home. Dig into your beautiful HBPP's if you need to, but stay home until there are widely deployed therapies, a vaccine visibly on the way, and enough doctors, nurses, beds, ventilators, and supplies to care for you if you do get sick. Dear God, it's not about Trump, that's his obsession... it's always about him. And his followers think it's always about him. It's not. He's almost irrelevant.

He had abdicated government. We have to take care of ourselves. This is the reality in America today. The most trusted people are your State and County health departments on the 5:00 PM news every night. The people you know and trust and who are taking on accountability, though the POTUS said he is not accountable. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we should be a less centralized country.

I don't buy this "who could have known crap". I wrote an email to my family in Seattle dated 1/22/2020 saying, "Um, let's wait until we get more clarity on this virus in China before I come visit you". And whom am I? I'm Nobody. On 2/1/2020 in my diary I recorded that I was making portfolio changes because of the virus. And I sold most of my stocks in February (see VP threads). And I started disinfecting the public lab computers I use at Lone Star College back in February. People thought I was nuts. No longer. College is closed, of course.

It's a terrible indictment when a Nobody like me takes visible, concrete actions faster than the POTUS.

ochotona wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 1:41 pm

Mountaineer wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 7:05 am So what is we do with all the Covid graphs and info? Ditto the Trump bashing during the middle of a crisis? Any particular specific actions other than feeding gasoline on our internal fires that try to burn up our realization that it is not we who are in control?

The takeaway for me on a concrete, personal level is that if any politician, at any level, of any party, says it's say to go out in the near future and resume normal life in the USA they are out-and-out lying. They are lying to save their career, reputation, power, whatever it is that these malignant narcissists who run our world crave (and there are many, not only Trump). Save yourself, save your family, save your neighbors, stay home. Dig into your beautiful HBPP's if you need to, but stay home until there are widely deployed therapies, a vaccine visibly on the way, and enough doctors, nurses, beds, ventilators, and supplies to care for you if you do get sick. Dear God, it's not about Trump, that's his obsession... it's always about him. And his followers think it's always about him. It's not. He's almost irrelevant.

He had abdicated government. We have to take care of ourselves. This is the reality in America today. The most trusted people are your State and County health departments on the 5:00 PM news every night. The people you know and trust and who are taking on accountability, though the POTUS said he is not accountable. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we should be a less centralized country.

I don't buy this "who could have known crap". I wrote an email to my family in Seattle dated 1/22/2020 saying, "Um, let's wait until we get more clarity on this virus in China before I come visit you". And whom am I? I'm Nobody. On 2/1/2020 in my diary I recorded that I was making portfolio changes because of the virus. And I sold most of my stocks in February (see VP threads). And I started disinfecting the public lab computers I use at Lone Star College back in February. People thought I was nuts. No longer.

It's a terrible indictment when a Nobody like me takes visible, concrete actions faster than the POTUS.

WELL said!!! Thank you!

Vinny

Xan wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 12:03 am

yankees60 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 28, 2020 11:55 pmCapture.JPG

Is there an equivalent chart looking at deaths or hospitalizations? Total cases is more of a chart of how much testing is being done.

That is exactly the problem - it's very hard to compare across countries, or even states with different testing policies. We're finding out now the extent of the un-tested, asymptomatic carrier problem:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/22 ... ve-got-it/

Such undocumented cases are still contagious and the study found them to be the source of most of the virus’s spread in China before the restrictions came in. Even though these people were only 55 per cent as contagious as people with symptoms, the study found that they were the source of 79 per cent of further infections, due to there being more of them, and the higher likelihood that they were out and about.

So given that - would you argue that the lockdown measures are going to be proven to be next to useless for controlling viral spread? That may be, but, would people have simply accepted the message of "you're going to get the virus no matter what, so just keep working and don't worry about it until you get sick"? Kinda doubt it. There would have been social upheaval and economic harm, as well as a raft of conspiracy theories, either way.

Denninger makes a persuasive case for the proposition that the mandated social distancing sought to be achieved by a nearly complete shut-down of the economy has done very little to alter the R0 of this virus. He concludes, based upon the CDC's own statistics and several decades worth of information gleaned from our experience with polio, that the most significant source of transmission, at this point, is health care workers who, though not necessarily infected themselves, are serving as extremely efficient vectors in the community. He asserts that no other conclusion can be reconciled with the math, raising the question why the focus of attention continues to be on measures that are not only largely unavailing but that are virtually certain to devastate the economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksME4oS ... e=emb_logo

I think I said May 31 in the "prediction" thread, but it depends....NYC is still scoring 3 to 4 thousand *confirmed* new cases a day. They were trending down but then increased again in the past day - so basically a constant rate of new cases since March 22. New cases have to reduce several fold, maybe down to the tens of patients, before the lockdown is lifted.

Packing people into public spaces like sardines has been a way of life here for a long time, but it's certainly not a good public health situation. Once the lockdown is lifted I have no idea what life here will be like. There is an elevator in the subway station near my workplace that we all call "the tuberculator". We still took it without a second thought...but will people willingly get into it now?

I do not speak Korean but
What can it Hurt.
Leading COVID-19 expert from South Korea, explains why everyone should be wearing a mask.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1243975060307599360

The Missus made us masks!

WiseOne wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:45 pm I think I said May 31 in the "prediction" thread, but it depends....NYC is still scoring 3 to 4 thousand *confirmed* new cases a day. They were trending down but then increased again in the past day - so basically a constant rate of new cases since March 22. New cases have to reduce several fold, maybe down to the tens of patients, before the lockdown is lifted.

Packing people into public spaces like sardines has been a way of life here for a long time, but it's certainly not a good public health situation. Once the lockdown is lifted I have no idea what life here will be like. There is an elevator in the subway station near my workplace that we all call "the tuberculator". We still took it without a second thought...but will people willingly get into it now?

You can still move here after the pandemic is over.

WiseOne wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:45 pm There is an elevator in the subway station near my workplace that we all call "the tuberculator". We still took it without a second thought...but will people willingly get into it now?

People will wear masks like in Asia

Boris Johnson says that China has perhaps dozens of times more cases than claimed. I wouldn't be surprised if that were actually the case. Given the tenuous relationship between the Chinese government and the truth.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronav ... ina-2020-3

Here's a picture from Hong Kong my dad recently sent me.

I feel like we should all be wearing masks to the grocery store. People assume that the few who do are sick, or at least they can’t help but feel *maybe* the wearer is sick. Maybe when the fancier or more fun designs come out .

off topic: (Smith’s Hong Kong photo). I wonder if that first character in the sign is Cantonese only.

dualstow wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:05 pm I feel like we should all be wearing masks to the grocery store. People assume that the few who do are sick, or at least they can’t help but feel *maybe* the wearer is sick. Maybe when the fancier or more fun designs come out .

off topic: (Smith’s Hong Kong photo). I wonder if that first character in the sign is Cantonese only.

A brighter mind will have to chime in on that one. I can speak Cantonese more or less fluently, but I am unable to read it unfortunately.

My dad has been cut off from China now that they have closed the border, so he will be in Hong Kong for the remainder of his trip. No boats are available to take him to Macau or anything like that.

We still don't know how the self-isolation situation is going to work out when he's back.

I really don't like the idea of wearing much of anything - let alone something covering my face. However... I expect it won't be too long before the social pressure ramps up enough that I won't be able to stop in a grocery store without a mask.

With that in mind, I'm working on my pack friendly, re-useable, re-chargeable face mask. Every evening I boil a bandana in 200ml of water and 60 grams of salt and then hang it up to dry without rinsing it. The next day, I tie it on like a cowboy neckerchief and can raise it up like a bank robber when required.

Once prepared, the bandana's invisible surface of salt crystals will near instantly destroy any viruses that land on it. And it can be recharged every day. So it is not only retro-cool, but also effective and cheap. Not as retro-cool as a Plague Doctor mask, but I do what I can. It's a skull bandana.

It also helps that I carry a 600 watt immersion heater and some silicone high temp food quality boiling bags.

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:24 pm

dualstow wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:05 pm I feel like we should all be wearing masks to the grocery store. People assume that the few who do are sick, or at least they can’t help but feel *maybe* the wearer is sick. Maybe when the fancier or more fun designs come out .

off topic: (Smith’s Hong Kong photo). I wonder if that first character in the sign is Cantonese only.

A brighter mind will have to chime in on that one. I can speak Cantonese more or less fluently, but I am unable to read it unfortunately.

That's interesting. I thought all the Chinese dialects were different only in their spoken aspect but shared the written aspect.
Which just goes to show how little I know about the Chinese language(s).

Mark Leavy wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:32 pmNot as retro-cool as a Plague Doctor mask, but I do what I can. It's a skull bandana.

A skull bandana may be better. I have a plague doctor mask that I bought for Halloween last year — who knew. If I wore it now, I don’t think it would be appreciated.

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:39 pm That's interesting. I thought all the Chinese dialects were different only in their spoken aspect but shared the written aspect.
Which just goes to show how little I know about the Chinese language(s).

That’s true for the most part. You don’t find many things written in Cantonese except for comic books, according to a guy who gave me a few lessons in a Burger King in no-Cantonese-at-all Taipei. (Bruce, if you’re out there, I really appreciated those lessons. If my minidisc recorder hadn’t glitched out, I’d still be playing the recordings on a regular basis). I do still remember how to say “eat sh*t”

There are some characters that are truly Cantonese-only, but if you break them down into their components, they look like the other characters. That is, they’re not made from scratch.

I am hoping that the Dow will hit 15,000 through the scope of this crisis.

dualstow wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:54 pm

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:39 pm That's interesting. I thought all the Chinese dialects were different only in their spoken aspect but shared the written aspect.
Which just goes to show how little I know about the Chinese language(s).

That’s true for the most part. You don’t find many things written in Cantonese except for comic books, according to a guy who gave me a few lessons in a Burger King in no-Cantonese-at-all Taipei. (Bruce, if you’re out there, I really appreciated those lessons. If my minidisc recorder hadn’t glitched out, I’d still be playing the recordings on a regular basis). I do still remember how to say “eat sh*t”

There are some characters that are truly Cantonese-only, but if you break them down into their components, they look like the other characters. That is, they’re not made from scratch.

So it's sort of like the relationship between German and Swiss German?